The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

THE MEEK ONE

A FANTASTIC STORY

From the Author

I BEG MY readers’ pardon for giving them this time, instead of the Diary in its usual form, simply a long story. But I have in fact been occupied with this story for the better part of the month. In any case, I beg the readers’ indulgence.

Now about the story itself. I have termed it “fantastic,” though I myself consider it realistic in the highest degree. But there is indeed a fantastic side to it, and namely in the very form of the story, which I find it necessary to clarify beforehand.

The thing is that this is not a story and not notes. Imagine to yourself a husband whose wife is lying on the table,¹ a suicide, who a few hours earlier threw herself out the window. He is in bewilderment and has not yet had time to collect his thoughts. He paces his rooms and tries to make sense of what has happened, “to collect his thoughts to a point.” Besides, he is an inveterate hypochondriac, of the sort that talks to himself. Here he is, then, talking to himself, telling the matter over, figuring it out for himself. Despite the seeming consistency of his speech, he contradicts himself several times, both in logic and in feelings. He justifies himself, and accuses her, and launches into extraneous explanations: there is coarseness of thought and heart here; there is also deep feeling. Little by little he actually figures out the matter and collects his “thoughts to a point.” A series of memories he calls up brings him irresistibly to the truth; the truth irresistibly elevates his mind and heart. Toward the end even the tone of the story changes, as compared with its disorderly beginning. The truth is disclosed to the unfortunate man quite clearly and definitely, at least for himself.

That is the theme. Of course, the process of telling goes on for several hours, in bits and snatches, and in incoherent form: now he talks to himself, now it is as if he addresses an invisible listener, some judge. But so it always happens in reality. If a stenographer could eavesdrop and write it all down after him, it would come out a bit rougher, less polished than I have presented it, but, for all I can see, the psychological order would perhaps remain the same. Now, this supposition of a stenographer who could write it all down (after which I would polish what was written) is what I call fantastic in this story. But a somewhat similar thing has been allowed in art more than once: Victor Hugo, for instance, in his masterpiece The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death, employed almost the same method, and though he introduced no stenographer, he allowed for still greater implausibility, supposing that a man condemned to death is able (and has time) to write notes not only on his last day, but even in his last hour and literally his last minute. But had he not allowed this fantasy, the work itself would not exist—the most realistic and truthful of all he wrote.