This name of mine is very popular. It’s familiar to every literate Russian and is mentioned in foreign lecture-rooms with an additional ‘honoured’ or ‘distinguished’. It’s one of those few fortunate names it would be a sign of bad taste to abuse or take in vain in public or in print. And that is only right. You see, my name is closely associated with the concept of a celebrated, richly gifted and unquestionably useful man. I am hard-working, with the stamina of an ox, which is important, and I have talent, which is even more important. What’s more, while I’m on the subject, I’m a well-bred, modest and decent fellow. Never have I poked my nose into literature or politics, never have I sought popularity by arguing with ignoramuses, never have I delivered speeches at dinners or at my colleagues’ funerals… Generally speaking, there’s not a single blemish on my scholarly name – and it has no reason to complain. It is fortunate.
The bearer of this name – myself – I would describe as a man of sixty-two, bald, with false teeth and an incurable nervous tic. I’m as dull and ugly as my name is brilliant and impressive. My head and hands tremble with weakness. Like one of those heroines in Turgenev,4 my neck resembles the skinny handle of a doublebass, my chest is hollow, my shoulders narrow. When I talk or lecture my mouth twists to one side. When I smile my face is a mass of ghastly, senile wrinkles. There is nothing inspiring about my pathetic figure. Perhaps only when I’m suffering from the tic do I have that special look which is bound to arouse in any observer the grimly inspiring thought: ‘That man’s obviously not long for this world.’
I still lecture fairly well, as I always have done; as before, I can still hold my audience’s attention for two hours. My fervour, my elegant exposition and my humour almost completely conceal the defects of my voice, which is dry, harsh and sing-song, like a sanctimonious preacher’s. But I write badly. The portion of my brain that controls the faculty of writing has refused to function. My memory is fading, my thoughts have little consistency and whenever I put them to paper I always feel that I have lost the knack of linking them organically, that my phrasing is monotonous and my language sketchy and feeble. Often I don’t write what I mean. When I’m writing the conclusion I’ve already forgotten the beginning. Often I forget ordinary words and I always have to waste a great deal of energy to avoid superfluous phrases and unnecessary parentheses – both of which are unmistakable proof of my declining mental faculties. Amazingly, the simpler the subject the more painful the effort. I feel far more at ease and intelligent with scientific articles than with letters of congratulation or with memoranda. And another thing: I find it easier to write in German or English than in Russian.
As for my present mode of life I must give first place to the insomnia from which I’ve been suffering of late. If someone were to question me as to what constitutes the fundamental, basic feature of my life now I would reply: insomnia. From force of habit I still undress and go to bed exactly at midnight. I fall asleep quickly, but between one and two o’clock I wake up, feeling that I haven’t slept a wink. I get out of bed and light a lamp. For an hour or two I pace up and down and look at those long-familiar pictures and photographs. When I am weary of walking I sit down at my table and stay there motionless, thinking of nothing, desiring nothing. If there’s a book in front of me I draw it towards me and mechanically read it, without any interest. This was how I read in one night an entire novel with the odd title: What Song the Swallow Sang.5 Or to occupy my mind I force myself to count to a thousand or imagine a colleague’s face, trying to remember when and under what circumstances he joined the Faculty. I like to listen for sounds. Sometimes my daughter Liza will mutter something rapidly in her sleep two rooms away, or my wife will cross the drawing-room and invariably she’ll drop the matchbox; or the warped cupboard will creak; or the lamp burner will suddenly start humming – for some reason all these sounds excite me.
To lie awake at night is to be conscious every minute that you are not normal, and that is why I so long for the morning and the day, when I have the right not to sleep. Many wearisome hours pass before the cock crows in the yard – he is my first herald of good tidings. The moment he crows I know that within an hour the house-porter will wake up and come upstairs for some reason, angrily coughing. And then the light will gradually grow pale at the windows, voices will ring out in the street.
My day begins when my wife arrives. She enters in her petticoat, her hair undone, but washed and smelling of flower-scented eau-de-Cologne and looking as if she has come in by accident. Every time she says the same thing, ‘Sorry, I only dropped in for a moment… Had another bad night?’
Then she puts the lamp out, sits by the table and starts talking. I’m no prophet, but I know in advance what she’s going to talk about – the same thing every morning. Usually, after anxious inquiries about my health, she’ll suddenly mention our son, who is an army officer stationed in Warsaw. After the twentieth of every month we send him fifty roubles – and this is our main topic of conversation.
‘Of course, it’s hard for us,’ my wife sighs, ‘but it’s our duty to help until he can finally fend for himself. The boy’s in a strange country, his pay’s not very much… But if you like we can send him forty roubles instead of fifty next month. What do you think?’
Everyday experience might have taught my wife that constant talk about expenses doesn’t reduce them in any way, but my wife refuses to learn from experience and every morning she regularly discusses our officer son and tells me that bread, thank God, is cheaper, but sugar is two copecks dearer – and all this as if she were communicating some important news.
I listen, mechanically agree and probably because I’ve had a bad night, strange, inappropriate thoughts grip me. I look at my wife and I wonder like a child. In bewilderment I ask myself if this extremely stout, clumsy old woman with her dull look of petty anxiety and fear that we might starve, her eyes clouded by constant brooding over debts and privation, who can talk of nothing but expenses and who smiles only when prices come down – could this woman possibly be the same slim Varya with whom I once fell in love so passionately for her fine, lucid mind, her pure soul, her beauty, because she felt ‘sympathy’ for my studies as Desdemona did for Othello?6 Could this really be the same Varya, my wife who once bore me a son?
I gaze intently into this flabby, clumsy old woman’s face, trying to discover my Varya, but of her past self nothing remains except her concern for my health and her habit of calling my salary ‘our salary’, my cap ‘our cap’. It pains me to look at her and to provide her with a few scraps of comfort I let her say what she likes – and I even keep quiet when she criticizes people unfairly or picks on me for not going into private practice or publishing textbooks.
Our conversations always end the same way. My wife suddenly remembers that I haven’t had my tea and takes fright.
‘What am I sitting here for?’ she says, getting up. ‘The samovar’s been on the table for ages and here I am chattering away. Heavens, I’ve become so forgetful!’