Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (555 page)

But what is absurd is not that I used to dream of him in my little bed but that, almost forgetting my chief object, I have come here for the sake of him, of that “imagined” man.  I have come to help him to stamp out a calumny, to crush his enemies.  The document of which Kraft had spoken, that woman’s letter to Andronikov about which she was so afraid, which might ruin her and reduce her to poverty, which she supposed to be in Versilov’s hands, was not in his possession but in mine, sewn up in my coat pocket!  I had sewn it there myself, and no one in the whole world knew of it.  The fact that the romantic Marie Ivanovna, in whose keeping the letter was left “to be preserved,” thought fit to give it to me and to no one else was only her own idea and a matter for her to decide, which I am not called upon to explain, though I may discuss it later if it seems appropriate.  But, armed with this unexpected weapon, I could not help yielding to the temptation to come to Petersburg.  Of course, I proposed to assist this man secretly without display or excitement, without expecting his praise or his embraces.  And never, never would I condescend to reproach him for anything.  And indeed, was it his fault that I had fallen in love with him and had created a fantastic ideal of him?  Though, indeed, I did not perhaps love him at all!  His original mind, his interesting character, his intrigues and adventures, and what my mother had been to him — all that, it seemed could not keep me.  It was enough that my fantastic doll was shattered, and that I could not, perhaps, love him any more.  And so what was keeping me? why was I sticking there? — that was the question.  The upshot of it all was that only I was a fool, no one else.

But, expecting honesty from others, I will be honest myself.  I must confess that the letter sewn up in my pocket did not only arouse in me the passionate desire to rush to Versilov’s aid.  Now it is quite clear to me, and even then I thought of it with a blush.  I had visions of a woman — a proud, aristocratic creature — whom I should meet face to face.  She would laugh at me, despise me, as though I were a mouse; she would not even suspect that her future was in my power.  This idea intoxicated me even in Moscow, and still more in the train on the way; I have confessed this already.  Yes, I hated that woman, but already I loved her as my victim; and all this was true, all this was real.  But this was childishness which I should not have expected even from anyone like me.  I am describing my feelings then, that is, what passed through my mind as I sat in the restaurant under the nightingale and made up my mind to break with them for ever.  The memory of my recent meeting with that woman sent a rush of colour to my face.  An ignominious meeting!  An ignominious and stupid impression, and — what mattered most — it showed my incapacity for action.  It proved — I thought then — that I was not strong enough to withstand the stupidest lure, though I told Kraft myself just now that I had my place “within myself,” and work of my own, and that if I had three lives they wouldn’t be enough for me.  I said that proudly.  My having abandoned my idea and mixed myself up with Versilov’s affairs was to some extent excusable, but that I should run from side to side like a frightened hare and be drawn into every trifle — that, of course, was simply my own folly.  What induced me to go to Dergatchev’s and to burst out with my imbecilities, though I knew long ago that I am incapable of saying anything cleverly or sensibly, that it is always better for me to be silent?  And some Vassin or other reassures me with the reflection that I’ve fifty years of life ahead of me and so I’ve no need to worry.  It was a good reply, I admit, and did credit to his unmistakable intelligence; it was good because it was the simplest, and what is simplest is never understood till the last, when everything that is cleverer or stupider has been tried already.  But I knew that answer before Vassin; I’d had an inkling of that thought more than three years ago; what’s more, my “idea” was to some extent included in it.  Such were my reflections in the restaurant.

I felt disgusted as I made my way towards Semyonovsky Polk at eight o’clock in the evening, worn out with walking and with thinking.  It was quite dark by then and the weather had changed; it was dry, but a horrid Petersburg wind had sprung up, blowing keenly and malignantly on my back and whirling up the dust and sand.  How many sullen faces of poor people hurrying home to their corners from work and trade!  Every one had his own sullen anxiety in his face, and there was perhaps not one common uniting thought in the crowd!  Kraft was right; every one was different.  I met a little boy, so little that it was strange he could be out alone in the street at that hour; he seemed to have lost his way.  A peasant-woman stopped for a minute to listen to him, but, not understanding what he said, waved her hand and went on, leaving him alone in the darkness.  I was going towards him, but he suddenly took fright and ran away.

As I approached the house I made up my mind that I should never go and see Vassin.  I had an intense longing as I went up the stairs to find them at home alone, without Versilov, that I might have time before he came in to say something nice to my mother or to my dear sister, to whom I had scarcely said anything particular all that month.  It so happened that he was not at home.

4

By the way, as I am bringing on to the scene this “new character” (I am speaking of Versilov), I will introduce briefly a formal account of him, though it is of no significance.  I do this to make things more comprehensible for the reader, and because I can’t foresee where this account could fit in in the later part of my story.

He studied at the university but went into a cavalry regiment of the guards.  He married Mlle. Fanariotov and retired from the army.  He went abroad, and on his return lived a life of worldly gaiety in Moscow.  On his wife’s death he spent some time in the country; then came the episode with my mother.  Then he lived for a long time somewhere in the south.  During the war with Europe he served in the army but did not reach the Crimea and was never in action.  At the conclusion of the war he left the service and went abroad.  He took my mother with him, though he left her at Königsberg.  The poor woman used sometimes, shaking her head, to tell with a sort of horror how she had spent six months there with her little girl, not knowing the language, absolutely friendless, and in the end penniless, as though she were lost in a forest.  Then Tatyana Pavlovna came to fetch her and took her back to some place in the Novgorod Province.  Then, on the emancipation of the serfs, Versilov became one of the first “mediators,” and is said to have performed his duties admirably; but he soon gave this up, and in Petersburg was occupied with the conduct of various private lawsuits.  Andronikov always had a high opinion of his capacity; he had a great respect for him, and only said he did not understand his character.  Then Versilov gave that up too, and went abroad again — this time for a long period, several years.  Then came his close intimacy with old Prince Sokolsky.  During this period his financial position underwent two or three radical changes.  At one time he fell into complete poverty, then grew wealthy and rose again.

Having brought my story to this point, I am determined to describe my “idea” too.  For the first time since its conception I will translate it into words.  I am determined to reveal it, so to speak, to the reader, partly for the sake of greater clearness in what I have to explain further.  And it is not only confusing for the reader; even I, the author, am beginning to get muddled by the difficulty of explaining each step without explaining what led up to it and induced me to take it.  By keeping up this “attitude of silence” I have clumsily descended to one of those “literary graces” which I have ridiculed above.  Before entering upon my Petersburg romance with all my ignominious adventures in it, I find this preface is necessary.  But I was not tempted to silence for the sake of literary “grace” but was forced to it by the nature of the case, that is, the difficulty of the case; even now, when it is all over, I find it very difficult to put this idea into words.  Besides, I must describe it in its aspect at that time, that is, the form it took and the way I looked at it, not now, but then, and that is a fresh difficulty.  To describe some things is almost impossible.  The ideas that are the simplest and the clearest are the most difficult to understand.  If before the discovery of America Columbus had begun telling his idea to other people, I am convinced that for a very long time people would not have understood him.  And indeed they did not understand him.  I don’t mean to compare myself with Columbus, and if anyone imagines that I do he ought to be ashamed of himself, that’s all.

CHAPTER V

1

My “idea” is — to become a Rothschild.  I invite the reader to keep calm and not to excite himself.

I repeat it.  My “idea” is to become a Rothschild, to become as rich as Rothschild, not simply rich, but as rich as Rothschild.  What objects I have in view, what for, and why — all that shall come later.  First I will simply show that the attainment of my object is a mathematical certainty.

It is a very simple matter; the whole secret lies in two words: OBSTINACY and PERSEVERANCE.

“We have heard that; it’s nothing new,” people will tell me.  Every “vater,” in Germany repeats this to his children, and meanwhile your Rothschild (James Rothschild the Parisian, is the one I mean) is unique while there are millions of such “vaters.”

I should answer:

“You assert that you’ve heard it, but you’ve heard nothing.  It’s true that you’re right about one thing.  When I said that this was ‘very simple,’ I forgot to add that it is most difficult.  All the religions and the moralities of the world amount to one thing: ‘Love virtue and avoid vice.’  One would think nothing could be simpler.  But just try doing something virtuous and giving up any one of your vices; just try it.  It’s the same with this.

“That’s why your innumerable German ‘vaters’ may, for ages past reckoning, have repeated those two wonderful words which contain the whole secret, and, meanwhile, Rothschild remains unique.  It shows it’s the same but not the same, and these ‘vaters’ don’t repeat the same idea.

“No doubt they too have heard of obstinacy and perseverance, but to attain my object what I need is not these German ‘vaters” obstinacy or these ‘vaters” perseverance.”

“The mere fact that he is a ‘vater’ — I don’t mean only the Germans — that he has a family, that he is living like other people, has expenses like other people, has obligations like other people, means that he can’t become a Rothschild, but must remain an average man.  I understand quite clearly that in becoming a Rothschild, or merely desiring to become one, not in the German ‘vaters’’ way but seriously, I must at the same time cut myself off from society.”

Some years ago I read in the newspaper that on one of the steamers on the Volga there died a beggar who went about begging in rags and was known to every one.  On his death they found sewn up in his shirt three thousand roubles in notes.  The other day I read of another beggar of the “respectable” sort, who used to go about the restaurants holding out his hand.  He was arrested and there was found on him five thousand roubles.  Two conclusions follow directly from this.  The first, that OBSTINACY in saving even the smallest coin will produce enormous results in the long run (time is of no account in this), and secondly that the most unskilful form of accumulation if only PERSEVERING is mathematically certain of success.

Meanwhile there are perhaps a good number of respectable, clever, obstinate people who cannot save either three or five thousand, however much they struggle, though they would be awfully glad to have such a sum.  Why is that?  The answer is clear: it is because not one of them, in spite of all their wishing it, DESIRES it to such a degree that, for instance, if he is not able to save by other means, he is ready to become a beggar, and so persistent that after becoming a beggar, he will not waste the first farthing he is given on an extra crust of bread for himself or his family.  With this system of saving, that is in beggary, one must live on bread and salt and nothing more, to save up such sums; at least, so I imagine.  That is no doubt what the two beggars I have mentioned above did do; they must have eaten nothing but bread and have lived almost in the open air.  There is no doubt that they had no intention of becoming Rothschilds; they were simply Harpagons or Ilyushkins in their purest form, nothing more; but, when there is intelligent accumulation in quite a different form with the object of becoming a Rothschild, no less strength of will is needed than in the case of those two beggars.  The German “vater” does not show such strength of will.  There are many kinds of strength in the world, especially of strength of will and of desire.  There is the temperature of boiling water and there is the temperature of molten iron.

One wants here the same thing as in a monastery, the same heroic asceticism.  Feeling is wanted, not only idea.  What for?  Why?  Is it moral and not monstrous to wear sackcloth and eat black bread all one’s life to heap up filthy lucre?  These questions I will consider later.  Now I am discussing only the possibility of attaining the object.  When I thought of my “idea” and it was forged in white heat, I began asking myself — am I capable of asceticism?  With this object, for the whole of the first month I took bread and water, not more than two and a half pounds of black bread a day.  To do this I was obliged to deceive Nikolay Semyonovitch who was clever, and Marie Ivanovna who was anxious for my welfare.  Though I wounded her and somewhat surprised Nikolay Semyonovitch who was a man of great delicacy, I insisted on having my dinner brought to my room.  There I simply got rid of it.  I poured the soup out of window on to the nettles or elsewhere, the meat I either flung out of window to a dog, or wrapping it up in paper put it in my pocket and threw it away after, and so on.  As the bread given me for dinner was much less than two and a half pounds I bought bread on the sly.  I stood this for a month perhaps, only upsetting my stomach a little, but the next month I added soup to the bread and drank a glass of tea morning and evening, and I assure you I passed a year like that in perfect health and content, as well as in a moral ecstasy and perpetual secret delight.  Far from regretting the dainties I missed, I was overjoyed.  At the end of the year, having convinced myself I was capable of standing any fast, however severe, I began eating as they did, and went back to dine with them.  Not satisfied with this experiment I made a second; apart from the sum paid to Nikolay Semyonovitch for my board I was allowed five roubles a month for pocket money.  I resolved to spend only half.  This was a very great trial, but after at most two years I had in my pocket by the time I went to Petersburg seventy roubles saved entirely in this way, besides other money.  The result of these two experiments was of vast importance to me: I had learnt positively that I could so will a thing as to attain my objects, and that I repeat is the essence of “my idea” — the rest is all nonsense.