Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (393 page)

“It was just at that time — that is, about the time that Surikov ‘froze his baby,’ about the middle of March, I suddenly felt much better, I don’t know why, and it lasted for a fortnight. I began going out, especially at dusk. I loved the March evenings when it began freezing and the gas was lighted. I sometimes walked a long way. One evening I was overtaken in the dark by a ‘gentleman.’ I didn’t see him distinctly. He was carrying something wrapped up in paper and wore some sort of an ugly little overcoat, too short for him, too thin for the time of year. Just as he reached a street lamp ten paces ahead of me, I noticed something fell out of his pocket. I made haste to pick it up, and was only just in the nick of time, for some one in a long kaftan sprang forward, but seeing the thing in my hand did not quarrel over it; he stole a glance at what was in my hand and slipped by. It was an old morocco pocket-book of old-fashioned make, stuffed full; but I guessed at the first glance that it might be with anything else but not with notes. The man who had lost it was already forty paces ahead of me, and was soon lost to sight in the crowd. I ran and began shouting after him, but as I had nothing to shout but ‘hi!’ he did not turn round. Suddenly he whisked round to the left in at the gate of a house. When I turned in at the gateway, which was very dark, there was no one there. It was a house of immense size — one of those monsters built by speculators for low-class tenements, and sometimes containing as many as a hundred flats. When I ran in at the gate, I fancied I saw a man in the furthest right-hand corner of the huge yard, though in the darkness I could scarcely distinguish him. Running to that corner, I saw the entrance to the stairs. The staircase was narrow, extremely dirty, and not lighted up at all. But I heard a man still on the stairs above, and I mounted the staircase, reckoning that while the door was being opened to him, I should have time to overtake him. And so I did. Each flight of stairs was short; they seemed endless in number, so that I was fearfully out of breath. A door was opened and shut on the fifth storey. I could make that out while I was three flights below. While I ran up, while I was getting my breath and feeling for the bell, several minutes passed. The door was opened at last by a peasant woman, who was blowing up a samovar in a tiny kitchen. She heard my inquiries in silence, not understanding a word I said, of course, and in silence opened the door into the next room, which was also a tiny and fearfully low-pitched room, wretchedly furnished with the barest essentials. There was an immensely wide bed with curtains in it, on which lay ‘Terentyitch’ (as the woman called him), a man apparently drunk. There was a candle-end burning in an iron candlestick on the table, and there was a bottle beside it nearly empty. Terentyitch grunted something and waved towards another door, while the woman went away; so there was nothing for me to do but to open that door. I did so and walked into the next room.

“The next room was even smaller and more cramped than the other, so that I did not know which way to turn; the narrow single bed in the corner took up a great deal of the space. The rest of the furniture consisted of three plain chairs, heaped up with rags of all sorts, and a cheap kitchen table in front of a little old sofa covered with American leather, so that there was scarcely room to pass between the table and the bed. On the table there was a lighted tallow candle in a similar iron candlestick, and on the bed was a tiny baby, crying. It could not have been more than three weeks old, to judge from the sound it made. It was being ‘changed’ by a pale, sickly looking woman. She was apparently young, in complete deshabille, and looked as though she had only just got up after a confinement. But the child was not comforted, but went on crying, clamouring for the emaciated mother’s breast. On the sofa there was another child, a girl about three years old, asleep, covered, I think, with a man’s dresscoat. At the table stood a gentleman in a very tattered coat (he had taken off the overcoat and it was Ivinq on the bed).

He was undoing a blue paper parcel which contained about two pounds of wheat bread and two little sausages. There was besides a teapot on the table with tea in it, and a few crusts of black bread. A partly opened trunk and two bundles of rags poked out from under the bed.

“In fact, there was the greatest disorder. It struck me at the first glance that the man and the woman were people of some breeding who had been reduced by poverty to that degrading condition when disorder gets the upper hand of every effort to contend with it, and even drives people to a bitter impulse to find in the daily increasing disorder a sort of fierce and, as it were, vindictive satisfaction.

“When I went in, the gentleman, who had only entered just before me and had unwrapped his provisions, was talking rapidly and excitedly to his wife. Though she had not finished attending to the baby, she had already begun whimpering; the news must have been bad as usual. The face of the man, who looked about eight-and-twenty, was dark and lean, with black whiskers and cleanly shaved chin. It struck me as rather refined and even agreeable. The face was morose, with a morose look in the eyes, and with a morbid shade of over-sensitive pride. A strange scene followed my entrance.

“There are people who derive extraordinary enjoyment from their irritable sensitiveness, especially when it reaches a climax, as it very quickly does with them. At that moment I believe they would positively prefer to have been insulted rather than not. These irritable people are always horribly fretted by remorse afterwards, if they have sense, of course, and are capable of realising that they have been ten times as excited as they need have been.

“The gentleman stared at me for some time in amazement, and his wife in alarm, as though there were something monstrous in anyone’s coming to see them. But all at once he flew at me almost with fury. I had not had time to mumble two words, yet seeing I was decently dressed, he felt, I suppose, fearfully insulted at my daring to peep into his den so unceremoniously, and to see the hideous surroundings of which he was so ashamed. He was glad, no doubt, of an opportunity of venting on anyone his rage at his own ill-luck. For one minute I even thought he would attack me. He turned white as a woman in hysterics, and alarmed his wife dreadfully.

‘“How dare you come in like this? Get out!’ he shouted, trembling, and scarcely able to pronounce the words. But suddenly he saw his pocketbook in my hands.

‘“I believe you dropped this,’ I said as calmly and drily as I could (that was the best thing to do, in fact).

“He stood facing me in absolute terror, and for some time seemed unable to take it in. Then he snatched at his side pocket, opened his mouth in dismay, and clapped his hand to his forehead.

‘“Good God! Where, how did you find it?’

“I explained in the briefest words and, if possible, still more drily how I’d picked up the pocket-book, how I’d run after him, calling, and how at last, on the chance and almost feeling my way, I had followed him up the stairs.

‘“Oh heavens!’ he cried, turning to his wife, ‘here are all our papers, the last of my instruments — everything. . . . Oh, my dear sir, do you know what you’ve done for me? I should have been lost!’

“Meanwhile I had taken hold of the door handle to go out without answering. But I was out of breath myself, and my excitement brought on such a violent fit of coughing that I could scarcely stand. I saw the gentleman rushing from side to side to find an empty chair, and finally snatching the rags off one, he flung them on to the floor, and hurriedly handing it to me, carefully helped me to sit down. But my cough went on without stopping for three minutes and more.

“When I recovered he was sitting beside me on another chair, from which he had also flung the rags on to the floor, looking intently at me.

‘“You seem to be ill,’ he said, in the tone in which doctors usually open proceedings with a patient. ‘I am a medical man myself (he didn’t say ‘doctor’), and as he said it, something made him point to the room, as though protesting against his surroundings. ‘I see that you ...’

‘“I’m in consumption,’ I said as curtly as possible, and I got up.

“He jumped up too at once.

‘“Perhaps you are exaggerating and ... if you take proper care ...’

“He had been so overwhelmed that he still seemed unable to pull himself together; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself,’ I interposed again,

taking hold of the door handle. ‘B-n examined me last week, and my business is settled.’ (I brought B. in again.) ‘Excuse me....’

“I tried again to open the door and leave the embarrassed and grateful doctor crushed with shame, but the cursed cough attacked me once more. Then the doctor insisted that I should sit down again and rest. He turned to his wife, and, without moving from her place, she uttered a few grateful and cordial words. She was so embarrassed as she spoke that a red flush suffused her thin, pale, yellow cheeks. I remained, but with an air of being horribly afraid Iwas in their way (which was the properthing). My doctor began at last to be fretted by remorse, I saw that.

‘“If I . . .’ he began, breaking off and moving restlessly about every moment. ‘I am so grateful to you, and I behaved so badly to you . . . I. .. you see . . .’ again he indicated the room, ‘at the present moment I am placed in such a position ...’

“‘Oh,’ said I, ‘there’s no need to see; it’s the usual thing. I expect you’ve lost your post, and have come up here to go into the case, and try to get another post.’

‘“How did you ... know?’ he asked in surprise.

‘“It’s obvious from the first glance,’ I said with involuntary irony. ‘Lots of people come up from the provinces full of hope and run about and live like this.’

“He suddenly began speaking with warmth and with quivering lips; he began complaining, he began telling his story, and I must own he moved me. I stayed nearly an hour with him. He told me his story, a very common one. He had been a provincial doctor, had a government post, but some intrigues were got up against him, in which even his wife was involved. His pride was touched; he lost his temper. A change in the governing authorities favoured the designs of his enemies; they undermined his reputation, made complaints against him. He lost his post, and had spent all his savings on coming to Petersburg to get the case taken up. Here, of course, for a long time he could get no hearing; then he got a hearing; then he was answered by a refusal; then he was deluded with promises; then he was answered with severity; then he was directed to write something by way of explanation; then they refused to take what he had written, and ordered him to file a petition — in short, he had been driven from pillar to post for the last five months, and had spent his last farthing. His wife’s last rags were in pawn, and now there was a new baby, and, and . . . ‘to-day a final refusal of my petition, and I’ve hardly bread — nothing — my wife just confined. I... I...’

“He jumped up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying in the corner, the baby began squealing again. I took out my notebook and began writing in it. When I had finished and stood up, he was standing before me, looking at me with timid curiosity.

‘“I have put down your name,’ I said, ‘and all the rest of it: the place where you served, the name of the governor, the day of the month. I have a comrade, an old schoolfellow called Bahmutov, and his uncle, Pyotr Matvyeitch Bahmutov, is an actual state councillor and director...’

‘“Pyotr Matvyeitch Bahmutov!’ exclaimed my doctor, almost trembling. ‘Why, it almost entirely depends upon him!’

“Everything about my doctor’s story and its successful conclusion, which I chanced to assist in bringing about, fell out and fitted in as though by design, exactly as in a novel. I told these poor people that they must try not to build any hopes on me; that I was a poor schoolboy myself. (I intentionally exaggerated my powerlessness; I finished my studies long ago and am not a schoolboy.) I told them that it was no good for them to know my name, but that I’d go at once to Vassilyevsky Island to my schoolfellow Bahmutov; and as I knew for a fact that his uncle, the actual state councillor, being a bachelor without children, positively worshipped his nephew, loving him passionately as the last representative of the family, ‘My comrade may perhaps be able to do something for you, and for me, with his uncle, of course.’

‘“If only they would allow me an explanation with his excellency! If only they would vouchsafe me the honour of a personal explanation!’ he exclaimed, with glittering eyes, shivering as though he were in a fever.

“That was what he said, ‘vouchsafe.’ Repeating once more that it would be sure to come to nothing, I added that if I didn’t come to see them next morninq,

it would mean that everything was over and they had nothing to expect. They showed me out with bows; they were almost beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their faces. I took a cab and at once set off for Vassilyevsky Island.

“At school I had been for years on bad terms with Bahmutov. He was considered an aristocrat among us, or I at least used to call him one. He was very well dressed and drove his own horses, but was not a bit stuck-up. He was always a good comrade, and exceptionally good-humoured, sometimes even witty. He hadn’t a very far-reaching intelligence, though he was always top of the class. I was never top in anything. All his schoolfellows liked him, except me. He had several times made overtures to me during those years, but I had always turned away from him with sullen ill-humour. Now I had not seen him for a year; he was at the university. When towards nine o’clock I went in to him, I was announced with great ceremony. He met me at first with amazement, and far from affably, but he soon brightened up and, looking at me, burst out laughing.

‘“What possessed you to come and see me,

Terentyev?’ he cried with his invariable good-natured ease, which was sometimes impudent but never offensive, which I liked so much in him and for which I hated him so much. ‘But how’s this?’ he exclaimed with dismay. ‘You’re very ill!’

“My cough racked me again. I dropped into a chair and could scarcely get my breath.