No one's to blame, of course, but I dislike being a celebrity, I'm sorry—I feel cheated, somehow.
At about ten o'clock I fall asleep, despite my tic. I sleep soundly, and would have gone on sleeping for a long time, had not someone woken me—soon after one o'clock comes a sudden knock on the door.
'Who's there?'
'A telegram.'
'You might have left it till the morning,' I say angrily, taking the telegram from the servant. 'Now I shan't get to sleep again.'
'Sorry, sir, but your light was on, so I thought you were awake.'
Tearing open the telegram, I first glance at the signature—my wife's. What can she want ?
yesterday gnekker secretly married liza come home
Reading the telegram, I feel momentary panic—not at what Liza and Gnekkcr have done, but at my own indifference to the news of their marriage. Philosophers and true sages are said to be aloof, but that's false, for such dispassionateness is spiritual atrophy and premature death.
I go to bed again, wondering how to occupy my mind. What shall I think about? I seem to have thought everything over already, and have nothing left capable of stimulating my ideas.
When da-- breaks, I sit up in bed, arms round my knees—and for want of anything better to do I try to know myself. 'Know thyself— excellent practical advice, that, and the only pity is, it didn't occur to the ancients to tell us the technique of following it.
When I wished to understand some other person or myself, it was not their actions—so dependent on other factors, all of them—that I used to consider, but their desires. Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you who you are.
Now I scrutinize myself. What do I want?
I want our wives, children, friends and pupils to love us as ordinary people—not for our reputation, not forhow we're branded and labelled. What then? I'd like to have had helpers and successors. And then? I'd like to wake up a hundred years from now and cast at least a cursory glance at what's happening in science. I'd like to have lived another ten years or so.
And then ?
The rest is nothing. I go on thinking—for a long time—but can't hit on anything. And rack my brains as I will, broadcast my thoughts where I may, I clearly see that there's-something missing in my wishes —something vital, something really basic. My passion for science, my urge to live, my sitting on this strange bed, my urge to know myself, together with all my thoughts and feelings, and the conceptions which I form about everything—these things lack any common link capable of bonding them into a single entity. Each sensation, each idea of mine has its o^n separate being. Neither in my judgements about science, the stage, literature and my pupils, nor in the pictures painted by my imagination could even the most skilful analyst detect any 'general conception', or the God of a live human being.
And if one lacks that, one has nothing.
So wretched is my plight that serious illness, fear of death, the impact of circumstance and people, have sufficed to capsize and shatter my entire outlook as I formerly conceived it—everything which once gave my life its joy and significance. No wonder, then, if I have blackened my last months with thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave and savage, no wonder I'm so listless and don't notice the break of day. Unless a man has something stronger, something superior to all outside influences, he only needs to catch a bad cold to lose his balance entirely, to take every bird for a fowl ofill omen, and to hear the baying of hounds in every noise, while his pessimism or his optimism, together with all his thoughts, great and small, arc significant solely as symptoms and in no other way.
I am beaten. And if so, there's no point in going on thinking and talking. I shall sit and await the future in silence.
In the morning the corridor waiter brings tea and the local paper. I mechanically read the announcements on the front page, the leading article, extracts from newspapers and magazines, and the Diary of the Day.
Amongst other things I find the following item in the Diary:
'Yesterday that well-kno^ scholar and distinguished Professor, Nicholas Stepanovich So-and-so, arrived in Kharkov by express train, and is staying at the Such-and-such Hotel.'
Famous names are obviously created to live their o^ lives independently of those who bear them. My name is now quietly drifting round Kharkov. In another three months it be painted on my tombstone in gold letters brilliant as the very sun, by which time I myself shaH already be under the sod.
A light tap on the door. Someone wants me.
'Who's there? Come in.'
The door opens and I step back in surprise, hurriedly wrapping the folds of my dressing-go^ about me. Before me stands Katya.
'Good morning,' she says, panting after her walk upstairs. 'Didn't expect me, did you ? I, er, I've arrived too.'
She sits do^.
'But why don't you say hallo ?' she goes on in a halting voice, avoiding my eyes. 'I'm here too—came today. I heard you were at this hotel, and I called round.'
'Delighted to see you,' I say, shrugging my shoulders. 'But I'm amazed—dropping in out of the blue like this. What have you come for?'
'Me? Oh, nothing—I just came.'
Silence. Suddenly she gets up impulsively and comes to me.
'Nicholas Stepanovich,' she says, blenching and clasping her hands on her bosom. 'I can't go on living like this, really, Nicholas Stepanovich ! Tell me quickly, for God's sake, this very instant—what am I to do? Tell me what to do?'
'But what can I say?' I ask in bewilderment. 'There's nothing I can say.'
'Tell me, I beg you,' she goes on, gasping, and shaking in every limb. 'I swear I can't live like this any longer, I can't stand it!'
She collapses on a chair and starts sobbing. Her head thro^ back, she 'wrings her hands and stamps her feet. Her hat has fallen off her head and dangles by a piece of elastic, her hair is ^ffled.
'Help me, help me!' she begs. 'I can't stand any more.'
She takes a handkerchieffrom her travelling bag, pulling out with it several letters which fall from her lap. I pick them off the floor, and on one I notice Michael Fyodorovich's handwriting and happen to read part of a word: 'passionat—'.
'There's nothing I can say, Katya,' I tell her.
'Help me!' she sobs, clutching my hand and kissing it. 'You're my father, aren't you? My only friend? You're clever, well educated, you've had a long life. You've been a teacher. Tell me what to do.'
'Honestly, Katya, I don't know '
I am at a loss, embarrassed, moved by her sobbing, and I can hardly stand.
'Let's have lunch, Katya,' I say with a forced smile. 'And stop that crying.'
'I shall soon be dead, Katya,' I at once add in a low voice.
'Just say one word, just one word!' she cries, holding out her hands. 'What can I do?'
'Now, don't be so silly, really,' I mutter. 'I can't make you out. Such a sensible little girl, and suddenly all these tears—whatever next!'
Silence follows. Katya straightens her hair, dons her hat, bundles up her letters and thrusts them in her bag—all without speaking or hurrying. Her face, bosom and gloves are wet with tears, but her expression is now cold and forbidding.
I look at her, ashamed to be happier than she. Only on the brink of death, in the sunset of my life, have I noticed that I lack what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea. But this poor girl has never kno^n—and never will know—any refuge in all her days on earth.
'Let's have lunch, Katya,' I say.
'No thanks,' she answers coldly.
Another minute passes in silence.
'I don't like Kharkov,' I say. 'It's so grey—a grey sort of townwn.'