“Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!”
There were some fifteen Cossacks.
The Tartars became frightened. They began to stop before they reached him. And Zhilin went running to the Cossacks.
The Cossacks surrounded him, asked him who he was, what he was, where from? But Zhilin was beside himself, he wept and kept repeating:
“Brothers! Brothers!”
The soldiers ran out to them, surrounded Zhilin; one brought him bread, another kasha, another vodka; another covered him with an overcoat, yet another broke his shackles.
The officers recognized him and took him to the fortress. The soldiers were glad, comrades gathered around Zhilin.
Zhilin told them how it had all happened to him, and said:
“That’s my going home and getting married for you! No, it’s clearly not my fate.”
And he stayed to serve in the Caucasus. And Kostylin was ransomed for five thousand only after another month. He was brought back barely alive.
1872
* See glossary of Caucasian mountaineer words following Hadji Murat.
The Diary of a Madman
1883. 20 OCTOBER. Today I was taken to the provincial board for examination, and the opinions were divided. They debated and decided that I am not mad. But they decided that only because, during the examination, I used all my strength to keep from speaking out. I did not speak out because I am afraid of the madhouse; I am afraid that there they would keep me from doing my mad deed. They declared me to be subject to affects and something else of the sort, but—in my right mind; they declared it, but as for me, I know that I am mad. The doctor prescribed me a treatment, assuring me that if I follow his prescriptions strictly, it will go away. Everything that troubles me will go away. Oh, what I’d give to have it go away! It’s too tormenting. I’ll tell you in due order how and why this examination came about, how I lost my mind, and how my madness betrayed itself. Until the age of thirty-five I lived like everybody else, and there was nothing noticeable about me. Maybe only in early childhood, before I was ten, there was something in me similar to my present state, but even then only in fits, and not, like now, constantly. In childhood it came over me a little differently. Here is how.
I remember I was going to bed once, I was five or six years old. My nanny Evpraxia—tall, thin, in a brown dress, with a cap on her head, and with the skin hanging down under her chin—was undressing me and putting me to bed.
“Let me, let me,” I said, and stepped over the rail.
“Well, lie down, lie down, Master Fedenka—look at Mitya, the good boy, already lying down,” she said, nodding towards my brother.
I jumped into bed still holding her hand. Then I let go, kicked my feet under the blanket, and covered myself up. And it felt so good. I quieted down, thinking: “I love nanny, nanny loves me and Mitenka, and I love Mitenka, and Mitenka loves me and nanny. And Taras loves nanny, and I love Taras, and Mitenka loves him. And Taras loves me and nanny. And mama loves me and nanny, and nanny loves mama, and me, and papa, and we all love each other, and it’s good for us all.” And suddenly I hear the housekeeper run in and shout something crossly about a sugar bowl, and nanny answers crossly that she didn’t take it. And it’s painful for me, and frightening, and incomprehensible, and terror, cold terror, comes over me, and I hide my head under the blanket. But the darkness under the blanket doesn’t make me feel any better. I remember how a boy was once beaten in my presence, and how he cried out, and how terrible Foka’s face was as he beat him.
“You won’t, you won’t,” he kept repeating, and he went on beating him. The boy said, “I won’t.” And the man kept repeating, “You won’t,” and went on beating him. And then it came over me. I began to sob and sob. And for a long time no one could calm me down. This sobbing, this despair were the first fits of my present madness. I remember it came over me another time when my aunt told us about Christ. She told us and was going to leave, but we said:
“Tell us more about Jesus Christ.”
“No, I have no time now.”
“No, tell us,” and Mitenka begged her to tell us. And our aunt began telling us again what she had told us earlier. She told us that they crucified him, beat him, tortured him, and he kept praying and did not judge them.
“Why did they torture him, auntie?”
“They were wicked people.”
“Yes, but he was good.”
“Well, that will do, it’s past eight. Do you hear?”
“What did they beat him for? He forgave them, but why did they beat him? It was painful. Was it painful, auntie?”
“Well, that will do, I’m going to have tea.”
“Maybe it’s not true, they didn’t beat him.”
“Well, that will do.”
“No, no, don’t go.”
And again it came over me, I sobbed and sobbed, and then started beating my head against the wall.
That was how it came over me in childhood. But from the age of fourteen, when sexuality awakened in me and I gave myself up to vice, it all went away, and I was a boy just like all boys. Like all of us, raised on heavy, overabundant food, pampered, with no physical labor and with every possibile temptation for arousing sensuality, and in a milieu of equally spoiled children, the boys my age taught me vice, and I gave myself up to it. Then this vice was replaced by another. I began to know women, and so, seeking pleasure and finding it, I lived to the age of thirty-five. I was perfectly healthy, and there were no signs of my madness. Those twenty years of my healthy life passed in such a way for me that I now remember almost nothing of them and recall them now with difficulty and loathing.
Like all mentally healthy boys of my circle, I went to school, then to the university, where I took a degree in law. Then I was briefly in government service, then I became acquainted with my present wife and got married and lived in the country, as they say, raised children, managed the estate, and was a justice of the peace. In the tenth year of my marriage, I experienced the first fit since my childhood.
My wife and I had saved money from her inheritance and my activity as a notary and decided to buy an estate. I was very concerned, as I ought to have been, with increasing our wealth and with the wish to increase it in the most intelligent way, better than others. I found out wherever estates were for sale and read all the announcements in the newspapers. I wanted to buy in such a way that the produce or timber of the estate would cover the purchase, and I would get the estate for nothing. I was looking for the sort of fool who has no sense of these things, and once it seemed to me that I had found one. An estate with large forests was for sale in Penza province. From all I could learn, it appeared that the seller was just such a fool, and the forests would cover the price of the estate. I got ready and went. We went first by railway (I went with a servant), then by stagecoach. For me it was a very cheerful trip. My servant, a young, good-natured man, was as cheerful as I was. New places, new people. We traveled, felt cheerful. The place was some hundred and fifty miles away. We decided to travel without stopping, only changing horses. Night fell; we kept going. We began to doze. I dozed off, but suddenly woke up. I was afraid of something. And as often happens, I woke up frightened, animated—it seemed I’d never fall asleep again. “Why am I traveling? Where am I traveling to?” suddenly came into my head. Not that I didn’t like the idea of buying an estate cheaply, but I suddenly fancied that there was no need at all for this long trip, that I would die here in a strange place. And it felt eerie to me. Sergei, my servant, woke up, and I took advantage of that and began talking with him. I talked about the local area, he answered me, joked, but to me it was dull. We talked about home, about how we’d make the purchase. And it was astonishing to me how cheerfully he responded. For him everything was good and cheerful, while for me it was all hateful. But all the same, while I was talking with him, it was a relief for me. But besides its being dull and eerie to me, I began to feel fatigue, a wish to stop. It seemed to me that to go into a house, to see people, to have tea, and, above all, to fall asleep would be a relief. We were approaching the town of Arzamas.