Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (90 page)

But while waiting to become famous the genius insisted upon immediate recognition in substantial form. It is always pleasant to receive payment in advance, and in this case it was particularly so. I know that he seriously assured my uncle that some great work lay before him, Foma, in the future — a work for which he had been summoned into the world, and to the accomplishment of this work he was urged by some sort of person with wings, who visited him at night, or something of that kind. This great work was to write a book full of profound wisdom in the soul-saving line, which would set the whole world agog and stagger all Russia. And when all Russia was staggered, he, Foma, disdaining glory, would retire into a monastery, and in the catacombs of Kiev would pray day and night for the happiness of the Fatherland. All this imposed upon my uncle.

Well, now imagine what this Foma, who had been all his life oppressed and crushed, perhaps actually beaten too, who was vain and secretly lascivious, who had been disappointed in his literary ambitions, who had played the buffoon for a crust of bread, who was at heart a despot in spite of all his previous abjectness and impotence, who was a braggart, and insolent when successful, might become when he suddenly found himself in the haven he had reached after so many ups and downs, honoured and glorified, humoured and flattered, thanks to a patroness who was an idiot and a patron who was imposed upon and ready to agree to anything. I must, of course, explain my uncle’s character more fully, or Foma Fomitch’s success cannot be understood. But for the moment I will say that Foma was a complete illustration of the saying, “Let him sit down to the table and he will put his feet on it.” He paid us out for his past! A base soul escaping from oppression becomes an oppressor. Foma had been oppressed, and he had at once a craving to oppress others; he had been the victim of whims and caprices and now he imposed his own whims and caprices on others. He had been the butt of others, and now he surrounded himself with creatures whom he could turn into derision. His boasting was ridiculous; the airs he gave himself were incredible; nothing was good enough for him; his tyranny was beyond all bounds, and it reached such a pitch that simple-hearted people who had not witnessed his manoeuvres, but only heard queer stories about him, looked upon all this as a miracle, as the work of the devil, crossed themselves and spat.

I was speaking of my uncle. Without explaining his remarkable character (I repeat) it is, of course, impossible to understand Foma Fomitch’s insolent domination in another man’s house; it is impossible to understand the metamorphosis of the cringing dependent into the great man. Besides being kind-hearted in the extreme, my uncle was a man of the most refined delicacy in spite of a somewhat rough exterior, of the greatest generosity and of proved courage. I boldly say of “courage”; nothing could have prevented him from fulfilling an obligation, from doing his duty — in such cases no obstacle would have dismayed him. His soul was as pure as a child’s. He was a perfect child at forty, open-hearted in the extreme, always good-humoured, imagining everybody an angel, blaming himself for other people’s shortcomings, and exaggerating the good qualities of others, even pre-supposing them where they could not possibly exist. He was one of those very generous and pure-hearted men who are positively ashamed to assume any harm of another, are always in haste to endow their neighbours with every virtue, rejoice at other people’s success, and in that way always live in an ideal world, and when anything goes wrong always blame themselves first. To sacrifice themselves in the interests of others is their natural vocation. Some people would have called him cowardly, weak-willed and feeble. Of course he was weak, and indeed he was of too soft a disposition; but it was not from lack of will, but from the fear of wounding, of behaving cruelly, from excess of respect for others and for mankind in general. He was, however, weak-willed and cowardly only when nothing was at stake but his own interests, which he completely disregarded, and for this he was continually an object of derision, and often with the very people for whom he was sacrificing his own advantage. He never believed, however, that he had enemies; he had them, indeed, but he somehow failed to observe them. He dreaded fuss and disturbance in the house like fire, and immediately gave way to anyone and submitted to anything. He gave in through a sort of shy good nature, from a sort of shy delicacy. “So be it,” he would say, quickly brushing aside all reproaches for his indulgence and weakness; “so be it . . . that everyone may be happy and contented!” I need hardly say that he was ready to submit to every honourable influence. What is more, an adroit rogue might have gained complete control over him, and even have lured him on to do wrong, of course misrepresenting the wrong action as a right one. My uncle very readily put faith in other people, and was often far from right in doing so. When, after many sufferings, he brought himself at last to believe that the man who deceived him was dishonest, he always blamed himself first — and sometimes blamed himself only. Now imagine, suddenly queening it in his quiet home, a capricious, doting, idiot woman — inseparable from another idiot, her idol — a woman who had only feared her general, and was now afraid of nothing, and impelled by a craving to make up to herself for what she had suffered in the past; and this idiot woman my uncle thought it his duty to revere, simply because she was his mother. They began with proving to my uncle at once that he was coarse, impatient, ignorant and selfish to the utmost degree. The remarkable thing is that the idiotic old lady herself believed in what she professed. And I believe that Foma Fomitch did also, at least to some extent. They persuaded my uncle, too, that Foma had been sent from heaven by Divine Providence for the salvation of his soul and the subduing of his unbridled passions; that he was haughty, proud of his wealth, and quite capable of reproaching Foma Fomitch for eating his bread. My poor uncle was very soon convinced of the depth of his degradation, was ready to tear his hair and to beg forgiveness. . . .

“It’s all my own fault, brother,” he would say sometimes to one of the people he used to talk to. “It’s all my fault I One ought to be doubly delicate with a man who is under obligations to one. ... I mean that I . . . Under obligations, indeed! I am talking nonsense again! He is not under obligations to me at all: on the contrary, it is I who am under an obligation to him for living with me! And here I have reproached him for eating my bread! . . . Not that I did reproach him, but it seems I made some slip of the tongue — I often do make such slips. . . . And, after all, the man has suffered, he has done great things; for ten years in spite of insulting treatment he was tending his sick friend! And then his learning. . . . He’s a writer! A highly educated man! A very lofty character; in short . . .”

The conception of the highly educated and unfortunate Foma ignominiously treated by the cruel and capricious general rent my uncle’s heart with compassion and indignation. All Foma’s peculiarities, all his ignoble doings my uncle at once ascribed to his sufferings, the humiliations he had endured in the past, and the bitterness left by them. ... He at once decided in his soft and generous heart that one could not be so exacting with a man who had suffered as with an ordinary person; that one must not only forgive him, but more than that, one must, by gentle treatment, heal his wounds, restore him and reconcile him with humanity. Setting this object before him he was completely fired by it, and lost all power of perceiving that his new friend was a lascivious and capricious animal, an egoist, a sluggard, a lazy drone — and nothing more. He put implicit faith in Foma’s genius and learning. I forgot to mention that my uncle had the most naive and disinterested reverence for the words “learning” and “literature”, though he had himself never studied anything. This was one of his chief and most guileless peculiarities.

“He is writing,” he would whisper, walking on tiptoe, though he was two rooms away from Foma’s study. “I don’t know precisely what he is writing,” he added, with a proud and mysterious air, “but no doubt he is brewing something, brother. ... I mean in the best sense, of course; it would be clear to some people, but to you and me, brother, it would be just a jumble that ... I fancy he is writing of productive forces of some sort — he said so himself. I suppose that has something to do with politics. Yes, his name will be famous! Then we shall be famous through him. He told me that himself, brother. ...”

I know for a fact that my uncle was forced by Foma’s orders to shave off his beautiful fair whiskers. Foma considered that these whiskers made my uncle look like a Frenchman, and that wearing them showed a lack of patriotism. Little by little Foma began meddling in the management of the estate, and giving sage counsels on the subject. These sage counsels were terrible. The peasants soon saw the position and understood who was their real master, and scratched their heads uneasily. Later on I overheard Foma talking to the peasants; I must confess I listened. Foma had told us before that he was fond of talking to intelligent Russian peasants. So one day he went to the threshing floor: after talking to the peasants about the farm-work, though he could not tell oats from wheat, after sweetly dwelling on the sacred obligations of the peasant to his master, after touching lightly on electricity and the division of labour, subjects of which I need hardly say he knew nothing, after explaining to his listeners how the earth went round the sun, and being at last quite touched by his own eloquence — he began talking about the ministers. I understood. Pushkin used to tell a story of a father who impressed upon his little boy of four that he, his papa, was so brave “that the Tsar loves Papa. . . .” So evidently this papa needed this listener of four years old! And the peasants always listened to Foma Fomitch with cringing respect.

“And did you get a large salary from royalty, little father?” a grey-headed old man called Arhip Korotky asked suddenly from the crowd of peasants, with the evident intention of being flattering; but the question struck Foma Fomitch as familiar, and he could not endure familiarity.

“And what business is that of yours, you lout?” he answered, looking contemptuously at the poor peasant. “Why are you thrusting forward your pug-face? Do you want me to spit in it?”

Foma Fomitch always talked in that tone to the “intelligent Russian peasant”.

“You are our father,” another peasant interposed; “you know we are ignorant people. You may be a major or a colonel or even your Excellency, we don’t know how we ought to speak to you.”

“You lout!” repeated Foma Fomitch, mollified however. “There are salaries and salaries, you blockhead! One will get nothing, though he is a general — because he does nothing to deserve it, he is of no service to the Tsar. But I.got twenty thousand when I was serving in the Ministry, and I did not take it, I served for the honour of it. I had plenty of money of my own. I gave my salary to the cause of public enlightenment, and to aid those whose homes have been burnt in Kazan.”

“I say! So it was you who rebuilt Kazan, little father?” the amazed peasant went on.

The peasants wondered at Foma Fomitch as a rule.

“Oh, well, I had my share in it,” Foma answered, with a show of reluctance, as though vexed with himself for deigning to converse on such a subject with such a person.

His conversations with my uncle were of a different stamp.

“What were you in the past?” Foma would say, for instance, lolling after an ample dinner in an easy-chair, while a servant stood behind him brandishing a fresh lime branch to keep off the flies. “What were you like before I came? But now I have dropped into your soul a spark of that heavenly fire which is glowing there now. Did I drop a spark of heavenly fire into your soul or not? Answer. Did I drop a spark or did I not?”

Foma Fomitch, indeed, could not himself have said why he asked such a question. But my uncle’s silence and confusion at once spurred him on. He who had been so patient and downtrodden in the past now exploded like gunpowder at the slightest provocation. My uncle’s silence seemed to him insulting, and he now insisted on an answer.

“Answer: is the spark glowing in you or not?”

My uncle hesitated, shrank into himself, and did not know what line to take.

“Allow me to observe that I am waiting,” said Foma in an aggrieved voice.

“Metis, ripondez done, Yegorushka,” put in Madame la Generale, shrugging her shoulders.

“I am asking you, is that spark burning within you or not?” Foma repeated condescendingly, taking a sweetmeat out of a bonbon box, which always stood on a table before him by Madame la Generale’s orders.

“I really don’t know, Foma,” my uncle answered at last with despair in his eyes. “Something of the sort, no doubt. . . . You really had better not ask or I am sure to say something wrong. . . .”

“Oh, very well! So you look upon me as so insignificant as not to deserve an answer — that’s what you meant to say. But so be it; let me be a nonentity.”

“Oh, no, Foma, God bless you! Why, when did I imply that?”

“Yes, that’s just what you did mean to say.”

“I swear I didn’t.”

“Oh, very well, then, I lie. So then you charge me with trying to pick a quarrel on purpose; it’s another insult added to all the past, but I will put up with this, too. ...”

“Mais, mon filsf” cried Madame la Gen£rale in alarm.

“Foma Fomitch! Mamma!” exclaimed my uncle in despair. “Upon my word it’s not my fault. Perhaps I may have let slip such a thing without knowing it. . . . You mustn’t mind me, Foma; I am stupid, you know; I feel I am stupid myself; I feel there is something amiss with me. ... I know, Foma, I know! You need not say anything,” he went on, waving his hand. “I have lived forty years, and until now, until I knew you, I thought I was all right . . . like everyone else. And I didn’t notice before that I was as sinful as a goat, an egoist of the worst description, and I’ve done such a lot of mischief that it is a wonder the world puts up with me.”

“Yes, you certainly are an egoist,” observed Foma, with conviction.

“Well, I realise myself that I am an egoist now! Yes, that’s the end of it! I’ll correct myself and be better!”