“So then,” he would sometimes begin thinking satirically (and he almost always began with the satirical when thinking about himself), “so then, someone there is concerned with correcting my morals and is sending me these cursed memories and ‘tears of repentance.’ Let them, it’s nothing! it’s all shooting with blanks! Don’t I know for sure, for surer than sure, that despite all these tearful repentances and self-condemnations, there isn’t a drop of independence in me, despite my most stupid forty years! If some such temptation should happen along tomorrow, well, for instance, if the circumstances were again such that it would profit me to spread the rumor that the teacher’s wife was receiving presents from me—I’d be sure to spread it, I wouldn’t flinch—and the thing would turn out even worse, more vile, than the first time, because this would already be the second time and not the first. Well, if I were to be insulted again, now, by that princeling, his mother’s only son, whose leg I shot off eleven years ago—I’d challenge him at once and set him on a peg leg again. Well, aren’t these blank shots, then, and what’s the sense in them! and why these reminders, if I can’t settle things for myself with any degree of decency!”
And though the fact with the teacher’s wife was not repeated, though he did not set anyone on a peg leg, the mere thought that this would certainly have to be repeated, if the circumstances were such, nearly killed him… at times. One could not, in fact, suffer from memories constantly; one could rest and enjoy oneself—in the intermissions.
And so Velchaninov did: he was ready to enjoy himself in the intermissions; but, all the same, the longer it went on, the more disagreeable his life in Petersburg became. July was approaching. A resolve sometimes flashed in him to drop everything, including the lawsuit itself, and go off somewhere without looking back, somehow suddenly, inadvertently, down to the Crimea, for instance. But an hour later, usually, he was already despising his thought and laughing at it: “These nasty thoughts won’t cease in any South, if they’ve already started and if I’m at least a somewhat decent man, and that means there’s no point in running away from them, and no reason to.
“And why run away?” he went on philosophizing from grief. “It’s so dusty here, so stuffy, everything’s so dirty in this house; in these offices I hang about in, among all these practical people—there’s so much of the most mousy bustle, so much of the most jostling worry; in all these people who stay on in the city, in all these faces flitting by from morning to evening—all their selfishness, all their simple-hearted insolence, all the cowardice of their little souls, all the chickenness of their little hearts is so naively and frankly told—that it’s really a paradise for a hypochondriac, speaking most seriously! Everything’s frank, everything’s clear, everything even finds it unnecessary to cover itself up, the way our ladies do somewhere in the country or taking the waters abroad—and therefore everything’s much more worthy of the fullest respect, if only for this frankness and simplicity alone… I won’t go anywhere! I may crack here, but I won’t go anywhere!…”
II
THE GENTLEMAN WITH CRAPE ON HIS HAT
It was the third of July. The stuffiness and heat were unbearable. For Velchaninov the day turned out to be a most bustling one: all morning he had to walk and drive around, and the future held for him the absolute need to visit that evening a certain necessary gentleman, a businessman and state councillor, at his country house somewhere on the Black River,1 and catch him unexpectedly at home. Sometime after five, Velchaninov finally entered a certain restaurant (rather dubious, but French) on Nevsky Prospect, near the Police Bridge, sat down in his usual corner at his table, and asked for his daily dinner.
He ate a one-rouble dinner daily and paid separately for the wine, considering this a sacrifice sensibly offered up to his disordered circumstances. Surprised that it was possible to eat such trash, he nevertheless finished everything to the last crumb—and each time with such appetite as if he had not eaten for three days. “There’s something morbid about it,” he occasionally muttered to himself, noting his appetite. But this time he sat down at his table in the nastiest state of mind, vexedly flung his hat away somewhere, leaned on his elbow, and fell to thinking. Let his neighbor, having dinner at the next table, make some noise, or a serving boy not understand him from the first word—and he, who knew so well how to be polite and, when necessary, so haughtily imperturbable, would surely raise a row like a cadet, and perhaps make a scandal.
The soup was served, he took the spoon, but suddenly, before dipping it, he dropped the spoon on the table and all but jumped up from his chair. An unexpected thought suddenly dawned on him: at that moment—and God knows by what process—he suddenly understood fully the cause of his anguish, his special, particular anguish, which had already tormented him for several days in a row, the whole time lately, which had fastened on to him God knows how and, God knows why, refused to get unfastened; and now he all at once saw and understood everything like the palm of his hand.
“It’s all that hat!” he murmured as if inspired. “Just simply and solely that cursed round hat with the loathsome funeral crape on it, that’s the cause of it all!”
He began to think—and the further he thought into it, the gloomier he became and the more astonishing “the whole event” became in his eyes.
“But… but what sort of event is it, anyhow?” he tried to protest, not trusting himself. “Is there anything in it that remotely resembles an event?”
The whole thing consisted in this: almost two weeks ago (he really did not remember, but it seemed like two weeks), he had met for the first time, in the street, somewhere at the corner of Podiachesky and Meshchansky Streets, a gentleman with crape on his hat. The gentleman was like everybody else, there was nothing special about him, he had passed by quickly, but he had glanced at Velchaninov somehow much too intently and for some reason had at once greatly attracted his attention. At least his physiognomy had seemed familiar to Velchaninov. He had apparently met it sometime somewhere. “Ah, anyhow, haven’t I met thousands of physiognomies in my life? One can’t remember them all!” Having gone on some twenty paces, he seemed to have forgotten the encounter already, despite his first impression. But the impression nevertheless lingered for the whole day—and a rather original one: in the form of some pointless, peculiar anger. Now, two weeks later, he recalled it all clearly, he also recalled failing completely to understand the source of his anger—to the point of not even once connecting and juxtaposing his nasty state of mind all that evening with the morning’s encounter. But the gentleman hastened to give a reminder of himself, and the next day again ran into Velchaninov on Nevsky Prospect and again looked at him somehow strangely. Velchaninov spat, but, having spat, was at once surprised at his spitting. True, there are physiognomies that instantly provoke a pointless and aimless revulsion. “Yes, I actually met him somewhere,” he muttered pensively, half an hour after the encounter. Then again for the whole evening he was in the nastiest state of mind; he even had some bad dream during the night, and still it did not occur to him that the whole cause of this new and peculiar spleen of his—was just merely the earlier encounter with the mourning gentleman, though that evening he had remembered him more than once. He even had a fleeting fit of anger, that “such trash” dared to get remembered for so long; and he would certainly have considered it humiliating to ascribe all his anxiety to the man, if such a thought had occurred to him. Two days later they met again, in a crowd, getting off some Neva steamer. This third time Velchaninov was ready to swear that the gentleman in the mourning hat recognized him and strained toward him, drawn back and pushed by the crowd; it seemed he even “dared” to reach out his hand to him; perhaps he even cried out and called him by name. This last, however, Velchaninov did not hear clearly, but… “who, however, is this rascal and why doesn’t he approach me, if in fact he recognizes me and would like so much to approach?” he thought spitefully, getting into a cab and going off toward the Smolny monastery. Half an hour later he was arguing loudly with his lawyer, but that evening and night he was again in the vilest and most fantastic anguish. “Is my bile not rising?” he asked himself suspiciously, looking in the mirror.