'There will be no more need for that.'
'No need for dressing up? Not even on carnival days?'
'This is a stupid conversation. There will be no need for carnival days.'
'No carnival days? No holidays?'
'There will be days of recreation. People will have a choice of resting or going into the country to help with the harvest.'
'Yes, I have heard of harvest days. No doubt we will sing while we work. But I return to my question. What of me, what of my place in your Utopia? Shall I still be allowed to dress up like a woman, if the spirit takes me, or like a young dandy in a white suit, or will I be allowed only one name, one address, one age, one parentage?'
'That is not for me to say. The people will give you their answer. The people will tell you what you are allowed.'
'But what do you say, Sergei Gennadevich? For if you are not one of the people, who are you and what future do you have? Shall I still have the freedom to pass myself off as whomever I wish – as a young man, for instance, who spends his idle hours dictating lists of people he doesn't like and inventing bloodthirsty punishments for them, or as the storekeeper whose job it is to order sawdust for the basket under the guillotine? Shall I be as free as that? Or should I bear in mind what I heard you say in Geneva: that we have had enough Copernicuses, that if another Copernicus were to arise he should have his eyes gouged out?'
'You are raving. You are not Copernicus.'
'You are right, I am not Copernicus. When I look up into the heavens I see only the stars that watched over us when we were born and will watch over us when we die, no matter how we disguise ourselves, no matter how deep the cellars in which we hide.'
'I am not hiding, I have simply merged with the invisible people of this city and with the conditions that produced me. Except that you cannot see those conditions.'
'May I be frank? You are speaking nonsense. I may not see lines and numbers in the sky, but I am not blind.'
'None so blind as he who will not see! You see children starving in a cellar; you refuse to see what determines the conditions of those children's lives. How can you call that seeing? But of course, you and the people who pay you have a stake in starving, hollow-eyed children. That is what you and they like to read about: soulful, hollow-eyed children with piping little voices. Well, let me tell you the truth about hunger. When they look at you, do you know what these hollow-eyed children see? Ask them! I'll tell you. They see fat cheeks and a juicy tongue. These innocents would fall upon you like rats and chew you up if they did not know you were strong enough to beat them off. But you prefer not to recognize that. You prefer to see three little angels on a brief visit to earth.
'The more I talk to you, Fyodor Mikhailovich, the less I understand how you could have written about Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov was at least alive, until he came down with the fever or whatever it was. Do you know how you strike me now? As an old, blinkered horse going round and round in a circle, rolling out the same old story day after day. What right have you to talk to me about dressing up? You couldn't dress up to save your life. You are nothing but a dry old man, a dry old workhorse near the end of its life. Isn't it time you tried to share the existence of the oppressed instead of sitting at home and writing about them and counting your money? But I see you are beginning to fidget. I suppose you want to hurry home and get this cellar and these children down in a notebook before the memory fades. You sicken me!'
He pauses, comes closer, peers. 'Do I go too far, Fyodor Mikhailovich?' he continues more softly. 'Am I overstepping the bounds of decency, uncovering what should not be uncovered – that we have seen through you, all of us, your stepson too? Why so silent? Has the knife come too close to the bone?' He brings the scarf out of his pocket. 'Shall we put on the blindfold again?'
Close to the bone? Yes, perhaps. Not the accusation itself but the voice he hears behind it: Pavel's. Pavel complaining to his friend, and his friend storing up the words like poison.
Dispiritedly he pushes the scarf aside. 'Why are you trying to provoke me?' he says. 'You didn't bring me here to show me your press, or to show me starving children. Those are just pretexts. What do you really want from me? Do you want to put me in such a rage that I will stamp off and betray you to the police? Why haven't you quit Petersburg? Instead of making your escape like a sensible person, you behave like Jesus outside Jerusalem, waiting for the arrival of an ass to carry you into the hands of your persecutors. Are you hoping I will play the part of the ass? You fancy yourself the prince in hiding, the prince and the martyr, waiting to be called. You want to steal Easter from Jesus. This is the second time you tempt me, and I am not tempted.'
'Stop changing the subject! We are talking about Russia, not about Jesus. And stop trying to put the blame on me. If you betray me it will only be because you hate me.'
'I don't hate you. I have no cause.'
'Yes you do! You want to strike back at me because I open people's eyes to what you are really like, you and your generation.'
'And what are we really like, I and my generation?'
'I will tell you. Your day is over. Only, instead of passing quietly from the scene, you want to drag the whole world down with you. You resent it that the reins are passing into the hands of younger and stronger men who are going to make a better world. That is what you are really like. And don't tell me the story that you were a revolutionary who went to Siberia for your beliefs. I know for a fact that even in Siberia you were treated like one of the gentry. You didn't share the sufferings of the people at all, it was just a sham. You old men make me sick! The day I get to be thirty-five, I'll put a bullet through my brains, I swear!'
These last words come out with such petulant force that he cannot hide a smile; Nechaev himself colours in confusion.
'I hope you have a chance to be a father before then, so that you will know what it is like to drink from this cup.'
'I will never be a father,' mutters Nechaev.
'How do you know? You can't be sure. All a man can do is sow the seed; after that it has a life of its own.'
Nechaev shakes his head decisively. What does he mean? That he does not sow his seed? That he is vowed to be a virgin like Jesus?
'You can't be sure,' he repeats softly. 'Seed becomes son, prince becomes king. When one day you sit on the throne (if you haven't blown out your brains by then), and the land is full of princelings, hiding in cellars and attics, plotting against you, what will you do? Send out soldiers to chop off their heads?'
Nechaev glowers. 'You are trying to make me angry with your silly parables. I know about your own father, Pavel Isaev told me – what a petty tyrant he was, how everyone hated him, till his own peasants killed him. You think that because you and your father hated each other, the history of the world has to consist of nothing but fathers and sons at war with each other. You don't understand the meaning of revolution. Revolution is the end of everything old, including fathers and sons. It is the end of successions and dynasties. And it keeps renewing itself, if it is true revolution. With each generation the old revolution is overturned and history starts again. That is the new idea, the truly new idea. Year One. Carte blanche. When everything is reinvented, everything erased and reborn: law, morality, the family, everything. When all prisoners are set free, all crimes forgiven. The idea is so tremendous that you cannot understand it, you and your generation. Or rather, you understand it only too well, and want to stifle it in the cradle.'