No More Learning

' 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 à 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 any one 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 every one. 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 every one 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, _à 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 naïveté
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 _à la Napoléon_. 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 some one 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 realize 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 realized
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.

"They won't let me. . . . I can't be good! " I managed to articulate; then I
went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a
quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her
arms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the trouble
was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the
loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust
into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a
far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward
now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was
I ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too, came into
my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that
she was now the heroine, while I was just such a crushed and humiliated
creature as she had been before me that night--four days before. . . . And
all this came into my mind during the minutes I was lying on my face on
the sofa.

My God! surely I was not envious of her then.

I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course, I
was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I cannot
get on without domineering and tyrannizing over some one, but . . . there
is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner
or later . . . and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I
was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled and
flamed up in my heart . . . a feeling of mastery and possession. My eyes
gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I hated her
and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling intensified
the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. At first there was a
look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but only for one instant.
She warmly and rapturously embraced me.


X

A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and
peeped through the crack at Liza.