Part 8

“Ah, isn’t this awful, my God?”

“There, I knew it would end like this,” said the painter frowning. “We oughtn’t to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I suppose you think your head’s full of great thoughts and great ideas now. Devil knows what they are, but they’re not ideas. You’re staring at me now with hatred and disgust; but if you want my opinion you’d better build twenty more of the houses than look like that. There’s more vice in your look than in the whole street. Let’s clear out, Volodya, damn him! He’s a fool. He’s a blockhead, and that’s all he is.”

“Human beings are always killing each other,” said the medico. “That is immoral, of course. But philosophy won’t help you. Good-bye!”

The friends parted at Trubnoi Square and went their way. Left alone, Vassiliev began to stride along the boulevard. He was frightened of the dark, frightened of the snow, which fell to the earth in little flakes, but seemed to long to cover the whole world; he was frightened of the street-lamps, which glimmered faintly through the clouds of snow. An inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul. Now and then people passed him; but he gave a start and stepped aside. It seemed to him that from everywhere there came and stared at him women, only women....

“It’s coming on,” he thought, “I’m going to have a fit.”

VI

At home he lay on his bed and began to talk, shivering all over his body.

“Live women, live.... My God, they’re alive.”

He sharpened the edge of his imagination in every possible way. Now he was the brother of an unfortunate, now her father. Now he was himself a fallen woman, with painted cheeks; and all this terrified him.

It seemed to him somehow that he must solve this question immediately, at all costs, and that the problem was not strange to him, but was his own. He made a great effort, conquered his despair, and, sitting on the side of the bed, his head clutched in his hands, he began to think:

How could all the women he had seen that night be saved? The process of solving a problem was familiar to him as to a learned person; and notwithstanding all his excitement he kept strictly to this process. He recalled to mind the history of the question, its literature, and just after three o’clock he was pacing up and down, trying to remember all the experiments which are practised nowadays for the salvation of women. He had a great many good friends who lived in furnished rooms, Falzfein, Galyashkin, Nechaiev, Yechkin ... not a few among them were honest and self-sacrificing, and some of them had attempted to save these women....

All these few attempts, thought Vassiliev, rare attempts, may be divided into three groups. Some having rescued a woman from a brothel hired a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine and she became a dressmaker, and the man who saved her kept her for his mistress, openly or otherwise, but later when he had finished his studies and was going away, he would hand her over to another decent fellow. So the fallen woman remained fallen. Others after having bought her out also hired a room for her, bought the inevitable sewing-machine and started her off reading and writing and preached at her. The woman sits and sews as long as it is novel and amusing, but later, when she is bored, she begins to receive men secretly, or runs back to where she can sleep till three in the afternoon, drink coffee, and eat till she is full. Finally, the most ardent and self-sacrificing take a bold, determined step. They marry, and when the impudent, self-indulgent, stupefied creature becomes a wife, a lady of the house, and then a mother, her life and outlook are utterly changed, and in the wife and mother it is hard to recognise the unfortunate woman. Yes, marriage is the best, it may be the only, resource.

“But it’s impossible,” Vassiliev said aloud and threw himself down on his bed. “First of all, I could not marry one. One would have to be a saint to be able to do it, unable to hate, not knowing disgust. But let us suppose that the painter, the medico, and I got the better of our feelings and married, that all these women got married, what is the result? What kind of effect follows? The result is that while the women get married here in Moscow, the Smolensk bookkeeper seduces a fresh lot, and these will pour into the empty places, together with women from Saratov, Nijni-Novgorod, Warsaw.... And what happens to the hundred thousand in London? What can be done with those in Hamburg?”

The oil in the lamp was used up and the lamp began to smell. Vassiliev did not notice it. Again he began to pace up and down, thinking. Now he put the question differently. What can be done to remove the demand for fallen women? For this it is necessary that the men who buy and kill them should at once begin to feel all the immorality of their _rôle_ of slave-owners, and this should terrify them. It is necessary to save the men.

Science and art apparently won’t do, thought Vassiliev. There is only one way out--to be an apostle.

And he began to dream how he would stand to-morrow evening at the corner of the street and say to each passer-by: “Where are you going and what for? Fear God!”

He would turn to the indifferent cabmen and say to them:

“Why are you standing here? Why don’t you revolt? You do believe in God, don’t you? And you do know that this is a crime, and that people will go to Hell for this? Why do you keep quiet, then? True, the women are strangers to you, but they have fathers and brothers exactly the same as you....”

Some friend of Vassiliev’s once said of him that he was a man of talent. There is a talent for writing, for the theatre, for painting; but Vassiliev’s was peculiar, a talent for humanity. He had a fine and noble _flair_ for every kind of suffering. As a good actor reflects in himself the movement and voice of another, so Vassiliev could reflect in himself another’s pain. Seeing tears, he wept. With a sick person, he himself became sick and moaned. If he saw violence done, it seemed to him that he was the victim. He was frightened like a child, and, frightened, ran for help. Another’s pain roused him, excited him, threw him into a state of ecstasy....

Whether the friend was right I do not know, but what happened to Vassiliev when it seemed to him that the question was solved was very much like an ecstasy. He sobbed, laughed, said aloud the things he would say to-morrow, felt a burning love for the men who would listen to him and stand by his side at the corner of the street, preaching. He sat down to write to them; he made vows.

All this was the more like an ecstasy in that it did not last. Vassiliev was soon tired. The London women, the Hamburg women, those from Warsaw, crushed him with their mass, as the mountains crush the earth. He quailed before this mass; he lost himself; he remembered he had no gift for speaking, that he was timid and faint-hearted, that strange people would hardly want to listen to and understand him, a law-student in his third year, a frightened and insignificant figure. The true apostleship consisted, not only in preaching, but also in deeds....

When daylight came and the carts rattled on the streets, Vassiliev lay motionless on the sofa, staring at one point. He did not think any more of women, or men, or apostles. All his attention was fixed on the pain of his soul which tormented him. It was a dull pain, indefinite, vague; it was like anguish and the most acute fear and despair. He could say where the pain was. It was in his breast, under the heart. It could not be compared to anything. Once on a time he used to have violent toothache. Once, he had pleurisy and neuralgia. But all these pains were as nothing beside the pain of his soul. Beneath this pain life seemed repulsive. The thesis, his brilliant work already written, the people he loved, the salvation of fallen women, all that which only yesterday he loved or was indifferent to, remembered now, irritated him in the same way as the noise of the carts, the running about of the porters and the daylight.... If someone now were to perform before his eyes a deed of mercy or an act of revolting violence, both would produce upon him an equally repulsive impression. Of all the thoughts which roved lazily in his head, two only did not irritate him: one--at any moment he had the power to kill himself, the other--that the pain would not last more than three days. The second he knew from experience.

After having lain down for a while he got up and walked wringing his hands, not from corner to corner as usually, but in a square along the walls. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. His face was pale and haggard, his temples hollow, his eyes bigger, darker, more immobile, as if they were not his own, and they expressed the intolerable suffering of his soul.

In the afternoon the painter knocked at the door.

“Gregory, are you at home?” he asked.

Receiving no answer, he stood musing for a while, and said to himself good-naturedly:

“Out. He’s gone to the University. Damn him.”

And went away.

Vassiliev lay down on his bed and burying his head in the pillow he began to cry with the pain. But the faster his tears flowed, the more terrible was the pain. When it was dark, he got into his mind the idea of the horrible night which was awaiting him and awful despair seized him. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, leaving the door wide open, and into the street without reason or purpose. Without asking himself where he was going, he walked quickly to Sadovaia Street.

Snow was falling as yesterday. It was thawing. Putting his hands into his sleeves, shivering, and frightened of the noises and the bells of the trams and of passers-by, Vassiliev walked from Sadovaia to Sukhariev Tower then to the Red Gates, and from here he turned and went to Basmannaia. He went into a public-house and gulped down a big glass of vodka, but felt no better. Arriving at Razgoulyai, he turned to the right and began to stride down streets that he had never in his life been down before. He came to that old bridge under which the river Yaouza roars and from whence long rows of lights are seen in the windows of the Red Barracks. In order to distract the pain of his soul by a new sensation or another pain, not knowing what to do, weeping and trembling, Vassiliev unbuttoned his coat and jacket, baring his naked breast to the damp snow and the wind. Neither lessened the pain. Then he bent over the rail of the bridge and stared down at the black, turbulent Yaouza, and he suddenly wanted to throw himself head-first, not from hatred of life, not for the sake of suicide, but only to hurt himself and so to kill one pain by another. But the black water, the dark, deserted banks covered with snow were frightening. He shuddered and went on. He walked as far as the Red Barracks, then back and into a wood, from the wood to the bridge again.

“No! Home, home,” he thought. “At home I believe it’s easier.”

And he went back. On returning home he tore off his wet clothes and hat, began to pace along the walls, and paced incessantly until the very morning.

VII

The next morning when the painter and the medico came to see him, they found him in a shirt torn to ribbons, his hands bitten all over, tossing about in the room and moaning with pain.

“For God’s sake!” he began to sob, seeing his comrades, “Take me anywhere you like, do what you like, but save me, for God’s sake now, now! I’ll kill myself.”

The painter went pale and was bewildered. The medico, too, nearly began to cry; but, believing that medical men must be cool and serious on every occasion of life, he said coldly:

“It’s a fit you’ve got. But never mind. Come to the doctor, at once.”

“Anywhere you like, but quickly, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t be agitated. You must struggle with yourself.”

The painter and the medico dressed Vassiliev with trembling hands and led him into the street.

“Mikhail Sergueyich has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long while,” the medico said on the way. “He’s a very nice man, and knows his job splendidly. He took his degree in ’82, and has got a huge practice already. He keeps friends with the students.”

“Quicker, quicker....” urged Vassiliev. Mikhail Sergueyich, a stout doctor with fair hair, received the friends politely, firmly, coldly, and smiled with one cheek only.

“The painter and Mayer have told me of your disease already,” he said. “Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, please.”

He made Vassiliev sit down in a big chair by the table, and put a box of cigarettes in front of him.

“Well?” he began, stroking his knees. “Let’s make a start. How old are you?”

He put questions and the medico answered. He asked whether Vassiliev’s father suffered from any peculiar diseases, if he had fits of drinking, was he distinguished by his severity or any other eccentricities. He asked the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and brothers. Having ascertained that his mother had a fine voice and occasionally appeared on the stage, he suddenly brightened up and asked:

“Excuse me, but could you recall whether the theatre was not a passion with your mother?”

About twenty minutes passed. Vassiliev was bored by the doctor stroking his knees and talking of the same thing all the while.

“As far as I can understand your questions, Doctor,” he said. “You want to know whether my disease is hereditary or not. It is not hereditary.”

The doctor went on to ask if Vassiliev had not any secret vices in his early youth, any blows on the head, any love passions, eccentricities, or exceptional infatuations. To half the questions habitually asked by careful doctors you may return no answer without any injury to your health; but Mikhail Sergueyich, the medico and the painter looked as though, if Vassiliev failed to answer even one single question, everything would be ruined. For some reason the doctor wrote down the answers he received on a scrap of paper. Discovering that Vassiliev had already passed through the faculty of natural science and was now in the Law faculty, the doctor began to be pensive....

“He wrote a brilliant thesis last year....” said the medico.

“Excuse me. You mustn’t interrupt me; you prevent me from concentrating,” the doctor said, smiling with one cheek. “Yes, certainly that is important for the anamnesis.... Yes, yes.... And do you drink vodka?” he turned to Vassiliev.

“Very rarely.”

Another twenty minutes passed. The medico began _sotto voce_ to give his opinion of the immediate causes of the fit and told how he, the painter and Vassiliev went to S----v Street the day before yesterday.

The indifferent, reserved, cold tone in which his friends and the doctor were speaking of the women and the miserable street seemed to him in the highest degree strange....

“Doctor, tell me this one thing,” he said, restraining himself from being rude. “Is prostitution an evil or not?”

“My dear fellow, who disputes it?” the doctor said with an expression as though he had long ago solved all these questions for himself. “Who disputes it?”

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“Yes-s, a psychiatrist.”

“Perhaps all of you are right,” said Vassiliev, rising and beginning to walk from corner to corner. “It may be. But to me all this seems amazing. They see a great achievement in my having passed through two faculties at the university; they praise me to the skies because I have written a work that will be thrown away and forgotten in three years’ time, but because I can’t speak of prostitutes as indifferently as I can about these chairs, they send me to doctors, call me a lunatic, and pity me.”

For some reason Vassiliev suddenly began to feel an intolerable pity for himself, his friends, and everybody whom he had seen the day before yesterday, and for the doctor. He began to sob and fell into the chair.

The friends looked interrogatively at the doctor. He, looking as though he magnificently understood the tears and the despair, and knew himself a specialist in this line, approached Vassiliev and gave him some drops to drink, and then when Vassiliev grew calm undressed him and began to examine the sensitiveness of his skin, of the knee reflexes....

And Vassiliev felt better. When he was coming out of the doctor’s he was already ashamed; the noise of the traffic did not seem irritating, and the heaviness beneath his heart became easier and easier as though it were thawing. In his hand were two prescriptions. One was for kali-bromatum, the other--morphia. He used to take both before.

He stood still in the street for a while, pensive, and then, taking leave of his friends, lazily dragged on towards the university.

MISFORTUNE

Sophia Pietrovna, the wife of the solicitor Loubianzev, a handsome young woman of about twenty-five, was walking quickly along a forest path with her bungalow neighbour, the barrister Ilyin. It was just after four. In the distance, above the path, white feathery clouds gathered; from behind them some bright blue pieces of cloud showed through. The clouds were motionless, as if caught on the tops of the tall, aged fir trees. It was calm and warm.

In the distance the path was cut across by a low railway embankment, along which at this hour, for some reason or other, a sentry strode. Just behind the embankment a big, six-towered church with a rusty roof shone white.

“I did not expect to meet you here,” Sophia Pietrovna was saying, looking down and touching the last year’s leaves with the end of her parasol. “But now I am glad to have met you. I want to speak to you seriously and finally. Ivan Mikhailovich, if you really love and respect me I implore you to stop pursuing me! You follow me like a shadow--there’s such a wicked look in your eye--you make love to me--write extraordinary letters and ... I don’t know how all this is going to end--Good Heavens! What can all this lead to?”

Ilyin was silent. Sophia Pietrovna took a few steps and continued:

“And this sudden complete change has happened in two or three weeks after five years of friendship. I do not know you any more, Ivan Mikhailovich.”

Sophia Pietrovna glanced sideways at her companion. He was staring intently, screwing up his eyes at the feathery clouds. The expression of his face was angry, capricious and distracted, like that of a man who suffers and at the same time must listen to nonsense.

“It is annoying that you yourself can’t realise it!” Madame Loubianzev continued, shrugging her shoulders. “Please understand that you’re not playing a very nice game. I am married, I love and respect my husband. I have a daughter. Don’t you really care in the slightest for all this? Besides, as an old friend, you know my views on family life ... on the sanctity of the home, generally.”

Ilyin gave an angry grunt and sighed:

“The sanctity of the home,” he murmured, “Good Lord!”

“Yes, yes. I love and respect my husband and at any rate the peace of my family life is precious to me. I’d sooner let myself be killed than be the cause of Andrey’s or his daughter’s unhappiness. So, please, Ivan Mikhailovich, for goodness’ sake, leave me alone. Let us be good and dear friends, and give up these sighings and gaspings which don’t suit you. It’s settled and done with! Not another word about it. Let us talk of something else!”

Sophia Pietrovna again glanced sideways at Ilyin. He was looking up. He was pale, and angrily he bit his trembling lips. Madame Loubianzev could not understand why he was disturbed and angry, but his pallor moved her.

“Don’t be cross. Let’s be friends,” she said, sweetly.

“Agreed! Here is my hand.”

Ilyin took her tiny plump hand in both his, pressed it and slowly raised it to his lips.

“I’m not a schoolboy,” he murmured. “I’m not in the least attracted by the idea of friendship with the woman I love.”

“That’s enough. Stop! It is all settled and done with. We have come as far as the bench. Let us sit down....”

A sweet sense of repose filled Sophia Pietrovna’s soul. The most difficult and delicate thing was already said. The tormenting question was settled and done with. Now she could breathe easily and look straight at Ilyin. She looked at him, and the egotistical sense of superiority that a woman feels over her lover caressed her pleasantly. She liked the way this big strong man with a virile angry face and a huge black beard sat obediently at her side and hung his head. They were silent for a little while. “Nothing is yet settled and done with,” Ilyin began. “You are reading me a sermon. ‘I love and respect my husband ... the sanctity of the home....’ I know all that for myself and I can tell you more. Honestly and sincerely I confess that I consider my conduct as criminal and immoral. What else? But why say what is known already? Instead of sermonizing you had far better tell me what I am to do.”

“I have already told you. Go away.”

“I have gone. You know quite well. I have started five times and half-way there I have come back again. I can show you the through tickets. I have kept them all safe. But I haven’t the power to run away from you. I struggle frightfully, but what in Heaven’s name is the use? If I cannot harden myself, if I’m weak and faint-hearted. I can’t fight nature. Do you understand? I cannot! I run away from her and she holds me back by my coattails. Vile, vulgar weakness.”

Ilyin blushed, got up, and began walking by the bench:

“How I hate and despise myself. Good Lord, I’m like a vicious boy--running after another man’s wife, writing idiotic letters, degrading myself. Ach!” He clutched his head, grunted and sit down.

“And now comes your lack of sincerity into the bargain,” he continued with bitterness. “If you don’t think I am playing a nice game--why are you here? What drew you? In my letters I only ask you for a straightforward answer: Yes, or No; and instead of giving it me, every day you contrive that we shall meet ‘by chance’ and you treat me to quotations from a moral copy-book.”

Madame Loubianzev reddened and got frightened. She suddenly felt the kind of awkwardness that a modest woman would feel at being suddenly discovered naked.

“You seem to suspect some deceit on my side,” she murmured. “I have always given you a straight answer; and I asked you for one to-day.”

“Ah, does one ask such things? If you had said to me at once ‘Go away,’ I would have gone long ago, but you never told me to. Never once have you been frank. Strange irresolution. My God, either you’re playing with me, or....”

Ilyin did not finish, and rested his head in his hands. Sophia Pietrovna recalled her behaviour all through. She remembered that she had felt all these days not only in deed but even in her most intimate thoughts opposed to Ilyin’s love. But at the same moment she knew that there was a grain of truth in the barrister’s words. And not knowing what kind of truth it was she could not think, no matter how much she thought about it, what to say to him in answer to his complaint. It was awkward being silent, so she said shrugging her shoulders:

“So I’m to blame for that too?”

“I don’t blame you for your insincerity,” sighed Ilyin. “It slipped out unconsciously. Your insincerity is natural to you, in the natural order of things as well. If all mankind were to agree suddenly to become serious, everything would go to the Devil, to ruin.”

Sophia Pietrovna was not in the mood for philosophy; but she was glad of the opportunity to change the conversation and asked:

“Why indeed?”

“Because only savages and animals are sincere. Since civilisation introduced into society the demand, for instance, for such a luxury as woman’s virtue, sincerity has been out of place.”