Chapter 12

“What an amusing man!” Solomin remarked as he was walking along arm-in-arm with Nejdanov; “if we should ever be sent to Siberia, which Heaven forbid, there will be someone to entertain us at any rate.”

Markelov walked in silence behind the others.

Meanwhile great preparations were going on at Golushkin’s to produce a “chic” dinner. (Golushkin, as a man of the highest European culture, kept a French cook, who had formerly been dismissed from a club for dirtiness.) A nasty, greasy fish soup was prepared, various _pâtés chauds_ and fricassés and, most important of all, several bottles of champagne had been procured and put into ice.

The host met the young people with his characteristic awkwardness, bustle, and much giggling. He was delighted to see Paklin as the latter had predicted and asked of him, “Is he one of us? Of course he is! I need not have asked,” he said, without waiting for a reply. He began telling them how he had just come from that “old fogey” the governor, and how the latter worried him to death about some sort of charity institution. It was difficult to say what satisfied Golushkin most, the fact that he was received at the governor’s, or that he was able to abuse that worthy before these advanced, young men. Then he introduced them to the promised proselyte, who turned out to be no other than the sleek consumptive individual with the long neck whom they had seen in the morning, Vasia, Golushkin’s clerk. “He hasn’t much to say,” Golushkin declared, “but is devoted heart and soul to our cause.” To this Vasia bowed, blushed, blinked his eyes, and grinned in such a manner that it was impossible to say whether he was merely a vulgar fool or an out-and-out knave and blackguard.

“Well, gentlemen, let us go to dinner,” Golushkin exclaimed.

They partook of various kinds of salt fish to give them an appetite and sat down to the table. Directly after the soup, Golushkin ordered the champagne to be brought up, which came out in frozen little lumps as he poured it into the glasses. “For our ... our enterprise!” Golushkin exclaimed, winking at the servant, as much as to say, “One must be careful in the presence of strangers.” The proselyte Vasia continued silent, and though he sat on the very edge of his chair and conducted himself generally with a servility quite out of keeping with the convictions to which, according to his master, he was devoted body and soul, yet gulped down the wine with an amazing greediness. The others made up for his silence, however, that is, Golushkin and Paklin, especially Paklin. Nejdanov was inwardly annoyed, Markelov angry and indignant, just as indignant, though in a different way, as he had been at the Subotchevs’; Solomin was observant.

Paklin was in high spirits and delighted Golushkin with his sharp, ready wit. The latter had not the slightest suspicion that the “little cripple” every now and again whispered to Nejdanov, who happened to be sitting beside him, the most unflattering remarks at his, Golushkin’s, expense. He thought him “a simple sort of fellow” who might be patronised; that was probably why he liked him. Had Paklin been sitting next him he would no doubt have poked him in the ribs or slapped him on the shoulder, but as it was, he merely contented himself by nodding and winking in his direction. Between him and Nejdanov sat Markelov, like a dark cloud, and then Solomin. Golushkin went into convulsions at every word Paklin said, laughed on trust in advance, holding his sides and showing his bluish gums. Paklin soon saw what was expected of him and began abusing everything (it being an easy thing for him), everything and everybody; conservatives, liberals, officials, lawyers, administrators, landlords, county councils and district councils, Moscow and St. Petersburg. “Yes, yes, yes,” Golushkin put in, “that’s just how it is! For instance, our mayor here is a perfect ass! A hopeless blockhead! I tell him one thing after another, but he doesn’t understand a single word; just like our governor!”

“Is your governor a fool then?” Paklin asked.

“I told you he was an ass!”

“By the way, does he speak in a hoarse voice or through his nose?”

“What do you mean?” Golushkin asked somewhat bewildered.

“Why, don’t you know? In Russia all our important civilians speak in a hoarse voice and our great army men speak through the nose. Only our very highest dignitaries do both at the same time.”

Golushkin roared with laughter till the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Yes, yes,” he spluttered, “if he talks through his nose ... then he’s an army man!”

“You idiot!” Paklin thought to himself.

“Everything is rotten in this country, wherever you may turn!” he bawled out after a pause. “Everything is rotten, everything!”

“My dear Kapiton Andraitch,” Paklin began suggestively (he had just asked Nejdanov in an undertone, “Why does he throw his arms about as if his coat were too tight for him?”), “my dear Kapiton Andraitch, believe me, half measures are of no use!”

“Who talks of half measures!” Golushkin shouted furiously (he had suddenly ceased laughing), “there’s only one thing to be done; it must all be pulled up by the roots: Vasia, drink!”

“I am drinking, Kapiton Andraitch,” the clerk observed, emptying a glass down his throat.

Golushkin followed his suit.

“I wonder he doesn’t burst!” Paklin whispered to Nejdanov.

“He’s used to it!” the latter replied.

But the clerk was not the only one who drank. Little by little the wine affected them all. Nejdanov, Markelov, and even Solomin began taking part in the conversation.

At first disdainfully, as if annoyed with himself for doing so, for not keeping up his character, Nejdanov began to hold forth. He maintained that the time had now come to leave off playing with words; that the time had come for “action,” that they were now on sure ground! And then, quite unconscious of the fact that he was contradicting himself, he began to demand of them to show him what real existing elements they had to rely on, saying that as far as he could see society was utterly unsympathetic towards them, and the people were as ignorant as could be. Nobody made any objection to what he said, not because there was nothing to object to, but because everyone was talking on his own account. Markelov hammered out obstinately in his hoarse, angry, monotonous voice (“just as if he were chopping cabbage,” Paklin remarked). Precisely what he was talking about no one could make out, but the word “artillery” could be heard in a momentary hush. He was no doubt referring to the defects he had discovered in its organisation. Germans and adjutants were also brought in. Solomin remarked that there were two ways of waiting, waiting and doing nothing and waiting while pushing things ahead at the same time.

“We don’t want moderates,” Markelov said angrily.

“The moderates have so far been working among the upper classes,” Solomin remarked, “and we must go for the lower.”

“We don’t want it! damnation! We don’t want it!” Golushkin bawled out furiously. “We must do everything with one blow! With one blow, I say!”

“What is the use of extreme measures? It’s like jumping out of the window.”

“And I’ll jump too, if necessary!” Golushkin shouted. “I’ll jump! and so will Vasia! I’ve only to tell him and he’ll jump! eh, Vasia? You’ll jump, eh?”

The clerk finished his glass of champagne.

“Where you go, Kapiton Andraitch, there I follow. I shouldn’t dare do otherwise.”

“You had better not, or I’ll make mincemeat of you!”

Soon a perfect babel followed.

Like the first flakes of snow whirling round and round in the mild autumn air, so words began flying in all directions in Golushkin’s hot, stuffy dining-room; all kinds of words, rolling and tumbling over one another: progress, government, literature, the taxation question, the church question, the woman question; the law-court question, realism, nihilism, communism, international, clerical, liberal, capital, administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation! It was just what Golushkin wanted; this uproar seemed to him the real thing. He was triumphant. “Look at us! out of the way or I’ll knock you on the head! Kapiton Golushkin is coming!” At last the clerk Vasia became so tipsy that he began to giggle and talk to his plate. All at once he jumped up shouting wildly, “What sort of devil is this _pro_gymnasium?”

Golushkin sprang up too, and throwing back his hot, flushed face, on which an expression of vulgar self-satisfaction was curiously mingled with a feeling of terror, a secret misgiving, he bawled out, “I’ll sacrifice another thousand! Get it for me, Vasia!” To which Vasia replied, “All right!”

Just then Paklin, pale and perspiring (he had been drinking no less than the clerk during the last quarter of an hour), jumped up from his seat and, waving both his arms above his head, shouted brokenly, “Sacrifice! Sacrifice! What pollution of such a holy word! Sacrifice! No one dares live up to thee, no one can fulfill thy commands, certainly not one of us here—and this fool, this miserable money-bag opens its belly, lets forth a few of its miserable roubles, and shouts ‘Sacrifice!’ And wants to be thanked, expects a wreath of laurels, the mean scoundrel!”

Golushkin either did not hear or did not understand what Paklin was saying, or perhaps took it only as a joke, because he shouted again, “Yes, a thousand roubles! Kapiton Golushkin keeps his word!” And so saying he thrust his hand into a side pocket. “Here is the money, take it! Tear it to pieces! Remember Kapiton!” When under excitement Golushkin invariably talked of himself in the third person, as children often do. Nejdanov picked up the notes which Golushkin had flung on the table covered with wine stains. Since there was nothing more to wait for, and the hour was getting late, they rose, took their hats, and departed.

They all felt giddy as soon as they got out into the fresh air, especially Paklin.

“Well, where are we going to now?” he asked with an effort.

“I don’t know were you are going, but I’m going home,” Solomin replied.

“Back to the factory?”

“Yes.”

“Now, at night, and on foot?”

“Why not? I don’t think there are any wolves or robbers here—and my legs are quite strong enough to carry me. It’s cooler walking at night.”

“But hang it all, it’s four miles!”

“I wouldn’t mind if it were more. Good-bye, gentlemen.” Solomin buttoned his coat, pulled his cap over his forehead, lighted a cigar, and walked down the street with long strides.

“And where are you going to?” Paklin asked, turning to Nejdanov.

“I’m going home with him.” He pointed to Markelov, who was standing motionless, his hands crossed on his breast. “We have horses and a conveyance.”

“Very well.... And I’m going to Fomishka’s and Fimishka’s oasis. And do you know what I should like to say? There’s twaddle here and twaddle there, only that twaddle, the twaddle of the eighteenth century, is nearer to the Russian character than the twaddle of the twentieth century. Goodbye, gentlemen. I’m drunk, so don’t be offended at what I say, only a better woman than my sister Snandulia... is not to be found on God’s earth, although she is a hunchback and called Snandulia. That’s how things are arranged in this world! She ought to have such a name. Do you know who Saint Snandulia was? She was a virtuous woman who used to visit prisons and heal the wounds of the sick. But... goodbye! goodbye, Nejdanov, thou man to be pitied! And you, officer... ugh! misanthrope! goodbye!” He dragged himself away, limping and swaying from side to side, towards the oasis, while Markelov and Nejdanov sought out the posting inn where they had left their conveyance, ordered the horses to be harnessed, and half an hour later were driving along the high road.

XXI

The sky was overcast with low-hanging clouds, and though it was light enough to see the cart-ruts winding along the road, still to the right and left no separate object could be distinguished, everything blending together into dark, heavy masses. It was a dim, unsettled kind of night; the wind blew in terrific gusts, bringing with it the scent of rain and wheat, which covered the broad fields. When they passed the oak which served as a signpost and turned down a by-road, driving became more difficult, the narrow track being quite lost at times. The coach moved along at a slower pace.

“I hope we’re not going to lose our way!” Nejdanov remarked; he had been quite silent until then.

“I don’t think so,” Markelov responded. “Two misfortunes never happen in one day.”

“But what was the first misfortune?”

“A day wasted for nothing. Is that of no importance?”

“Yes... certainly... and then this Golushkin! We shouldn’t have drank so much wine. My head is simply splitting.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Golushkin. We got some money from him at any rate, so our visit wasn’t altogether wasted.”

“But surely you’re not really sorry that Paklin took us to his... what did he call them... poll-parrots?”

“As for that, there’s nothing to be either sorry or glad about. I’m not interested in such people. That wasn’t the misfortune I was referring to.”

“What was it then?”

Markelov made no reply, but withdrew himself a little further into his corner, as if he were muffling himself up. Nejdanov could not see his face very clearly, only his moustache stood out in a straight black line, but he had felt ever since the morning that there was something in Markelov that was best left alone, some mysteriously unknown worry.

“I say, Sergai Mihailovitch,” Nejdanov began, “do you really attach any importance to Mr. Kisliakov’s letters that you gave me today? They are utter nonsense, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”

Markelov drew himself up.

“In the first place,” he began angrily, “I don’t agree with you about these letters—I find them extremely interesting... and conscientious! In the second place, Kisliakov works very hard and, what is more, he is in earnest; he _believes_ in our cause, believes in the revolution! And I must say that _you_, Alexai Dmitritch, are very luke-warm—_you_ don’t believe in our cause!”

“What makes you think so?” Nejdanov asked slowly.

“It is easy to see from your very words, from your whole behaviour. Today, for instance, at Golushkin’s, who said that he failed to see any elements that we could rely on? You! Who demanded to have them pointed out to him? You again! And when that friend of yours, that grinning buffoon, Mr. Paklin, stood up and declared with his eyes raised to heaven that not one of us was capable of self-sacrifice, who approved of it and nodded to him encouragingly? Wasn’t it you? Say what you like of yourself...think what you like of yourself, you know best... that is your affair, but I know people who could give up everything that is beautiful in life—even love itself—to serve their convictions, to be true to them! Well, _you_ ... couldn’t have done that, today at any rate!”

“Today? Why not today in particular?”

“Oh, don’t pretend, for heaven’s sake, you happy Don Juan, you myrtle-crowned lover!” Markelov shouted, quite forgetting the coachman, who, though he did not turn round on the box, must have heard every word. It is true the coachman was at that moment more occupied with the road than with what the gentlemen were saying behind him. He loosened the shaft-horse carefully, though somewhat nervously, she shook her head, backed a little, and went down a slope which had no business there at all.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you,” Nejdanov observed.

Markelov gave a forced, malicious laugh.

“So you don’t understand me! ha, ha, ha! I know everything, my dear sir! I know whom you made love to yesterday, whom you’ve completely conquered with your good looks and honeyed words! I know who lets you into her room... after ten o’clock at night!”

“Sir!” the coachman exclaimed suddenly, turning to Markelov, “hold the reins, please. I’ll get down and have a look. I think we’ve gone off the track. There seems a sort of ravine here.”

The carriage was, in fact, standing almost on one side. Markelov seized the reins which the coachman handed to him and continued just as loudly:

“I don’t blame you in the least, Alexai Dmitritch! You took advantage of.... You were quite right. No wonder that you’re not so keen about our cause now... as I said before, you have something else on your mind. And, really, who can tell beforehand what will please a girl’s heart or what man can achieve what she may desire?”

“I understand now,” Nejdanov began; “I understand your vexation and can guess... who spied on us and lost no time in letting you know—” “It does not seem to depend on merit,” Markelov continued, pretending not to have heard Nejdanov, and purposely drawling out each word in a sing-song voice, “no extraordinary spiritual or physical attractions.... Oh no! It’s only the damned luck of all... bastards!”

The last sentence Markelov pronounced abruptly and hurriedly, but suddenly stopped as if turned to stone.

Nejdanov felt himself grow pale in the darkness and tingled all over. He could scarcely restrain himself from flying at Markelov and seizing him by the throat. “Only blood will wipe out this insult,” he thought.

“I’ve found the road!” the coachman cried, making his appearance at the right front wheel, “I turned to the left by mistake—but it doesn’t matter, we’ll soon be home. It’s not much farther. Sit still, please!”

He got onto the box, took the reins from Markelov, pulled the shaft-horse a little to one side, and the carriage, after one or two jerks, rolled along more smoothly and evenly. The darkness seemed to part and lift itself, a cloud of smoke could be seen curling out of a chimney, ahead some sort of hillock, a light twinkled, vanished, then another.... A dog barked.

“That’s our place,” the coachman observed. “Gee up, my pretties!”

The lights became more and more numerous as they drove on.

“After the way in which you insulted me,” Nejdanov said at last, “you will quite understand that I couldn’t spend the night under your roof, and I must ask you, however unpleasant it may be for me to do so, to be kind enough to lend me your carriage as soon as we get to your house to take me back to the town. Tomorrow I shall find some means of getting home, and will then communicate with you in a way which you doubtless expect.”

Markelov did not reply at once.

“Nejdanov,” he exclaimed suddenly, in a soft, despairing tone of voice, “Nejdanov! For Heaven’s sake come into the house if only to let me beg for your forgiveness on my knees! Nejdanov! forget... forget my senseless words! Oh, if some one only knew how wretched I feel!” Markelov struck himself on the breast with his fist, a groan seemed to come from him. “Nejdanov. Be generous.... Give me your hand.... Say that you forgive me!”

Nejdanov held out his hand irresolutely—Markelov squeezed it so hard that he could almost have cried out.

The carriage stopped at the door of the house.

“Listen to me, Nejdanov,” Markelov said to him a quarter of an hour later in his study, “listen.” (He addressed him as “thou,” and in this unexpected “_thou_” addressed to a man whom he knew to be a successful rival, whom he had only just cruelly insulted, wished to kill, to tear to pieces, in this familiar word “thou” there was a ring of irrevocable renunciation, sad, humble supplication, and a kind of claim.... Nejdanov recognised this claim and responded to it by addressing him in the same way.) “Listen! I’ve only just told you that I’ve refused the happiness of love, renounced everything to serve my convictions.... It wasn’t true, I was only bragging! Love has never been offered to me, I’ve had nothing to renounce! I was born unlucky and will continue so for the rest of my days ... and perhaps it’s for the best. Since I can’t get that, I must turn my attention to something else! If you can combine the one with the other... love and be loved ... and serve the cause at the same time, you’re lucky! I envy you ... but as for myself ... I can’t. You happy man! You happy man! I can’t.”

Markelov said all this softly, sitting on a low stool, his head bent and arms hanging loose at his sides. Nejdanov stood before him lost in a sort of dreamy attentiveness, and though Markelov had called him a happy man, he neither looked happy nor did he feel himself to be so.

“I was deceived in my youth,” Markelov went on; “she was a remarkable girl, but she threw me over... and for whom? For a German! for an adjutant! And Mariana—”

He stopped. It was the first time he had pronounced her name and it seemed to burn his lips.

“Mariana did not deceive me. She told me plainly that she did not care for me .... There is nothing in me she could care for, so she gave herself to you. Of course, she was quite free to do so.”

“Stop a minute!” Nejdanov exclaimed. “What are you saying? What do you imply by the words ‘gave herself’? I don’t know what your sister told you, but I assure you—”

“I didn’t mean physically, but morally, that is, with the heart and soul,” Markelov interrupted him. He was obviously displeased with Nejdanov’s exclamation. “She couldn’t have done better. As for my sister, she didn’t, of course, wish to hurt me. It can make no difference to her, but she no doubt hates you and Mariana too. She did not tell me anything untrue... but enough of her!”

“Yes,” Nejdanov thought to himself, “she does hate us.”

“It’s all for the best,” Markelov continued, still sitting in the same position. “The last fetters have been broken; there is nothing to hinder me now! It doesn’t matter that Golushkin is an ass, and as for Kisliakov’s letters, they may perhaps be absurd, but we must consider the most important thing. Kisliakov says that everything is ready. Perhaps you don’t believe that too.”

Nejdanov did not reply.

“You may be right, but if we’ve to wait until everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never make a beginning. If we weigh _all_ the consequences beforehand we’re sure to find some bad ones among them. For instance, when our forefathers emancipated the serfs, do you think they could foresee that a whole class of money-lending landlords would spring up as a result of the emancipation? Landlords who sell a peasant eight bushels of rotten rye for six roubles and in return for it get labour for the whole six roubles, then the same quantity of good sound rye and interest on top of that! Which means that they drain the peasants to the last drop of blood! You’ll agree that our emancipators could hardly have foreseen that. Even if they had foreseen it, they would still have been quite right in freeing the serfs without weighing all the consequences beforehand! That is why I have decided!”

Nejdanov looked at Markelov with amazement, but the latter turned to one side and directed his gaze into a corner of the room. He sat with his eyes closed, biting his lips and chewing his moustache.

“Yes, I’ve decided!” he repeated, striking his knee with his brown hairy hand. “I’m very obstinate.... It’s not for nothing that I’m half a Little Russian.”

He got up, dragged himself into his bedroom, and came back with a small portrait of Mariana in a glazed frame.

“Take this,” he said in a sad, though steady voice. “I drew it some time ago. I don’t draw well, but I think it’s like her.” (It was a pencil sketch in profile and was certainly like Mariana.) “Take it, Alexai; it is my bequest, and with this portrait I give you all my rights.... I know I never had any... but you know what I mean! I give you up everything, and her.... She is very good, Alexai—”

Markelov ceased; his chest heaved visibly.

“Take it. You are not angry with me, are you? Well, take it then. It’s no use to me... now.”