No More Learning

Two minutes later she came from behind the screen and looked
with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was forced,
however, to _keep up appearances_, and I turned away from her eyes.

"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.

I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and
closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the
other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway. . . .

I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through
losing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight out
that I opened her hand and put the money in it . . . from spite. It came
into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room and she
was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain: though I
did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart,
but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so purposely
made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that I could
not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid seeing her,
and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened the door in
the passage and began listening.

"Liza! Liza! " I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.

There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
the stairs.

"Liza! " I cried, more loudly.

No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open
heavily with a creak and slam violently, the sound echoed up the stairs.

She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly
oppressed.

I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and
looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;
straight before me on the table I saw. . . . In short, I saw a crumpled
blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute
before. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other
in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table
at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.

Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have
expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for
my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. I
could not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,
flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. She could
not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the street.

It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling
almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as
though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to be
heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I ran
two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.

Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?

Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet, to
entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast was being
rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with
indifference. But--what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate her,
perhaps, even to-morrow, just because I had kissed her feet to-day?
Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognized that day, for the
hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?

I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered
this.

"And will it not be better? " I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,
stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. "Will it not
be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for ever?
Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful
consciousness! To-morrow I should have defiled her soul and have
exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in
her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the feeling of
insult will elevate and purify her . . . by hatred . . . h'm! . . . perhaps,
too, by forgiveness. . . . Will all that make things easier for her
though? . . . "

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which
is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain in
my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could there
have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that I
should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard
nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time
afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment and
hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.

* * * * *

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I
have many evil memories now, but . . . hadn't I better end my "Notes"
here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I
have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's
hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long
stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in
my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from
real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly
not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an
anti-hero are _expressly_ gathered together here, and what matters most,
it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from
life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so
divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life,
and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to
looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all
privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume
sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know
what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers
were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little
more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity,
relax the control and we . . . yes, I assure you . . . we should be begging
to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be
angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for
yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes,
and don't dare to say all of us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not
justifying myself with that "all of us. " As for what concerns me in
particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have
not dared to carry half-way, and what's more, you have taken your
cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving
yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in
you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living
means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without
books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know
what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate,
what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men
with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it
a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized
man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not
by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are
developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow
from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground. "

[_The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however.
He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems
to us that we may stop here. _]




A FAINT HEART

A STORY


Under the same roof in the same flat on the same fourth storey lived two
young men, colleagues in the service, Arkady Ivanovitch Nefedevitch and
Vasya Shumkov. . . . The author of course, feels the necessity of
explaining to the reader why one is given his full title, while the
other's name is abbreviated, if only that such a mode of expression may
not be regarded as unseemly and rather familiar. But, to do so, it would
first be necessary to explain and describe the rank and years and
calling and duty in the service, and even, indeed, the characters of the
persons concerned; and since there are so many writers who begin in that
way, the author of the proposed story, solely in order to be unlike them
(that is, some people will perhaps say, entirely on account of his
boundless vanity), decides to begin straightaway with action. Having
completed this introduction, he begins.

Towards six o'clock on New Year's Eve Shumkov returned home. Arkady
Ivanovitch, who was lying on the bed, woke up and looked at his friend
with half-closed eyes. He saw that Vasya had on his very best trousers
and a very clean shirt front. That, of course, struck him. "Where had
Vasya to go like that? And he had not dined at home either! " Meanwhile,
Shumkov had lighted a candle, and Arkady Ivanovitch guessed immediately
that his friend was intending to wake him accidentally. Vasya did, in
fact, clear his throat twice, walked twice up and down the room, and at
last, quite accidentally, let the pipe, which he had begun filling in
the corner by the stove, slip out of his hands. Arkady Ivanovitch
laughed to himself.

"Vasya, give over pretending! " he said.

"Arkasha, you are not asleep? "

"I really cannot say for certain; it seems to me I am not. "

"Oh, Arkasha! How are you, dear boy? Well, brother! Well, brother! . . .
You don't know what I have to tell you! "

"I certainly don't know; come here. "

As though expecting this, Vasya went up to him at once, not at all
anticipating, however, treachery from Arkady Ivanovitch. The other
seized him very adroitly by the arms, turned him over, held him down,
and began, as it is called, "strangling" his victim, and apparently this
proceeding afforded the lighthearted Arkady Ivanovitch great
satisfaction.

"Caught! " he cried. "Caught! "

"Arkasha, Arkasha, what are you about? Let me go. For goodness sake, let
me go, I shall crumple my dress coat! "

"As though that mattered! What do you want with a dress coat? Why were
you so confiding as to put yourself in my hands? Tell me, where have you
been? Where have you dined? "

"Arkasha, for goodness sake, let me go! "

"Where have you dined? "

"Why, it's about that I want to tell you. "

"Tell away, then. "

"But first let me go. "

"Not a bit of it, I won't let you go till you tell me! "

"Arkasha! Arkasha! But do you understand, I can't--it is utterly
impossible! " cried Vasya, helplessly wriggling out of his friend's
powerful clutches, "you know there are subjects! "

"How--subjects? ". . .

"Why, subjects that you can't talk about in such a position without
losing your dignity; it's utterly impossible; it would make it
ridiculous, and this is not a ridiculous matter, it is important. "

"Here, he's going in for being important! That's a new idea! You tell me
so as to make me laugh, that's how you must tell me; I don't want
anything important; or else you are no true friend of mine. Do you call
yourself a friend? Eh? "

"Arkasha, I really can't! "

"Well, I don't want to hear. . . . "

"Well, Arkasha! " began Vasya, lying across the bed and doing his utmost
to put all the dignity possible into his words. "Arkasha! If you like, I
will tell you; only. . . . "

"Well, what? . . .
"

"Well, I am engaged to be married! "

Without uttering another word Arkady Ivanovitch took Vasya up in his
arms like a baby, though the latter was by no means short, but rather
long and thin, and began dexterously carrying him up and down the room,
pretending that he was hushing him to sleep.

"I'll put you in your swaddling clothes, Master Bridegroom," he kept
saying. But seeing that Vasya lay in his arms, not stirring or uttering
a word, he thought better of it at once, and reflecting that the joke
had gone too far, set him down in the middle of the room and kissed him
on the cheek in the most genuine and friendly way.

"Vasya, you are not angry? "

"Arkasha, listen. . . . "

"Come, it's New Year's Eve. "

"Oh, I'm all right; but why are you such a madman, such a scatterbrain?
How many times I have told you: Arkasha, it's really not funny, not
funny at all! "

"Oh, well, you are not angry? "

"Oh, I'm all right; am I ever angry with any one! But you have wounded
me, do you understand? "

"But how have I wounded you? In what way? "

"I come to you as to a friend, with a full heart, to pour out my soul to
you, to tell you of my happiness. . . . "

"What happiness? Why don't you speak? . . . "

"Oh, well, I am going to get married! " Vasya answered with vexation, for
he really was a little exasperated.

"You! You are going to get married! So you really mean it? " Arkasha
cried at the top of his voice. "No, no . . . but what's this? He talks
like this and his tears are flowing. . . . Vasya, my little Vasya, don't,
my little son! Is it true, really? " And Arkady Ivanovitch flew to hug
him again.

"Well, do you see, how it is now? " said Vasya. "You are kind, of course,
you are a friend, I know that. I come to you with such joy, such
rapture, and all of a sudden I have to disclose all the joy of my heart,
all my rapture struggling across the bed, in an undignified way. . . . You
understand, Arkasha," Vasya went on, half laughing. "You see, it made it
seem comic: and in a sense I did not belong to myself at that minute. I
could not let this be slighted. . . . What's more, if you had asked me her
name, I swear, I would sooner you killed me than have answered you. "

"But, Vasya, why did you not speak! You should have told me all about it
sooner and I would not have played the fool! " cried Arkady Ivanovitch in
genuine despair.

"Come, that's enough, that's enough! Of course, that's how it is. . . . You
know what it all comes from--from my having a good heart. What vexes me
is, that I could not tell you as I wanted to, making you glad and happy,
telling you nicely and initiating you into my secret properly. . . .
Really, Arkasha, I love you so much that I believe if it were not for
you I shouldn't be getting married, and, in fact, I shouldn't be living
in this world at all! "

Arkady Ivanovitch, who was excessively sentimental, cried and laughed at
once as he listened to Vasya. Vasya did the same. Both flew to embrace
one another again and forgot the past.

"How is it--how is it? Tell me all about it, Vasya! I am astonished,
excuse me, brother, but I am utterly astonished; it's a perfect
thunderbolt, by Jove! Nonsense, nonsense, brother, you have made it up,
you've really made it up, you are telling fibs! " cried Arkady
Ivanovitch, and he actually looked into Vasya's face with genuine
uncertainty, but seeing in it the radiant confirmation of a positive
intention of being married as soon as possible, threw himself on the bed
and began rolling from side to side in ecstasy till the walls shook.

"Vasya, sit here," he said at last, sitting down on the bed.

"I really don't know, brother, where to begin! "

They looked at one another in joyful excitement.

"Who is she, Vasya? "

"The Artemyevs! . . . " Vasya pronounced, in a voice weak with emotion.

"No? "

"Well, I did buzz into your ears about them at first, and then I shut
up, and you noticed nothing. Ah, Arkasha, if you knew how hard it was to
keep it from you; but I was afraid, afraid to speak! I thought it would
all go wrong, and you know I was in love, Arkasha! My God! my God! You
see this was the trouble," he began, pausing continually from agitation,
"she had a suitor a year ago, but he was suddenly ordered somewhere; I
knew him--he was a fellow, bless him! Well, he did not write at all, he
simply vanished. They waited and waited, wondering what it meant. . . .
Four months ago he suddenly came back married, and has never set foot
within their doors! It was coarse--shabby! And they had no one to stand
up for them. She cried and cried, poor girl, and I fell in love with her
. . . indeed, I had been in love with her long before, all the time! I
began comforting her, and was always going there. . . . Well, and I really
don't know how it has all come about, only she came to love me; a week
ago I could not restrain myself, I cried, I sobbed, and told her
everything--well, that I love her--everything, in fact! . . . 'I am ready
to love you, too, Vassily Petrovitch, only I am a poor girl, don't make
a mock of me; I don't dare to love any one. ' Well, brother, you
understand! You understand? . . . On that we got engaged on the spot. I
kept thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, I said to her,
'How are we to tell your mother? ' She said, 'It will be hard, wait a
little; she's afraid, and now maybe she would not let you have me; she
keeps crying, too. ' Without telling her I blurted it out to her mother
to-day. Lizanka fell on her knees before her, I did the same . . . well,
she gave us her blessing. Arkasha, Arkasha! My dear fellow! We will live
together. No, I won't part from you for anything. "

"Vasya, look at you as I may, I can't believe it. I don't believe it, I
swear. I keep feeling as though. . . . Listen, how can you be engaged to be
married? . . . How is it I didn't know, eh? Do you know, Vasya, I will
confess it to you now. I was thinking of getting married myself; but now
since you are going to be married, it is just as good! Be happy, be
happy! . . . "

"Brother, I feel so lighthearted now, there is such sweetness in my soul
. . . " said Vasya, getting up and pacing about the room excitedly. "Don't
you feel the same? We shall be poor, of course, but we shall be happy;
and you know it is not a wild fancy; our happiness is not a fairy tale;
we shall be happy in reality! . . . "

"Vasya, Vasya, listen! "

"What? " said Vasya, standing before Arkady Ivanovitch.

"The idea occurs to me; I am really afraid to say it to you. . . . Forgive
me, and settle my doubts. What are you going to live on? You know I am
delighted that you are going to be married, of course, I am delighted,
and I don't know what to do with myself, but--what are you going to live
on? Eh? "

"Oh, good Heavens! What a fellow you are, Arkasha! " said Vasya, looking
at Nefedevitch in profound astonishment. "What do you mean? Even her old
mother, even she did not think of that for two minutes when I put it all
clearly before her. You had better ask what they are living on! They
have five hundred roubles a year between the three of them: the pension,
which is all they have, since the father died. She and her old mother
and her little brother, whose schooling is paid for out of that income
too--that is how they live! It's you and I are the capitalists! Some
good years it works out to as much as seven hundred for me. "

"I say, Vasya, excuse me; I really . . . you know I . . . I am only thinking
how to prevent things going wrong. How do you mean, seven hundred? It's
only three hundred. . . . "

"Three hundred! . . . And Yulian Mastakovitch? Have you forgotten him? "

"Yulian Mastakovitch? But you know that's uncertain, brother; that's not
the same thing as three hundred roubles of secure salary, where every
rouble is a friend you can trust. Yulian Mastakovitch, of course, he's a
great man, in fact, I respect him, I understand him, though he is so far
above us; and, by Jove, I love him, because he likes you and gives you
something for your work, though he might not pay you, but simply order a
clerk to work for him--but you will agree, Vasya.