The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

CHAPTER ONE

I

WHO I WAS AND WHO SHE WAS

…SO LONG as she’s here—everything is still all right: I go over and look every moment; but tomorrow she’ll be taken away and—how am I to stay alone? She’s in the big room now, on a table, we put two card tables together, and the coffin will come tomorrow, a white one, white gros de Naples, but, anyhow, it’s not that… I keep pacing and want to figure it out for myself. It’s already six hours now that I’ve been wanting to figure it out and I simply can’t collect my thoughts to a point. The thing is that I keep pacing, pacing, pacing… Here is how it was. I’ll simply tell it in order (order!). Gentlemen, I’m far from being a writer, and you can see that, and let it be so, but I’ll tell it as I understand it. There’s my whole horror—that I understand everything!

This, if you want to know, that is, if we take it from the very beginning, quite simply that she used to come to me then to pawn things in order to pay for an advertisement in The Voice,² saying here, thus and so, a governess, agrees to relocate, and give lessons at home, and so on and so forth. This was at the very beginning, and I, of course, didn’t distinguish her from the others: she comes like everybody else, well, and so forth. But later I began to distinguish. She was so slender, fair-haired, medium tall; with me she was always awkward, as if abashed (I think she was the same with all strangers, and, naturally, I was the same for her as any other, that is, taken not as a pawnbroker but as a human being). As soon as she got the money, she would turn and leave at once. And all silently. Others, they argue, beg, bargain in order to get more; this one no, just what’s given… It seems to me I keep getting confused… Yes; first of all I was struck by her things: gilt silver earrings, a trashy little locket—things worth two bits. She knew herself they were only a bit’s worth, yet I saw by her face that they were treasures for her—and in fact it was all she had left from her papa and mama, I found out later. Once only did I allow myself to smile at her things. That is, you see, I never allow myself that, I keep a gentlemanly tone with the public: a few words, polite and stern. “Stern, stern, stern.” But she suddenly allowed herself to bring the remnants (I mean, literally) of an old rabbitskin jacket—and I couldn’t help myself and suddenly said something to her, as if a witticism. Goodness, how she flushed! Her eyes are light blue, big, pensive, but—how they lit up! But she didn’t let out a word, she took her “remnants” and—left. It was then that I took particular notice of her for the first time and thought something of that sort about her, that is, precisely of that particular sort. Yes: I also remember the impression, that is, if you like, the main impression, the synthesis of everything: namely, that she was terribly young, so young, as if she were just fourteen years old. And yet she was three months short of sixteen then. But anyway that’s not what I wanted to say, the synthesis wasn’t in that at all. Next day she came again. I found out later that she had gone with the jacket to Dobronravov and to Moser, but they take nothing but gold and wouldn’t even speak to her. But I once took a cameo from her (a trashy one)—and, on reflection, was surprised afterward: I, too, take nothing but gold and silver, yet I accepted a cameo from her. That was my second thought about her then, I remember it.

This time, that is, after Moser, she brought an amber cigar holder—a so-so little thing, for an amateur, but once again worth nothing with us, because we take only gold. Since she came after the previous day’s rebellion, I met her sternly. Sternness with me is dryness. However, as I handed her the two roubles, I couldn’t help myself and said as if with a certain irritation: “I’m doing it only for you, Moser wouldn’t take such a thing from you.” I especially emphasized the words for you, and precisely in a certain sense. I was angry. She flushed again on hearing this for you, but held her peace, didn’t drop the money, took it—that’s poverty! But how she flushed! I realized that I’d stung her. And after she left, I suddenly asked myself: can it really be that this triumph over her cost two roubles? Heh, heh, heh! I remember twice asking precisely this question: “Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” And, laughing, I resolved it for myself in the affirmative. I got quite merry then. But this wasn’t a bad feeling: I had a design, an intention: I wanted to test her, because I suddenly had some thoughts fermenting in me concerning her. This was my third particular thought about her.

… Well, so from then on it all got started. Naturally, I at once made indirect efforts to find out all the circumstances and waited with particular impatience for her to come. I did have a feeling that she would come soon. When she came, I entered into friendly conversation with unusual politeness. I’m not badly brought up and have manners. Hm. It was then I guessed that she was kind and meek. The kind and meek ones don’t resist for long, and though they don’t really open up completely, still they can’t quite avoid conversing: they reply charily, but they do reply, and the more the further, only don’t get tired yourself if it’s something you need. Naturally, she didn’t explain anything to me herself that time. It was later that I found out about The Voice and everything. She was then spending her last strength to advertise, at first, naturally, with pride, something like: “Governess, willing to relocate, send letter stating conditions,” but then: “Willing to do anything, teach, be a companion, keep house, tend the sick, can sew,” etc., etc., the same old stuff! Naturally, all this was added to the advertisement gradually, and toward the end, when things got desperate, there was even “without salary, in exchange for board.” No, she didn’t find a situation! I ventured then to test her for a last time: I suddenly take today’s Voice and show her an advertisement: “Young person, orphan, seeks position as governess of small children, preferably with an older widower. Can help with housework.”

“There, you see, this woman placed an advertisement this morning, and by evening she’ll certainly have found work. That’s how one should advertise!”

Again she flushed, again her eyes lit up, she turned and left at once. I liked that very much. However, I was already sure of everything by then and had no fear: no one was going to take cigar holders from her. And she had already run out of cigar holders. So it was, on the third day she came, so pale, alarmed—I understood that something had happened with her at home, and in fact it had. I’ll explain presently what had happened, but now I just want to recall how I suddenly displayed my chic before her then and grew taller in her eyes. The intention suddenly appeared in me. The thing was that she brought this icon (got herself to bring it)… Ah, listen! listen! Here’s where it begins, and before I kept getting confused… The thing is that I want to recall it all now, each trifle, each little feature. I keep wanting to collect my thoughts to a point and—I can’t, and now these little features, these little features …

An icon of the Mother of God. The Mother of God with the Child, from home, from her family, an old one, in a gilt silver casing—worth—well, worth about six roubles. I can see the icon is dear to her, she wants to pawn the whole icon, without removing the casing. I tell her it’s better to remove the casing and keep the icon; because it’s still an icon after all.

“Is it forbidden for you?”

“No, not really forbidden, but just so, maybe, you yourself…”

“Well, remove it, then.”

“You know what, I won’t remove it, I’ll put it on the stand over there,” I said on reflection, “with the other icons, under the lamp” (ever since I opened my shop, I’ve always kept an icon lamp burning), “and you can quite simply take ten roubles.”

“I don’t want ten, give me five, I’ll certainly buy it back.”

“You don’t want ten? The icon’s worth it,” I added, noticing that her eyes flashed again. She held her peace. I brought her five roubles.

“Don’t despise anyone, I’ve felt the same pinch myself, and even worse, and if you now see me in this occupation, miss… after all I’ve endured it’s…”

“You’re taking revenge on society, is that it?” she interrupted me suddenly with rather caustic mockery, in which, however, there was a good deal of innocence (that is, of generality, because she decidedly did not distinguish me from others then, so that she said it almost inoffensively).“Aha!” thought I, “that’s how you are, the character’s coming out, of the new tendency.”

“You see,” I observed at once, half jokingly, half mysteriously, “I—I’m part of that part of the whole that wishes to do evil, but does good…”

She glanced at me quickly and with great curiosity, in which, however, there was a good deal of childishness:

“Wait… What is that thought? Where is it from? I’ve heard it somewhere…”

“Don’t rack your brain, Mephistopheles recommends himself to Faust in those terms. Have you read Faust ?”³

“Not… not attentively.”

“That is, you haven’t read it at all. You ought to read it. However, I see a mocking twist on your lips again. Please don’t suppose me to be of so little taste as to wish to paint over my role as a pawnbroker by recommending myself as a Mephistopheles. Once a pawnbroker, always a pawnbroker. We know that, miss.”

“You’re somehow strange… I didn’t want to say anything like that at all…”

She wanted to say: I didn’t expect you to be an educated man, but she didn’t say it, though I knew she was thinking it; I pleased her terribly.

“You see,” I observed, “one can do good in any occupation. I don’t mean myself, of course, I, let’s say, do nothing but bad, but…”

“Of course one can do good in any situation,” she said, glancing at me with a quick and meaning look. “Precisely in any situation,” she suddenly added. Oh, I remember, I remember all those moments! And I also want to add that these young people, these dear young people, when they want to say something intelligent and meaningful, suddenly show, with all too much sincerity and naivete on their faces, that “here I am saying something intelligent and meaningful to you”—and not out of vanity, like our sort, but you can see that she herself values all this terribly, and believes it, and respects it, and thinks that you, too, respect it the same way she does. Oh sincerity! This is how they win one over. And it was so lovely in her!

I remember, I haven’t forgotten anything! When she left, I made up my mind all at once. That same day I went to make my final search and found out all the rest of her then current innermost secrets; all the former innermost secrets I already knew from Lukerya, who was then their servant and whom I had bribed several days earlier. These innermost secrets were so horrible that I don’t even understand how she could have laughed as she did that day and been curious about Mephistopheles’ saying, being under such horror herself. But—youth! I thought precisely that about her then, with pride and with joy, because there was magnanimity in it: on the verge of ruin, yet Goethe’s great words still shine. Youth is always magnanimous, be it ever so slightly, even lopsidedly. That is, I mean her, her alone. And, above all, I already looked at her then as mine and had no doubt of my power. You know, it is a most voluptuous thought, when one no longer has any doubts.

But what’s the matter with me. If I do it this way, when will I collect it all into a point? Quickly, quickly… this is not it at all, oh, God!

II

A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL

The “innermost secrets” I found out about her can be explained in a word: her father and mother had died, already long ago, three years before, and she was left with some disorderly aunts. That is, it’s not enough to call them disorderly. One was a widow with a big family, six children, each smaller than the next; the other was a spinster, old and nasty. They were both nasty. Her father had been in the civil service, but as a scrivener, and of merely nonhereditary nobility—in short, it all played into my hands. I came as if from a higher world: a retired staff captain, after all, of a brilliant regiment, a hereditary nobleman, independent, and so on, and as for the pawnshop, the aunts could only look upon it with respect. She had slaved for the aunts for three years, but passed an examination somewhere all the same—struggled to pass it, managed to pass it, from under her merciless daily work—and that did mean something about her yearning toward the lofty and noble! After all, why did I want to get married? Spit on me, though, that’s for later… As if that was the point! She taught her aunt’s children, did sewing, and toward the end not just sewing but, with her bad chest, also scrubbed the floors. Quite simply, they even beat her, reproached her for every crumb. In the end they were intending to sell her. Pah! I omit the filth of the details. Later she told me everything in detail. For a whole year a fat neighboring shopkeeper had been observing it all, not a simple shopkeeper, but with two grocery stores. He had already given a sweet time to two wives and was looking for a third, and so he cast an eye on her: “Quiet,” he thought, “grew up in poverty, and I’m marrying for my orphans.” In fact, he did have orphans. He sent a matchmaker, began making arrangements with the aunts, what’s more—he was fifty years old; she was horrified. It was then that she began coming to me often, so as to place advertisements in The Voice. Finally, she started asking her aunts to give her a bit of time to think it over. They gave her this bit, but just one, no more, because, they carped: “We don’t know what we’ll grub up ourselves, even without an extra mouth.” I already knew it all, and after that morning I made my decision. In the evening the merchant came, bringing a pound of candy from his shop worth fifty kopecks; she was sitting with him, and I called Lukerya out from the kitchen and told her to go and whisper to her that I was at the gate and wished to tell her something most urgently. I remained pleased with myself. And generally all that day I had been awfully pleased.

There at the gate, in Lukerya’s presence, I explained to her, amazed as she already was by the fact of my calling her outside, that I would consider it a happiness and an honor… Second: not to be surprised at my manner and that it was at the gate: “I’m a direct man,” I said, “and I’ve looked into the circumstances of the matter.” And I wasn’t lying that I’m direct. Well, spit on it. I spoke not only decently, that is, showing a man of breeding, but also originally, and that’s the main thing. So what, is it a sin to confess it? I want to judge myself and so I do. I must speak pro and contra, and so I do. Later I also remembered it with delight, though that is stupid: I declared directly, without any embarrassment, first, that I was not especially talented, not especially intelligent, maybe not even especially kind, a rather cheap egoist (I remember that expression, I thought it up then, on my way there, and remained pleased), and that it was very, very possible that I contained in myself much that was also unpleasant in many other respects. All this was spoken with a special sort of pride—we all know how such things are said. Of course, I had taste enough, after nobly declaring my shortcomings, not to start declaring my merits, saying: “But, on the other hand, I have this, this, and that.” I could see that so far she was terribly afraid, but I didn’t soften anything, what’s more, seeing that she was afraid, I intensified it on purpose: I said directly that she would have enough to eat, but as for outfits, theaters, balls—there would be none of that, or not till later, when I’d reached my goal. This stern tone decidedly carried me away. I added, also as casually as possible, that if I’d taken such an occupation, that is, keeping this shop, it was that I had a certain goal, there was a certain circumstance… But I had the right to speak that way: I actually had such a goal and such a circumstance. Wait, gentlemen, all my life I’ve been the first to hate this pawnshop, but, as a matter of fact, though it’s ridiculous to speak in mysterious phrases to oneself, I was in fact “taking revenge on society,” really, really, really! So that her morning witticism about my “taking revenge” was unjust. That is, you see, if I had told her directly in so many words: “Yes, I’m taking revenge on society,” and she had burst out laughing, as she did that morning, it would in fact have come out ridiculous. Well, but by an indirect hint, by letting in a mysterious phrase, it turned out that one could bribe the imagination. Besides, I no longer feared anything then: I knew that the fat shopkeeper was in any case more disgusting to her and that I, standing there at the gate, was a deliverer. That I understood. Oh, man understands meanness especially well! But was it meanness? How can one judge a man here? Didn’t I already love her even then?

Wait: naturally, I didn’t say half a word to her then about being a benefactor; on the contrary, oh, on the contrary: “It’s you,” I might have said, “who are my benefactor, not I yours” So that I even put it into words, I couldn’t help myself, and it came out stupid, perhaps, because I noticed a fleeting wrinkle on her face. But on the whole I was decidedly the winner. Wait, if I’m to recall all this filth, I’ll also recall the ultimate swinishness: I was standing there, and it was stirring in my head: you’re tall, well built, well bred, and—and, finally, speaking without braggadocio, you’re not bad looking. That’s what was playing through my mind. Naturally, she said yes to me right there at the gate. But… but I must add: right there at the gate she thought for a long time before she said yes. She got so thoughtful, so thoughtful, that I already started asking: “Well, what is it?”—and even couldn’t help myself, asking with a certain chic: “Well, what is it, miss?”—adding a polite touch.

“Wait, I’m thinking.”

And her little face was so serious, so serious—that even then I might have read! And there I was feeling offended: “Can it be,” I thought, “that she’s choosing between me and the merchant?” Oh, I didn’t understand then! I didn’t understand anything, not anything! Until today I didn’t understand! I remember Lukerya ran out after me, as I was leaving, stopped me in the street, and said breathlessly: “God will reward you, sir, for taking our dear young lady, only don’t tell it to her, she’s proud.”

Proud, eh! I say I like the proud ones myself. The proud ones are especially good when… well, when one no longer doubts one’s power over them, eh? Oh, mean, clumsy man! Oh, how pleased I was! Do you know, she might, when she was standing at the gate then, thinking whether to say yes to me, and I got surprised, do you know, she might even have been thinking: “If it’s disaster either way, isn’t it better to choose the worst straight off, that is, the fat shopkeeper, let him get drunk and quickly beat me to death!” Eh? What do you think, could she have had such a thought?

And now, too, I don’t understand, now, too, I don’t understand anything! I only just said that she might have had this thought: to choose the worst of two disasters, that is, the merchant? But who was worse for her then—I or the merchant? The merchant or the pawnbroker quoting Goethe? That’s still a question! Why a question? And you don’t understand this: the answer’s lying on the table, and you say question! No, but spit on me! I’m not the point… And by the way, what is it to me now—whether I’m the point or not? That’s something I’m quite unable to decide. I’d better go to bed. I have a headache…

III

THE NOBLEST OF MEN, BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IT MYSELF

Didn’t fall asleep. How could I, some pulse was throbbing in my head. I want to take it all in, all this filth. Oh, filth! Oh, what filth I dragged her out of then! She really ought to have understood it, to have appreciated my action! I also liked various thoughts, for instance, that I was forty-one and she had just turned sixteen. This captivated me, this feeling of inequality, very sweet it was, very sweet.

I, for instance, wanted to do the wedding à l’anglaise,⁴ that is, decidedly the two of us, with perhaps two witnesses, one of them Lukerya, and then straight to the train, say, for instance, to Moscow (I happened incidentally to have business there), to a hotel, for a couple of weeks. She protested, she wouldn’t allow it, and I was forced to go visiting her aunts, honoring them as relatives from whom I was taking her. I yielded, and the aunts were rendered their due. I even gave the creatures a hundred roubles each and promised more, naturally without telling her anything about it, so as not to upset her by the meanness of the situation. The aunts at once became like silk. There was also an argument about the dowry: she had nothing, almost literally, but she also wanted nothing. I, however, succeeded in proving to her that nothing at all was not possible, and I took care of the dowry, because who else would do anything for her? Well, but spit on talking about me. My various ideas, however, I did manage to tell her then, so that she’d at least know. Even too hastily, perhaps. The main thing is that from the very first, though she tried to hold back, she threw herself to me with love, she would meet me with rapture when I came home in the evening, told me in her prattle (the charming prattle of innocence!) all about her childhood, her infancy, her parental home, her father and mother. But I immediately doused all this ecstasy at once with cold water. It was in this that my idea lay. To her raptures I responded with silence, benevolent, of course… but all the same she quickly saw that we were different, and that I was—a riddle. And I was, above all, aiming at a riddle! It was for the sake of posing a riddle, perhaps, that I did all this stupidity! First of all, sternness—so it was under sternness that I brought her into my house. In short, though I was very pleased, I set about creating a whole system then. Oh, it poured out by itself quite effortlessly. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, I had to create this system, owing to an irresistible circumstance—what am I doing, in fact, slandering myself! The system was a true one. No, listen, if you’re going to judge a man, you must know the case… Listen!

How shall I begin, because it’s very difficult. Once you start justifying yourself—it gets difficult. You see: young people, for instance, despise money—I right away emphasized money; I stressed money. And I emphasized it so much that she began to grow more and more silent. She’d open her big eyes, listen, look, and keep silent. You see: young people are magnanimous, that is, the good ones are, magnanimous and impulsive, but they have little tolerance, the moment something’s not right—there’s scorn. And I wanted breadth, I wanted to implant breadth right in her heart, implant it in her own heart’s view, isn’t that so? I’ll take a banal example: how, for instance, should I explain my pawnshop to such a character? Naturally, I didn’t speak of it directly, otherwise it would have come out that I was asking forgiveness for the pawnshop, but I acted, so to speak, through pride, I spoke almost silently. And I’m a master of speaking silently, I’ve spent my whole life speaking silently and have silently lived through whole tragedies with myself. Oh, but I was also unhappy! I had been discarded by everyone, discarded and forgotten, and no one, no one knows it! And suddenly this sixteen-year-old girl snatched all sorts of details from mean people afterward and thought she knew everything, but the secret meanwhile remained only in this man’s breast! I kept silent, and especially, especially kept silent with her, right up till yesterday—why did I keep silent? As a proud man. I wanted her to find out herself, without me, not from mean people’s talk now, but that she should guess herself about this man and comprehend him! Receiving her into my house, I wanted full respect. I wanted her to stand before me entreatingly for the sake of my suffering—and I was worth it. Oh, I was always proud, I always wanted all or nothing! That’s precisely why, because I’m no halfway man in happiness, but wanted all, that’s precisely why I was forced to act as I did then, as if to say: “Guess yourself, and appreciate it!” Because, you must agree, if I myself had begun explaining and prompting, shuffling and begging for respect—it would have been as if I were begging alms… But anyhow… but anyhow, why am I talking about that?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! Directly and mercilessly (and I emphasize that it was mercilessly), I explained to her then, in a few words, that the magnanimity of youth is lovely, but—not worth a groat. Why not? Because it comes

cheap, it’s acquired without living, it’s all, so to speak, “the first impressions of being,”⁵ but let’s see you do any work! Cheap magnanimity is always easy, and even to give your life—that, too, is cheap, because here it’s just hot blood and surplus strength,⁶ one passionately desires beauty! No, take a deed of magnanimity that’s difficult, quiet, inaudible, unglamorous, with calumny, where there’s much sacrifice and not a drop of glory—where you, a shining man, are presented as a scoundrel before everyone, whereas you’re more honest than anyone else on earth—go and try that deed, no, you’d give it up! And I—all I’ve done all my life is bear that deed. At first she argued, and how she argued, but then she began to grow silent, even completely, only widening her eyes terribly as she listened, such big, big eyes, so attentive. And… and besides that, I suddenly saw a smile, mistrustful, silent, not nice. It was with this smile that I brought her into my house. It’s also true that she had nowhere else to go …

IV

PLANS AND MORE PLANS

Which of us was the first to begin it then?

Neither. It began by itself from the first step. I said I brought her into my house under sternness, yet from the first step I softened it. It was explained to her, while still a fiancée, that she would be occupied with taking the pledges and handing out the money, and she said nothing then (note that). What’s more—she took to the business even with zeal. Well, of course, the apartment, the furniture—it all remained the same. The apartment has two rooms: one, a big room with a partition, beyond which is the shop; and the other, also a big one, our living room, as well as bedroom. My furniture is scanty; even her aunts had better. My icon stand with the icon lamp is in the other room, where the shop is; in my room there is my bookcase with a few books in it, and a trunk, to which I kept the keys; also a bed, tables, chairs. While she was still my fiancée I told her that one rouble a day, no more, was allotted for our keep, that is, food for me, her, and Lukerya, whom I had lured to us: “I need thirty thousand in three years,” I said, “otherwise one can’t make money.” She didn’t object, but I raised it thirty kopecks myself. The same with the theater. I had told my fiancée there would be no theater, and yet I decided there should be theater once a month, and that decently, in the orchestra. We went together, three times it was, to see Pursuit of Happiness and Songbirds,⁷ I think. (Oh, spit on it, who cares!) We went silently, and came home silently. Why, why did we start being silent from the very beginning? In the beginning there were no quarrels, but there was silence. She kept looking at me then, I remember, somehow on the sly; when I noticed it, I intensified my silence. True, it was I who stressed silence, not she. Once or twice there were impulses on her part, she would rush to embrace me; but since these were morbid, hysterical impulses, and I needed firm happiness, along with respect from her, I took it coldly. And I was right: each time after such an impulse, there was a quarrel the next day.

That is, again, there were no quarrels, but there was silence and—and a more and more bold look on her part. “Rebellion and independence”—that’s what it was, only she didn’t know how. Yes, that meek face was becoming bolder and bolder. Would you believe, I was becoming repugnant to her, I studied it thoroughly. And there was no doubting the fact that she had fits of temper. So, for example, after getting out of such filth and beggarliness, after having scrubbed floors, she would suddenly start sniffing at our poverty! You see, sirs: it wasn’t poverty, it was economy, and, where necessary, even luxury—with linens, for instance, with cleanliness. I had always dreamed, before, that cleanliness in a husband is attractive to a wife. However, it wasn’t at poverty, it was at my supposed stinginess in economy: “He has goals, he shows a firm character.” She suddenly gave up the theater herself. And more and more of this mocking wrinkle… and I was intensifying my silence, intensifying my silence.

I couldn’t go justifying myself, could I? It was mainly this pawnshop. Excuse me, sirs: I knew that a woman, and a sixteen-year-old one at that, can’t help submitting wholly to a man. There’s no originality in women, that—that is an axiom, even now it’s an axiom for me! What is it that’s lying there in the other room: truth is truth, and even Mill⁸ himself can do nothing about it! And a woman who loves, oh, a woman who loves—will deify even the vices, even the villainies of the beloved being. He himself wouldn’t seek out such justifications for his villainies as she will find for him. This is magnanimous, but unoriginal. Woman has been ruined by unoriginality alone. And what, I repeat, what are you pointing to there on the table? Is that original, what’s there on the table? Ohh!

Listen: I was sure of her love then. And she did throw herself on my neck then. So she loved me, or rather—wished to love. Yes, that’s how it was: she wished to love, she sought to love. And the main thing is that there were no such villainies for which she would have to seek justifications. You say: a pawnbroker, and everybody says it. But what if I am a pawnbroker? It means there are reasons, if the most magnanimous of men became a pawnbroker. You see, gentlemen, there are ideas… that is, you see, certain ideas, once they’re uttered, expressed in words, come out terribly stupid. They come out shameful for oneself. And why? No why. Because we’re all trash and can’t bear the truth, or else I don’t know why. I said “the most magnanimous of men” just now. It’s ridiculous, and yet that’s how it was. That was the truth, that is, the most, the very most truthful truth! Yes, I had the right then to want to provide for myself and to open this pawnshop: “You rejected me, you people, that is, you drove me away with scornful silence. To my passionate impulse toward you, you responded by offending me for the rest of my life. Now, therefore, I had the right to protect myself from you with a wall, to raise these thirty thousand roubles and end my life somewhere in the Crimea, on the southern coast, amid mountains and vineyards, on my own estate, bought with this thirty thousand, and, above all, far away from all of you, but without spite toward you, with an ideal in my soul, with a beloved woman by my heart, with a family, should God send it, and—helping out the neighboring settlers.” Naturally, it’s good that I’m now saying this to myself, but what could have been stupider than if I had then painted it aloud for her? Hence the proud silence, hence the silent sitting. Because what could she have understood? Sixteen years, early youth—what could she understand of my justifications, my sufferings? Here was straightforwardness, ignorance of life, cheap youthful convictions, the chicken’s blindness of “beautiful hearts,” and, above all, here was the pawnshop, and—basta! (But was I a villain in the pawnshop, didn’t she see how I acted and whether I took too much?) Oh, how terrible is the truth on earth! This lovely one, this meek one, this heaven—she was a tyrant, an unbearable tyrant and tormentor of my soul! I’ll slander myself if I don’t say it! You think I didn’t love her? Who can say I didn’t love her? You see: there was irony here, a wicked irony of fate and nature came out here! We’re cursed, the life of men generally is cursed! (Mine in particular!) I understand now that I did make some mistake here! Something here didn’t come out right. Everything was clear, my plan was clear as the sky: “Stern, proud, and needs nobody’s moral consolation, suffers silently.” That’s how it was, I wasn’t lying, I wasn’t lying! “She herself will see afterward that there was magnanimity here, only she failed to notice it—and once she realizes it someday, she’ll appreciate it ten times more, and will fall down in the dust with her hands clasped in entreaty.” That was the plan. But I forgot something here, or lost sight of it. There was something here I failed to do. But enough, enough. And of whom shall I now ask forgiveness? What’s finished is finished. Take heart, man, and be proud! It’s not your fault!…

So, then, I’ll tell the truth, I won’t be afraid to stand face-to-face with the truth: it was her fault, her fault!…

V

THE MEEK ONE REBELS

The quarrels began with her suddenly deciding to lend money in her own way, to appraise things above their value, and she even deigned a couple of times to enter into a dispute with me on the subject. I didn’t agree. But here the captain’s widow turned up.

An old woman, a captain’s widow, came with a locket—a present from her late husband, well, the usual thing, a keepsake. I gave her thirty roubles. She started whining pathetically, begging me not to let the thing go—naturally, I won’t let it go. Well, in short, suddenly, five days later, she comes to exchange it for a bracelet that isn’t worth even eight roubles. Naturally, I rejected it. She must have guessed something right then from my wife’s eyes, but anyway she came when I wasn’t there and my wife exchanged the locket for her.

Finding out that same day, I began speaking meekly, but firmly and reasonably. She was sitting on the bed looking down, tapping the rug with her right toe (her gesture); there was a bad smile on her lips. Then, without raising my voice at all, I declared calmly that the money was mine, that I had the right to look at life with my own eyes, and—that when I invited her into my home, I had not concealed anything from her.

She suddenly jumped up, suddenly trembled all over, and—what do you think?—suddenly stamped her feet at me; this was a beast, this was a fit, this was a beast in a fit. I froze in astonishment; I never expected such an escapade. But I was not put out, I didn’t even stir, and again in the same calm voice declared to her directly that from then on I was depriving her of her participation in my concerns. She burst out laughing in my face and left the apartment.

The thing was that she had no right to leave the apartment. Nowhere without me, that was the agreement while she was still my fiancée. Toward evening she came back. Not a word from me.

The next day she was gone again from morning on, and the day after. I locked my shop and went to the aunts. I had broken with them right after the wedding—they never visited me, nor I them. It now turned out that she hadn’t been there. They listened to me with curiosity and laughed in my face: “Serves you right,” they said. But I had anticipated their laughter. I straightaway bribed the maiden aunt, the younger one, with a hundred roubles, and gave her twenty-five up front. Two days later she comes to me: “An officer,” she says, “Yefimovich, a sub-lieutenant, your former regimental comrade, is mixed up in it.” I was very amazed. This Yefimovich had caused me the most evil in the regiment, and a month ago had come to my shop once and then again, shameless as he was, on the pretext of pawning something, and, I remember, had begun laughing with my wife. I went up to him right then and told him that he dared not come to me, remembering our relations; but no such notion ever entered my head, I simply thought he was a brazen fellow. And now suddenly the aunt informs me that she has already set up a meeting with him and that the whole thing is being handled by a former acquaintance of the aunts, Yulia Samsonovna, a widow, and a colonel’s widow at that—“It’s to her that your spouse now goes,” she says.

I’ll cut this picture short. The business cost me all of three hundred roubles, but in two days it was arranged so that I would be standing in the next room, behind a closed door, listening to the first rendezvous of my wife alone with Yefimovich. In anticipation, on the eve, a brief but, for me, all too portentous scene took place between us.

She came back toward evening, sat on the bed, looking at me mockingly and tapping the rug with her little foot. As I looked at her, the idea flew into my head that for the whole past month, or, better, the past two weeks, she had not been quite in her own character, one might even say it was the opposite character: what showed was a violent, aggressive being, I wouldn’t say shameless, but disorderly and seeking confusion herself. Inviting confusion. Her meekness, however, got in the way. When such a one gets violent, even if she leaps beyond all measure, you can still see that she’s only breaking herself, is egging herself on, and that she herself will be the first to be unable to manage her own sense of integrity and shame. That’s why her sort sometimes leap much too far beyond measure, so that you don’t believe your own observing mind. The soul accustomed to depravity, on the other hand, will always soften things, making them more vile, but in the guise of an order and decency that claim superiority over you.

“And is it true that you were thrown out of your regiment because you were scared to fight a duel?” she asked suddenly, out of the blue, and her eyes flashed.

“It’s true. On the decision of the officers, I was asked to withdraw from the regiment, though, anyhow, I myself had already sent in my resignation before then.”

“Thrown out as a coward?”

“Yes, they judged me a coward. But I refused the duel not because I was a coward, but because I did not wish to submit to their tyrannical decision and challenge a man when I myself did not feel any offense. You know,” I couldn’t help myself here, “that to rise up actively against such tyranny and accept all the consequences was to show much greater courage than in any duel you like.”

I couldn’t help it, with this phrase I began as if justifying myself; that was just what she needed, this new humiliation of me. She laughed maliciously:

“And is it true that after that you wandered the streets of Petersburg for three years, as a vagabond, begging for kopecks and sleeping under billiard tables?”

“I also happened to spend nights in the Haymarket and in Vyazemsky’s house.⁹ Yes, it’s true; after the regiment, there was much disgrace and degradation in my life, but not moral degradation, because I was the first to hate my actions even then. It was only the degradation of my will and mind, and was caused only by the desperateness of my situation. But that has passed…”

“Oh, now you’re somebody—a financier!”

That is, a hint at the pawnshop. But I had already managed to control myself. I saw that she desired explanations humiliating to me and—I didn’t give them. A client opportunely rang the bell, and I went out to him in the big room. Afterward, an hour later, when she suddenly got dressed to go out, she stopped in front of me and said:

“You told me nothing about it before the wedding, however.”

I did not reply, and she left.

And so, the next day I stood in that room behind the door and listened to how my fate was being decided, and in my pocket there was a revolver. She was dressed up and sitting at the table, and Yefimovich was clowning in front of her. And what then: the outcome was (I say it to my credit), the outcome was just exactly what I anticipated and expected—though without being aware that I was anticipating and expecting it. I don’t know whether I’ve expressed myself clearly.

The outcome was this. I listened for a whole hour, and for a whole hour I was witness to a combat between a most noble and lofty woman and a depraved, dull-witted society creature with a reptilian soul. And where, I thought, amazed, where did she, this naive, this meek, this taciturn woman, get to know all that? The wittiest author of high-society comedies would have been unable to create this scene of mockery, the most naive laughter, and the holy disdain of virtue for vice. And so much brilliance in her words and little phrases; such sharpness in her quick responses, such truth in her condemnation! And at the same time so much of an almost girlish simple-heartedness. She laughed in his face at his declarations of love, at his gestures, at his offers. Having come with crude assault in mind and anticipating no resistance, he suddenly wilted. At first I might have thought it was simply her coquetry here—“the coquetry of a depraved but witty being, to put on a more costly show.” But no, the truth shone like the sun, and it was impossible to doubt it. Only out of hatred toward me, affected and impulsive, could she, so inexperienced, have ventured upon this meeting, but as soon as it came to business—her eyes were opened at once. Here was simply a creature thrashing about, so as to insult me in any way possible, but, having decided upon such filth, she could not bear the disorder. And how could she, so pure and sinless, she, with her ideal, be tempted by Yefimovich or anyone else you like among these high-society creatures? On the contrary, he could only make her laugh. The whole truth rose from her soul, and indignation called up sarcasm from her heart. I repeat, toward the end this buffoon was quite withered and sat scowling and barely responding, so that I began to be afraid he might risk insulting her out of base vengeance. And I repeat again: to my credit, I heard the scene out almost without astonishment. As if I had encountered only what I knew. As if I had gone so as to encounter it. I had gone believing nothing, no accusation, though I did put a revolver in my pocket—that is the truth! And how could I have imagined her different? Why, then, did I love her, why did I esteem her, why had I married her? Oh, of course, I satisfied myself only too well as to how much she hated me then, but I also satisfied myself as to how chaste she was. I stopped the scene suddenly by opening the door. Yefimovich jumped up, I took her by the hand and invited her to leave with me. Yefimovich quickly recovered and suddenly burst into a ringing and rolling guffaw.

“Oh, I won’t oppose the sacred rights of matrimony, take her, take her! And you know,” he shouted after me, “though it’s not possible for a decent man to fight a duel with you, still, out of respect for your lady, I’m at your service… If you’ll risk it, that is…”

“Do you hear!” I stopped her on the threshold for a moment.

After that not a word all the way home. I led her by the hand, and she didn’t resist. On the contrary, she was terribly struck, but only till home. Having come home, she sat down on a chair and fixed her eyes on me. She was extremely pale; though mockery formed on her lips at once, her look was solemnly and severely challenging, and it seemed she was seriously convinced in the first moments that I was going to kill her with the revolver. But I silently took the revolver out of my pocket and put it on the table. She looked at me and at the revolver. (Note this: the revolver was familiar to her. I had had it and kept it loaded ever since I opened the pawnshop. On opening the pawnshop, I had decided not to keep any huge dogs, or a muscular lackey, as Moser, for instance, does. My clients are let in by the cook. But it’s impossible for someone occupied with this trade to go without self-protection, just in case, and so I kept a loaded revolver. In the first days after she entered my house, she got very interested in this revolver, asked questions, and I even explained the mechanism and system to her, and besides that, persuaded her once to shoot at a target. Note all that.) Paying no attention to her frightened look, I lay down half undressed on the bed. I was completely worn out; it was already nearly eleven o’clock. She went on sitting in the same place, without stirring, for about an hour longer, then put out the candle and lay down, also dressed, by the wall, on the sofa. The first time she didn’t lie down with me—note that as well…

VI

A TERRIBLE MEMORY

Now, this terrible memory …

I woke up in the morning, between seven and eight, I think, and it was already almost completely light in the room. I woke up all at once with full consciousness and suddenly opened my eyes. She was standing by the table holding the revolver in her hand. She didn’t see that I was awake and watching. And suddenly I see her start moving toward me with the revolver in her hand. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to be fast asleep.

She came to the bed and stood over me. I heard everything; and though a dead silence fell, I heard that silence. Here a convulsive movement occurred—and suddenly, irresistibly, against my will, I opened my eyes. She was looking at me, right into my eyes, and the revolver was already at my temple. Our eyes met. But we looked at each other for no more than a moment. I forcibly closed my eyes again, and at the same moment decided with all my strength of soul that I would not stir or open my eyes again, no matter what lay ahead of me.

In fact, it does happen that a deeply sleeping man suddenly opens his eyes, even raises his head for a second and looks around the room, and then, after a moment, unconsciously lays his head back on the pillow and falls asleep, remembering nothing.

When I, having met her gaze and felt the revolver at my temple, suddenly closed my eyes again and did not stir, like a man fast asleep—she decidedly could have supposed that I was in fact sleeping and had seen nothing, the more so as it was quite incredible for someone, after seeing what I had seen, to close his eyes again at such a moment.

Yes, incredible. But even so she might have guessed the truth—it was this that suddenly flashed through my mind, still in that same moment. Oh, what a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings swept through my mind in less than a moment, and long live the electricity of human thought! In that case (so I felt), if she had guessed the truth and knew I was not asleep, then I had already crushed her by my readiness to accept death, and her hand might now falter. The former resolution might be dashed against the new extraordinary impression. They say that people standing on a high place are as if drawn down of themselves into the abyss. I think many suicides and murders have been committed only because the revolver has already been taken in hand. Here, too, is an abyss; here, too, is a forty-five-degree slope, down which you cannot help sliding, and something invincibly challenges you to pull the trigger. But the awareness that I had seen everything, knew everything, and was silently awaiting death from her—might keep her from the slope.

The silence continued, and suddenly at my temple, through my hair, I felt the cold touch of steel. You may ask: did I have any firm hope of salvation? I’ll answer you as before God: I had no hope, except perhaps for one chance in a hundred. Why, then, did I accept death? But I will ask: what did I need life for after that revolver, raised against me by the being I adored? Besides, I knew with all the strength of my being that at that very moment a fight was going on between us, a terrible life-and-death combat, the combat of that same coward of yesterday, driven out by his comrades for cowardice. I knew it, and she knew it, if only she had guessed the truth that I was not asleep.

Maybe this isn’t so, maybe I didn’t think that then, but it had to be so even without thinking, because all I did afterward, in every hour of my life, was think of it.

But again you will ask a question: why did I not save her from evildoing? Oh, I asked myself this question a thousand times afterward—every time that, with a chill in my spine, I recalled that second. But my soul was in dark despair then: I was perishing, I was perishing myself, could I have saved anyone else? And how do you know whether I wanted to save anyone then? Who knows what I might have felt then?

My consciousness, however, was seething; seconds passed, there was dead silence; she was still standing over me—and suddenly I shivered with hope! I quickly opened my eyes. She was no longer in the room. I got up: I was victorious—and she was forever defeated!

I came out to have tea. The samovar was always served in the front room, and she always poured tea. I sat down at the table silently and accepted the glass of tea from her. After about five minutes I glanced at her. She was terribly pale, still paler than yesterday, and was looking at me. And suddenly—and suddenly, seeing that I was looking at her, she smiled palely with her pale lips, a timid question in her eyes. “That means she’s still in doubt and is asking herself: does he know or doesn’t he, did he see or didn’t he?” I looked away indifferently. After tea I locked the shop, went to the market, and bought an iron bed and a screen. Coming home, I ordered the bed put in the big room and partitioned off with the screen. It was a bed for her, but I didn’t say a word to her. Even without words she understood from this bed that I “had seen and knew everything” and that there was no longer any doubt. I left the revolver on the table for the night, as usual. At night she silently lay down on this new bed: the marriage was dissolved, she was “defeated, but not forgiven.” During the night she became delirious, and by morning was in a fever. She lay ill for six weeks.