Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (575 page)

“These staircases . . .” Versilov mumbled, dwelling on the syllables evidently in order to say something, and evidently afraid I might say something, “I’m no longer used to such stairs, and you’re on the third storey, but now I can find the way. . . .  Don’t trouble, my dear, you’ll catch cold, too.”

But I did not leave him.  We were going down the second flight.

“I’ve been expecting you for the last three days,” broke from me suddenly, as it were of itself; I was breathless.

“Thank you, my dear.”

“I knew you’d be sure to come.”

“And I knew that you knew I should be sure to come.  Thank you, my dear.”

He was silent.  We had reached the outer door, and I still followed him.  He opened the door; the wind rushing in blew out my candle.  Then I clutched his hand.  It was pitch dark.  He started but said nothing.  I stooped over his hand and kissed it greedily several times, many times.

“My darling boy, why do you love me so much?” he said, but in quite a different voice.  His voice quivered, there was a ring of something quite new in it as though it were not he who spoke.

I tried to answer something, but couldn’t, and ran upstairs.  He stood waiting where he was, and it was only when I was back in the flat that I heard the front door open and shut with a slam.  I slipped by the landlord, who turned up again, and went into my room, fastened the latch, and without lighting the candle threw myself on my bed, buried my face in the pillow and cried and cried.  It was the first time I had cried since I was at Touchard’s.  My sobs were so violent, and I was so happy . . . but why describe it?

I write this now without being ashamed of it, for perhaps it was all good, in spite of its absurdity.

3

But didn’t I make him suffer for it!  I became frightfully overbearing.  There was no reference to this scene between us afterwards.  On the contrary, we met three days later as though nothing had happened — what’s more, I was almost rude that evening, and he too seemed rather dry.  This happened in my room again; for some reason I had not been to see him in spite of my longing to see my mother.

We talked all this time, that is throughout these two months, only of the most abstract subjects.  And I can’t help wondering at it; we did nothing but talk of abstract subjects — of the greatest interest and of vast significance for humanity, of course, but with no bearing whatever on the practical position.  Yet many, many aspects of the practical position needed, and urgently needed, defining and clearing up, but of that we did not speak.  I did not even say anything about my mother or Liza or . . . or indeed about myself and my whole history.  Whether this was due to shame or to youthful stupidity I don’t know.  I expect it was stupidity, for shame I could have overcome.  But I domineered over him frightfully, and absolutely went so far as insolence more than once, even against my own feelings.  This all seemed to happen of itself, inevitably; I couldn’t restrain myself.  His tone was as before, one of light mockery, though always extremely affectionate in spite of everything. I was struck, too, by the fact that he preferred coming to me, so that at last I very rarely went to see my mother, not more than once a week, especially towards the latter part of the time, as I became more and more absorbed in frivolity.  He used always to come in the evenings, to sit and chat with me, he was very fond of talking to the landlord too, which enraged me in a man like him.

The idea struck me that he might have nowhere to go except to see me.  But I knew for a fact that he had acquaintances, and that he had, indeed, of late renewed many of his old ties in society, which he had dropped the year before.  But he did not seem to be particularly fascinated by them, and seemed to have renewed many of them simply in a formal way; he preferred coming to see me.

I was sometimes awfully touched by the timid way in which he almost always opened my door, and for the first minute looked with strange anxiety into my eyes.  “Am I in the way?” he seemed to ask, “tell me, and I’ll go.”  He even said as much sometimes.  Once, for instance, towards the end he came in when I had just put on a suit, brand new from the tailor’s, and was just setting off to Prince Sergay’s, to go off somewhere with him (where, I will explain later).  He sat down without noticing that I was on the point of going out; he showed at moments a remarkable absence of mind.  As luck would have it, he began to talk of the landlord.  I fired up.

“Oh, damn the landlord!”

“Ah, my dear,” he said, getting up, “I believe you’re going out and I’m hindering you. . . .  Forgive me, please.”

And he meekly hastened to depart.  Such meekness towards me from a man like him, a man so aristocratic and independent, who had so much individuality, at once stirred in my heart all my tenderness for him, and trust in him.  But if he loved me so much, why did he not check me at the time of my degradation?  If he had said one word I should perhaps have pulled up.  Though perhaps I should not.  But he did see my foppery, my flaunting swagger, my smart Matvey (I wanted once to drive him back in my sledge but he would not consent, and indeed it happened several times that he refused to be driven in it), he could see I was squandering money — and he said not a word, not a word, he showed no curiosity even!  I’m surprised at that to this day; even now.  And yet I didn’t stand on ceremony with him, and spoke openly about everything, though I never gave him a word of explanation.  He didn’t ask and I didn’t speak.

Yet on two or three occasions we did speak on the money question.  I asked him on one occasion, soon after he renounced the fortune he had won, how he was going to live now.

“Somehow, my dear,” he answered with extraordinary composure.

I know now that more than half of Tatyana Pavlovna’s little capital of five thousand roubles has been spent on Versilov during the last two years.

Another time it somehow happened that we talked of my mother.

“My dear boy,” he said mournfully, “I used often to say to Sofia Andreyevna at the beginning of our life together, though indeed I’ve said it in the middle and at the end too:  ‘My dear, I worry you and torment you, and I don’t regret it as long as you’re before me, but if you were to die I know I should kill myself to atone for it.’”

I remember, however, that he was particularly open that evening.

“If only I were a weak-willed nonentity and suffered from the consciousness of it!  But you see that’s not so, I know I’m exceedingly strong, and in what way do you suppose?  Why just in that spontaneous power of accommodating myself to anything whatever, so characteristic of all intelligent Russians of our generation. There’s no crushing me, no destroying me, no surprising me.  I’ve as many lives as a cat.  I can with perfect convenience experience two opposite feelings at one and the same time, and not, of course, through my own will.  I know, nevertheless, that it’s dishonourable just because it’s so sensible.  I’ve lived almost to fifty, and to this day I don’t know whether it’s a good thing I’ve gone on living or not.  I like life, but that follows as a matter of course.  But for a man like me to love life is contemptible.  Of late there has been a new movement, and the Krafts won’t accommodate themselves to things, and shoot themselves.  But it’s evident that the Krafts are stupid, we, to be sure, are clever — so that one can draw no parallel, and the question remains open anyway.  And can it be that the earth is only for such as we?  In all probability it is; but the idea is a comfortless one.  However . . . however, the question remains open, anyway.”

He spoke mournfully and yet I didn’t know whether he was sincere or not.  He always had a manner which nothing would have made him drop.

4

Then I besieged him with questions, I fell upon him like a starving man on bread.  He always answered me readily and straightforwardly, but in the end always went off into the widest generalizations, so that in reality one could draw no conclusions from it.  And yet these questions had worried me all my life, and I frankly confess that even in Moscow I had put off settling them till I should meet him in Petersburg.  I told him this plainly, and he did not laugh at me — on the contrary, I remember he pressed my hand.

On general politics and social questions I could get nothing out of him, and yet in connection with my “idea” those subjects troubled me more than anything.  Of men like Dergatchev I once drew from him the remark that “they were below all criticism,” but at the same time he added strangely that “he reserved the right of attaching no significance to his opinions.”  For a very long time he would say nothing on the question how the modern state would end, and how the social community would be built up anew, but in the end I literally wrenched a few words out of him.

“I imagine that all that will come about in a very commonplace way,” he said once.  “Simply un beau matin, in spite of all the balance-sheets on budget days, and the absence of deficits, all the states without exception will be unable to pay, so that they’ll all be landed in general bankruptcy.  At the same time all the conservative elements of the whole world will rise up in opposition to everything, because they will be the bondholders and creditors, and they won’t want to allow the bankruptcy.  Then, of course, there will follow a general liquidation, so to speak; the Jews will come to the fore and the reign of the Jews will begin: and then all those who have never had shares in anything, and in fact have never had anything at all, that is all the beggars, will naturally be unwilling to take part in the liquidation. . . .  A struggle will begin, and after seventy-seven battles the beggars will destroy the shareholders and carry off their shares and take their places as shareholders, of course.  Perhaps they’ll say something new too, and perhaps they won’t.  Most likely they’ll go bankrupt too.  Further than that, my dear boy, I can’t undertake to predict the destinies by which the face of this world will be changed.  Look in the Apocalypse though . . .”

“But can it all be so materialistic?  Can the modern world come to an end simply through finance?”

“Oh, of course, I’ve only chosen one aspect of the picture, but that aspect is bound up with the whole by indissoluble bonds, so to speak.”

“What’s to be done?”

“Oh dear, don’t be in a hurry; it’s not all coming so soon.  In any case, to do nothing is always best, one’s conscience is at rest anyway, knowing that one’s had no share in anything.”

“Aië, do stop that, talk sense.  I want to know what I’m to do and how I’m to live.”

“What you are to do, my dear?  Be honest, never lie, don’t covet your neighbour’s house; in fact, read the Ten Commandments — it’s written there once for all.”

“Don’t talk like that, all that’s so old, and besides . . . it’s all words; I want something real.”

“Well, if you’re fearfully devoured by eunui, try to love some one or something, or at any rate to attach yourself to something.”

“You’re only laughing!  Besides, what can I do alone with your Ten Commandments?”

“Well, keep them in spite of all your doubts and questions, and you’ll be a great man.”

“Whom no one will know of.”

“‘There is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest.’”

“You’re certainly laughing.”

“Well, if you take it so to heart you’d better try as soon as possible to specialize, take up architecture or the law, and then when you’re busy with serious work you’ll be more settled in your mind and forget trifles.”

I was silent.  What could I gather from this?  And yet, after every such conversation I was more troubled than before.  Moreover I saw clearly that there always remained in him, as it were, something secret, and that drew me to him more and more.

“Listen,” I said, interrupting him one day, “I always suspect that you say all this only out of bitterness and suffering, but that secretly you are a fanatic over some idea, and are only concealing it, or ashamed to admit it.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Listen, nothing’s better than being useful.  Tell me how, at the present moment, I can be most of use.  I know it’s not for you to decide that, but I’m only asking for your opinion.  You tell me, and what you say I swear I’ll do!  Well, what is the great thought?”

“Well, to turn stones into bread.  That’s a great thought.”

“The greatest?  Yes, really, you have suggested quite a new path.  Tell me, is it the greatest?”

“It’s very great, my dear boy, very great, but it’s not the greatest.  It’s great but secondary, and only great at the present time.  Man will be satisfied and forget; he will say:  ‘I’ve eaten it and what am I to do now?’  The question will remain open for all time.”

“You spoke once of the ‘Geneva ideas.’  I didn’t understand what was meant by the ‘Geneva ideas.’”

“The ‘Geneva idea’ is the idea of virtue without Christ, my boy, the modern idea, or, more correctly, the ideas of all modern civilization.  In fact, it’s one of those long stories which it’s very dull to begin, and it will be a great deal better if we talk of other things, and better still if we’re silent about other things.”

“You always want to be silent!”

“My dear, remember that to be silent is good, safe, and picturesque.”

“Picturesque?”

“Of course.  Silence is always picturesque, and the man who is silent always looks nicer than the man who is speaking.”

“Why, talking as we do is no better than being silent.  Damn such picturesqueness, and still more damn such profitableness.”

“My dear,” he said suddenly, rather changing his tone, speaking with real feeling and even with a certain insistence, “I don’t want to seduce you from your ideals to any sort of bourgeois virtue, I’m not assuring you that ‘happiness is better than heroism’; on the contrary ‘heroism is finer than any happiness,’ and the very capacity for it alone constitutes happiness.  That’s a settled thing between us.  I respect you just for being able in these mawkish days to set up some sort of an ‘idea’ in your soul (don’t be uneasy, I remember perfectly well).  But yet one must think of proportion, for now you want to live a resounding life, to set fire to something, to smash something, to rise above everything in Russia, to call up storm-clouds, to throw every one into terror and ecstasy, while you vanish yourself in North America.  I’ve no doubt you’ve something of that sort in your heart, and so I feel it necessary to warn you, for I really love you, my dear.”