My good Darya Pavlovna, You once wanted to be my "nurse" and made me promise to send for you when needed. I am going away in two days and will not come back. Want to go with me?
Last year, like Herzen, I registered as a citizen of canton Uri, [210] and no one knows it. I have already bought a small house there. I have twelve thousand roubles left; we'll go and live there eternally. I don't want to move anywhere ever.
The place is very dull, a ravine; the mountains cramp sight and thought. Very grim. It was because there was a small house for sale. If you don't like it, I'll sell it and buy another in another place.
I'm not well, but I hope with the local air I'll get rid of my hallucinations. Physically, that is; and morally you know all; only is it all?
I've told you a lot of my life. But not all. Even to you—not all! Incidentally, I confirm that in my conscience I am guilty of my wife's death. I have not seen you since then and so I'm confirming it. I am also guilty before Lizaveta Nikolaevna; but here you do know; here you predicted almost everything.
Better don't come. The fact that I'm calling you to me is a terrible baseness. And why should you bury your life with me? You are dear to me, and when I was in anguish I felt good near you: only in your presence could I speak of myself aloud. Nothing follows from that. You yourself defined it as "nursing"—it's your expression; why sacrifice so much? Realize, also, that I do not pity you, since I'm calling you, and do not respect you, since I'm waiting for you to come. And yet I call and wait. In any case, I need your answer, because I must leave very soon. In such case, I'll go alone.
I have no hope from Uri; I'm simply going. I did not choose a gloomy place on purpose. Nothing binds me to Russia—everything in it is as foreign to me as everywhere else. True, I disliked living in it more than elsewhere; but even in it I was unable to come to hate anything!
I've tested my strength everywhere. You advised me to do that, "in order to know myself." This testing for myself, and for show, proved it to be boundless, as before all my life. In front of your very eyes I endured a slap from your brother; I acknowledged my marriage publicly. But what to apply my strength to—that I have never seen, nor do I see it now, despite your encouragements in Switzerland, which I believed. I am as capable now as ever before of wishing to do a good deed, and I take pleasure in that; along with it, I wish for evil and also feel pleasure. But both the one and the other, as always, are too shallow, and are never very much. My desires are far too weak; they cannot guide. One can cross a river on a log, but not on a chip. All this so that you don't think I'm going to Uri with any hopes.
As always, I do not blame anyone. I've tried great debauchery and exhausted my strength in it; but I don't like debauchery and I did not want it. You've been observing me lately. Do you know that I even looked at these negators of ours with spite, envying them their hopes? But your fears were empty: I could not be their comrade, because I shared nothing. Nor could I do it out of ridicule, for spite, and not because I was afraid of the ridiculous—I cannot be afraid of the ridiculous—but because, after all, I have the habits of a decent man and felt disgusted. Still, if I had more spite and envy for them, I might even have gone over to them. You can judge how easy it has been for me and how I've tossed about!
Dear friend, tender and magnanimous being whom I divined! Perhaps you dream of giving me so much love and of pouring upon me so much of the beautiful from your beautiful soul, that you hope in that way finally to set up some goal for me? No, you had better be more carefuclass="underline" my love will be as shallow as I myself am, and you will be unhappy. Your brother told me that he who loses his ties with his earth also loses his gods, that is, all his goals. One can argue endlessly about everything, but what poured out of me was only negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Or not even negation. Everything is always shallow and listless. Magnanimous Kirillov could not endure his idea and—shot himself; but I do see that he was magnanimous because he was not in his right mind. I can never lose my mind, nor can I ever believe an idea to the same degree as he did. I cannot even entertain an idea to the same degree. I could never, never shoot myself!
I know I ought to kill myself, to sweep myself off the earth like a vile insect; but I'm afraid of suicide, because I'm afraid of showing magnanimity. I know it will be one more deceit—the last deceit in an endless series of deceits. What's the use of deceiving oneself just so as to play at magnanimity? There never can be indignation or shame in me; and so no despair either.
Forgive me for writing so much. I've come to my senses, and this is accidental. This way a hundred pages are too little and ten lines are enough. To call for a "nurse," ten lines are enough.
Since I left, I've been living six stations away, in the stationmaster's house. I got to know him while I was on a spree in Petersburg five years ago. No one knows I'm living here. Write care of him. I enclose the address.
Nikolai Stavrogin.
Darya Pavlovna went at once and showed the letter to Varvara Petrovna. She read it and asked Dasha to step out so that she could read it again by herself; but she somehow very quickly called her again. "Will you go?" she asked, almost timidly.
"I will," Dasha replied.
"Get ready! We're going together."
Dasha looked at her questioningly.
"And what is there for me to do here now? Does it make any difference? I, too, will register in Uri and live in the ravine... Don't worry, I won't bother you."
They quickly began getting ready, in order to catch the noon train. But before half an hour had gone by, Alexei Yegorych came from Skvoreshniki. He reported that Nikolai Vsevolodovich had "suddenly" arrived that morning, on the early train, and was in Skvoreshniki, but "in such a state that he wouldn't answer any questions, walked through all the rooms, and locked himself in his half..."
"I concluded on coming to report without his orders," Alexei Yegorych added, with a very imposing air.
Varvara Petrovna gave him a piercing look and asked no questions. The carriage was readied instantly. She went with Dasha. On the way, it is said, she crossed herself frequently.
All the doors in "his half were open, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich was nowhere to be found.
"Maybe in the attic, ma'am?" Fomushka said cautiously.
Remarkably, several servants followed Varvara Petrovna into "his half; the rest of the servants all waited in the reception room. Never before would they have allowed themselves such a breach of etiquette. Varvara Petrovna noticed it but said nothing.
They went upstairs to the attic. There were three rooms there; no one was found in any of them.
"Could he maybe have gone up there?" someone pointed at the door to the garret. Indeed, the permanently closed door to the garret was now unlocked and standing wide open. It led to a long, very narrow, and terribly steep wooden stairway that went up almost under the roof. There was a sort of little room there, too.
"I won't go up there. Why on earth would he climb up there?" Varvara Petrovna turned terribly pale, looking around at the servants. They stared at her and said nothing. Dasha was trembling.
Varvara Petrovna rushed up the stairs; Dasha followed her; but as soon as she entered the garret, she cried out and fell unconscious.
The citizen of canton Uri was hanging just inside the door. On the table lay a scrap of paper with the penciled words: "Blame no one; it was I." With it on the table there also lay a hammer, a piece of soap, and a big nail, evidently prepared in reserve. The strong silk cord upon which Nikolai Vsevolodovich had hanged himself, evidently prepared and chosen beforehand, was heavily soaped. Everything indicated premeditation and consciousness to the last minute.
Our medical men, after the autopsy, completely and emphatically ruled out insanity.