Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (231 page)

To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object to PUNISH Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that were owing him. I had for a long time — for the last two years — been intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out of a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I won’t, I won’t, I simply won’t pay him his wages, I won’t just because that is “what I wish,” because “I am master, and it is for me to decide,” because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude; but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a whole month....

But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out for four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by heart). He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare, keeping it up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me or seeing me out of the house. If I held out and pretended not to notice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further tortures. All at once, A PROPOS of nothing, he would walk softly and smoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand at the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other, and fix upon me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but continue staring at me persistently for some seconds, then, with a peculiar compression of his lips and a most significant air, deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room. Two hours later he would come out again and again present himself before me in the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask him what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously and began staring back at him. So we stared at one another for two minutes; at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went back again for two hours.

If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long, deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he wanted.

This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance apart from him.

“Stay,” I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning, with one hand behind his back, to go to his room. “Stay! Come back, come back, I tell you!” and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he turned round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he persisted in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.

“How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for? Answer!”

After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round again.

“Stay!” I roared, running up to him, “don’t stir! There. Answer, now: what did you come in to look at?”

“If you have any order to give me it’s my duty to carry it out,” he answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp, raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to another, all this with exasperating composure.

“That’s not what I am asking you about, you torturer!” I shouted, turning crimson with anger. “I’ll tell you why you came here myself: you see, I don’t give you your wages, you are so proud you don’t want to bow down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your stupid stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it is — stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! ...”

He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.

“Listen,” I shouted to him. “Here’s the money, do you see, here it is,” (I took it out of the table drawer); “here’s the seven roubles complete, but you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ... going ... to ... have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to beg my pardon. Do you hear?”

“That cannot be,” he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.

“It shall be so,” I said, “I give you my word of honour, it shall be!”

“And there’s nothing for me to beg your pardon for,” he went on, as though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. “Why, besides, you called me a ‘torturer,’ for which I can summon you at the police-station at any time for insulting behaviour.”

“Go, summon me,” I roared, “go at once, this very minute, this very second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!”

But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud calls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without looking round.

“If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened,” I decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind his screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating slowly and violently.

“Apollon,” I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless, “go at once without a minute’s delay and fetch the police-officer.”

He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a guffaw.

“At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can’t imagine what will happen.”

“You are certainly out of your mind,” he observed, without even raising his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle. “Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as for being frightened — you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for nothing will come of it.”

“Go!” I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should strike him in a minute.

But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open at that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at us in perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back to my room. There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my head against the wall and stood motionless in that position.

Two minutes later I heard Apollon’s deliberate footsteps. “There is some woman asking for you,” he said, looking at me with peculiar severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away, but stared at us sarcastically.

“Go away, go away,” I commanded in desperation. At that moment my clock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.

CHAPTER IX

“Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be.”

I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my ragged wadded dressing-gown — exactly as I had imagined the scene not long before in a fit of depression. After standing over us for a couple of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at ease. What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with confusion, more so, in fact, than I should have expected. At the sight of me, of course.

“Sit down,” I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naivete of expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.

She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as usual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should make her pay dearly for ALL THIS.

“You have found me in a strange position, Liza,” I began, stammering and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. “No, no, don’t imagine anything,” I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. “I am not ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary, I look with pride on my poverty. I am poor but honourable.... One can be poor and honourable,” I muttered. “However ... would you like tea?....”

“No,” she was beginning.

“Wait a minute.”

I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.

“Apollon,” I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist, “here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant. If you won’t go, you’ll make me a miserable man! You don’t know what this woman is.... This is — everything! You may be imagining something.... But you don’t know what that woman is! ...”

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or putting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention to me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle, which he had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minutes with my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON. My temples were moist with sweat. I was pale, I felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to pity, looking at me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up from his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me over his shoulder: “Shall I get a whole portion?” deliberately walked out of the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to me on the way: shouldn’t I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown, no matter where, and then let happen what would?

I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were silent.

“I will kill him,” I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

“What are you saying!” she cried, starting.

“I will kill him! kill him!” I shrieked, suddenly striking the table in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid it was to be in such a frenzy. “You don’t know, Liza, what that torturer is to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetch some rusks; he ...”

And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain them.

She was frightened.

“What is the matter? What is wrong?” she cried, fussing about me.

“Water, give me water, over there!” I muttered in a faint voice, though I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what is called, PUTTING IT ON, to save appearances, though the attack was a genuine one.

She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all that had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with positive alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.

“Liza, do you despise me?” I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

“Drink your tea,” I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself, but, of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have killed her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a word to her all the time. “She is the cause of it all,” I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we did not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from beginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to begin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity. I was obstinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer, because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

“I want to... get away ... from there altogether,” she began, to break the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and unnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not care what happened. Another five minutes passed.

“Perhaps I am in your way,” she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was getting up.

But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively trembled with spite, and at once burst out.

“Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?” I began, gasping for breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed to have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to begin. “Why have you come? Answer, answer,” I cried, hardly knowing what I was doing. “I’ll tell you, my good girl, why you have come. You’ve come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may as well know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you now. Why are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening before me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer; but I didn’t succeed, I didn’t find him; I had to avenge the insult on someone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on you and laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted to humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power.... That’s what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?”

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully; but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. And all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words overwhelmed her....