hardly seen it when he died, and in reality he was entirely ignorant of what
he had discovered. The important thing is life—life and nothing else! What
is any ‘discovery’ whatever compared with the incessant, eternal discovery
of life?
“But what is the use of talking? I’m afraid all this is so commonplace that
my confession will be taken for a schoolboy exercise—the work of some
ambitious lad writing in the hope of his work ‘seeing the light’; or perhaps
my readers will say that ‘I had perhaps something to say, but did not know
how to express it.’
“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even in
every serious human idea—born in the human brain—there always remains
something—some sediment—which cannot be expressed to others, though
one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is
always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain,
but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you
will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of
your idea to a single living soul.
“So that if I cannot now impart all that has tormented me for the last six
months, at all events you will understand that, having reached my ‘last
convictions,’ I must have paid a very dear price for them. That is what I
wished, for reasons of my own, to make a point of in this my ‘Explanation.’
“But let me resume.”
VI.
“I will not deceive you. ‘Reality’ got me so entrapped in its meshes now
and again during the past six months, that I forgot my ‘sentence’ (or perhaps
I did not wish to think of it), and actually busied myself with affairs.
“A word as to my circumstances. When, eight months since, I became
very ill, I threw up all my old connections and dropped all my old
companions. As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of individual, my
friends easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me all the
same, without that excuse. My position at home was solitary enough. Five
months ago I separated myself entirely from the family, and no one dared
enter my room except at stated times, to clean and tidy it, and so on, and to
bring me my meals. My mother dared not disobey me; she kept the children
quiet, for my sake, and beat them if they dared to make any noise and
disturb me. I so often complained of them that I should think they must be
very fond, indeed, of me by this time. I think I must have tormented ‘my
faithful Colia’ (as I called him) a good deal too. He tormented me of late; I
could see that he always bore my tempers as though he had determined to
‘spare the poor invalid.’ This annoyed me, naturally. He seemed to have
taken it into his head to imitate the prince in Christian meekness! Surikoff,
who lived above us, annoyed me, too. He was so miserably poor, and I used
to prove to him that he had no one to blame but himself for his poverty. I
used to be so angry that I think I frightened him eventually, for he stopped
coming to see me. He was a most meek and humble fellow, was Surikoff.
(N.B.—They say that meekness is a great power. I must ask the prince
about this, for the expression is his.) But I remember one day in March,
when I went up to his lodgings to see whether it was true that one of his
children had been starved and frozen to death, I began to hold forth to him
about his poverty being his own fault, and, in the course of my remarks, I
accidentally smiled at the corpse of his child. Well, the poor wretch’s lips
began to tremble, and he caught me by the shoulder, and pushed me to the
door. ‘Go out,’ he said, in a whisper. I went out, of course, and I declare I
liked it. I liked it at the very moment when I was turned out. But his words
filled me with a strange sort of feeling of disdainful pity for him whenever I
thought of them—a feeling which I did not in the least desire to entertain.
At the very moment of the insult (for I admit that I did insult him, though I
did not mean to), this man could not lose his temper. His lips had trembled,
but I swear it was not with rage. He had taken me by the arm, and said, ‘Go
out,’ without the least anger. There was dignity, a great deal of dignity,
about him, and it was so inconsistent with the look of him that, I assure you,
it was quite comical. But there was no anger. Perhaps he merely began to
despise me at that moment.
“Since that time he has always taken off his hat to me on the stairs,
whenever I met him, which is a thing he never did before; but he always
gets away from me as quickly as he can, as though he felt confused. If he
did despise me, he despised me ‘meekly,’ after his own fashion.
“I dare say he only took his hat off out of fear, as it were, to the son of his
creditor; for he always owed my mother money. I thought of having an
explanation with him, but I knew that if I did, he would begin to apologize
in a minute or two, so I decided to let him alone.
“Just about that time, that is, the middle of March, I suddenly felt very
much better; this continued for a couple of weeks. I used to go out at dusk. I
like the dusk, especially in March, when the night frost begins to harden the
day’s puddles, and the gas is burning.
“Well, one night in the Shestilavochnaya, a man passed me with a paper
parcel under his arm. I did not take stock of him very carefully, but he
seemed to be dressed in some shabby summer dust-coat, much too light for
the season. When he was opposite the lamp-post, some ten yards away, I
observed something fall out of his pocket. I hurried forward to pick it up,
just in time, for an old wretch in a long kaftan rushed up too. He did not
dispute the matter, but glanced at what was in my hand and disappeared.
“It was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I guessed, at a
glance, that it had anything in the world inside it, except money.
“The owner was now some forty yards ahead of me, and was very soon
lost in the crowd. I ran after him, and began calling out; but as I knew
nothing to say excepting ‘hey!’ he did not turn round. Suddenly he turned
into the gate of a house to the left; and when I darted in after him, the
gateway was so dark that I could see nothing whatever. It was one of those
large houses built in small tenements, of which there must have been at
least a hundred.
“When I entered the yard I thought I saw a man going along on the far
side of it; but it was so dark I could not make out his figure.
“I crossed to that corner and found a dirty dark staircase. I heard a man
mounting up above me, some way higher than I was, and thinking I should
catch him before his door would be opened to him, I rushed after him. I
heard a door open and shut on the fifth storey, as I panted along; the stairs
were narrow, and the steps innumerable, but at last I reached the door I
thought the right one. Some moments passed before I found the bell and got
it to ring.
“An old peasant woman opened the door; she was busy lighting the
‘samovar’ in a tiny kitchen. She listened silently to my questions, did not
understand a word, of course, and opened another door leading into a little
bit of a room, low and scarcely furnished at all, but with a large, wide bed
in it, hung with curtains. On this bed lay one Terentich, as the woman called
him, drunk, it appeared to me. On the table was an end of candle in an iron
candlestick, and a half-bottle of vodka, nearly finished. Terentich muttered
something to me, and signed towards the next room. The old woman had
disappeared, so there was nothing for me to do but to open the door
indicated. I did so, and entered the next room.
“This was still smaller than the other, so cramped that I could scarcely
turn round; a narrow single bed at one side took up nearly all the room.
Besides the bed there were only three common chairs, and a wretched old
kitchen-table standing before a small sofa. One could hardly squeeze
through between the table and the bed.
“On the table, as in the other room, burned a tallow candle-end in an iron
candlestick; and on the bed there whined a baby of scarcely three weeks
old. A pale-looking woman was dressing the child, probably the mother; she
looked as though she had not as yet got over the trouble of childbirth, she
seemed so weak and was so carelessly dressed. Another child, a little girl of
about three years old, lay on the sofa, covered over with what looked like a
man’s old dress-coat.
“At the table stood a man in his shirt sleeves; he had thrown off his coat;
it lay upon the bed; and he was unfolding a blue paper parcel in which were
a couple of pounds of bread, and some little sausages.
“On the table along with these things were a few old bits of black bread,
and some tea in a pot. From under the bed there protruded an open
portmanteau full of bundles of rags. In a word, the confusion and untidiness
of the room were indescribable.
“It appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man and the woman
were respectable people, but brought to that pitch of poverty where
untidiness seems to get the better of every effort to cope with it, till at last
they take a sort of bitter satisfaction in it. When I entered the room, the
man, who had entered but a moment before me, and was still unpacking his
parcels, was saying something to his wife in an excited manner. The news
was apparently bad, as usual, for the woman began whimpering. The man’s
face seemed to me to be refined and even pleasant. He was dark-
complexioned, and about twenty-eight years of age; he wore black
whiskers, and his lip and chin were shaved. He looked morose, but with a
sort of pride of expression. A curious scene followed.
“There are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy feelings,
especially when they have just taken the deepest offence; at such moments
they feel that they would rather be offended than not. These easily-ignited
natures, if they are wise, are always full of remorse afterwards, when they
reflect that they have been ten times as angry as they need have been.
“The gentleman before me gazed at me for some seconds in amazement,
and his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly
extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But suddenly
he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter more than a
couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was decently dressed
and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared enter his den so
unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and untidiness of it.
“Of course he was delighted to get hold of someone upon whom to vent
his rage against things in general.
“For a moment I thought he would assault me; he grew so pale that he
looked like a woman about to have hysterics; his wife was dreadfully
alarmed.
“‘How dare you come in so? Be off!’ he shouted, trembling all over with
rage and scarcely able to articulate the words. Suddenly, however, he
observed his pocketbook in my hand.
“‘I think you dropped this,’ I remarked, as quietly and drily as I could. (I
thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he stood before me in
downright terror, and seemed unable to understand. He then suddenly
grabbed at his side-pocket, opened his mouth in alarm, and beat his
forehead with his hand.
“‘My God!’ he cried, ‘where did you find it? How?’ I explained in as few
words as I could, and as drily as possible, how I had seen it and picked it
up; how I had run after him, and called out to him, and how I had followed
him upstairs and groped my way to his door.
“‘Gracious Heaven!’ he cried, ‘all our papers are in it! My dear sir, you
little know what you have done for us. I should have been lost—lost!’
“I had taken hold of the door-handle meanwhile, intending to leave the
room without reply; but I was panting with my run upstairs, and my
exhaustion came to a climax in a violent fit of coughing, so bad that I could
hardly stand.
“I saw how the man dashed about the room to find me an empty chair,
how he kicked the rags off a chair which was covered up by them, brought
it to me, and helped me to sit down; but my cough went on for another three
minutes or so. When I came to myself he was sitting by me on another
chair, which he had also cleared of the rubbish by throwing it all over the
floor, and was watching me intently.
“‘I’m afraid you are ill?’ he remarked, in the tone which doctors use
when they address a patient. ‘I am myself a medical man’ (he did not say
‘doctor’), with which words he waved his hands towards the room and its
contents as though in protest at his present condition. ‘I see that you—’
“‘I’m in consumption,’ I said laconically, rising from my seat.
“He jumped up, too.
“‘Perhaps you are exaggerating—if you were to take proper measures
perhaps—”
“He was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his scattered
senses; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.
“‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ I said. ‘Dr. B—— saw me last week’ (I lugged
him in again), ‘and my hash is quite settled; pardon me—’ I took hold of the
door-handle again. I was on the point of opening the door and leaving my
grateful but confused medical friend to himself and his shame, when my
damnable cough got hold of me again.
“My doctor insisted on my sitting down again to get my breath. He now
said something to his wife who, without leaving her place, addressed a few
words of gratitude and courtesy to me. She seemed very shy over it, and her
sickly face flushed up with confusion. I remained, but with the air of a man
who knows he is intruding and is anxious to get away. The doctor’s remorse
at last seemed to need a vent, I could see.
“‘If I—’ he began, breaking off abruptly every other moment, and
starting another sentence. ‘I—I am so very grateful to you, and I am so
much to blame in your eyes, I feel sure, I—you see—’ (he pointed to the
room again) ‘at this moment I am in such a position—’
“‘Oh!’ I said, ‘there’s nothing to see; it’s quite a clear case—you’ve lost
your post and have come up to make explanations and get another, if you
can!’
“‘How do you know that?’ he asked in amazement.
“‘Oh, it was evident at the first glance,’ I said ironically, but not
intentionally so. ‘There are lots of people who come up from the provinces
full of hope, and run about town, and have to live as best they can.’
“He began to talk at once excitedly and with trembling lips; he began
complaining and telling me his story. He interested me, I confess; I sat there
nearly an hour. His story was a very ordinary one. He had been a provincial
doctor; he had a civil appointment, and had no sooner taken it up than
intrigues began. Even his wife was dragged into these. He was proud, and
flew into a passion; there was a change of local government which acted in
favour of his opponents; his position was undermined, complaints were
made against him; he lost his post and came up to Petersburg with his last
remaining money, in order to appeal to higher authorities. Of course nobody
would listen to him for a long time; he would come and tell his story one
day and be refused promptly; another day he would be fed on false
promises; again he would be treated harshly; then he would be told to sign
some documents; then he would sign the paper and hand it in, and they
would refuse to receive it, and tell him to file a formal petition. In a word he
had been driven about from office to office for five months and had spent
every farthing he had; his wife’s last rags had just been pawned; and
meanwhile a child had been born to them and—and today I have a final
refusal to my petition, and I have hardly a crumb of bread left—I have
nothing left; my wife has had a baby lately—and I—I—’
“He sprang up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying in the
corner; the child had begun to moan again. I pulled out my note-book and
began writing in it. When I had finished and rose from my chair he was
standing before me with an expression of alarmed curiosity.
“‘I have jotted down your name,’ I told him, ‘and all the rest of it—the
place you served at, the district, the date, and all. I have a friend,
Bachmatoff, whose uncle is a councillor of state and has to do with these
matters, one Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff.’
“‘Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff!’ he cried, trembling all over with
excitement. ‘Why, nearly everything depends on that very man!’
“It is very curious, this story of the medical man, and my visit, and the
happy termination to which I contributed by accident! Everything fitted in,
as in a novel. I told the poor people not to put much hope in me, because I
was but a poor schoolboy myself—(I am not really, but I humiliated myself
as much as possible in order to make them less hopeful)—but that I would
go at once to the Vassili Ostroff and see my friend; and that as I knew for
certain that his uncle adored him, and was absolutely devoted to him as the
last hope and branch of the family, perhaps the old man might do something
to oblige his nephew.
“‘If only they would allow me to explain all to his excellency! If I could
but be permitted to tell my tale to him!” he cried, trembling with feverish
agitation, and his eyes flashing with excitement. I repeated once more that I
could not hold out much hope—that it would probably end in smoke, and if
I did not turn up next morning they must make up their minds that there was
no more to be done in the matter.
“They showed me out with bows and every kind of respect; they seemed
quite beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their faces!
“I took a droshky and drove over to the Vassili Ostroff at once. For some
years I had been at enmity with this young Bachmatoff, at school. We
considered him an aristocrat; at all events I called him one. He used to dress
smartly, and always drove to school in a private trap. He was a good
companion, and was always merry and jolly, sometimes even witty, though
he was not very intellectual, in spite of the fact that he was always top of
the class; I myself was never top in anything! All his companions were very
fond of him, excepting myself. He had several times during those years
come up to me and tried to make friends; but I had always turned sulkily
away and refused to have anything to do with him. I had not seen him for a
whole year now; he was at the university. When, at nine o’clock, or so, this
evening, I arrived and was shown up to him with great ceremony, he first
received me with astonishment, and not too affably, but he soon cheered up,
and suddenly gazed intently at me and burst out laughing.
“‘Why, what on earth can have possessed you to come and see me,
Terentieff?’ he cried, with his usual pleasant, sometimes audacious, but
never offensive familiarity, which I liked in reality, but for which I also
detested him. ‘Why what’s the matter?’ he cried in alarm. ‘Are you ill?’
“That confounded cough of mine had come on again; I fell into a chair,
and with difficulty recovered my breath. ‘It’s all right, it’s only
consumption’ I said. ‘I have come to you with a petition!’
“He sat down in amazement, and I lost no time in telling him the medical
man’s history; and explained that he, with the influence which he possessed
over his uncle, might do some good to the poor fellow.
“‘I’ll do it—I’ll do it, of course!’ he said. ‘I shall attack my uncle about it
tomorrow morning, and I’m very glad you told me the story. But how was it
that you thought of coming to me about it, Terentieff?’
“‘So much depends upon your uncle,’ I said. ‘And besides we have
always been enemies, Bachmatoff; and as you are a generous sort of fellow,
I thought you would not refuse my request because I was your enemy!’ I
added with irony.
“‘Like Napoleon going to England, eh?’ cried he, laughing. ‘I’ll do it
though—of course, and at once, if I can!’ he added, seeing that I rose
seriously from my chair at this point.
“And sure enough the matter ended as satisfactorily as possible. A month
or so later my medical friend was appointed to another post. He got his
travelling expenses paid, and something to help him to start life with once
more. I think Bachmatoff must have persuaded the doctor to accept a loan
from himself. I saw Bachmatoff two or three times, about this period, the
third time being when he gave a farewell dinner to the doctor and his wife
before their departure, a champagne dinner.
“Bachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed the Nicolai
bridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me of his joy, the joyful feeling
of having done a good action; he said that it was all thanks to myself that he
could feel this satisfaction; and held forth about the foolishness of the
theory that individual charity is useless.
“I, too, was burning to have my say!
“‘In Moscow,’ I said, ‘there was an old state counsellor, a civil general,
who, all his life, had been in the habit of visiting the prisons and speaking to
criminals. Every party of convicts on its way to Siberia knew beforehand
that on the Vorobeef Hills the “old general” would pay them a visit. He did
all he undertook seriously and devotedly. He would walk down the rows of
the unfortunate prisoners, stop before each individual and ask after his
needs—he never sermonized them; he spoke kindly to them—he gave them
money; he brought them all sorts of necessaries for the journey, and gave
them devotional books, choosing those who could read, under the firm
conviction that they would read to those who could not, as they went along.
“‘He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of any of them, but
listened if any volunteered information on that point. All the convicts were
equal for him, and he made no distinction. He spoke to all as to brothers,
and every one of them looked upon him as a father. When he observed
among the exiles some poor woman with a child, he would always come
forward and fondle the little one, and make it laugh. He continued these acts
of mercy up to his very death; and by that time all the criminals, all over
Russia and Siberia, knew him!
“‘A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that he
himself had been a witness of how the very most hardened criminals
remembered the old general, though, in point of fact, he could never, of
course, have distributed more than a few pence to each member of a party.
Their recollection of him was not sentimental or particularly devoted. Some
wretch, for instance, who had been a murderer—cutting the throat of a
dozen fellow-creatures, for instance; or stabbing six little children for his
own amusement (there have been such men!)—would perhaps, without
rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, “I wonder whether that old
general is alive still!” Although perhaps he had not thought of mentioning
him for a dozen years before! How can one say what seed of good may
have been dropped into his soul, never to die?’
“I continued in that strain for a long while, pointing out to Bachmatoff
how impossible it is to follow up the effects of any isolated good deed one
may do, in all its influences and subtle workings upon the heart and after-
actions of others.
“‘And to think that you are to be cut off from life!’ remarked Bachmatoff,
in a tone of reproach, as though he would like to find someone to pitch into
on my account.
“We were leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, looking into the
Neva at this moment.
“‘Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?’ said I, suddenly
—leaning further and further over the rail.
“‘Surely not to throw yourself into the river?’ cried Bachmatoff in alarm.
Perhaps he read my thought in my face.
“‘No, not yet. At present nothing but the following consideration. You see
I have some two or three months left me to live—perhaps four; well,
supposing that when I have but a month or two more, I take a fancy for
some “good deed” that needs both trouble and time, like this business of our
doctor friend, for instance: why, I shall have to give up the idea of it and
take to something else—some little good deed, more within my means, eh?
Isn’t that an amusing idea!’
“Poor Bachmatoff was much impressed—painfully so. He took me all the
way home; not attempting to console me, but behaving with the greatest
delicacy. On taking leave he pressed my hand warmly and asked permission
to come and see me. I replied that if he came to me as a ‘comforter,’ so to
speak (for he would be in that capacity whether he spoke to me in a
soothing manner or only kept silence, as I pointed out to him), he would but
remind me each time of my approaching death! He shrugged his shoulders,
but quite agreed with me; and we parted better friends than I had expected.
“But that evening and that night were sown the first seeds of my ‘last
conviction.’ I seized greedily on my new idea; I thirstily drank in all its
different aspects (I did not sleep a wink that night!), and the deeper I went
into it the more my being seemed to merge itself in it, and the more alarmed
I became. A dreadful terror came over me at last, and did not leave me all
next day.
“Sometimes, thinking over this, I became quite numb with the terror of it;
and I might well have deduced from this fact, that my ‘last conviction’ was
eating into my being too fast and too seriously, and would undoubtedly
come to its climax before long. And for the climax I needed greater
determination than I yet possessed.
“However, within three weeks my determination was taken, owing to a
very strange circumstance.
“Here on my paper, I make a note of all the figures and dates that come
into my explanation. Of course, it is all the same to me, but just now—and
perhaps only at this moment—I desire that all those who are to judge of my
action should see clearly out of how logical a sequence of deductions has at
length proceeded my ‘last conviction.’
“I have said above that the determination needed by me for the
accomplishment of my final resolve, came to hand not through any
sequence of causes, but thanks to a certain strange circumstance which had
perhaps no connection whatever with the matter at issue. Ten days ago
Rogojin called upon me about certain business of his own with which I
have nothing to do at present. I had never seen Rogojin before, but had
often heard about him.
“I gave him all the information he needed, and he very soon took his
departure; so that, since he only came for the purpose of gaining the
information, the matter might have been expected to end there.
“But he interested me too much, and all that day I was under the
influence of strange thoughts connected with him, and I determined to
return his visit the next day.
“Rogojin was evidently by no means pleased to see me, and hinted,
delicately, that he saw no reason why our acquaintance should continue. For
all that, however, I spent a very interesting hour, and so, I dare say, did he.
There was so great a contrast between us that I am sure we must both have
felt it; anyhow, I felt it acutely. Here was I, with my days numbered, and he,
a man in the full vigour of life, living in the present, without the slightest
thought for ‘final convictions,’ or numbers, or days, or, in fact, for anything
but that which-which—well, which he was mad about, if he will excuse me
the expression—as a feeble author who cannot express his ideas properly.
“In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in Rogojin a
man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps, there was little in the
outside world which was of interest to him, still he was clearly a man with
eyes to see.
“I hinted nothing to him about my ‘final conviction,’ but it appeared to
me that he had guessed it from my words. He remained silent—he is a
terribly silent man. I remarked to him, as I rose to depart, that, in spite of
the contrast and the wide differences between us two, les extremites se
touchent (‘extremes meet,’ as I explained to him in Russian); so that maybe
he was not so far from my final conviction as appeared.
“His only reply to this was a sour grimace. He rose and looked for my
cap, and placed it in my hand, and led me out of the house—that dreadful
gloomy house of his—to all appearances, of course, as though I were
leaving of my own accord, and he were simply seeing me to the door out of
politeness. His house impressed me much; it is like a burial-ground, he
seems to like it, which is, however, quite natural. Such a full life as he leads
is so overflowing with absorbing interests that he has little need of
assistance from his surroundings.
“The visit to Rogojin exhausted me terribly. Besides, I had felt ill since
the morning; and by evening I was so weak that I took to my bed, and was
in high fever at intervals, and even delirious. Colia sat with me until eleven
o’clock.
“Yet I remember all he talked about, and every word we said, though
whenever my eyes closed for a moment I could picture nothing but the
image of Surikoff just in the act of finding a million roubles. He could not
make up his mind what to do with the money, and tore his hair over it. He
trembled with fear that somebody would rob him, and at last he decided to
bury it in the ground. I persuaded him that, instead of putting it all away
uselessly underground, he had better melt it down and make a golden coffin
out of it for his starved child, and then dig up the little one and put her into
the golden coffin. Surikoff accepted this suggestion, I thought, with tears of
gratitude, and immediately commenced to carry out my design.
“I thought I spat on the ground and left him in disgust. Colia told me,
when I quite recovered my senses, that I had not been asleep for a moment,
but that I had spoken to him about Surikoff the whole while.
“At moments I was in a state of dreadful weakness and misery, so that
Colia was greatly disturbed when he left me.
“When I arose to lock the door after him, I suddenly called to mind a
picture I had noticed at Rogojin’s in one of his gloomiest rooms, over the
door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we walked past it, and I believe
I must have stood a good five minutes in front of it. There was nothing
artistic about it, but the picture made me feel strangely uncomfortable. It
represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that
painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the cross and taken down
from it, with great beauty still upon His face. This marvellous beauty they
strive to preserve even in His moments of deepest agony and passion. But
there was no such beauty in Rogojin’s picture. This was the presentment of
a poor mangled body which had evidently suffered unbearable anguish even
before its crucifixion, full of wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of
soldiers and people, and of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen
with the cross—all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.
“The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body, only
just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was one of
pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but was left as it
would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such anguish.
“I know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour suffered
actually and not figuratively, and that nature was allowed her own way even
while His body was on the cross.
“It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the
Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that the disciples,
the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the
cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him—supposing that they
saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and
they must have so seen it)—how could they have gazed upon the dreadful
sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?’
“The thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is so terrible
and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His miracles during life
was unable to triumph over it at the last. He who called to Lazarus,
‘Lazarus, come forth!’ and the dead man lived—He was now Himself a
prey to nature and death. Nature appears to one, looking at this picture, as
some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better—a stranger simile—
some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which has seized and
crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a Being worth
nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was perhaps created
merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.
“This blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well shown
in the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men and things to it is
so well expressed that the idea unconsciously arises in the mind of anyone
who looks at it. All those faithful people who were gazing at the cross and
its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind that evening; for
they must have felt that all their hopes and almost all their faith had been
shattered at a blow. They must have separated in terror and dread that night,
though each perhaps carried away with him one great thought which was
never eradicated from his mind for ever afterwards. If this great Teacher of
theirs could have seen Himself after the Crucifixion, how could He have
consented to mount the Cross and to die as He did? This thought also comes
into the mind of the man who gazes at this picture. I thought of all this by
snatches probably between my attacks of delirium—for an hour and a half
or so before Colia’s departure.
“Can there be an appearance of that which has no form? And yet it
seemed to me, at certain moments, that I beheld in some strange and
impossible form, that dark, dumb, irresistibly powerful, eternal force.
“I thought someone led me by the hand and showed me, by the light of a
candle, a huge, loathsome insect, which he assured me was that very force,
that very almighty, dumb, irresistible Power, and laughed at the indignation
with which I received this information. In my room they always light the
little lamp before my icon for the night; it gives a feeble flicker of light, but
it is strong enough to see by dimly, and if you sit just under it you can even
read by it. I think it was about twelve or a little past that night. I had not
slept a wink, and was lying with my eyes wide open, when suddenly the
door opened, and in came Rogojin.
“He entered, and shut the door behind him. Then he silently gazed at me
and went quickly to the corner of the room where the lamp was burning and
sat down underneath it.
“I was much surprised, and looked at him expectantly.
“Rogojin only leaned his elbow on the table and silently stared at me. So
passed two or three minutes, and I recollect that his silence hurt and
offended me very much. Why did he not speak?
“That his arrival at this time of night struck me as more or less strange
may possibly be the case; but I remember I was by no means amazed at it.
On the contrary, though I had not actually told him my thought in the
morning, yet I know he understood it; and this thought was of such a
character that it would not be anything very remarkable, if one were to
come for further talk about it at any hour of night, however late.
“I thought he must have come for this purpose.
“In the morning we had parted not the best of friends; I remember he
looked at me with disagreeable sarcasm once or twice; and this same look I
observed in his eyes now—which was the cause of the annoyance I felt.
“I did not for a moment suspect that I was delirious and that this Rogojin
was but the result of fever and excitement. I had not the slightest idea of
such a theory at first.
“Meanwhile he continued to sit and stare jeeringly at me.
“I angrily turned round in bed and made up my mind that I would not say
a word unless he did; so I rested silently on my pillow determined to remain
dumb, if it were to last till morning. I felt resolved that he should speak
first. Probably twenty minutes or so passed in this way. Suddenly the idea
struck me—what if this is an apparition and not Rogojin himself?
“Neither during my illness nor at any previous time had I ever seen an
apparition;—but I had always thought, both when I was a little boy, and
even now, that if I were to see one I should die on the spot—though I don’t
believe in ghosts. And yet now, when the idea struck me that this was a
ghost and not Rogojin at all, I was not in the least alarmed. Nay—the
thought actually irritated me. Strangely enough, the decision of the question
as to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did not, for some reason or other,
interest me nearly so much as it ought to have done;—I think I began to
muse about something altogether different. For instance, I began to wonder
why Rogojin, who had been in dressing-gown and slippers when I saw him
at home, had now put on a dress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also
thought to myself, I remember—‘if this is a ghost, and I am not afraid of it,
why don’t I approach it and verify my suspicions? Perhaps I am afraid—’
And no sooner did this last idea enter my head than an icy blast blew over
me; I felt a chill down my backbone and my knees shook.
“At this very moment, as though divining my thoughts, Rogojin raised
his head from his arm and began to part his lips as though he were going to
laugh—but he continued to stare at me as persistently as before.
“I felt so furious with him at this moment that I longed to rush at him; but
as I had sworn that he should speak first, I continued to lie still—and the
more willingly, as I was still by no means satisfied as to whether it really
was Rogojin or not.
“I cannot remember how long this lasted; I cannot recollect, either,
whether consciousness forsook me at intervals, or not. But at last Rogojin
rose, staring at me as intently as ever, but not smiling any longer,—and
walking very softly, almost on tip-toes, to the door, he opened it, went out,
and shut it behind him.
“I did not rise from my bed, and I don’t know how long I lay with my
eyes open, thinking. I don’t know what I thought about, nor how I fell
asleep or became insensible; but I awoke next morning after nine o’clock
when they knocked at my door. My general orders are that if I don’t open
the door and call, by nine o’clock, Matreona is to come and bring my tea.
When I now opened the door to her, the thought suddenly struck me—how
could he have come in, since the door was locked? I made inquiries and
found that Rogojin himself could not possibly have come in, because all our
doors were locked for the night.
“Well, this strange circumstance—which I have described with so much
detail—was the ultimate cause which led me to taking my final
determination. So that no logic, or logical deductions, had anything to do
with my resolve;—it was simply a matter of disgust.
“It was impossible for me to go on living when life was full of such
detestable, strange, tormenting forms. This ghost had humiliated me;—nor
could I bear to be subordinate to that dark, horrible force which was
embodied in the form of the loathsome insect. It was only towards evening,
when I had quite made up my mind on this point, that I began to feel
easier.”
