This resulted in yet another shame. Not the vile little urge to boast of my intelligence that had made me break the ice there and start talking, but also a desire to “throw myself on their necks.” This desire to throw myself on people’s necks so that they recognize me as good and start embracing me or something like that (swinishness, in short), I consider the most loathsome of all my shames, and I had suspected it in myself for a very long time—namely, ever since the corner I had kept myself in for so many years, though I don’t regret it. I knew that I had to be gloomier among people. What comforted me, after each such disgrace, was simply that the “idea” was with me all the same, in secret as always, and that I hadn’t betrayed it to them. With a sinking feeling, I sometimes imagined that once I had spoken my idea to someone, I would suddenly have nothing left, so that I’d become like everybody else, and might even abandon the idea; and so I preserved and cherished it and trembled at the thought of babbling. And then at Dergachev’s, almost with the first encounter, I had been unable to hold out, I hadn’t betrayed anything, of course, but I had babbled inadmissibly; the result was disgrace. A nasty recollection! No, it’s impossible for me to live with people; I think so even now; I say it for forty years to come. My idea is—my corner.
V
AS SOON AS VASIN praised me, I suddenly felt an irrepressible urge to speak.
“In my opinion, each of us has the right to have his own feelings . . . if it’s from conviction . . . so that no one should reproach him for them,” I addressed Vasin. Though I spoke glibly, it was as if it wasn’t me, but as if somebody else’s tongue was moving in my mouth.
“Re-e-eally, sir?” a voice picked up at once, drawling ironically, the same that had interrupted Dergachev and had shouted to Kraft that he was a German.
Considering him a total nonentity, I turned to the teacher, as if it was he who had shouted.
“My conviction is that I cannot judge anyone,” I trembled, already knowing that I was going to fly off.
“Why such secrecy?” the nonentity’s voice rang out again.
“Each of us has his idea,” I looked point-blank at the teacher, who, on the contrary, was silent and studied me with a smile.
“Do you?” shouted the nonentity.
“It’s too long to tell . . . But part of my idea is precisely that I should be left in peace. As long as I’ve got two roubles, I want to live alone, not depending on anybody (don’t worry, I know the objections), and not doing anything—even for that great future of mankind for which Mr. Kraft has been invited to work. Personal freedom, I mean my own, sir, is foremost, and I do not want to know anything beyond that.”
My mistake was that I got angry.
“That is, you preach the placidity of a sated cow?”
“Let it be so. There’s no insult in a cow. I don’t owe anyone anything, I pay society money in the form of fiscal impositions, so that I won’t be robbed, beaten, or killed, and no one dares to demand anything more from me. I personally may have other ideas, and would like to serve mankind, and will, and maybe even ten times more than all the preachers, but I only want it to be so that no one dares to demand it of me, or forces me, like Mr. Kraft; my full freedom, even if I don’t lift a finger. And to run around throwing yourself on other people’s necks out of love for mankind, and burn with tears of tenderness—that is merely a fashion. And why should I necessarily love my neighbor or your future mankind, which I’ll never see, which will not know about me, and which in its turn will rot without leaving any trace or remembrance (time means nothing here), when the earth in its turn will become an icy stone and fly through airless space together with an infinite multitude of identical icy stones, that is, more meaningless than anything one can possibly imagine! There’s your teaching! Tell me, why should I necessarily be noble, especially if it all lasts no more than a minute?”
“B-bah!” shouted the voice.
I had fired all this off nervously and spitefully, snapping all the ropes. I knew I was falling into a pit, but I hurried for fear of objections. I sensed only too well that I was pouring as if through a sieve, incoherently, and skipping ten thoughts to get to the eleventh, but I was in a hurry to convince and reconquer them. This was so important for me! I’d been preparing for three years! But, remarkably, they suddenly fell silent, said absolutely nothing, and listened. I went on addressing the teacher:
“Precisely, sir. A certain extremely intelligent man said, among other things, that there is nothing more difficult than to answer the question, ‘Why must one necessarily be noble?’ You see, sir, there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world: naïve scoundrels, that is, those who are convinced that their meanness is the highest nobility; ashamed scoundrels, that is, those who are ashamed of their meanness, but fully intend to go through with it anyway; and, finally, sheer scoundrels, purebred scoundrels. With your permission, sir: I had a friend, Lambert, who at the age of sixteen said to me that when he was rich, his greatest pleasure would be to feed dogs bread and meat, while the children of the poor were dying of hunger, and when they had no wood for their stoves, he would buy a whole lumberyard, stack it up in a field, and burn it there, and give not a stick to the poor. Those were his feelings! Tell me, what answer should I give this purebred scoundrel when he asks, ‘Why should I necessarily be noble?’ And especially now, in our time, which you have so refashioned. Because it has never been worse than it is now. Things are not at all clear in our society, gentlemen. I mean, you deny God, you deny great deeds, what sort of deaf, blind, dull torpor can make me act this way, if it’s more profitable for me otherwise? You say, ‘A reasonable attitude towards mankind is also to my profit’; but what if I find all these reasonablenesses unreasonable, all these barracks and phalansteries?18 What the devil do I care about them, or about the future, when I live only once in this world? Allow me to know my own profit myself: it’s more amusing. What do I care what happens to this mankind of yours in a thousand years, if, by your code, I get no love for it, no future life, no recognition of my great deed? No, sir, in that case I shall live for myself in the most impolite fashion, and they can all go to blazes!”
“An excellent wish!”
“However, I’m always ready to join in.”
“Even better!” (This was still that same voice.)
The rest went on being silent, they went on peering at me and studying me; but tittering gradually began to come from different ends of the room, still quiet, but they all tittered right in my face. Only Vasin and Kraft did not titter. The one with the black side-whiskers also grinned; he looked at me point-blank and listened.
“Gentlemen,” I was trembling all over, “I won’t tell you my idea for anything, but, on the contrary, I will ask you from your own point of view—don’t think it’s mine, because it may be that I love mankind a thousand times more than all of you taken together! Tell me—and you absolutely must answer me now, you are duty bound, because you’re laughing—tell me, how will you entice me to follow you? Tell me, how will you prove to me that with you it will be better? Where are you going to put the protest of my person in your barracks? I have long wished to meet you, gentlemen! You will have barracks, communal apartments, stricte necessaire,18 atheism, and communal wives without children—that’s your finale, I know it, sirs. And for all that, for that small share of middling profit that your reasonableness secures for me, for a crust and some warmth, you take my whole person in exchange! With your permission, sir: say my wife is taken away; are you going to subdue my person so that I won’t smash my rival’s head in? You’ll say that I myself will become more reasonable then; but what will the wife of such a reasonable husband say, if she has the slightest respect for herself? No, it’s unnatural, sirs; shame on you!”