I pace, I keep pacing. I know, I know, don’t prompt me: you find it ridiculous that I complain about chance and about five minutes? But it’s obvious here. Consider one thing: she didn’t even leave a note saying something like “blame no one for my death,” as they all do. Couldn’t she have considered that they might even give Lukerya trouble: “You were the only one with her, so it was you who pushed her.” At the least, they’d be pestering her for no reason, if four people in the courtyard hadn’t seen from windows in the wing and from the courtyard how she stood with the icon in her hands and threw herself down. But this, too, is chance, that people were standing there and saw it. No, all this is a moment, just one unaccountable moment. Suddenness and fantasy! So what if she prayed before the icon? That doesn’t mean it was before death. The whole moment lasted maybe only some ten minutes, the whole decision—precisely as she was standing by the wall, her head leaning on her hand, and smiling. The thought flew into her head, whirled around, and—and she couldn’t resist it.
There’s an obvious misunderstanding here, like it or not. She still could have lived with me. And what if it was anemia? Simply from anemia, from an exhaustion of vital energy? She got tired over the winter, that’s what…
I was late!!!
How thin she is in the coffin, how sharp her little nose is! Her eyelashes lie like little points. And how she fell—didn’t crush, didn’t break anything! Only this “handful of blood.” A teaspoon, that is. Internal concussion. A strange thought: if only it were possible not to bury her? Because if she’s taken away, then… oh, no, it’s almost impossible that she’ll be taken away! Oh, I know they must take her away, I’m not crazy and not raving at all, on the contrary, never before has my mind shone so—but how can it be that again there’s no one in the house, again two rooms, and again myself alone with the pledges. Raving, raving, there’s where the raving is! I wore her out—that’s what!
What are your laws to me now? What do I need your customs, your morals, your life, your state, your faith for? Let your judge judge me, let them take me to court, to your public court, and I’ll say I recognize nothing. The judge will shout: “Silence, officer!” But I’ll shout back at him: “Where did you get such power now that I should obey you? Why did dark insensateness smash what is dearest of all? Why do I need your laws now? I separate myself.” Oh, it makes no difference to me!
Blind, blind! Dead, she doesn’t hear! You don’t know what paradise I’d have surrounded you with. Paradise was in my soul, I’d have planted it all around you! Well, so you wouldn’t love me—let it be, what of it? Everything would be like that, everything would stay like that. You’d tell me things as you would a friend—and we’d be joyful, and we’d laugh joyfully looking into each other’s eyes. And so we’d live. And even if you came to love someone else—well, let it be, let it be! You’d walk with him and laugh, and I’d watch from the other side of the street… Oh, let it all be, only let her open her eyes at least once! For one moment, only one! she’d look at me as she did just now, when she stood in front of me and swore to be my faithful wife! Oh, in one look she’d understand everything.
Insensateness! Oh, nature! People are alone on the earth—that’s the trouble! “Is there a living man on the field?” the Russian warrior cries. I, too, though not a warrior, cry out, and no one answers. They say the sun gives life to the universe. Let the sun rise and—look at it, isn’t it dead? Everything is dead, and the dead are everywhere. Only people, and around them silence—that’s the earth! “People, love one another”—who said that? whose testament is it? The pendulum ticks insensibly, disgustingly. It’s two o’clock in the morning. Her little boots are standing by her bed, just as if they were waiting for her… No, seriously, when she’s taken away tomorrow, what about me then?
THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
A FANTASTIC STORY
I
I AM A ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a step up in rank, if I did not still remain as ridiculous to them as before. But now I’m no longer angry, now they are all dear to me, and even when they laugh at me—then, too, they are even somehow especially dear to me. I would laugh with them—not really at myself, but for love of them—if it weren’t so sad for me to look at them. Sad because they don’t know the truth, and I do know the truth. Ah, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand it.
Before, it caused me great anguish that I seemed ridiculous. Not seemed, but was. I was always ridiculous, and I know it, maybe right from birth. Maybe from the age of seven I already knew I was ridiculous. Then I went to school, then to the university, and what—the more I studied, the more I learned that I was ridiculous. So that for me, all my university education existed ultimately as if only to prove and explain to me, the deeper I went into it, that I was ridiculous. And as with learning, so with life. Every passing year the same consciousness grew and strengthened in me that my appearance was in all respects ridiculous. I was ridiculed by everyone and always. But none of them knew or suspected that if there was one man on earth who was more aware than anyone else of my ridiculousness, it was I myself, and this was the most vexing thing for me, that they didn’t know it, but here I myself was to blame: I was always so proud that I would never confess it to anyone for anything. This pride grew in me over the years, and if it had so happened that I allowed myself to confess to anyone at all that I was ridiculous, I think that same evening I’d have blown my head off with a revolver. Oh, how I suffered in my youth over being unable to help myself and suddenly somehow confessing it to my comrades. But once I reached early manhood, I became a bit calmer for some reason, though with every passing year I learned more and more about my terrible quality. Precisely for some reason, because to this day I cannot determine why. Maybe because a dreadful anguish was growing in my soul over one circumstance which was infinitely higher than the whole of me: namely—the conviction was overtaking me that everywhere in the world it made no difference. I had had a presentiment of this for a very long time, but the full conviction came during the last year somehow suddenly. I suddenly felt that it would make no differenceto me whether the world existed or there was nothing anywhere. I began to feel and know with my whole being that with me there was nothing. At first I kept thinking that instead there had been a lot before, but then I realized that there had been nothing before either, it only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I became convinced that there would never be anything. Then I suddenly stopped being angry with people and began almost not to notice them. Indeed, this was manifest even in the smallest trifles: it would happen, for instance, that I’d walk down the street and bump into people. It wasn’t really because I was lost in thought: what could I have been thinking about, I had completely ceased to think then: it made no difference to me. And it would have been fine if I had resolved questions—oh, I never resolved a single one, and there were so many! But it began to make no differenceto me, and the questions all went away.
And then, after that, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, precisely on the third of November, and since that time I remember my every moment. It was a gloomy evening, as gloomy as could be. I was returning home then, between ten and eleven o’clock, and I remember I precisely thought that there could not be a gloomier time. Even in the physical respect. Rain had poured down all day, and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, even some sort of menacing rain, I remember that, with an obvious hostility to people, and now, between ten and eleven, it suddenly stopped, and a terrible dampness set in, damper and colder than when it was raining, and a sort of steam rose from everything, from every stone in the street and from every alleyway, if you looked far into its depths from the street. I suddenly imagined that if the gaslights went out everywhere, it would be more cheerful, and that with the gaslights it was sadder for the heart, because they threw light on it all. I’d had almost no dinner that day, and had spent since early evening sitting at some engineer’s, with two more friends sitting there as well. I kept silent, and they seemed to be sick of me. They talked about something provocative and suddenly even grew excited. But it made no difference to them, I could see that, and they got excited just so. I suddenly told them that: “Gentlemen,” I said, “it makes no difference to you.” They weren’t offended, but they all started laughing at me. It was because I said it without any reproach and simply because it made no difference to me. And they could see that it made no difference to me, and found that amusing.