The clock in the corridor strikes one, then two, then three … These last months of my life, as I wait for death, seem to me far longer than my whole life. And never before was I able to be so reconciled to the slowness of time as now. Before, when I waited at the station for a train or sat at an examination, a quarter of an hour seemed like an eternity, but now I can spend the whole night sitting motionless on my bed and think with perfect indifference that tomorrow the night will be just as long and colorless, and the night after …
In the corridor it strikes five o’clock, six, seven … It’s getting dark.
There’s a dull pain in my cheek—the tic is beginning. To occupy myself with thoughts, I put myself in my former point of view, when I was not indifferent, and ask: why am I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sitting in this small hotel room, on this bed with its strange gray blanket? Why am I looking at this cheap tin washbasin and listening to the trashy clock clanking in the corridor? Can all this be worthy of my fame and my high station among people? And my response to these questions is a smile. The naïveté with which, in my youth, I exaggerated the importance of renown and the exclusive position celebrities supposedly enjoy, strikes me as ridiculous. I’m well known, my name is spoken with awe, my portrait has been published in Niva and World Illustrated,26 I’ve even read my own biography in a certain German magazine—and what of it? I’m sitting all alone in a strange town, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my palm … Family squabbles, merciless creditors, rude railway workers, the inconvenience of the passport system,27 expensive and unwholesome food in the buffets, universal ignorance and rudeness of behavior—all that and many other things it would take too long to enumerate, concern me no less than any tradesman known only in the lane where he lives. How, then, does the exclusiveness of my position manifest itself? Suppose I’m famous a thousand times over, that I’m a hero and the pride of my motherland; all the newspapers publish bulletins about my illness, expressions of sympathy come to me by mail from colleagues, students, the public; but all that will not prevent me from dying in a strange bed, in anguish, in utter solitude … No one’s to blame for that, of course, but, sinner that I am, I dislike my popular name. It seems to me that it has betrayed me.
Around ten o’clock I fall asleep and, despite my tic, sleep soundly and would go on sleeping for a long time if no one woke me up. Shortly after one o’clock there is a sudden knock at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Telegram!”
“You might have brought it tomorrow,” I grumble as I take the telegram from the servant. “Now I won’t fall back to sleep.”
“Sorry, sir. You had a light burning, I thought you weren’t asleep.”
I open the telegram and look at the signature first: from my wife. What does she want?
“Yesterday Gnekker and Liza secretly married. Come back.”
I read this telegram and am frightened for a moment. What frightens me is not what Gnekker and Liza have done, but the indifference with which I receive the news of their marriage. They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.
I lie down in bed again and begin inventing thoughts to occupy myself with. What to think about? It seems everything has already been thought through, and there’s nothing now that is capable of stirring my mind.
When dawn comes I’m sitting in bed with my arms around my knees and, since I have nothing to do, am trying to know myself. “Know yourself”28—what splendid and useful advice; too bad the ancients never thought of showing how to use this advice.
Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you who you are.
And now I examine myself: what do I want?
I want our wives, children, friends, and students to love in us not the name, not the brand or label, but the ordinary person. What else? I’d like to have helpers and heirs. What else? I’d like to wake up in a hundred years and have at least a glimpse of what’s happened with science. I’d like to live another ten years or so … And what more?
Nothing more. I think, I think for a long time, and can’t think up anything else. And however much I think, however widely my thought ranges, it’s clear to me that my wishes lack some chief thing, some very important thing. In my predilection for science, in my wish to live, in this sitting on a strange bed and trying to know myself, in all the thoughts, feelings, and conceptions I form about everything, something general is lacking that would unite it all into a single whole. Each feeling and thought lives separately in me, and in all my opinions about science, the theater, literature, students, and in all the pictures drawn by my imagination, even the most skillful analyst would be unable to find what is known as a general idea or the god of the living man.
And if there isn’t that, there’s nothing.
Given such poverty, a serious illness, the fear of death, the influence of circumstances or of people, would be enough to overturn and smash to pieces all that I used to consider my worldview, and in which I saw the meaning and joy of my life. And therefore it’s not at all surprising that I should darken the last months of my life with thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave and a barbarian, and that I’m now indifferent and do not notice the dawn. When a man lacks that which is higher and stronger than any external influence, a good cold really is enough to make him lose his balance and begin to see an owl in every bird and hear a dog’s howl in every sound. And at that moment all his pessimism or optimism, together with his thoughts great and small, have the significance of mere symptoms and nothing more.
I am defeated. If so, there’s no point in continuing to think, no point in talking. I’ll sit and silently wait for what comes.
In the morning the servant brings me tea and a copy of the local newspaper. I mechanically read through the announcements on the first page, the editorial, the excerpts from other newspapers and magazines, the news reports … In the news I find, among other things, the following item: “Yesterday our famous scientist, the acclaimed professor Nikolai Stepanovich So-and-so, arrived in Kharkov on the express train and is staying at such-and-such hotel.”
Evidently, great names are created so as to live by themselves, apart from their bearers. Now my name is peacefully going about Kharkov; in some three months, inscribed in gold letters on a tombstone, it will shine like the sun itself—while I’m already covered with moss …
A light tap at the door. Someone wants me.
“Who’s there? Come in!”
The door opens and I step back in surprise, hastily closing the skirts of my dressing gown. Katya stands before me.
“Good morning,” she says, breathing heavily after climbing the stairs. “You didn’t expect me? I … I’ve come here, too.”
She sits down and continues, stammering and not looking at me.
“Why don’t you wish me good morning? I’ve come, too … today … I found out you were in this hotel and looked you up.”
“I’m very glad to see you,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, “but I’m surprised … It’s as if you dropped from the sky. Why are you here?”
“Me? I … simply up and came.”
Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and steps towards me.
“Nikolai Stepanych!” she says, turning pale and clasping her hands to her breast. “Nikolai Stepanych! I can’t live like this any longer! I can’t! For the love of God, tell me quickly, this very moment: what am I to do? Tell me, what am I to do?”