Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (394 page)

‘“Don’t trouble. I’m in consumption,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to you with a request.’

“He sat down, wondering, and I told him at once the whole story of the doctor, and explained that, having an influence over his uncle, he might be able to do something.

‘“I’ll do it. Certainly I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll attack my uncle to-morrow. And indeed I’m glad to do it; and you’ve told it all so well. . . . But what put it into your head, Terentyev, to come to me?’

‘“So much depends upon your uncle in this case. And since we were always enemies, Bahmutov, and as you’re an honourable man, I thought you wouldn’t refuse an enemy,’ I added with irony.

‘“As Napoleon appealed to England!’ he cried, laughing. ‘I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll go at once if I can,’ he added hastily, seeing that I was gravely and sternly getting up from my chair.

“And indeed the affair was unexpectedly arranged among us in the most successful way. Within six weeks our doctor was appointed to a post in another province, and had received help in money, as well as his travelling expenses. I suspect that Bahmutov, who had taken to visiting the doctor pretty often (I purposely did not do so, and even received the doctor coolly when he came to see me), I suspect that Bahmutov had induced the doctor to accept a loan from him. I saw Bahmutov about twice in the course of the six weeks, and we met for the third time when we saw the last of the doctor. Bahmutov got up a dinnerwith champagne for him at parting, at which the doctor’s wife too was present, though she left early to go home to her baby. It was at the beginning of May. It was a fine evening. The huge ball of the sun was sinking on the water. Bahmutov saw me home; we went by the Nikolaevsky Bridge; we were both a little drunk. Bahmutov spoke of his delight at the successful conclusion of the business, thanked me for something, said how happy he felt after a good deed, declared that the credit of it all was mine, and that people were wrong in preaching and maintaining, as many do now, that individual benevolence was of no use. I had a great longing to speak too.

‘“Anyone who attacks individual charity,’ I began, ‘attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. But the organisation of “public charity” and the problem of individual freedom are two distinct questions, and not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it’s an individual impulse, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another. There was an old fellow at Moscow, a “General” — that is, an actual state councillor, with a German name. He spent his whole life visiting prisons and prisoners; every party of exiles to Siberia knew beforehand that the “old General” would visit them on the Sparrow Hills. He carried out this good work with the greatest earnestness and devotion. He would turn up, walk through the rows of prisoners, who surrounded him, stop before each, questioning each as to his needs, calling each of them “my dear,” and hardly ever preaching to anyone. He used to give them money, send them the most necessary articles — leq-wrappers, under qarments, linen, and sometimes took them books of devotion, which he distributed among those who could read, firmly persuaded that they would read them on the way, and that those who could read would read them to those who could not. He rarely asked a prisoner about his crime; he simply listened if the criminal began speaking of it. All the criminals were on an equal footing with him, he made no distinction between them. He talked to them as though they were brothers, and they came in the end to look on him as a father. If he saw a woman with a baby among the prisoners, he would go up, fondle the child, and snap his fingers to make it laugh. He visited the prisoners like this for many years, up to the time of his death, so much so that he was known all over Russia and Siberia — that is, by all the criminals. A man who had been in Siberia told me that he had seen himself how the most hardened criminals remembered the general; yet the latter could rarely give more than twenty farthings to each prisoner on his visits. It’s true they spoke of him without any great warmth, or even earnestness. Some one of these “unhappy” creatures, a man who had murdered a dozen people and slaughtered six children solely for his own pleasure (for there are such men, I am told), would suddenly, once in twenty years, apropos of nothing, heave a sigh and say:

“‘ “What about that old general, is he still alive, I wonder?”

‘“Perhaps he smiles as he says it. And that’s all. But how can you tell what seed may have been dropped in his soul for ever by that old general, whom he hasn’t forgotten for twenty years? How can you tell, Bahmutov, what significance such an association of one personality with another may have on the destiny of those associated? . . . You know it’s a matter of a whole lifetime, an infinite multitude of ramifications hidden from us. The most skilful chess-player, the cleverest of them, can only look a few moves ahead; a French player who could reckon out ten moves ahead was written about as a marvel. How many moves there are in this, and how much that is unknown to us! In scattering the seed, scattering your “charity,” your kind deeds, you are giving away, in one form or another, part of your personality, and taking into yourself part of another; you are in mutual communion with one another, a little more attention and you will be rewarded with the knowledge of the most unexpected discoveries. You will come at last to look upon your work as a science; it will lay hold of all your life, and may fill up your whole life. On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds scattered by you, perhaps forgotten by you, will grow up and take form. He who has received them from you will hand them on to another. And how can you tell what part you may have in the future determination of the destinies of humanity? If this knowledge and a whole lifetime of this work should make you at last able to sow some mighty seed, to bequeath the world some mighty thought, then ...’ and so on. I talked a great deal.

‘“And to think that you, talking like this, are condemned to death!’ cried Bahmutov, with a warm note of reproach against some one in his voice.

“At that moment we were standing on the bridge, and leaning our elbows on the rail, we looked into the Neva.

‘“And do you know what’s just struck me?’ I said, bending lower over the rail.

‘“Not to throw yourself into the water!’ cried Bahmutov, almost in alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.

‘“No; for the time being, only the following reflection: here I have two or three months left to live, perhaps four; but when I’ve only two months, for instance, left, if I’m terribly anxious to do a good deed which requires a great deal of work, activity, and bother, like our business with the doctor, I ought to refuse it because I haven’t time enough left, and seek some other good work on a smaller scale, and more within my means (if I am still so drawn to good deeds). You must own that’s an amusing idea.’

“Poor Bahmutov was much distressed on my account. He took me home to my very door, and was for the most part silent, having too much tact to attempt to console me. As he said ‘good-bye’ to me he pressed my hand warmly and asked permission to come and see me. I answered that if he came to comfort me (and that, even if he were silent, he would come to comfort me, I explained that to him) each time by doing so, he would remind me of death more than ever. He shrugged his shoulders, but agreed with me. We parted fairly civilly, which was more than I had expected.

“But that eveninq and that niqht there was sown the first seed of my ‘last conviction.’ I clutched eagerly at this new idea and eagerly analysed it in all its branches, in all its aspects. I didn’t sleep all night, and the more deeply I went into it, the more I absorbed it, the more frightened I became. An awful terror came over me and haunted me continually for the following days. Sometimes, thinking of that continual terror of mine, I shivered suddenly with another dread. From that dread I could not but conclude that my ‘last conviction’ had taken too grave a hold upon me, and must lead to its logical conclusion. But I had not resolution enough for that conclusion. Three weeks later it was all over and that resolution came to me, but it was through a very strange circumstance.

“Here in my ‘Explanation’ I note down all these dates and numbers. Of course it will make no difference to me, butnow(and perhaps only for this moment) I should like those who will judge of my action to be able to see what long chain of logical reasoning led to my ‘last conviction.’ I have just written above that the final resoluteness, which I had lacked for carrying out my ‘last conviction,’ seemed to come to me, not from logical reasoning, but from a strange shock, from a strange circumstance, perhaps quite irrelevant. Ten days ago Rogozhin came to see me about an affair of his own, which there is no need to go into. I had never seen Rogozhin before, but I had heard a great deal about him. I gave him the necessary information. He soon went away, and as he had simply come for the information, our acquaintance might have ended there. But he interested me too much, and all that day I was possessed by strange ideas, so that I made up my mind to go to him next day, to return his visit. Rogozhin was evidently not pleased to see me, and even dropped a ‘delicate’ hint that it was no good for us to continue the acquaintance; yet I spent a very interesting hour, and probably he did the same. The contrast between us was so great that it could not be ignored by us, especially by me. I was a man whose days were numbered, while he was living the fullest, the most actual life, absorbed in the moment, entirely unconcerned about ‘final’ deductions, numbers, or anything whatever except what. .. what. . . what he was mad upon, in fact. Mr. Rogozhin must forgive me that expression, if only because I’m a poor hand at literature and don’t know how to express my ideas. In spite of his unfriendliness, I thought he was a man of intelligence and capable of understanding much, though he had few outside interests. I gave him no hint of my ‘final conviction,’ but yet I fancied that he guessed it as he listened to me. He did not speak; he is awfully silent. As I took leave I hinted that, in spite of all the difference and the contrast between us — les extremites se touchent (I explained that in Russian for him), and that perhaps he was by no means so far from my ‘final conviction’ as he seemed. To that he responded with a very grim and sour grimace, got up, himself handed me my cap, making it appear as though I were going away of my own accord, and without more ado led me out of his gloomy house, pretending to see me out from politeness. His house impressed me; it’s like a graveyard, and I believe he likes it, which is very natural, indeed; such a full, vivid life as he leads is too full in itself to need a setting.

“That visit to Rogozhin exhausted me very much, and I had felt very unwell all that morning. Towards the evening I was very weak and lay down on my bed; from time to time I was in a high fever, and even delirious. Kolya was with me till eleven o’clock. I remember everything he talked of, however, and everything we spoke about. But when at moments a mist passed before my eyes I kept seeing Ivan Fomitch, who seemed to be receiving millions of money and not to know where to put it, to be worried about it, terrified that it would be stolen, and at last he seemed to decide to bury it in the earth. Finally I advised him, instead of digging such a mountain of gold into the earth, to have the whole heap melted down into a gold coffin for the frozen baby and to have the baby dug up for the purpose. This sarcasm of mine seemed to be accepted by Surikov with tears of gratitude, and he went at once to carry out the plan, and I thought I left him with a curse.

“Kolya assured me, when I was quite myself again, that I had not slept at all, but that I had been talking to him all the time about Surikov. At moments I was in great misery and in a state of collapse, so that Kolya was uneasy when he left me. When I got up myself to lock the door after him, I suddenly recalled a picture I had seen at Rogozhin’s, over the door of one of the dreariest of his rooms. He showed it me himself in passing. I believe I stood before it for five minutes. There was nothing good about it from an artistic point of view, but it produced a strange uneasiness in me.

“The picture represented Christ who has only just been taken from the cross. I believe artists usually paint Christ, both on the cross and after He has been taken from the cross, still with extraordinary beauty of face. They strive to preserve that beauty even in His most terrible agonies. In Rogozhin’s picture there’s no trace of beauty. It is in every detail the corpse of a man who has endured infinite agony before the crucifixion; who has been wounded, tortured, beaten by the guards and the people when He carried the cross on His back and fell beneath its weight, and after that has undergone the agony of crucifixion, lasting for six hours at least (according to my reckoning). It’s true it’s the face of a man only just taken from the cross — that is to say, still bearing traces of warmth and life. Nothing is rigid in it yet, so that there’s still a look of suffering in the face of the dead man, as though he were still feeling it (that has been very well caught by the artist). “Vfet the face has not been spared in the least. It is simply nature, and the corpse of a man, whoever he might be, must really look like that after such suffering. I know that the Christian Church laid it down, even in the early ages, that Christ’s suffering was not symbolical but actual, and that His body was therefore fully and completely subject to the laws of nature on the cross. In the picture the face is fearfully crushed by blows, swollen, covered with fearful, swollen and bloodstained bruises, the eyes are open and squinting: the great wide-open whites of the eyes glitter with a sort of deathly, glassy light. But, strange to say, as one looks at this corpse of a tortured man, a peculiar and curious question arises; if just such a corpse (and it must have been just like that) was seen by all His disciples, by those who were to become His chief apostles, by the women that followed Him and stood by the cross, by all who believed in Him and worshipped Him, how could they believe that that martyr would rise again? The question instinctively arises: if death is so awful and the laws of nature so mighty, how can they be overcome? How can they be overcome when even He did not conquer them, He who vanquished nature in His lifetime, who exclaimed, ‘Maiden, arise!’ and the maiden arose—’Lazarus, come forth!’ and the dead man came forth? Looking at such a picture, one conceives of nature in the shape of an immense, merciless, dumb beast, or more correctly, much more correctly, speaking, though it sounds strange, in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of that Being. This picture expresses and unconsciously suggests to one the conception of such a dark, insolent, unreasoning and eternal Power to which everything is in subjection. The people surrounding the dead man, not one of whom is shown in the picture, must have experienced the most terrible anguish and consternation on that evening, which had crushed all their hopes, and almost their convictions. They must have parted in the most awful terror, though each one bore within him a mighty thought which could never be wrested from him. And if the Teacher could have seen Himself on the eve of the crucifixion, would He have gone up to the cross and died as He did? That question too rises involuntarily, as one looks at the picture.