No More Learning

"What if she comes," I thought incessantly,
"well, it doesn't matter, let her come! H'm! it's horrid that she
should see, for instance, how I live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero
to her, while now, h'm! It's horrid, though, that I have let myself go
so, the room looks like a beggar's. And I brought myself to go out to
dinner in such a suit! And my American leather sofa with the stuffing
sticking out. And my dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such
tatters, and she will see all this and she will see Apollon. That
beast is certain to insult her. He will fasten upon her in order to be
rude to me. And I, of course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall
begin bowing and scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round
me, I shall begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it
isn't the beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more
important, more loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that
dishonest lying mask again! . . . "

When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.

"Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night.
I remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to
excite an honourable feeling in her. . . . Her crying was a good thing,
it will have a good effect. "

Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come
back home, even after nine o'clock, when I calculated that Liza could
not possibly come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came
back to my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all
that had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the
moment when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its
look of torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a
distorted smile she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that
fifteen years later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always
with the pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face
at that minute.

Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to
over-excited nerves, and, above all, as EXAGGERATED. I was always
conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of
it. "I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong," I repeated to
myself every hour. But, however, "Liza will very likely come all the
same," was the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so
uneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: "She'll come, she is certain
to come! " I cried, running about the room, "if not today, she will come
tomorrow; she'll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure
hearts! Oh, the vileness--oh, the silliness--oh, the stupidity of
these 'wretched sentimental souls! ' Why, how fail to understand? How
could one fail to understand? . . . "

But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.

And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how
little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic
too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my
will. That's virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!

At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, "to tell her all," and
beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me
that I believed I should have crushed that "damned" Liza if she had
chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have
spat at her, have turned her out, have struck her!

One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I
began to grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine
o'clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for
instance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me
and my talking to her. . . . I develop her, educate her. Finally, I
notice that she loves me, loves me passionately. I pretend not to
understand (I don't know, however, why I pretend, just for effect,
perhaps). At last all confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing,
she flings herself at my feet and says that I am her saviour, and that
she loves me better than anything in the world. I am amazed, but. . . .
"Liza," I say, "can you imagine that I have not noticed your love? I
saw it all, I divined it, but I did not dare to approach you first,
because I had an influence over you and was afraid that you would force
yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in
your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that
. . . because it would be tyranny . . . it would be indelicate (in short, I
launch off at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a
la George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you
are pure, you are good, you are my noble wife.

'Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be'. "

Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In
fact, in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out
my tongue at myself.

Besides, they won't let her out, "the hussy! " I thought. They don't
let them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some
reason I fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o'clock
precisely). Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there
yet, and had certain rights; so, h'm! Damn it all, she will come, she
is sure to come!

It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at
that time by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was
the bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been
squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated
him! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him,
especially at some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who
worked part of his time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he
despised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably.
Though, indeed, he looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at that
flaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his
forehead and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth,
compressed into the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was
confronting a man who never doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to
the most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and
with that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in
love with every button on his coat, every nail on his
fingers--absolutely in love with them, and he looked it! In his
behaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me,
and if he chanced to glance at me he gave me a firm, majestically
self-confident and invariably ironical look that drove me sometimes to
fury. He did his work with the air of doing me the greatest favour,
though he did scarcely anything for me, and did not, indeed, consider
himself bound to do anything. There could be no doubt that he looked
upon me as the greatest fool on earth, and that "he did not get rid of
me" was simply that he could get wages from me every month. He
consented to do nothing for me for seven roubles a month. Many sins
should be forgiven me for what I suffered from him. My hatred reached
such a point that sometimes his very step almost threw me into
convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his lisp. His tongue
must have been a little too long or something of that sort, for he
continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it, imagining that
it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow, measured tone,
with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground. He
maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself
behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading! But he
was awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even,
sing-song voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that that
is how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the
dead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at
that time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were
chemically combined with my existence. Besides, nothing would have
induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished
lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in
which I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me,
for some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I
could not turn him away.

To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was
impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known
where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during
those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object
to PUNISH Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that
were owing him. I had for a long time--for the last two years--been
intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself
airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his
wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely
silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the
first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out
of a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I
won't, I won't, I simply won't pay him his wages, I won't just because
that is "what I wish," because "I am master, and it is for me to
decide," because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;
but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to
him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a
whole month. . . .

But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out
for four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for
there had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may
be observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by
heart). He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare,
keeping it up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me
or seeing me out of the house. If I held out and pretended not to
notice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further
tortures. All at once, A PROPOS of nothing, he would walk softly and
smoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand
at the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other,
and fix upon me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I
suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but
continue staring at me persistently for some seconds, then, with a
peculiar compression of his lips and a most significant air,
deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room. Two
hours later he would come out again and again present himself before me
in the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask
him what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously
and began staring back at him. So we stared at one another for two
minutes; at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went back
again for two hours.

If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my
revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,
deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral
degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing
completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he
wanted.

This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost
my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance
apart from him.

"Stay," I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,
with one hand behind his back, to go to his room. "Stay! Come back,
come back, I tell you! " and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he
turned round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he
persisted in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.

"How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?
Answer! "

After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round
again.

"Stay! " I roared, running up to him, "don't stir! There. Answer, now:
what did you come in to look at? "

"If you have any order to give me it's my duty to carry it out," he
answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp,
raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to
another, all this with exasperating composure.

"That's not what I am asking you about, you torturer! " I shouted,
turning crimson with anger. "I'll tell you why you came here myself:
you see, I don't give you your wages, you are so proud you don't want
to bow down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your
stupid stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it
is--stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! . . . "

He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.

"Listen," I shouted to him. "Here's the money, do you see, here it
is," (I took it out of the table drawer); "here's the seven roubles
complete, but you are not going to have it, you . . . are . . . not . . .
going . . . to . . . have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to
beg my pardon. Do you hear? "

"That cannot be," he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.

"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word of honour, it shall be! "

"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for," he went on, as
though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. "Why, besides, you
called me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you at the
police-station at any time for insulting behaviour. "

"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this very minute, this very
second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer! "

But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud
calls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without
looking round.

"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened," I
decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind
his screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating
slowly and violently.

"Apollon," I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless,
"go at once without a minute's delay and fetch the police-officer. "

He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles
and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a
guffaw.

"At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can't imagine what will
happen. "

"You are certainly out of your mind," he observed, without even raising
his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.
"Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as
for being frightened--you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for
nothing will come of it. "

"Go! " I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should
strike him in a minute.

But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open
at that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at
us in perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back
to my room. There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my
head against the wall and stood motionless in that position.

Two minutes later I heard Apollon's deliberate footsteps. "There is
some woman asking for you," he said, looking at me with peculiar
severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away,
but stared at us sarcastically.

"Go away, go away," I commanded in desperation. At that moment my
clock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.
IX

"Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be. "

I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I
believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my
ragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had imagined the scene not
long before in a fit of depression. After standing over us for a
couple of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at
ease. What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with
confusion, more so, in fact, than I should have expected. At the sight
of me, of course.

"Sit down," I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I
sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me
open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naivete
of expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.

She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as
usual, while instead of that, she . . . and I dimly felt that I should
make her pay dearly for ALL THIS.

"You have found me in a strange position, Liza," I began, stammering
and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. "No, no, don't
imagine anything," I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. "I
am not ashamed of my poverty. . . . On the contrary, I look with pride
on my poverty. I am poor but honourable. . . . One can be poor and
honourable," I muttered. "However . . . would you like tea? . . . . "

"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute. "

I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.

"Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the
seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,
"here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must
come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.
If you won't go, you'll make me a miserable man! You don't know what
this woman is. . . . This is--everything! You may be imagining
something. . . . But you don't know what that woman is! . . . "

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles
again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or
putting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention
to me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,
which he had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minutes
with my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON. My temples were moist with sweat.
I was pale, I felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to
pity, looking at me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up
from his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off
his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me
over his shoulder: "Shall I get a whole portion? " deliberately walked
out of the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to
me on the way: shouldn't I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown,
no matter where, and then let happen what would?

I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were
silent.

"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist
so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

"What are you saying! " she cried, starting.

"I will kill him! kill him! " I shrieked, suddenly striking the table
in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid
it was to be in such a frenzy. "You don't know, Liza, what that
torturer is to me. He is my torturer. . . . He has gone now to fetch
some rusks; he . . . "

And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How
ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain
them.

She was frightened.

"What is the matter? What is wrong? " she cried, fussing about me.

"Water, give me water, over there! " I muttered in a faint voice, though
I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without
water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what is
called, PUTTING IT ON, to save appearances, though the attack was a
genuine one.

She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment
Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this
commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all
that had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with
positive alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.

"Liza, do you despise me? " I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling
with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

"Drink your tea," I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself, but,
of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite
against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have
killed her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a
word to her all the time. "She is the cause of it all," I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we
did not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from
beginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to
begin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity.
I was obstinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,
because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful
stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

"I want to. . . get away . . . from there altogether," she began, to break
the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought
not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as
I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and
unnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled
all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not
care what happened. Another five minutes passed.

"Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was
getting up.

But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively
trembled with spite, and at once burst out.

"Why have you come to me, tell me that, please? " I began, gasping for
breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed to
have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to
begin. "Why have you come? Answer, answer," I cried, hardly knowing
what I was doing. "I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.
You've come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you
are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may
as well know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you
now. Why are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been
insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening
before me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;
but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on
someone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on
you and laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted to
humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power. . . .
That's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose
to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that? "

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in
exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very
well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a
handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;
but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. And
all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her
eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, the
cynicism of my words overwhelmed her. . . .

"Save you! " I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down
the room before her. "Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse than
you myself. Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you
that sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for? was it to read
us a sermon? ' Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I
wanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your
hysteria--that was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn't keep it
up then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the
devil knows why, gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I
got home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I
hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only
like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really
want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want
peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so
long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go
without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I
always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know
that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I
have been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your
coming. And do you know what has worried me particularly for these
three days? That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see
me in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told you
just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well know
that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more
afraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because I am as
vain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.
Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for
having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at
Apollon like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying
like a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was
jeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears I could
not help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put to
shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never forgive
you either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you turned up like
this, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest,
absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit
better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;
while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! And
what is it to me that you don't understand a word of this! And what do
I care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or
not? Do you understand? How I shall hate you now after saying this,
for having been here and listening. Why, it's not once in a lifetime a
man speaks out like this, and then it is in hysterics! . . . What more
do you want? Why do you still stand confronting me, after all this?
Why are you worrying me? Why don't you go? "

But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed to
think and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in
the world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,
that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance. What
happened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great
deal more than I imagined. She understood from all this what a woman
understands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I
was myself unhappy.

The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by
a look of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling myself a
scoundrel and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was
accompanied throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively.
She was on the point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished she
took no notice of my shouting: "Why are you here, why don't you go
away? " but realised only that it must have been very bitter to me to
say all this. Besides, she was so crushed, poor girl; she considered
herself infinitely beneath me; how could she feel anger or resentment?
She suddenly leapt up from her chair with an irresistible impulse and
held out her hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and not
daring to stir. . . . At this point there was a revulsion in my heart
too. Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst
into tears. I, too, could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I never
had before.