“Undo them, please, my dear fellow,” I said to the porter, so as to keep him there. And to myself, “Get dressed quickly and go to the theater.”
The porter undid the straps.
“Please go to the gentleman in number eight, my dear fellow, the one who arrived with me, and tell him I’ll be ready presently and will come to him.”
The porter left, and I hurriedly began to dress, afraid to look at the walls. “What nonsense,” I thought, “why am I afraid like a child? I’m not afraid of ghosts. Yes, ghosts … it’s better to be afraid of ghosts than of what I’m afraid of. Of what? Nothing … Myself … Well, nonsense.” Anyway, I put on a stiff, cold, starched shirt, inserted the studs, put on a frock coat and new shoes, and went to the Kharkov landowner. He was ready. We went to Faust. On the way, he stopped to have his hair curled. I had my hair cut by a Frenchman, chatted with him, bought some gloves; everything was very well. I completely forgot the oblong room and the partition. It was also pleasant in the theater. After the theater, the Kharkov landowner suggested that we go and have supper. That was not my custom, but when we left the theater and he suggested it to me, I recalled the partition and agreed.
We came home past one o’clock. I had drunk an inhabitual two glasses of wine, but I was cheerful. But as soon as we entered the corridor with its dimmed lights and I was enveloped by the hotel smell, cold terror ran down my spine. But there was nothing to do. I shook my friend’s hand and went into the room.
I spent a terrible night, worse than in Arzamas, and only in the morning, when the old man had already begun to cough next door, did I fall asleep, not in bed, in which I had tried several times to lie down, but on the sofa. All night I had suffered terribly; again my soul and body had been painfully sundered. “I live, have lived, must live, and suddenly death, the annihilation of everything. Why life, then? To die? To kill myself at once? I’m afraid. To wait till death comes? I’m still more afraid. To live, then? What for? In order to die.” I could not get out of this circle. I would pick up a book and read. For a moment I would forget myself, and then again the same question and terror. I would get into bed, close my eyes. Still worse. God made this. Why? They say: don’t ask, but pray. All right, I prayed. I prayed now, too, again as in Arzamas; but there and afterwards I prayed simply, like a child. Now my prayer had a meaning: “If you exist, reveal to me why and what I am.” I bowed down, recited all the prayers I knew, invented my own, and added: “So, reveal it.” And I would grow quiet and wait for an answer. But there was no answer, as if there was no one to answer me. And I remained alone with myself. And I gave myself answers in place of the one who would not answer. So as to live in the future life, I answered myself. Then why this unclarity, this torment? I cannot believe in the future life. I believed when I did not ask with all my soul, but now I cannot, I cannot. If you existed, you would tell me, tell people. But if you don’t exist, there is only despair. But I don’t want it, I don’t want it. I was indignant. I asked him to reveal the truth to me, to reveal himself to me. I did everything that everybody does, but he would not reveal himself. “Ask, and it shall be given you,”1 came to my mind, and so I asked. It was not comfort that I found in this asking, but rest. Maybe I didn’t ask, maybe I renounced him. “You make one step forward, he makes ten steps back.” I didn’t believe in him, but I asked, and still he did not reveal anything to me. I settled accounts with him and condemned him. I simply didn’t believe.
THE NEXT DAY I tried as hard as I could to finish all my business during the day and avoid a night in the hotel room. I did not finish everything and returned home during the night. There was no anguish. My life, which had begun to change since Arzamas, was changed still more by this Moscow night. I became still less concerned with affairs, and apathy kept coming over me. My health began to fail. My wife demanded that I be treated. She said that my talk of faith and God came from illness. But I knew that my weakness and illness came from the unresolved question in me. I tried not to give way to this question and tried to fill my life with habitual conditions. I went to church on Sundays and feast days, I prepared for communion, I even observed fasts, having begun to do so after my trip to Penza, and I prayed, but more as a habit. I expected nothing from it, as if I did not tear up a bill of exchange and made claims when it was due, though I knew it was impossible to get anything for it. I did it just in case. And I filled my life, not with estate management—I was repulsed by the struggle it took; I had no energy—but with reading magazines, newspapers, novels, playing cards for small stakes, and the sole manifestation of my energy was hunting out of old habit. I had been a hunter all my life. Once in the winter a neighbor came with his hounds to go wolf hunting. I went with him. We arrived at the appointed place, put on skis, and went on. The hunt was not successful, the wolves broke through the battue. I heard it from far off and went through the woods, following the fresh tracks of a hare. The tracks led me deep into a clearing. In the clearing I found him. He leaped so that I could no longer see him. I went back. I went back through a big forest. The snow was deep, my skis sank, I got tangled in the brush. It grew more and more dense. I began to wonder where I was; the snow changed everything. And I suddenly felt that I was lost. Home, the hunters were far away, nothing could be heard. I was tired and all in a sweat. Once you stop, you freeze. If you keep walking, you lose strength. I called out, all was quiet. No one responded. I walked back. Again it wasn’t right. I looked around. It was all forest, no telling east from west. I walked back again. My legs were tired. I felt frightened, stopped, and the whole terror of Arzamas and Moscow came over me, only a hundred times greater. My heart pounded, my arms and legs trembled. To die here? I don’t want to. Why die? What is death? I wanted to question, to reproach God as before, but here I suddenly felt that I didn’t dare, that I shouldn’t, that I couldn’t have accounts with God, that he had said what was needed, that I alone was to blame. And I began to pray for his forgiveness, and I felt myself vile. The terror did not last long. I stood for a short time, recovered myself, went in one direction, and soon came out. I wasn’t far from the edge. I walked to the edge, to the road. My arms and legs were trembling in the same way and my heart was pounding. But I felt joy. I reached the hunters; we returned home. I was cheerful, but I knew that in me there was something joyful, that I would sort it out when I was left alone. And so it happened. I was left alone in my study and began to pray, asking forgiveness and remembering my sins. They seemed few to me. But I remembered them, and they became vile to me.
SINCE THEN I began to read the Holy Scriptures. For me the Bible was incomprehensible, tempting,2 the Gospels moved me to tenderness. But most of all I read the lives of the saints. And this reading comforted me, presenting me with examples that it seemed more and more possible for me to imitate. Since that time the affairs of my estate and family interested me less and less. They even repulsed me. It all seemed not right to me. How and what would be right I did not know, but that which had been my life had ceased to be it. Again I learned that while buying an estate. Not far from us an estate was for sale on very profitable terms. I went there, it was all excellent, profitable. It was especially profitable that the only land the peasants owned was their kitchen gardens. I realized that they would have to harvest the landowner’s fields for nothing in exchange for pasture, and so it was. I evaluated it all; it all pleased me out of old habit. Then I left for home, met an old peasant woman, asked her the way, talked with her. She told me about her poverty. I came home and, while telling my wife about the profits of the estate, I suddenly felt ashamed. It became loathsome to me. I said I couldn’t buy the estate, because our profit would be based on people’s poverty and misfortune. I said it, and suddenly the truth of what I said lit up in me. Above all the truth that the muzhiks want to live as much as we do, that they are people—brothers, sons of the Father, as the Gospel says.3 Suddenly something that had long been aching in me tore free, as if it had been born. My wife got angry, scolded me. But for me it was joyful. This was the beginning of my madness. But total madness began still later, a month after that. It began with my going to church, standing through the liturgy, praying well and listening and being moved. And suddenly they gave me a prosphora,4 then we went to kiss the cross, began jostling, then at the door there were the beggars. And suddenly it became clear to me that all this should not exist. Not only that it should not exist, but that it does not exist, and if this does not exist, then there is no death or fear, and the former rending in me is no more, and I am no longer afraid of anything. Here the light shone fully upon me, and I became what I am. If none of this exists, then first of all it does not exist in me. Right there on the porch I gave the beggars all I had with me, thirty-six roubles, and went home on foot, talking with the people.