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Authors: Mikhail Lermontov

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BOOK: A Hero of Our Time
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I departed alone.
PECHORIN’S DIARIES
Foreword
I learned not long ago that Pechorin had died upon returning from Persia. This news made me very glad: it gave me the right to publish these notes, and I took the opportunity to put my name on someone else’s work. God grant that readers won’t punish me for this innocent forgery.
Now I must give some explanation of the motives that have induced me to deliver to the public the secrets of a heart belonging to a person whom I didn’t know. It would be fine if I had been his friend: everyone understands the treacherous indiscretions of a true friend. But I had only seen him once in my life on the highway. Hence I cannot attempt that inexpressible hatred, which, hiding under the guise of friendship, awaits only the death or misfortune of its beloved object to unleash a torrent of reproach, counsel, mockery and pity on its head.
As I read these notes again, I am convinced by the sincerity of this man who so relentlessly displayed his personal weaknesses and defects for all to see. The story of a man’s soul, even the pettiest of souls, is only slightly less intriguing and edifying than the history of an entire people, especially when it is a product of the observations of a ripe mind about itself, and when it is written without the vain desire to excite sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau’s confessions
1
have their shortcomings in the fact that he read them to his friends.
So it was only the desire to be of use that made me print excerpts from these diaries, which I came by accidentally. Though I changed all the proper names, those about whom the diaries speak will likely recognize themselves, and perhaps they will find some justification for the behavior of which this man has long been accused—he, who henceforth will partake of nothing in this world of ours. We almost always forgive those we understand.
I have put in this book only that which is related to Pechorin’s sojourn in the Caucasus. In my hands remains another fat book of diaries, where he tells his whole life’s story. At some point, it too will receive the world’s verdict. But presently, I do not dare to assume that responsibility for many important reasons.
Perhaps several readers will want to know my opinion of Pechorin’s character? My reply is the title of this book. “What vicious irony!” they will say. I don’t know.
1
TAMAN
Taman is the foulest little town of all the seaside towns of Russia. I almost died of hunger there, and even worse, the people there tried to drown me. I arrived late at night by stage-coach. The coach driver halted our tired
troika
at the gate of the only stone house at the town’s entrance. The sentry, a Black Sea Cossack, having heard the sound of the horses’ bells, issued his usual inquiry with a wild cry of “who goes there?” A sergeant and a corporal came out. I explained to them that I was an officer, and that I was traveling on official business to an active detachment and requested government quarters. The corporal took us through the town. Whenever we approached an
izba
1
it was occupied. It was cold, I hadn’t slept for three nights, I was exhausted and I started to get angry. “Take me somewhere you rascal! Even if it’s to hell, just take me somewhere!” I cried. “There is one last
fatera,
”
2
responded the corporal, scratching the back of his head, “but your honor won’t like it—it’s unclean!” Having not understood the exact meaning of this last word, I ordered him to march on, and after long wandering through muddy alleys, where I could see only decrepit fences on either side, we drove up to a small peasant house, right on the sea.
A full moon shone on the reed roof and white walls of my new living quarters. Another peasant house, smaller and more ancient, stood next to it in a courtyard, which was enclosed by a stone wall. The land fell away in a precipice to the sea at the very walls of this peasant house, and dark-blue waves lapped below with relentless murmurings. The moon quietly watched the element, which was restless but submissive to her, and under her light, I could make out two ships, far offshore, whose black rigging, resembling a cobweb, was in motionless silhouette against the pale line of the horizon. “There are ships at the pier,” I thought. “Tomorrow I’ll set off for Gelendzhik.”
A Cossack from the front line was fulfilling the duties of an orderly under my command. Having instructed him to unload my valise and release the coach driver, I called the proprietor. Silence. I knocked. Silence. What was this? At last, a boy of about fourteen years crawled out of the vestibule.
“Where is the proprietor?”
“No.” The boy spoke in a Ukrainian dialect.
“What? He’s not here at all?”
“Not at all.”
“And the proprietress?”
“Run off to the
slobodka.
”
3
“Who then will open the door for me?” I said, kicking it with my foot. The door opened. A dampness blew softly from the peasant house. I struck a sulfur match and put it up to the boy’s nose. It illuminated two white eyes. He was blind, completely blind from birth. He stood in front of me without moving, and I began to scrutinize the features of his face.
I confess that I have a strong prejudice against the blind, the cross-eyed, the deaf, the mute, the legless, the armless, the hunch-backed and the like. I have noticed that there is always a sort of strange relationship between the exterior of a person and his soul. It is as if, with the loss of a feature, the soul loses some kind of sensibility.
I started to scrutinize the face of this blind boy. But what would you suggest I read in a face that has no eyes? . . . I looked at him with involuntary pity for a while, when suddenly a barely visible smile scampered across his thin lips, and, I don’t know why, but it produced in me a most unpleasant impression. The suspicion that this blind boy wasn’t as blind as he seemed was born in my mind. In vain I tried to persuade myself that you couldn’t mimic a walleye, and why would you? But what was I to do? I am often prone to prejudice . . .
“Are you the son of the proprietress?” I asked him eventually.
“No.”
“Who are you then?”
“An orphan, a cripple.”
“And does the proprietress have children?”
“No. There was a daughter, ran away cross the sea with a Tatar.”
“Which Tatar?”
“The devil knows! A Crimean Tatar, a boatman from Kerchi.”
I went into the shack. The sum total of furniture inside consisted of two benches and a table and an enormous trunk by the stove. There wasn’t a single image on the wall—a bad sign! The sea wind burst into the room through a broken windowpane. I pulled the end of a wax candle out of my valise and, having lit it, started to unpack my things, putting my saber and rifle down in the corner. I put my pistols on the table, spread out my felt cloak on the bench, while my Cossack put his on the other. After ten minutes he started snoring, but I couldn’t get to sleep. In the darkness the boy with the wall-eyes continued to circle before me.
Thus an hour passed. The moon shone through the window, and its light played on the earthen floor of the peasant house. Suddenly, a shadow flew through a bright ray that cut across the floor. I half-rose and looked through the window. Someone ran past it a second time and hid God knows where. I couldn’t imagine that this being had run down the steep slope to the water; however, there was nowhere else to go. I stood up, threw on my
beshmet,
girded myself with my dagger-belt, and quietly exited the peasant house. The blind boy was standing in front of me. I hid by the fence, and with a sure but careful gait he walked past me. He was carrying some kind of bundle under his arm, and turning toward the jetty, he descended a narrow and steep path. “On that day the dumb shall cry out and the blind shall see,”
4
I thought, following him at a distance from which I wouldn’t lose sight of him.
In the meantime, the moon was becoming shrouded in clouds, and a fog rose on the sea. The lamp on the stern of the nearest ship just barely shined through it—and closer to shore, foam glittered on the boulders, which threatened to sink it at any moment. I descended with difficulty, stole down the steep slope, and this is what I saw: the blind boy paused, then turned right at the bottom. He walked so close to the water that it seemed as if a wave might grab him and take him away at any moment. But it was evident that this wasn’t his first walk along these parts, judging from the conviction with which he stepped from stone to stone, avoiding the grooves between them. At last he stopped, as though he was listening for something, sat on the ground and put the bundle down beside him. Hiding behind a protruding part of the rock-face, I observed his movements. Several minutes later a white figure appeared on the other side of him. She walked up to the blind boy and sat next to him. The wind brought me their conversation from time to time:
“So, blind boy,” said the female voice, “the storm is fierce. Yanko won’t come.”
“Yanko isn’t afraid of storms,” he replied.
“The fog is thickening,” the female voice rejoined in a sad tone.
“Fog is better for getting past patrol ships,” was the reply.
“And if he drowns?”
“Well then, on Sunday you’ll have to go to church without a new ribbon.”
A silence followed. But I was shocked by one thing: before, the blind boy had spoken to me in a Ukrainian dialect, and now he was expressing himself cleanly in Russian.
“You see, I’m right,” said the blind boy again, clapping his palms, “Yanko isn’t afraid of the sea or the wind or the fog or the shore patrol. Listen now. You won’t fool me—that isn’t water lapping, those are his long oars.”
The woman jumped up and began peering into the distance with an anxious look.
“You’re delirious, blind boy,” she said, “I don’t see anything.”
I admit, as hard as I tried to make out in the distance anything that resembled a boat, I was unsuccessful. Thus passed about ten minutes. And then, a black dot appeared between the mountains of waves. It grew larger and smaller in turns. Slowly climbing up to the peak of a wave, and quickly falling from it, a boat was approaching the shore. Brave was the seaman who decided to set out across the strait at a distance of twenty
verst
s on such a night, and important must his reason have been, to have induced him to it! Thinking this, with an involuntary beating of my heart, I looked at the poor boat, but like a duck, it dived under and then, rapidly waving its oars, like wings, sprang out of the depths in a spray of foam. And I thought to myself, it is going to strike against the shore with all its might and fly into pieces. But it turned deftly to one side, and hurdled unharmed into a small bay. A man of medium height, in a Tatar sheepswool hat, emerged from it. He waved an arm and the three of them took to dragging something out of the boat. The load was so great that even now I don’t understand how it hadn’t sunk. Each took a bundle onto his shoulder and they set off along the shoreline; and soon I lost sight of them. I had to go back, but I confess that all these odd things had perturbed me, and I barely managed to wait until morning.
My Cossack was very surprised to see me fully dressed when he awoke. I, however, did not give him any reason for it. I admired the blue sky beyond the window, studded with little clouds, above the far coast of the Crimea, which extended in a violet stripe and ended in a cliff, at the top of which a lighthouse tower shone white. Then I set off for the Fanagorya fort in order to learn from the commandant the time of my departure to Gelendzhik.
But alas! The commandant could not tell me anything definitively. The ships standing at the jetty were all patrol or merchant ships, which hadn’t yet started loading. “Maybe in about three, four days, the postal boat will arrive,” said the commandant, “and then we’ll see.” I returned home, morose and angry. I was met in the doorway by the frightened face of my Cossack.
“It’s bad, Your Honor!” he said to me.
“Yes, brother, God knows when we’ll get out of this place!”
He seemed even more alarmed at this and, leaning into me, said in a whisper:
“It is unclean here! Today I met a Black Sea
uryadnik.
5
I know him—he was in my detachment last year. And when I told him where we were staying, he said: ‘Brother, it’s unclean there, the people are not good!’ Yes, and it’s true, who is this blind boy? He goes everywhere alone, to the bazaar, to get bread, to fetch water . . . it’s clear that they’re used to him around here.”
“What of it? Has the proprietress appeared at least?”
“Today, when you were gone, an old woman came and with her a daughter.”
“What daughter? She doesn’t have a daughter.”
“God knows who she was, if she wasn’t the daughter. Over there, the old woman is sitting in her house.”
I went into the peasant house. The stove had been lit and it was hot; a meal, a rather luxurious one for the likes of poor folk, was cooking inside it. The old woman answered all my questions with the reply that she was deaf and couldn’t hear. What was I to do with her? I addressed myself to the blind boy who was sitting in front of the stove and putting brushwood in the fire.

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