Part 14

"Akh!" sighed Mikhail Averyanitch, "why seek intellect among the men of the present day?" And he began to relate how in the old days life was wholesome, gay, and interesting, how the intellect of Russia was really enlightened, and how high a place was given to the ideas of honour and friendship. Money was lent without I. O. U.'s, and it was regarded as shameful not to stretch out the hand of aid to a needy friend. What marches there were, what adventures, what fights, what companions-in-arms, what women! The Caucasus, what a marvellous country! And the wife of the commander of his battalion--what a strange woman!--who put on an officer's uniform and drove into the mountains at night without an escort. They said she had a romance with a prince in one of the villages.

"Heavenly mother! Lord preserve us!" sighed Dáryushka.

"And how we drank! How we used to eat! What desperate Liberals we were!"

Andréi Yéfimitch listened, but heard nothing; he was thinking of something else and drinking his beer.

"I often dream of clever people and have imaginary conversations with them," he said, suddenly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanitch. "My father gave me a splendid education, but, under the influence of the ideas current in the sixties, forced me to become a doctor. It seems to me that if I had disobeyed him I might now be living in the very centre of the intellectual movement--probably a member of some faculty. Of course intellect itself is not eternal but transitory--but you already know why I worship it so. Life is a vexatious snare. When a reflecting man attains manhood and ripe consciousness, he cannot but feel himself in a trap from which there is no escape.... By an accident, without consulting his own will, he is called from non-existence into life.... Why? He wishes to know the aim and significance of his existence; he is answered with silence or absurdities; he knocks but it is not opened to him; and death itself comes against his will. And so, as prisoners united by common misfortune are relieved when they meet, men inclined to analysis and generalisation do not notice the snare in which they live when they spend their days in the exchange of free ideas. In this sense intellect is an irreplaceable enjoyment."

"Entirely true!"

And still with his face averted from his companion, Andréi Yéfimitch, in a soft voice, with constant pauses, continues to speak of clever men and of the joy of communion with them, and Mikhail Averyanitch listens attentively and says: "It is entirely true."

"Then you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" asks the postmaster.

"No, my dear Mikhail Averyanitch. I do not believe, and I have no reason for believing."

"I admit that I also doubt it. Still I have a feeling that I can never die. 'Come,' I say to myself, 'Come, old man, it's time for you to die.' But in my heart a voice answers: 'Don't believe it, you will never die.'"

At nine o'clock Mikhail Averyanitch takes leave. As he puts on his overcoat in the hall, he says with a sigh:

"Yes, what a desert fate has planted us in! And what is worst of all, we shall have to die here. _Akh!_"

VII

When he has parted from his friend, Andréi Yéfimitch sits at his table and again begins to read. The stillness of evening, the stillness of night is unbroken by a single sound; time, it seems, stands still and perishes, and the doctor perishes also, till it seems that nothing exists but a book and a green lamp-shade. Then the rude, peasant face of the doctor, as he thinks of the achievements of the human intellect, becomes gradually illumined by a smile of emotion and rapture. Oh, why is man not immortal? he asks. For what end exist brain-centres and convolutions, to what end vision, speech, consciousness, genius, if all are condemned to pass into the earth, to grow cold with it, and for countless millions of years, without aim or object, to be borne with it around the sun? In order that the human frame may decay and be whirled around the sun, is it necessary to drag man with his high, his divine mind, out of non-existence, as if in mockery, and to turn him again into earth?

Immortality of matter! What cowardice to console ourselves with this fictitious immortality! Unconscious processes working themselves out in Nature--processes lower even than folly, for in folly there is at least consciousness and volition, while in these processes there is neither! Yet they say to men, "Be at rest, thy substance, rotting in the earth, will give life to other organisms "--in other words, thou wilt be more foolish than folly! Only the coward, who has more fear of death than sense of dignity, can console himself with the knowledge that his body in the course of time will live again in grass, in stones, in the toad. To seek immortality in the indestructibility of matter is, indeed, as strange as to prophesy a brilliant future for the case when the costly violin is broken and worthless.

When the clock strikes, Andréi Yéfimitch leans back in his chair, shuts his eyes, and thinks. Under the influence of the lofty thoughts which he has just been reading, he throws a glance over the present and the past. The past is repellent, better not think of it! And the present is but as the past. He knows that in this very moment, while his thoughts are sweeping round the sun with the cooling earth, in the hospital building in a line with his lodgings, lie men tortured by pain and tormented by uncleanliness; one cannot sleep owing to the insects, and howls in his pain; another is catching erysipelas, and groaning at the tightness of his bandages; others are playing cards with the nurses, and drinking vodka. In this very year no less than twelve thousand persons were duped; the whole work of the hospital, as twenty years before, is based on robbery, scandal, intrigue, nepotism, and gross charlatanry; altogether, the hospital is an immoral institution, and a source of danger to the health of its inmates. And Andréi Yéfimitch knows that inside the iron bars of Ward No. 6, Nikita beats the patients with his fists, and that, outside, Moséika wanders about the streets begging for kopecks.

Yet he knows very well that in the last twenty-five years a fabulous revolution has taken place in the doctor's art. When he studied at the university it had seemed to him that medicine would soon be overtaken by the lot of alchemy and metaphysics, but now the records of its feats which he reads at night touch him, astonish him, and even send him into raptures. What a revolution! what unexpected brilliance! Thanks to antiseptics, operations are every day performed which the great Pigorof regarded as impossible. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors perform such operations as the resection of the knee articulations, of a hundred operations on the stomach only one results in death, and the stone is now such a trifle that it has ceased to be written about. Complaints which were once only alleviated are now entirely cured. And hypnotism, the theory of heredity, the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch, statistics of hygiene, even Russian Zemstvo medicine! Psychiatry, with its classification of diseases, its methods of diagnosis, its method of cure--what a transformation of the methods of the past! No longer arc lunatics drenched with cold water and confined in strait waistcoats; they are treated as human beings, and even--as Andréi Yéfimitch read in the newspapers--have their own special dramatic entertainments and dances. Andréi Yéfimitch is well aware that in the modern world such an abomination as Ward No. 6 is possible only in a town situated two hundred versts from a railway, where the Mayor and Councillors are half-educated tradesmen, who regard a doctor as a priest to whom everything must be entrusted without criticism, even though he were to dose his patients with molten tin. In any other town the public and the Press would long ago have tom this little Bastille to pieces.

"But in the end?" asks Andréi Yéfimitch, opening his eyes. "What is the difference? In spite of antiseptics and Koch and Pasteur, the essence of the matter has no way changed. Disease and death still exist. Lunatics are amused with dances and theatricals, but they are still kept prisoners.... In other words, all these tilings are vanity and folly, and between the best hospital in Vienna and the hospital here there is in reality no difference at all."

But vexation and a feeling akin to envy forbid indifference. It all arises out of weariness. Andréi Yéfimitch's head falls upon his book, he rests his head comfortably on his hands and thinks:

"I am engaged in a bad work, and I receive a salary from the men whom I deceive. I am not an honest man.... But then by myself I am nothing; I am only part of a necessary social evil; all the officials in the district are bod, and draw their salaries without doing their work.... In other words, it is not I who am guilty of dishonesty, but Time.... If I were born two hundred years hence I should be a different man."

When the clock strikes three, he puts out his lamp and goes up to his bedroom. But he has no wish to sleep.

VIII

Two years ago, in a fit of liberality, the Zemstvo determined to appropriate three hundred roubles a year to the increase of the personnel of the hospital, until such time as they should open one of their own. They sent, therefore, as assistant to Andréi Yéfimitch, the district physician Yevgéniï Feódoritch Khobótoff. Khobótoff was a very young man, under thirty, bill and dark, with small eyes and high cheek-bones; evidently of Asiatic origin. He arrived in the town without a kopeck, with a small portmanteau as his only luggage, and was accompanied by a young, unattractive woman, whom he called his cook. This woman's child completed the party. Khobótoff wore a peaked cap and high boots, and--in winter--a short fur coat. He was soon on intimate terms with the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, and with the bursar, but the rest of the officials he avoided and denounced as aristocrats. He possessed only one book, "Prescriptions of the Vienna Hospital in 1881," and when he visited the hospital he always brought it with him. He did not care for cards, and in the evenings spent his time playing billiards at the club.

Khobótoff visited the hospital twice a week, inspected the wards, and received out-patients. The strange absence of antiseptics, cupping-glasses, and other necessaries seemed to trouble him, but he made no attempt to introduce a new order, fearing to offend Andréi Yéfimitch, whom he regarded as all old rogue, suspected of having large means, and secretly envied. He would willingly have occupied his position.

IX

One spring evening towards the end of March, when the snow had disappeared and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor was standing at his gate saying good-bye to his friend the postmaster. At that moment the Jew Moséika, returning with his booty, entered the yard. He was capless, wore a pair of goloshes on his stockingless feet, and held in his hand a small bag of coins.

"Give me a kopeck?" he said to the doctor, shuddering from the cold and grinning.

Andréi Yéfimitch, who could refuse no one, gave him a ten-kopeck piece.

"How wrong this is!" he thought, as he looked at the Jew's bare legs and thin ankles. "Wet, I suppose?" And impelled by a feeling of pity and squeamishness he entered the wing after Moséika, looking all the time now at the Jew's bald head, now at his ankles. When the doctor entered, Nikita jumped off his rubbish-heap and stretched himself.

"Good evening, Nikita!" said the doctor softly. "Suppose you give this man a pair of boots ... that is ... he might catch cold."

"Yes, your Honour. I will ask the superintendent."

"Please. Ask him in my name. Say that I spoke about it."

The door of the ward was open. Iván Dmítritch, who was lying on his bed, and listening with alarm to the unknown voice, suddenly recognised the doctor. He shook with anger, jumped oft his bed, and with a flushed, malicious face, and staring eyeballs, ran into the middle of the room.

"It is the doctor!" he cried, with a loud laugh. "At last! Lord, I congratulate you, the doctor honours us with a visit! Accursed monster!" he squealed, and in an ecstacy of rage never before seen in the hospital, stamped his feet. "Kill this monster! No, killing is not enough for him! Drown him in the closet!"

Andréi Yéfimitch heard him. He looked into the ward and asked mildly:

"For what?"

"For what!" screamed Iván Dmítritch, approaching with a threatening face, and convulsively clutching his dressing-gown. "For what! Thief!" He spoke in a tone of disgust, and twisted his lips as if about to spit.

"Charlatan! Hangman!"

"Be quiet!" said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you I have never stolen anything.... I see that you are angry with me. Be calm, I implore you, if you can, and tell me why you want to kill me."

"For keeping me here."

"I do that because you are ill."

"Yes! Ill! But surely tens, hundreds, thousands of madmen live unmolested merely because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish them from the sane. You, the feldscher, the superintendent, all the rascals employed in the hospital are immeasurably lower in morals than the worst of us; why, then, are we here instead of you? Where is the logic?"

"It is not a question of morality or logic. It depends on circumstances. The man who is put here, here he stays, and the man who is not here lives in freedom, that is all For the fact that I am a doctor and you a lunatic neither morals nor logic is responsible, but only empty circumstance."

"This nonsense I do not understand!" answered Iván Dmitri tch, sitting down on his bed.

Moséika, whom Nikita was afraid to search in the doctor's presence, spread out on his bed his booty--pieces of bread, papers, and bones; and trembling with the cold, talked Yiddish in a sing-song voice. Apparently he imagined that he was opening a shop.

"Release me!" said Iván Dmítritch. His voice trembled.

"I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because it is not in my power. Judge for yourself! What good would it do you if I released you? Suppose I do! The townspeople or the police will capture you and send you back."

"Yes, that is true, it is true ..." said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing his forehead. "It is terrible! But what can I do? What?"

His voice, his intelligent, youthful face pleased Andréi Yéfimitch. He wished to caress him and quiet him. He sat beside him on the bed, thought for a moment, and said:

"You ask what is to be done. The best thing in your position would be to run away. But unfortunately that is useless. You would be captured. When society resolves to protect itself from criminals, lunatics, and inconvenient people, it is irresistible. One thing alone remains to you, to console yourself with the thought that your stay here is necessary."

"It is necessary to no one."

"Once prisons and asylums exist, someone must inhabit them. If it is not you it will be I, if not I then someone else. But wait! In the far future there will be neither prisons nor madhouses, nor barred windows, nor dressing-gowns.... Such a time will come sooner or later."

Iván Dmítritch smiled contemptuously.

"You are laughing at me," he said, winking. "Such gentry as you and your assistant Nikita have no business with the future. But you may be assured, sir, that better times are in store for us. What if I do express myself vulgarly--laugh at me!--but the dawn of a new life will shine, and truth will triumph ... and it will be on our side the holiday will be. I shall not see it, but our posterity shall.... I congratulate them with my whole soul, and rejoice--rejoice for them! Forward! God help you, friends!"

Iván Dmítritch's eyes glittered; he rose, stretched out his eyes to the window, and said in an agitated voice:

"For these barred windows I bless you. Hail to the truth! I rejoice!"

"I see no cause for rejoicing," said Andréi Yéfimitch, whom Iván Dmítritch's movements, though they seemed theatrical, pleased. "Prisons and asylums will no longer be, and justice, as you put it, will triumph. But the essence of things will never change, the laws of Nature will remain the same. Men will be diseased, grow old, and die, just as now. However glorious the dawn which enlightens your life, in the end of ends you will be nailed down in a coffin and flung into a pit."

"But immortality?"

"Nonsense!"

"You do not believe, but I believe. Dostoyeffsky or Voltaire or someone said that if there were no God men would have invented one. And I am deeply convinced that if there were no immortality it would sooner or later have been invented by the great human intellect."

"You speak well," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling with pleasure. "It is well that you believe. With such faith as yours you would live happily though entombed in a wall. May I asked where you were educated?"

"I was at college, but never graduated."

"You are a thoughtful and penetrating man. You would find tranquillity in any environment. The free and profound thought which aspires to the comprehension of life; and high contempt for the vanity of the world--these are two blessings higher than which no man can know. And these you will enjoy though you live behind a dozen barred windows. Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of the earth."

"Your Diogenes was a blockhead!" cried Iván Dmítritch gloomily. "What do you tell me about Diogenes and the understanding of life?" He spoke angrily, and sprang up. "I love life, love it passionately. I have the mania of persecution, a ceaseless, tormenting terror, but there are moments when I am seized by the thirst of life, and in those moments I fear to go out of my mind. I long to live ... terribly!"

He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and continued in a lower voice:

"When I meditate I am visited by visions. Men come to me, I hear voices and music, and it seems to me that I am walking through woods, on the shores of the sea; and I long passionately for the vanities and worries of life.... Tell me! What is the news?"

"You ask about the town, or generally?"

"First tell me about the town, and then generally?"

"What is there? The town is tiresome to the point of torment. There is no one to talk to, no one to listen to. There are no new people. But lately we got a new doctor, Khobótoff, a young man."

"He has been here. A fool?"

"Yes, an uneducated man. It is strange, do you know. If you judge by metropolitan life there is no intellectual stagnation in Russia, but genuine activity; in other words, there are real men. But for some reason or other they always send such fellows here. It is an unfortunate town.'"

"An unfortunate town," sighed Iván Dmítritch. "And what news is there generally? What have you in the newspapers and reviews?"

In the ward it was already dark. The doctor rose, and told his patient what was being written in Russia and abroad, and what were the current tendencies of the world. Iván Dmítritch listened attentively, and asked questions. But suddenly, as if he had just remembered something terrible, he seized his head and threw himself on the bed, with his back turned to the doctor.

"What is the matter?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "You will not hear another word from me," said Iván Dmítritch rudely. "Go away!"

"Why?"

"I tell you, go away! Go to the devil!"

Andréi Yéfimitch shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and left the ward. As he passed through the hall, he said: "Suppose you were to clear some of this away; Nikita.... The smell is frightful."

"Yes, your Honour!"

"What a delightful young man!" thought Andréi Yéfimitch, as he walked home. "He is the first man worth talking to whom I have met all the time I have lived in this town. He can reason and interests himself only with what is essential."

As he read in his study, as he went to bed, all the time, he thought of Iván Dmítritch. When he awoke next morning, he remembered that he had made the acquaintance of a clever and interesting man. And he decided to pay him another visit at the first opportunity.

X

Iván Dmítritch lay in the same position as on the day before, holding his head in his hands, his legs being doubled up underneath him.

"Good morning, my friend," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "You are not asleep?"

"In the first place I am not your friend," said Iván Dmítritch, keeping his face turned towards the pillow, "and in the second, you are troubling yourself in vain; you will not get from me a single word." "That is strange," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "Yesterday we were speaking as friends, but suddenly you took offence and stopped short.... Perhaps I spoke awkwardly, or expressed opinions differing widely from your own."

"You won't catch me!" said Iván Dmítritch, rising from the bed and looking at the doctor ironically and suspiciously. "You may go and spy and cross-examine somewhere else; here there is nothing for you to do. I know very well why you came yesterday.

"That is a strange idea," laughed the doctor. "But why do you assume that I am spying?"

"I assume it.... Whether spy or doctor it is all the same."

"Yes, but ... excuse me...." The doctor sat on a stool beside the bed, and shook his head reproachfully. "Even suppose you are right, suppose I am following your words only in order to betray you to the police, what would happen? They would arrest you and try you. But then, in the dock or in prison would you be worse off than here? In exile or penal servitude you would not suffer any more than now.... What, then, do you fear?"

Apparently these words affected Iván Dmítritch. He sat down quietly.

It was five o'clock, the hour when Andréi Yéfimitch usually walked up and down his room and Dáryushka asked him whether it was time for his beer. The weather was calm and clear.

"After dinner I went out for a walk, and you see where I've come," said the doctor. "It is almost spring."

"What month is it?" asked Iván Dmítritch. "March?"

"Yes, we are at the end of March."

"Is it very muddy?"

"Not very. The paths in the garden are clear."

"How glorious it would be to drive somewhere outside the town!" said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing his red eyes as if he were sleepy, "and then to return to a warm comfortable study ... and to be cured of headache by a decent doctor.... For years past I have not lived like a human being.... Things are abominable here,--intolerable, disgusting!"

After last evening's excitement he was tired and weak, and he spoke unwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his face it was plain that his head ached badly.

"Between a warm, comfortable study and this ward there is no difference," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "The rest and tranquillity of a man are not outside but within him."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Ordinary men find good and evil outside, that is, in their carriages and comfortable rooms; but the thinking man finds them within himself."

"Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it is warm and smells of oranges--it doesn't suit this climate. With whom was it I spoke of Diogenes? With you?"

"Yes, yesterday with me."

"Diogenes had no need of a study and a warm house, he was comfortable without them.... Lie in a tub and eat oranges and olives! Set him down in Russia--not in December, but even in May. He would freeze even in May with the cold."

"No. Cold, like every other feeling, may be disregarded. As Marcus Aurelius said, pain is the living conception of pain; make an effort of the will to change this conception, cease to complain, and the pain disappears. The wise man, the man of thought and penetration, is distinguished by his contempt for suffering; he is always content and he is surprised by nothing."

"That means that I am an idiot because I suffer, because I am discontented, and marvel at the baseness of men."