"Yes! be patient, be patient!" he said with vexation. "But patience finally runs out. Be patient! And on what money will I have dinner tomorrow? No one will lend to me. And if I were to go and sell all my paintings and drawings, I'd get twenty kopecks for the lot. They've been useful, of course, I feel that: it was not in vain that each of them was undertaken, in each of them I learned something. But what's the use? Sketches, attempts-and there will constantly be sketches, attempts, and no end to them. And who will buy them, if they don't know my name? And who needs drawings from the antique, or from life class, or my unfinished Love of Psyche, or a perspective of my room, or the portrait of my Nikita, though it's really better than the portraits of some fashionable painter? What is it all, in fact? Why do I suffer and toil over the ABC's like a student, when I could shine no worse than the others and have money as they do?"
Having said that, the artist suddenly shuddered and went pale: gazing at him, peering from behind the canvas on the easel, was someone's convulsively distorted face. Two terrible eyes were fixed directly on him, as if preparing to devour him; on the mouth was written the threatening command to keep silent. Frightened, he wanted to cry out and call Nikita, who had already managed to set up a mighty snoring in the front room; but suddenly he stopped and laughed. The feeling of fear instantly subsided. It was the portrait he had bought, which he had quite forgotten about. Moonlight illuminated the room and, falling on it, endowed it with a strange aliveness. He began studying it and cleaning it. Wetting a sponge, he went over it several times, washed off almost all the dust and dirt that had accumulated and stuck to it, hung it on the wall before him, and marveled still more at the extraordinary work: the whole face almost came to life, and the eyes stared at him so that he finally gave a start and stepped back, saying in an amazed voice, "It stares, it stares at you with human eyes!" A story he had heard long ago from his professor suddenly came to his mind, about a certain portrait by the famous Leonardo da Vinci, which the great master had labored over for several years and still considered unfinished, but which, according to the words of Vasari, 7 everyone nevertheless considered a most perfect and finished work of art. Most finished of all in it were the eyes, at which his contemporaries were amazed; even the tiniest, barely visible veins were not omitted but were rendered on the canvas. But here, in the portrait now before him, there was nevertheless something strange. This was no longer art: it even destroyed the har- mony of the portrait itself. They were alive, they were human eyes! It seemed as if they had been cut out of a living man and set there. Here there was not that lofty pleasure which comes over the soul at the sight of an artist's work, however terrible its chosen subject; here there was some morbid, anguished feeling. "What is it?" the artist asked himself involuntarily. "It's nature all the same, it's living nature-why, then, this strangely unpleasant feeling? Or else the slavish, literal imitation of nature is already a trespass and seems like a loud, discordant cry? Or else, if you take the subject indifferently, unfeelingly, with no feeling for it, it inevitably stands out only in its terrible reality, not illumined by the light of some incomprehensible, ever-hidden thought, stands out in that reality which is revealed only when, wishing to understand a beautiful man, one arms oneself with an anatomical knife, cuts into his insides, and sees a repulsive man? Why, then, does simple, lowly nature appear with one artist in such a light that you have no lowly impression; on the contrary, it seems as if you enjoy it, and after that everything around you flows and moves more calmly and evenly? And why, with another artist, does that same nature seem low, dirty, though he has been just as faithful to nature? But no, some radiance is missing. Just as with a natural landscape: however splendid, it still lacks something if there's no sun in the sky."
He went up to the portrait again, so as to study those wondrous eyes, and noticed with horror that they were indeed staring at him. This was no longer a copy from nature, this was that strange aliveness that would radiate from the face of a dead man rising from the grave. Either it was the light of the moon bringing delirious reveries with it and clothing everything in other images, opposite to positive daylight, or there was some other cause, only suddenly, for some reason, he felt afraid to be alone in the room. He quietly withdrew from the portrait, turned away and tried not to look at it, and yet his eyes, of themselves, involuntarily cast sidelong glances at it. Finally he even became frightened of walking about the room; it seemed to him that some other would immediately start walking behind him, and he kept timorously looking back. He had never been a coward; but his imagination and nerves were sensitive, and that evening he was unable to explain this involun- tary fear to himself. He sat in the corner, but there, too, it seemed to him that someone was about to look over his shoulder into his face. Not even the snores of Nikita resounding from the front room could drive away his fear. Finally, timorously, without raising his eyes, he stood up, went behind his screen, and got into bed. Through a chink in the screen he could see his room lit up by moonlight, and directly opposite him he could see the portrait on the wall. The eyes were fixed still more terribly, still more meaningly, on him, and seemed not to want to look at anything but him. Filled with an oppressive feeling, he decided to get up, grabbed a bedsheet, and, going over to the portrait, covered it completely.
Having done so, he went back to bed more calmly, began thinking about the poverty and pitifulness of the artist's lot, about the thorny path that lay before him in this world; and meanwhile his eyes involuntarily looked through the chink in the screen at the sheet-covered portrait. The moonlight intensified the whiteness of the sheet, and it seemed to him that the terrible eyes even began to glow through the cloth. In fear, he fixed his eyes on it more intently, as if wishing to assure himself that it was nonsense. But finally, indeed now… he saw, saw clearly: the sheet was no longer there… the portrait was all uncovered and staring, past whatever was around it, straight into him, simply staring into his insides… His heart went cold. And he saw: the old man stirred and suddenly leaned on the frame with both hands. Finally he propped himself on his hands and, thrusting out both legs, leaped free of the frame… Now all that could be seen through the chink in the screen was the empty frame. The noise of footsteps sounded in the room, finally coming closer and closer to the screen. The poor artist's heart began to pound harder. Breathless with fear, he expected the old man to look behind the screen at any moment. And then he did look behind the screen, with the same bronze face, moving his big eyes. Chartkov tried to cry out and found that he had no voice, tried to stir, to make some movement, but his limbs would not move. Open-mouthed and with bated breath, he looked at this terrible phantom, tall, in a loose Asian robe, waiting for what he would do. The old man sat down almost at his feet and then took something from under the folds of his loose garment. It was a sack. The old man untied it and, taking it by the corners, shook it upside down: with a dull sound, heavy packets shaped like long posts fell to the floor, and each was wrapped in blue paper and had "1,000 Gold Roubles" written on it. Thrusting his long, bony hands from the wide sleeves, the old man began to unwrap the packets. Gold gleamed. However great the oppressive feeling and frantic fear of the artist, still all of him gazed at the gold, staring fixedly as it was unwrapped by the bony hands, gleaming, clinking thinly and dully, and then wrapped up again. Here he noticed one packet that had rolled farther away than the rest, just near the leg of his bed, by its head. He seized it almost convulsively and looked fearfully to see whether the old man would notice. But it seemed the old man was very busy. He gathered up all his packets, put them back into the sack, and, without looking at him, went out from behind the screen. Chartkov's heart pounded heavily as he heard the shuffle of the retreating steps in the room. He clutched his packet tighter in his hand, his whole body trembling over it, when suddenly he heard the footsteps approaching the screen again-evidently the old man had remembered that one packet was missing. And now-he looked behind the screen again. Filled with despair, the artist clutched the packet in his hand with all his might, tried as hard as he could to make some movement, cried out-and woke up.