Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (395 page)

“All this floated before my mind by snatches, perhaps in actual delirium, for fully an hour and a half before Kolya went away, sometimes taking definite shape. Can anything that has no shape appear in a shape? But I seemed to fancy at times that I saw in some strange, incredible form that infinite Power, that dull, dark, dumb force. I remember that some one seemed to lead me by the hand, holding a candle, to show me a huge and loathsome spider, and to assure me, laughing at my indignation, that this was that same dark, dumb and almighty Power. There is always a little lamp lighted at night before the ikon in my room. It is a dim and feeble light, yet one can make out everything, and even read just under the lamp. I believe it must have been after midnight. I had not slept at all and lay with wide-open eyes. Suddenly my door opened and Rogozhin walked in.

“He walked in, shut the door, looked at me without speaking, and went quietly to the chair standing just under the lamp. I was awfully surprised and looked at him in suspense. Rogozhin put his elbows on the little table and began to stare at me without speaking. So passed two or three minutes, and I remember his silence greatly offended and annoyed me. Why wouldn’t he talk? His coming so late at night did strike me as strange, of course, but I remember that I was not so tremendously taken aback by it. Rather the other way, indeed; for though I had not put my thought clearly into words in the morning, I know he understood it; and it was a thought that one might well come to talk over once more, even at a very late hour. I took it for granted he had come for that. Our parting in the morning had been rather unfriendly, and I remember that he looked at me once or twice very sarcastically. I saw the same sarcastic look in his face now, and it was that which offended me. That it actually was Rogozhin and not an apparition, an hallucination, I had not the slightest doubt at the beginning. I never thought of it, in fact.

“Meanwhile he went on sitting there and still staring at me with the same sarcastic look. I turned angrily on my bed, leaned with my elbow on the pillow, and made up mv mind to be silent too, even if we had to sit like that all the time. I was set on his beginning first. I think twenty minutes must have passed in that way. Suddenly the idea occurred to me: what if it’s not Rogozhin, but only an apparition?

“I had never once seen an apparition, during my illness or before it. But I had always felt as a boy, and now too — that is, quite lately — that if I should ever see such a thing I should die on the spot, although I don’t believe in ghosts. Yet when the idea struck me that it was not Rogozhin but only an apparition, I remember I wasn’t in the least frightened. In fact it made me feel angry. Another strange thing was that I was not nearly so concerned and anxious to decide whether it was Rogozhin or an apparition, as I should have been. I believe I was thinking of something else at the time. I was much more interested, for instance, in the question why Rogozhin, who had been in his dressing-gown and slippers earlier in the day, was now wearing a dress-coat, a white waistcoat, and a white tie. The thought struck me too: if it is an apparition and I’m not afraid of it, why not get up, go to him, and make sure? Perhaps I didn’t dare and was afraid. But I’d no sooner thought of being afraid than an icy shiver ran all down me; I felt a cold chill at my spine and my knees trembled. At that very instant, as though guessing that I was afraid, Rogozhin moved away the hand on which he was leaning, drew himself up, and his lips began to part, as though he were going to laugh; he stared at me persistently. I was seized with such fury that I longed to fall upon him, but as I had vowed not to be the first to speak, I remained in bed. Besides, I was still not sure whether it was Rogozhin or not.

“I don’t remember exactly how long it lasted; I can’t be quite sure either whether I didn’t lose consciousness from time to time. But at last Rogozhin got up and looked at me as deliberately and intently as he had on coming in. He no longer grinned at me, and softly, almost on tip-toe, went to the door, opened it, and went out. I did not get out of bed. I don’t know how long I lay with my eyes open, thinking. Goodness knows what I thought about. I don’t remember either how I lost consciousness. But I waked next morning at ten o’clock when they knocked at my door. I have arranged that, if I don’t open the door myself before ten o’clock and call for tea to be brought to me, Matryona should knock.

When I opened the door to her, the thought occurred to me at once: how could he have come in when the door was locked? I made inquiries, and convinced myself that Rogozhin in the flesh could not have come in, as all our doors are locked at night.

“Well, this peculiar incident which I have described so minutely was the cause of my making up my mind. What helped to bring about that ‘final decision’ was not logic, not a logical conviction, but a feeling of repulsion. I could not go on living a life which was taking such strange, humiliating forms. That apparition degraded me. I am not able to submit to the gloomy power that takes the shape of a spider. And it was only when I felt at last, as it was getting dark, that I had reached the final moment of full determination that I felt better. But that was only the first stage; for the second stage I had to go to Pavlovsk. But all that I have explained sufficiently already.

CHAPTER 7

I HAD a little pocket-pistol; I got it when I was quite a child, at that absurd age when one is delighted at the story of a duel or of an attack by robbers, at imagining how one might be challenged to a duel and how bravely one would face the pistol-shot. A month ago I looked at it, and got it ready. In the box where it lay I found two bullets, and in the powder-horn there was powder enough for three charges. It’s a miserable pistol, it doesn’t aim straight, and wouldn’t kill further than fifteen paces. But, of course, it would blow one’s skull off, if one put it right against the temple.

“I decided to die at Pavlovsk at sunrise, and I meant to go into the park, so as not to upset anyone in the villa. My ‘Explanation’ will explain things sufficiently to the police. Lovers of psychology, and anyone else who likes, are welcome to get anything they can out of it. But I don’t want this manuscript to be made public. I beg the prince to keep one copy for himself, and give another to Aglaia Ivanovna Epanchin. Such is my will. I bequeath my skeleton to the Medical Academy, for the good of science.

“I don’t admit the right of any man to judge me, and I know that I am now beyond the reach of all judgment. Not long ago I was much amused by imagining — what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do something awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world — what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm and snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn’t strike people in my position, if only as a joke. But perhaps it does; there are plenty of people fond of a joke, even among us.

“But though I don’t recognise the right of any to judge me, I know that I shall be judged when I am dumb, and have no voice to defend myself. I don’t want to go away without leaving some word of defence — a free defence, not forced out of me, not to justify myself — oh, no! I have no one’s forgiveness to ask, and nothing to ask forgiveness for — it’s simply because I want to.

“Here, at the outset, a strange question arises: by what right, with what motive could anyone presume to dispute my right to dispose of my last fortnight? Whose business is it to judge? What is it to anyone that I should not only be condemned, but should conscientiously endure my sentence to the end? Can it really matter to anyone? From the ethical point of view? I quite understand that if, in the bloom of health and strength, I were to take my life, which might be ‘of use to my neighbour,’ and all the rest of it, morality might reproach me on traditional lines for disposing of my life without asking leave, or for some other reason of its own. But now, now that the term of my sentence has been pronounced? What moral obligation demands, not only your life, but the last gasp with which you give up your last atom of life, listening to words of comfort from the prince, whose Christian arguments are bound to bring him to the happy thought that it is really for the best that you should die. (Christians like him always do come to that idea. It’s their favourite tack.) And what does he want to bring in his ridiculous ‘trees of Pavlovsk’ for? To soften the last hours of my life? Don’t they understand, that the more I forget myself, the more I give myself up to the last semblance of life and love, with which they are trying to screen from me Meyer’s wall and all that is so openly and simply written on it, the more unhappy they make me? What use to me is your nature, your Pavlovsk park, your sunrises and sunsets, your blue sky, and your contented faces, when all this endless festival has begun by my being excluded from it? What is there for me in this beauty when, every minute, every second I am obliged, forced, to recognise that even the tiny fly, buzzing in the sunlight beside me, has its share in the banquet and the chorus, knows its place, loves it and is happy; and I alone am an outcast, and only my cowardice has made me refuse to realise it till now. Oh, I know how the prince and all of them would have liked, from principle and for the triumph of morality, to lead me on to singing Millevoix’ celebrated classical verse.

Ah, puissent voir longtemps votre beaute sacree Tant d’amis sourds a mes adieux!

Quits meurentpleins de jours, que leurmort soitpleuree,

Qu’un ami leurferme les yeux! —

instead of these ‘corrupting and wicked words.’ But believe me, believe me, simple-hearted souls, that those edifying lines, that academic benediction of the world in French verse, contains so much concealed bitterness, such irreconcilable malice, revelling in rhyme, that perhaps, even the poet himself was muddled and took that malice for tears of tenderness, and died in that faith; peace be to his ashes! Let me tell you, there is a limit of ignominy in the consciousness of one’s own nothingness and impotence beyond which a man cannot go, and beyond which he begins to feel immense satisfaction in his very degradation. . . . Oh, of course humility is a great force in that sense, I admit that — though not in the sense in which religion accepts humility as a force.

“Religion! Eternal life I can admit, and perhaps I always have admitted it. Let consciousness, kindled by the will of a higher Power, have looked round upon the world and have said—’I am!’ and let it suddenly be doomed by that Power to annihilation, because it’s somehow necessary for some purpose — and even without explanation of the purpose — so be it, I admit it all, but again the eternal question: what need is there of my humility? Can’t I simply be devoured without being expected to praise what devours me? Can there really be Somebody up aloft who will be aggrieved by my not going on for a fortnight longer? I don’t believe it; and it’s a much more likely supposition that all that’s needed is my worthless life, the life of an atom, to complete some universal harmony; for some sort of plus and minus, for the sake of some sort of contrast, and so on, just as the life of millions of creatures is needed every day as a sacrifice, as, without their death, the rest of the world couldn’t go on (though that’s not a very grand idea in itself, I must observe). But so be it! I admit that otherwise, that is without the continual devouring of one another, it would have been impossible to arrange the world. I am even ready to admit that I can’t understand anything about that arrangement. But this I do know for certain: that if I have once been allowed to be conscious that ‘I am,’ it doesn’t matter to me that there are mistakes in the construction of the world, and that without them it can’t go on. Who will condemn me after that, and on what charge? Say what you like, it’s all impossible and unjust.

“And yet, in spite of all my desire to do it, I could never conceive of there being no future life, no Providence. It seems most likely that they do exist, but that we don’t understand anything about the future life or its laws. But if this is so difficult and even impossible to understand, surely I shan’t be held responsible for not being able to comprehend the inconceivable. It’s true, they tell me, and the prince, of course, is with them there, that submissive faith is needed, that one must obey without reasoning, simply from piety, and that I shall certainly be rewarded in the next world for my humility.

“We degrade God too much, ascribing to Him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him. But, again, if it’s impossible to understand Him,

I repeat it’s hard to have to answer for what it is not given to man to understand. And, if it is so, how shall I be judged for being unable to understand the will and laws of Providence? No, we’d better leave religion on one side.

“And I’ve said enough, indeed. When I reach these lines, the sun will, no doubt, be rising, and ‘resounding in the sky,’ and its vast immeasurable power will be shed upon the earth. So be it! I shall be looking straight at the source of power and life; I do not want this life! If I’d had the power not to be born, I would certainly not have accepted existence upon conditions that are such a mockery. But I still have power to die, though the days I give back are numbered. It’s no great power, it’s no great mutiny.

“My last ‘Explanation’: I am dying, not because I am not equal to bearing these three weeks. Oh, I should have the strength, and, if I cared to, I should be comforted enough by the recognition of the wrong done me; but I’m not a French poet, and I do not care for such consolation. Finally, there’s temptation too. Nature has so limited any activity by its three weeks’ sentence, that perhaps suicide is the only action I still have time to beqin and end bv mv own will. And,

perhaps I want to take advantage of the last possibility of action. A protest is sometimes no small action....”

The “Explanation” was over. Ippolit at last stopped.

There is, in extreme cases, a pitch of cynical frankness when a nervous man, exasperated, and beside himself, shrinks from nothing, and is readyfor any scandal, even glad of it. He falls upon people with a vague but firm determination to fling himself from a belfry a minute later, and so settle any difficulties that may arise. And the approaching physical exhaustion is usually the symptom of this condition. The extreme, almost unnatural tension which had kept Ippolit up till that moment had reached that fatal pitch. This eighteen-year-old boy, exhausted by illness, seemed as weak as a trembling leaf torn from a tree. But as soon as — for the first time in the course of the last hour — he looked round upon his audience, the most haughty, most disdainful and resentful repugnance was at once apparent in his eyes and his smile. He made haste with his challenge. But his listeners too were very indignant. They were all noisily and angrily getting up from the table. Weariness, wine, nervous strain increased the disorderliness and, as it were, foulness of the impression, if one may so express it.