For certain things he had to run over to Kirillov. As soon as Shatov turned to go, she immediately began calling him back frenziedly, and calmed down only when Shatov rushed madly back from the stairs and explained to her that he was leaving only for a minute, to get the most necessary things, and would come back at once.
"Well, lady, you're a hard one to please," Arina Prokhorovna laughed. "One minute he has to stand facing the wall and not dare look at you, the next he mustn't dare leave for a moment or you'll cry. He might think something this way. Now, now, don't be capricious, don't pout, I'm just laughing."
"He dare not think anything."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, if he wasn't in love with you like a sheep, he wouldn't be running around town with his tongue hanging out, and he wouldn't have roused all the local dogs. He broke my window."
V
Shatov found Kirillov, who was still pacing his room from corner to corner, so distracted that he had even forgotten about the wife's arrival and listened uncomprehendingly.
"Ah, yes," he remembered suddenly, as if tearing himself away with effort, and only for a moment, from some idea that held him fascinated, "yes ... an old woman ... A wife or an old woman? Wait: both a wife and an old woman, right? I remember; I went; the old woman will come, only not now. Take the pillow. Anything else? Yes... Wait, Shatov, do you ever have moments of eternal harmony?"
"You know, Kirillov, you mustn't go on not sleeping at night."
Kirillov came to himself and—strangely—began to speak even far more coherently than he usually spoke; one could see that he had long been formulating it all, and perhaps had written it down:
"There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true.[191] God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.'[192]This... this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there's no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love—oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds—the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically. I think man should stop giving birth. Why children, why development, if the goal has been achieved? It's said in the Gospel that in the resurrection there will be no birth, but people will be like God's angels.[193] A hint. Your wife's giving birth?"
"Kirillov, does it come often?"
"Once in three days, once a week."
"You don't have the falling sickness?"
"No."
"Then you will. Watch out, Kirillov, I've heard that this is precisely how the falling sickness starts. An epileptic described to me in detail this preliminary sensation before a fit, exactly like yours; he, too, gave it five seconds and said it couldn't be endured longer. Remember Muhammad's jug that had no time to spill while he flew all over paradise on his horse?[194] The jug is those same five seconds; it's all too much like your harmony, and Muhammad was an epileptic. Watch out, Kirillov, it's the falling sickness!"
"It won't have time," Kirillov chuckled softly.
VI
The night was passing. Shatov was sent out, abused, called back. Marie reached the last degree of fear for her life. She shouted that she wanted to live, that "she must live, she must!" and was afraid to die. "Not that, not that!" she kept repeating. Had it not been for Arina Prokhorovna, things would have been very bad. Gradually she gained complete control over the patient, who started obeying her every word, her every bark, like a child. Arina Prokhorovna used severity, not kindness, but her work was masterful. Dawn broke. Arina Prokhorovna suddenly came up with the idea that Shatov had just run out to the stairs to pray to God, and she began to laugh. Marie also laughed, spitefully, caustically, as if it made her feel better. Finally, they chased Shatov out altogether. A damp, cold morning came. He leaned his face to the wall in the corner, exactly as the evening before when Erkel came. He was trembling like a leaf, afraid to think, yet his thought clung to everything that presented itself to his mind, as happens in dreams. Reveries incessantly carried him away, and incessantly snapped off like rotten threads. Finally, it was no longer groans that came from the room, but terrible, purely animal sounds, intolerable, impossible. He wanted to stop his ears, but could not, and fell to his knees, unconsciously repeating "Marie, Marie!" And then, finally, there came a cry, a new cry, at which Shatov gave a start and jumped up from his knees, the cry of an infant, weak, cracked. He crossed himself and rushed into the room. In Arina Prokhorovna's hands a small, red, wrinkled being was crying and waving its tiny arms and legs, a terribly helpless being, like a speck of dust at the mercy of the first puff of wind, yet crying and proclaiming itself, as if it, too, somehow had the fullest right to life... Marie was lying as if unconscious, but after a minute she opened her eyes and gave Shatov a strange, strange look: it was somehow quite a new look, precisely how he was as yet unable to understand, but he did not know or remember her ever having such a look before.
"A boy? A boy?" she asked Arina Prokhorovna in a pained voice.
"A little boy!" she shouted in reply, swaddling the baby.
For a moment, once she had swaddled him and before laying him across the bed between two pillows, she handed him to Shatov to hold. Marie, somehow on the sly and as if she were afraid of Arina Prokhorovna, nodded to him. He understood at once and brought the baby over to show her.
"How... pretty..." she whispered weakly, with a smile.
"Pah, what a look!" the triumphant Arina Prokhorovna laughed merrily, peeking into Shatov's face. "Just see the face on him!"
"Be glad, Arina Prokhorovna... This is a great joy..." Shatov babbled with an idiotically blissful look, radiant after Marie's two words about the baby.
"What's this great joy of yours?" Arina Prokhorovna was amusing herself, while bustling about, tidying up, and working like a galley slave.
"The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great mystery and an inexplicable one, Arina Prokhorovna, and what a pity you don't understand it!"
Shatov was muttering incoherently, dazedly, and rapturously. It was as if something were swaying in his head, and of itself, without his will, pouring from his soul.
"There were two, and suddenly there's a third human being, a new spirit, whole, finished, such as doesn't come from human hands; a new thought and a new love, it's even frightening ... And there's nothing higher in the world!"
"A nice lot of drivel! It's simply the further development of the organism, there's nothing to it, no mystery," Arina Prokhorovna was guffawing sincerely and merrily. "That way every fly is a mystery. But I tell you what: unnecessary people shouldn't be born. First reforge everything so that they're not unnecessary, and then give birth to them. Otherwise, you see, I've got to drag him to the orphanage tomorrow... Though that's as it should be."
"Never will he go from me to the orphanage!" Shatov said firmly, staring at the floor.