He could not get himself to lie down, but I insisted. Nastasya brought vinegar in a bowl, I wetted a towel and put it to his head. Then Nastasya climbed on a chair and set about lighting an icon lamp in front of the icon in the corner. I noticed it with surprise; besides, there had never even been any icon lamp, and now one had suddenly appeared.
"It was I who ordered it today, just after they left," Stepan Trofimovich muttered, glancing slyly at me. "Quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu 'on vient vous arrêter,[cxx] it makes an impression, and they really must report that they've seen..."
Having finished with the icon lamp, Nastasya planted herself in the doorway, put her right hand to her cheek, and began looking at him with a lamentable air.
"Éloignez-la[cxxi] under some pretext," he beckoned to me from the sofa, "I can't stand this Russian pity, et puis ça m'embête,"[cxxii]
But she left on her own. I noticed that he kept glancing back at the door and listening towards the entryway.
"Il faut être prêt, voyez-vous," he gave me a significant look, "chaque moment[cxxiii] ... they'll come, take, and ffft!—a man disappears!"
"Lord! Who will come? Who will take you?"
"Voyez-vous, mon cher, I asked him directly as he was leaving: What will they do to me now?"
"You might as well have asked where they'll exile you to!" I cried out in the same indignation.
"That's what I implied when I asked the question, but he left without answering. Voyez-vous, as regards underwear, clothing, warm clothing especially, that's up to them, if they tell me to take it, well and good, or else they may send me in a soldier's greatcoat. But thirty-five roubles" (here he suddenly lowered his voice, glancing back at the door through which Nastasya had left), "I've quietly slipped through a tear in my waistcoat pocket—here, feel it... I think they won't take my waistcoat off, and I left seven roubles in my purse, to pretend 'this is all I have.' You know, there's some change and a few coppers on the table, so they won't guess where I've hidden the money, and they'll think this is all. For God knows where I shall have to spend this night."
I hung my head at such madness. Obviously, it was not possible to make an arrest or a search in the way he was saying, and he was most certainly confused. True, it all happened in those days, before the present latest laws. True, too, he had been offered (according to his own words) a more regular procedure, but had outwitted them and refused ... Of course, before—that is, still quite recently—a governor could, in extreme cases ... But, again, what sort of extreme case could this be? That was what baffled me.
"Most likely there was a telegram from Petersburg," Stepan Trofimovich suddenly said.
"A telegram? About you? You mean on account of Herzen's writings and your poem? You're out of your mind, what's there to arrest you for?"
I simply got angry. He made a face and was apparently offended— not at my yelling at him, but at the thought that there was nothing to arrest him for.
"Who can tell these days what he might be arrested for?" he muttered mysteriously. A wild and most absurd idea flashed through my mind.
"Stepan Trofimovich, tell me as a friend," I cried out, "as a true friend, I won't betray you: do you belong to some secret society, or do you not?"
And now, to my surprise, even here he was not certain whether he was or was not a participant in some secret society.
"But that depends, voyez-vous ..."
"How does it 'depend'?"
"When one belongs wholeheartedly to progress, and... who can vouch for it: you think you don't belong, and then, lo and behold, it turns out you do belong to something."
"How can that be? It's either yes or no."
"Cela date de Pétersbourg,[cxxiv] when she and I wanted to found a magazine there. That's the root of it. We slipped away then and they forgot us, but now they've remembered. Cher, cher, but don't you know!" he exclaimed painfully. "In our country they can take you, put you in a kibitka, and march you off to Siberia for good, or else forget you in some dungeon ..."
And he suddenly burst into hot, hot tears. Tears simply poured out of him. He covered his eyes with his red foulard and sobbed, sobbed for a good five minutes, convulsively. I cringed all over. This was the man who for twenty years had been prophesying to us, our preacher, mentor, patriarch, Kukolnik, holding himself so loftily and majestically over us all, before whom we bowed so wholeheartedly, considering it an honor—and now suddenly he was sobbing, sobbing like a naughty little boy waiting for a birching from the teacher who has just gone to fetch the rod. I felt terribly sorry for him. He obviously believed as much in the "kibitka" as in the fact that I was sitting beside him, and expected it precisely that morning, that very minute, and all because of Herzen's writings and some sort of poem of his own! Such full, such total ignorance of everyday reality was both moving and somehow disgusting.
He finally stopped weeping, got up from the sofa, and began pacing the room again, continuing our conversation, but glancing out the window every moment and listening towards the entryway. Our conversation continued disjointedly. All my assurances and reassurances were like sand against the wind. He scarcely listened, and yet he needed terribly for me to reassure him, and talked nonstop to that end. I saw that he could no longer do without me, and would not let me go for anything in the world. I stayed, and we sat for something over two hours. In the course of the conversation, he recalled that Blum had taken with him two tracts he had found.
"What tracts!" I was fool enough to get scared. "Did you really ..."
"Eh, ten copies were passed off on me," he replied vexedly (he spoke with me now vexedly and haughtily, now terribly plaintively and humbly), "but I had already taken care of eight, so Blum got hold of only two..."
And he suddenly flushed with indignation.
"Vous me mettez avec ces gens-là![cxxv] Do you really suppose I could be in with those scoundrels, with tract-mongers, with my boy Pyotr Stepanovich, avec ces esprits-forts de la lâcheté![cxxvi] Oh, God!"
"Hah, haven't they somehow mixed you up with... Nonsense, though, it can't be!" I observed.
"Savez-vous," suddenly escaped him, "I feel at moments que je ferai là-bas quelque esclandre.[cxxvii] Oh, don't go away, don't leave me alone! Ma carrière est finie aujourd'hui, je le sens.[cxxviii] I, you know, I will perhaps rush at someone there and bite him, like that sub-lieutenant..."
He gave me a strange look—frightened and at the same time as if wishing to frighten. He was indeed growing more and more vexed at someone and at something as time went by and the "kibitkas" failed to come; he was even angry. Suddenly Nastasya, who had gone from the kitchen to the entryway for something, brushed against the coat-rack there and knocked it over. Stepan Trofimovich trembled and went dead on the spot; but when the matter was clarified, he all but shrieked at Nastasya and, stamping his feet, chased her back into the kitchen. A minute later he said, looking at me in despair: