Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (104 page)

“It is consistent, it is consistent, Foma! I assure you that it is consistent!”

“It is? But are we equals now? Don’t you understand that I have, so to speak, crushed you by my generosity, and you have crushed yourself by your degrading action? You are crushed and I am uplifted. Where is the equality? Is friendship possible without equality? I say this, uttering a cry of lamentation from my heart, and not triumphing, not exalting myself over you, as you perhaps imagine.”

“But I am uttering a cry of lamentation from my heart too, Foma, I assure you.”

“And this is the man,” Foma went on, changing his severe tone for a sanctimonious one, “this is the man for whom I so often kept vigil at night! How many times on my sleepless nights have I arisen from my bed, have lighted a candle and said to myself, ‘Now he is sleeping peacefully, trusting in you. Do not you, Foma, sleep, be valiant for him; maybe you will think of something more for the welfare of that man.’ That is what Foma thought on his sleepless nights, Colonel! And this is how that colonel has repaid him! But enough, enough ...”

“But I will deserve your friendship again, Foma; I will deserve it, I swear to you.”

“You will deserve it? Where is the guarantee? As a Christian I will forgive you, and even love you; but as a man and a gentleman I shall not be able to help despising you. I must, I am bound to, in the name of morality, because — I repeat it — you have disgraced yourself, while my action has been most high-minded. Why, who out of your set would perform such an action? Would any one of them refuse an immense sum of money which poor destitute Foma, despised by all, has refused from devotion to true greatness? No, Colonel; to be on a level with me you must perform now a regular series of heroic deeds. And what are you capable of when you cannot even address me as your equal, but call me Foma like a servant. ...”

“FomaI but I call you so from affection!” wailed my uncle. “I did not know you disliked it. My God! if I had only known! ...”

“You,” Foma pursued, “you who could not, or rather, would not, grant the most insignificant, the most trivial request when I asked you to address me like a general as ‘your Excellency’ ...”

“But, Foma, you know that is really, so to say, high treason, Foma!”

“High treason! You have learnt some phrase out of a book and repeat it like a parrot! But, do you know, you put me to shame, covered me with ignominy by your refusal to call me ‘your Excellency’; you covered me with ignominy because without understanding my reasons you made me look a capricious fool worthy of a madhouse. Why, do you suppose I don’t understand that I should have been ridiculous if I had wanted to be styled ‘Excellency’ — I who despise all these ranks and earthly grandeurs, insignificant in themselves if they are not lighted up by virtue? For a million I would not accept the rank of general, without virtue. And meanwhile you looked upon me as a madman! It was for your benefit I sacrificed my pride and allowed you, you to be able to look upon me as a madman, you and your learned gentlemen! It was solely in order to enlighten your mind, to develop your morals, and to shed upon you the light of new ideas that I made up my mind to demand from you a general’s title. I wanted you for the future not to regard generals as the highest luminaries on this earthly sphere; I wanted to show you that rank is nothing without greatness of soul, and that there is no need to rejoice at the arrival of your general when there are, perhaps, standing at your side, people made illustrious by virtue! But you have so constantly prided yourself before me on your rank of colonel that it was hard for you to say to me: ‘your Excellency.’ That was the root of it! That was where one must look for the reason, and not in any breach of the decrees of Providence I The whole reason is, that you are a colonel and I am simply Foma. ...”

“No, Foma; no, I assure you that it is not so. You are a learned man . . . you are not simply Foma. ... I respect you. ...”

“You respect me! Good! Then tell me, since you respect me, what is your opinion, am I worthy of the rank of a general or am I not? Answer at once and straightforwardly, am I or not? I want to see your intelligence, your development.”

“For honesty, for disinterestedness, for intelligence, for lofty nobility of soul you are worthy of it,” my uncle brought out with pride.

“Well, if I am worthy of it, why will you not say ‘your Excellency’ to me?”

“Foma, I will, perhaps.”

“But, I insist! And I insist now, Colonel, I require it and insist. I see how hard it is for you, that is why I insist. That sacrifice on your side will be the first step in your moral victory, for — don’t forget it — you will have to gain a series of moral victories to be on a level with me; you must conquer yourself, and only then I shall feel certain of your sincerity. ...”

“To-morrow, then, I will call you ‘your Excellency’, Foma.”

“No, not to-morrow, Colonel, to-morrow can take care of itself. I insist that you now at once address me as ‘your Excellency’.”

“Certainly, Foma, I am ready; only what do you mean by ‘at once’, Foma?”

“Why not at once, or are you ashamed? That’s an insult to me if you are ashamed.”

“Oh, well, if you like, Foma. I am ready ... I am proud to do so, indeed; only it’s queer, Foma, apropos of nothing, ‘Good-day, your Excellency.’ You see, one can’t.”

“No, not ‘Good-day, your Excellency.’ That’s an offensive tone, it is like a joke, a farce. I do not permit such jokes with me. You forget yourself, Colonel, you forget yourself. Change your tone!”

“And you are not joking, Foma?”

“In the first place, I am not Foma, Yegor Ilyitch, and don’t you forget it. I am Foma Fomitch.”

“Oh, Foma Fomitch, I am delighted, really, I am altogether delighted, only what am I to say?”

“You are puzzled what to add to the phrase, ‘your Excellency’. That I understand. You should have explained yourself long ago. It is excusable indeed, especially if a man is not a literary character, to put it politely. Well, I will help you, since you are not a literary character. Repeat after me, ‘Your Excellency!’ . . .”

“Well, your Excellency ...”

“No, not ‘Well, your Excellency,’ but simply ‘your Excellency!’ I tell you, Colonel, you must change your tone. I hope, too, that you will not be offended if I suggest that you should make a slight bow. And at the same time bend forward, expressing in that way respectfulness and readiness, so to say, to fly on his errands. I have been in the society of generals myself, and I know all that, so then ‘your Excellency.’”

“Your Excellency . . .”

“How inexpressibly delighted I am that I have at last an opportunity of asking your forgiveness for not having recognised from the first moment your Excellency’s soul. I make bold to assure you that I will not for the future spare my poor efforts for the public welfare. . . . Well, that’s enough!”

Poor uncle! He had to repeat all this rigmarole phrase by phrase, word by word. I stood and blushed as though I were guilty. I was choking with rage.

“Well, don’t you feel now,” the torturer went on, “that your heart is suddenly lighter, as though an angel had flown into your soul? ... Do you feel the presence of that angel? Answer.”

“Yes, Foma, I certainly feel more at ease,” answered my uncle.

“As though after you have conquered yourself your heart were, so to say, steeped in holy oil?”

“Yes, Foma; certainly it all seems as it were in butter.”

“As it were in butter? H’m. I wasn’t talking of butter, though. . . . Well, never mind! You see, Colonel, the value of a duty performed! Conquer yourself. You are vain, immensely vain!”

“I see I am, Foma,” my uncle answered, with a sigh.

“You are an egoist, and indeed a gloomy egoist. . . .”

“An egoist I am, it is true, Foma, and I see it; ever since I have come to know you, I have learned to know that too.”

“I am speaking to you now like a father, like a tender mother. . . . You repel people and forget that a friendly calf sucks two mothers.”

“That is true too, Foma!”

“You are coarse. You jar so coarsely upon the human heart, you so egoistically insist upon attention, that a decent man is ready to run from you to the utmost ends of the earth.”

My uncle heaved another deep sigh.

“Be softer, more attentive, more loving to others; forget yourself for the sake of others, then they will think of you. Live and let others live — that is my rule! Suffer, labour, pray and hope — those are the truths which I would like to instil into all mankind at once! Model yourself on them and then I shall be the first to open my heart to you, I shall weep on your bosom ... if need be. . . . As it is, it is always T and T and ‘my gracious self with you. But, you know, one may get sick at last of your gracious self, if you will allow me to say so.”

“A sweet-tongued gentleman,” Gavrila brought out, awestruck.

“That’s true, Foma, I feel all’ that,” my uncle assented, deeply touched. “But I am not altogether to blame, Foma. I’ve been brought up like this, I have lived with soldiers; but I swear, Foma, I have not been without feeling. When I said good-bye to the regiment, all the hussars, all my division, simply shed tears and said they would never get another like me. I thought at the time that I too was not altogether a lost soul.”

“Again a piece of egoism! Again I catch you in vanity. You are boasting and at the same time reproaching me with the hussars’ tears. Why don’t I boast of anyone’s tears? And yet there may have been grounds, there may have been grounds for doing so.”

“I meant nothing, Foma, it was a slip of the tongue. I couldn’t help remembering those old happy times.”

“Happy times do not fall from heaven, we make them ourselves; it lies in our hearts, Yegor Ilyitch. That is why I am always happy and, in spite of my sufferings, contented, tranquil in spirit, and am not a burden to anyone unless it is to fools, upstarts and learned gentlemen, on whom I have no mercy and don’t care to have. I don’t like fools! And what are these learned gentlemen? ‘A man of learning’; and his learning turns out to be nothing but a hoaxing trick, and not learning. Why, what did he say just now? Let him come here! Let all these men of learning come here! I can refute them all; I can refute all their propositions! I say nothing of greatness of soul . . .”

“Of course, Foma. Who doubts it?”

“This afternoon, for instance, I showed intelligence, talent, colossal erudition, knowledge of the human heart, knowledge of contemporary literature; I showed and displayed in a brilliant fashion how some wretched Komarinsky may furnish a lofty topic of conversation for a man of talent. And did any one of them appreciate me as I deserved? No, they turned away! Why, I am certain he has told you already that I know nothing, and yet perhaps Macchiaveili himself or some Mercadante was sitting before him and only to blame for being poor and in obscurity. . . . That does not penetrate to them I . . . I hear of Korovkin too. What sort of queer fish is he?”

“He is a clever man, Foma, a man of learning. ... I am expecting him. He will certainly be a nice man, Foma.”

“H’m, I doubt it. Most likely some modern ass laden with books; there is no soul in them, Colonel, no heart in them! And what is learning without virtue?”

“No, Foma, no. How he talked of family happiness! The heart feels it of itself, Foma.”

“H’m! We will have a look at him; we will examine Korovkin too. But enough,” Foma concluded, getting up from his easy-chair. “I cannot altogether forgive you yet, Colonel; the insult was too deadly; but I will pray, and perhaps God will shed peace on the wounded heart. We will speak further of this to-morrow, but now permit me to withdraw. I am tired and exhausted. ...”

“Oh, Foma!” cried my uncle in a fluster, “why, of course you are tired! I say, won’t you have something to support you, a snack of something? I will order something at once.”

“A snack! Ha-ha-ha!” answered Foma, with a contemptuous laugh. “First they offer you a drink of poison, and then they ask you if you won’t have a snack of something. They want to heal the wounds of the heart with stewed mushrooms or pickled apples! What a pitiful materialist you are, Colonel!”

“Oh, Foma, I spoke in all simplicity . . .”

“Oh, very well. Enough of that. I will withdraw, and you go at once to your mother; fall on your knees, sob, weep, but beg for her forgiveness, that is your duty, that is a moral obligation.”

“Oh, Foma, I have been thinking of nothing but that all the time; even now while I have been talking to you I have been thinking of it. I am ready to implore her on my knees till dawn. But only think, Foma, what they are expecting of me.

Why, you know it’s unjust, Foma, it’s cruel. Be entirely magnanimous, make me completely happy, think a little, decide, and then . . . then ... I swear! . . .”

“No, Yegor Ilyitch, no, it’s no business of mine,” answered Foma. “You know that I do not meddle in the slightest degree in all that; you may be persuaded that I am at the bottom of it all, but I assure you that from the very beginning I have held entirely aloof from this affair. It is solely the desire of your mother, and she, of course, wishes for nothing but your good. ... Go to her, make haste, fly and rectify the position by your obedience . . . and let not the sun go down upon your wrath; while I ... I shall be all night long praying for you. I have known no sleep for many a night, Yegor Ilyitch. Good night! I forgive you too, old man,” he said, turning to Gavrila. “I know you did not do it of yourself. You forgive me too if I have offended you. . . . Good night, good night, all, and may the Lord bless you.”

Foma went out. I rushed at once into the room.

“You’ve been listening!” cried my uncle.

“Yes, uncle, I have been listening! And you, you could call him ‘your Excellency’?”

“What could I do, brother? Indeed, I am proud of it. . . . That was no great act of sacrifice. But what a noble, what a disinterested, what a great man! Sergey, why, you heard yourself . . . and how I could, how I could thrust that money on him, I simply don’t understand I My dear, I was carried away, I was in a rage. I did not understand him; I suspected him, I accused him. . . . But no, he could not be antagonistic to me — I see that now . . . and do you remember what a noble expression there was on his face when he was refusing the money?”