“Get naked, get naked!” voices shouted all around.
“I want terribly, terribly to get naked!” Avdotya Ignatievna squealed.
“Ah… ah… ah, I see it’s going to be fun here; I don’t want to go to Ecke!”
“No, I could live a little, no, you know, I could live a little!”
“Hee, hee, hee!” Katie giggled.
“The main thing is that no one can forbid us, and though I can see that Pervoedov is angry, he still can’t reach me with his hand. Grand-père, do you agree?”
“I fully, fully agree, and with the greatest pleasure, provided Katie is the first to start her bi-og-raphy.”
“I protest! I protest with all my strength,” General Pervoedov stated firmly.
“Your Excellency!” the blackguard Lebezyatnikov, in hasty agitation and with lowered voice, babbled and persuaded, “Your Excellency, it’s even more profitable for us if we agree. There’s this girl here, you know… and, finally, all these different antics…”
“Granted there’s the girl, but…”
“It’s more profitable, Your Excellency, by God it’s more profitable for you! Well, at least as a little sample, at least for a try…”
“Even in the grave they won’t let me rest!”
“First of all, General, you play cards in the grave, and, second of all, we spit on you,” Klinevich scanned out.
“My dear sir, I beg you all the same not to forget yourself.”
“What? You can’t reach me, and I can tease you from here like Yulka’s lapdog. And first of all, gentlemen, what sort of general is he here? It’s there that he was a general, but here—pfft!”
“No, not pfft… here, too, I’m…”
“Here you’ll rot in your coffin and there’ll be only six brass buttons left!”
“Bravo, Klinevich, ha, ha, ha!” voices bellowed.
“I served my sovereign… I wear a sword…”
“Your sword’s good for skewering mice, and besides you never drew it.”
“It’s all the same, sir; I constituted part of the whole.”
“We know these parts of the whole.”
“Bravo, Klinevich, bravo, ha, ha, ha!”
“I don’t understand what a sword is,” the engineer declared.
“We’ll run like mice from the Prussians,16 they’ll make mincemeat of us!” a voice farther away and unknown to me cried out, literally spluttering with rapture.
“A sword, sir, is honor,” came the general’s cry, but that was the last I heard of him. A long and furious bellowing, uproar, and racket arose, and only Avdotya Ignatievna’s squeals, impatient to the point of hysterics, could be made out.
“Quicker, be quicker! Ah, when are we going to start not being ashamed of anything!”
“Oh, woe, woe! Truly my soul is visiting the torments!” came the voice of the simple man, and …
And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened unexpectedly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: all became still, just like a cemetery, vanished like a dream. A true graveyard silence fell. I don’t think they were ashamed before me: they had decided not to be ashamed of anything! I waited for about five minutes but—not a word, not a sound. It was also impossible to suppose that they feared a denunciation to the police; for what could the police do here? I’m forced to conclude that they must after all have some secret unknown to mortals, and which they carefully conceal from every mortal.
“Well, my dears,” I thought, “I’ll be visiting you again,” and with those words I left the cemetery.
No, this I cannot allow; no, I truly cannot! It’s not bobok that bothers me (so here’s that bobok!).
Depravity in such a place, the depravity of last hopes, the depravity of flabby and rotting corpses and—not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! They’re given, they’re made a gift of these moments and… And, above all, above all in such a place! No, this I cannot allow…
I’ll visit other classes, I’ll listen everywhere. The point is that I must listen everywhere, and not just at one end, to form an idea. Perhaps I’ll bump into something com forting.
And I’ll certainly go back to those ones. They promised their biographies and various little anecdotes. Pah! But I’ll go, I’ll certainly go; it’s a matter of conscience!
I’ll take it to The Citizen;17 they also exhibited the portrait of some editor. Maybe they’ll print it.
THE MEEK ONE
A FANTASTIC STORY
From the Author
I BEG MY readers’ pardon for giving them this time, instead of the Diary in its usual form, simply a long story. But I have in fact been occupied with this story for the better part of the month. In any case, I beg the readers’ indulgence.
Now about the story itself. I have termed it “fantastic,” though I myself consider it realistic in the highest degree. But there is indeed a fantastic side to it, and namely in the very form of the story, which I find it necessary to clarify beforehand.
The thing is that this is not a story and not notes. Imagine to yourself a husband whose wife is lying on the table,1 a suicide, who a few hours earlier threw herself out the window. He is in bewilderment and has not yet had time to collect his thoughts. He paces his rooms and tries to make sense of what has happened, “to collect his thoughts to a point.” Besides, he is an inveterate hypochondriac, of the sort that talks to himself. Here he is, then, talking to himself, telling the matter over, figuring it out for himself. Despite the seeming consistency of his speech, he contradicts himself several times, both in logic and in feelings. He justifies himself, and accuses her, and launches into extraneous explanations: there is coarseness of thought and heart here; there is also deep feeling. Little by little he actually figures out the matter and collects his “thoughts to a point.” A series of memories he calls up brings him irresistibly to the truth; the truth irresistibly elevates his mind and heart. Toward the end even the tone of the story changes, as compared with its disorderly beginning. The truth is disclosed to the unfortunate man quite clearly and definitely, at least for himself.
That is the theme. Of course, the process of telling goes on for several hours, in bits and snatches, and in incoherent form: now he talks to himself, now it is as if he addresses an invisible listener, some judge. But so it always happens in reality. If a stenographer could eavesdrop and write it all down after him, it would come out a bit rougher, less polished than I have presented it, but, for all I can see, the psychological order would perhaps remain the same. Now, this supposition of a stenographer who could write it all down (after which I would polish what was written) is what I call fantastic in this story. But a somewhat similar thing has been allowed in art more than once: Victor Hugo, for instance, in his masterpiece The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death, employed almost the same method, and though he introduced no stenographer, he allowed for still greater implausibility, supposing that a man condemned to death is able (and has time) to write notes not only on his last day, but even in his last hour and literally his last minute. But had he not allowed this fantasy, the work itself would not exist—the most realistic and truthful of all he wrote.