Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (617 page)

I was astonished:  “And SHE?” the idea flashed across me.

“Well, and how did mother and you meet then?” I asked cautiously.

“Then?  Oh, we didn’t meet then at all.  She only got as far as Königsberg, and stopped there, and I was on the Rhine.  I didn’t go to her, and I told her to stay there and wait.  We only saw each other again long after, oh, long after, when I went to her to ask her to consent to my marriage. . . .”

2

Now I’m coming to the core of it all, that is, as far as I was able to grasp it myself; for, indeed, his own account began to be somewhat disconnected.  His talk became ten times as incoherent and rambling as soon as he reached this part of the story.

He met Katerina Nikolaevna suddenly, just when he was expecting mother, at the moment of most impatient expectation.  They were all, at the time, on the Rhine, at some spa, all drinking the waters.  Katerina Nikolaevna’s husband was by then almost dying, he had, at any rate, been given up by the doctors.  She made an impression on him at the first meeting, as it were cast a sort of spell upon him.  It was a case of fate.  It’s remarkable that recalling it and writing it down now, I don’t remember that he once used the word “love” in connection with her, or spoke of “being in love.”  The word “fate” I remember.

And, of course, it was fate.  He did NOT CHOOSE it, “he did not want to love her.”  I don’t know whether I can give a clear account of it, but his whole soul was in revolt at the fact that this could have happened to him.  Everything in him that was free was annihilated by this meeting.  And the man was fettered for life to a woman who had really nothing to do with him.  He did not desire this slavery of passion.  To state the fact plainly, Katerina Nikolaevna is a type rare amongst society women — a type perhaps unique in that circle.  That is, she is an extremely good-natured and straightforward woman.  I’ve heard, indeed I know for a fact that this was what made her irresistible in the fashionable world whenever she made her appearance in it.  (She used at times to withdraw into complete seclusion.)

Versilov did not believe, of course, when he first met her, that she was like that; in fact, he believed she was the exact opposite, that she was a hypocrite and a Jesuit.  At this point I will anticipate by quoting her own criticism of him: she declared that he could not help thinking what he did of her “because an idealist always runs his head against reality and is more inclined than other people to assume anything horrid.”

I don’t know if this is true of idealists in general, but it was entirely true of him, no doubt.  I may perhaps add here my own judgment, which flashed across my mind while I was listening to him then: I thought that he loved mother, more so to say with the humane love one feels for all mankind, than with the simple love with which women are loved as a rule, and that as soon as he met a woman whom he began to love with that simple love, he at once turned against that love — most probably because the feeling was new to him.  Perhaps, though, this idea is incorrect; I did not of course utter it to him.  It would have been indelicate, and he really was in such a condition that it was almost necessary to spare him: he was agitated; at some points in his story he simply broke off, and was silent for some moments, walking about the room with a vindictive face.

She soon divined his secret.  Oh, perhaps she flirted with him on purpose; even the most candid women are base in these cases, and it is their overwhelming instinct.  It ended in a rupture full of rankling bitterness, and I believe he tried to kill her; he frightened her, and would have killed her, perhaps, “but it was all turned to hatred.”  Then there came a strange period: he was suddenly possessed by the strange idea of torturing himself by a discipline, “the same as that used by the monks.  Gradually, by systematic practice, you overcome your will, beginning with the most absurd and trivial things, and end by conquering your will completely, and become free.”  He added that this practice of the monks is a serious thing; in the course of a thousand years it has been brought by them to a science.  But what is most remarkable is that he gave himself up to this idea of discipline, not in order to get rid of the image of Katerina Nikolaevna, but in the full conviction that he had not only ceased to love her, but hated her.  He so thoroughly believed in his hatred for her as to conceive the idea of loving and marrying her step-daughter, who had been seduced by Prince Sergay, to persuade himself absolutely of this new love, and to win the poor imbecile’s heart completely, by his devotion making her perfectly happy.  Why, instead of devoting himself to her, he did not think of mother, who was all this time waiting for him at Königsberg, remained for me inexplicable. . . .  He quite forgot mother, indeed, and even neglected to send money for her maintenance, so that Tatyana Pavlovna had to come to her rescue; yet finally he did go to mother “to ask her permission” to marry the young lady, pleading that “such a bride was not a woman.”  Oh, perhaps all this is only a portrait of a theoretical man, as Katerina Nikolaevna said of him later.  But why is it, though, that these theoretical people (if they really are theoretical people) are capable of such very real suffering, and end in such very real tragedy?  On that evening, however, I looked at it differently, and I was disturbed by the thought:

“All your development, your whole soul, has been won by the suffering and the struggle of your whole life, while her perfection has cost her nothing.  That’s unjust. . . .  Woman is revolting in that way.”  I said this without the least intention of flattering him, speaking with warmth and indignation.

“Perfection?  Her perfection?  But she has no sort of perfection!” he said suddenly, seeming almost surprised at my words.  “She is the most ordinary woman, she is really a contemptible woman. . . .  But she is bound to have every perfection!”

“Why is she bound to?”

“Because she has such power, she is bound to have every sort of perfection!” he cried vindictively.

“The saddest thing is that you are so harassed even now,” I could not help blurting out suddenly.

“How harassed!” he repeated my words again, standing still before me as though in some perplexity.  And suddenly a slow, gentle, dreamy smile lighted up his whole face, and he held up his finger as though considering.  Then as though waking up, he took from the table an open letter, and flung it down in front of me.

“Read it!  You must know everything . . . and why have you made me rake up all this bygone foolishness? . . .  It has only roused up nasty and spiteful feelings in my heart. . . .”

I cannot describe my astonishment.  The letter was from her to him, received by him that afternoon at five o’clock.  I read it, almost shaking with emotion.  It was not long, and was written so simply and straightforwardly, that as I read it I seemed to see her before me and hear her words.  With the most simple truthfulness (and so almost touchingly) she confessed her terror, and then simply besought him to “leave her in peace.”  In conclusion, she told him that she definitely was to marry Büring.  Till then she had never written a word to him.

And this is what I could make out of his explanation:

As soon as he had read the letter that day, he was aware of a new sensation: for the first time in those fatal two years he felt not the slightest hatred for her, or the slightest shock of emotion, such as had “driven him out of his mind” at a mere rumour of Büring.  “On the contrary, I sent her my blessing, with perfect sincerity,” he told me, with deep feeling.  I heard these words with ecstasy.  Then all the passion and agony that had possessed him had vanished all at once of itself, like a dream, like an obsession that had lasted two years.  Hardly yet able to believe in himself he hastened to mother’s and — arrived at the very moment when she was set free by the death of the old man who had bequeathed her to him.  The coincidence of these two events had deeply stirred his soul.  Not long afterwards he rushed to find me — and that immediate thought of me I shall never forget.

I shall never forget the end of that evening either.  The whole man was suddenly transformed again.  We did not separate till late at night.  The effect that all he told me had upon me I will describe later, in its proper place, and will confine myself now to a few words, in conclusion, about him.  Reflecting upon it now, I realize that what captivated me so much at the time was his humility, so to speak, with me, his frank sincerity with a boy like me!  “It was infatuation, but my blessings on it!” he exclaimed.  “But for that blind obsession I might perhaps have never discovered in my heart my sole queen, my suffering darling — your mother.”  These passionate words, wrung from him by over-mastering feeling, I note particularly, in view of what followed.  But at the time he gained complete possession of my heart and conquered it.

I remember in the end we became very cheerful.  He asked for some champagne, and we drank to mother, and to the “future.”  Oh, he was so full of life, and so eager to live!  But we suddenly became extremely merry, not from the wine: we only drank two glasses.  I don’t know why, but in the end we laughed almost helplessly.  We began talking of quite extraneous matters; he began telling me an anecdote and I told him one.  And our laughter and our anecdotes, were by no means malicious or amusing, but we were merry.  He was unwilling to let me go:  “Stay, stay a little longer,” he repeated, and I stayed.  He even came out to see me home; it was an exquisite evening, with a slight frost.  “Tell me, have you sent her an answer yet?” I asked, quite casually, as I pressed his hand for the last time at the cross road.

“No, not yet, but that’s no matter.  Come to-morrow, come early. . . .  Oh, and another thing: drop Lambert altogether and tear up that ‘document,’ and make haste about it.  Goodbye!”

Saying this he went away quickly; I remained standing still, and so much taken aback that I could not bring myself to call after him.  The expression, the “document,” startled me particularly: how could he have known of it, and that particular word too, if not from Lambert?  I went home in great confusion.  And how can it have happened, the question flashed upon me suddenly, that such an obsession for two years can have vanished like a dream, like a vapour, like a phantom.

CHAPTER IX

1

But I waked up next morning feeling fresher and in better heart.  I unconsciously reproached myself, indeed, with perfect sincerity, for a certain levity, and, as it were, superciliousness, with which it seemed to me, recalling it, I had listened to some parts of his “confession” the evening before.  Supposing it had been to some extent muddled, and some revelations had been, as it were, a little delirious and incoherent, he had not, of course, prepared to deliver a speech when he invited me the day before.  He had simply done me a great honour in turning to me, as his one friend at such a moment, and I shall never forget his doing it.  On the contrary, his confession was “touching,” though people may laugh at me for saying so, and if there were glimpses from time to time of something cynical, or even something that seemed ridiculous, I was not so narrow as to be unable to understand and accept realism, which did not, however, detract from the ideal.  The great point was now that I understood the man, and I even felt, and was almost vexed at feeling, that it had all turned out to be so simple: I had always in my heart set that man on a supreme pinnacle, in the clouds, and had insisted on shrouding his life in mystery, so that I had naturally wished not to fit the key to it so easily.

In his meeting WITH HER, however, and in the sufferings he had endured for two years, there was much that was complex.  “He did not want to live under the yoke of fate; he wanted to be free, and not a slave to fate; through his bondage to fate he had been forced to hurt mother, who was still waiting for him at Königsberg. . . .”  Besides, I looked upon him in any case as a preacher: he cherished in his heart the golden age, and knew all about the future of atheism; and then the meeting with HER had shattered everything, distorted everything!  Oh, I was not a traitor to her, but still I was on his side.  Mother, for instance, I reflected, would have been no hindrance, nor would marriage with her be so indeed.  That I understood; that was something utterly different from his meeting with THAT WOMAN.  Mother, it is true, would not have given him peace either, but that was all the better: one cannot judge of such men as of others, and their life must always be different; and that’s not unseemly at all; on the contrary, it would be unseemly if they settled down and became altogether like other ordinary people.  His praises of the nobility, and his words:  “Je mourrai gentilhomme,” did not disconcert me in the least; I understood what sort of gentilhomme he was; he was a man ready to abandon everything, and to become the champion of political rights for all, and the leading Russian thought of a universal harmony of ideas.  And even though all this might be nonsense, that is “the universal harmony of ideas” (which is of course inconceivable), yet the very fact that he had all his life bowed down to an idea, and not to the stupid golden calf, was good.  My God! why, conceiving “my idea,” had I, I myself — could I — have been bowing down to the golden calf, could I have been aiming only at money, then?  I swear that all I wanted was the idea!  I swear I would not have had one chair, one sofa upholstered in velvet, and I would have eaten the same plate of soup as now, if I had had millions.  I dressed and hurried off impatiently to see him.  I may add that in regard to his outburst yesterday about the “document,” I was ever so much more at ease in my mind than I had been the day before.  To begin with, I hoped to have it out with him, and besides, what was there in Lambert’s having wormed his way in to him, and having talked to him of something?  But what rejoiced me most was an extraordinary sensation: it came from the thought that “he no longer loved HER”; I put absolute faith in it, and felt as if some one had lifted a fearful weight off my heart.  I recall a conjecture that flashed upon me at the time: that the unseemliness and senselessness of his last violent outbreak, on hearing about Büring, and the sending of that insulting letter, that that final crisis might be taken as a sign and augury of a change in his feeling, and an approaching return to sanity; it must be as it is in illness, I thought, and, in fact, he is bound to reach the opposite extreme, it is a pathological episode, and nothing more.