No More Learning

"Forgive me if I tell you something
else. . . . I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a
dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as
this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again
in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a
whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this
place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering to-day.
This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such
places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories . . . like you. . . .
Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory. . . .
But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once
been particularly happy here. . . . "

"Very good," said the girl, "perhaps I will come here to-morrow, too, at
ten o'clock. I see that I can't forbid you. . . . The fact is, I have to be
here; don't imagine that I am making an appointment with you; I tell you
beforehand that I have to be here on my own account. But . . . well, I
tell you straight out, I don't mind if you do come. To begin with,
something unpleasant might happen as it did to-day, but never mind
that. . . . In short, I should simply like to see you . . . to say two words
to you. Only, mind, you must not think the worse of me now! Don't think
I make appointments so lightly. . . . I shouldn't make it except that. . . .
But let that be my secret! Only a compact beforehand. . . . "

"A compact! Speak, tell me, tell me all beforehand; I agree to anything,
I am ready for anything," I cried delighted. "I answer for myself, I
will be obedient, respectful . . . you know me. . . . "

"It's just because I do know you that I ask you to come to-morrow," said
the girl, laughing. "I know you perfectly. But mind you will come on the
condition, in the first place (only be good, do what I ask--you see, I
speak frankly), you won't fall in love with me. . . . That's impossible, I
assure you. I am ready for friendship; here's my hand. . . . But you
mustn't fall in love with me, I beg you! "

"I swear," I cried, gripping her hand. . . .

"Hush, don't swear, I know you are ready to flare up like gunpowder.
Don't think ill of me for saying so. If only you knew. . . . I, too, have
no one to whom I can say a word, whose advice I can ask. Of course, one
does not look for an adviser in the street; but you are an exception. I
know you as though we had been friends for twenty years. . . . You won't
deceive me, will you? . . . "

"You will see . . . the only thing is, I don't know how I am going to
survive the next twenty-four hours. "

"Sleep soundly. Good-night, and remember that I have trusted you
already. But you exclaimed so nicely just now, 'Surely one can't be held
responsible for every feeling, even for brotherly sympathy! ' Do you
know, that was so nicely said, that the idea struck me at once, that I
might confide in you? "

"For God's sake do; but about what? What is it? "

"Wait till to-morrow. Meanwhile, let that be a secret. So much the
better for you; it will give it a faint flavour of romance. Perhaps I
will tell you to-morrow, and perhaps not. . . . I will talk to you a little
more beforehand; we will get to know each other better. . . . "

"Oh yes, I will tell you all about myself to-morrow! But what has
happened? It is as though a miracle had befallen me. . . . My God, where am
I? Come, tell me aren't you glad that you were not angry and did not
drive me away at the first moment, as any other woman would have done?
In two minutes you have made me happy for ever. Yes, happy; who knows,
perhaps, you have reconciled me with myself, solved my doubts! . . .
Perhaps such moments come upon me. . . . But there I will tell you all
about it to-morrow, you shall know everything, everything. . . . "

"Very well, I consent; you shall begin. . . . "

"Agreed. "

"Good-bye till to-morrow! "

"Till to-morrow! "

And we parted. I walked about all night; I could not make up my mind to
go home. I was so happy. . . . To-morrow!


SECOND NIGHT

"Well, so you have survived! " she said, pressing both my hands.

"I've been here for the last two hours; you don't know what a state I
have been in all day. "

"I know, I know. But to business. Do you know why I have come? Not to
talk nonsense, as I did yesterday. I tell you what, we must behave more
sensibly in future. I thought a great deal about it last night. "

"In what way--in what must we be more sensible? I am ready for my part;
but, really, nothing more sensible has happened to me in my life than
this, now. "

"Really? In the first place, I beg you not to squeeze my hands so;
secondly, I must tell you that I spent a long time thinking about you
and feeling doubtful to-day. "

"And how did it end? "

"How did it end? The upshot of it is that we must begin all over again,
because the conclusion I reached to-day was that I don't know you at
all; that I behaved like a baby last night, like a little girl; and, of
course, the fact of it is, that it's my soft heart that is to
blame--that is, I sang my own praises, as one always does in the end
when one analyses one's conduct. And therefore to correct my mistake,
I've made up my mind to find out all about you minutely. But as I have
no one from whom I can find out anything, you must tell me everything
fully yourself. Well, what sort of man are you? Come, make
haste--begin--tell me your whole history. "

"My history! " I cried in alarm. "My history! But who has told you I have
a history? I have no history. . . . "

"Then how have you lived, if you have no history? " she interrupted,
laughing.

"Absolutely without any history! I have lived, as they say, keeping
myself to myself, that is, utterly alone--alone, entirely alone. Do you
know what it means to be alone? "

"But how alone? Do you mean you never saw any one? "

"Oh no, I see people, of course; but still I am alone. "

"Why, do you never talk to any one? "

"Strictly speaking, with no one. "

"Who are you then? Explain yourself! Stay, I guess: most likely, like me
you have a grandmother. She is blind and will never let me go anywhere,
so that I have almost forgotten how to talk; and when I played some
pranks two years ago, and she saw there was no holding me in, she called
me up and pinned my dress to hers, and ever since we sit like that for
days together; she knits a stocking, though she's blind, and I sit
beside her, sew or read aloud to her--it's such a queer habit, here for
two years I've been pinned to her. . . . "

"Good Heavens! what misery!
But no, I haven't a grandmother like that. "

"Well, if you haven't why do you sit at home? . . . "

"Listen, do you want to know the sort of man I am? "

"Yes, yes! "

"In the strict sense of the word? "

"In the very strictest sense of the word. "

"Very well, I am a type! "

"Type, type! What sort of type? " cried the girl, laughing, as though she
had not had a chance of laughing for a whole year. "Yes, it's very
amusing talking to you. Look, here's a seat, let us sit down. No one is
passing here, no one will hear us, and--begin your history. For it's no
good your telling me, I know you have a history; only you are concealing
it. To begin with, what is a type? "

"A type? A type is an original, it's an absurd person! " I said, infected
by her childish laughter. "It's a character. Listen; do you know what is
meant by a dreamer? "

"A dreamer! Indeed I should think I do know. I am a dreamer myself.
Sometimes, as I sit by grandmother, all sorts of things come into my
head. Why, when one begins dreaming one lets one's fancy run away with
one--why, I marry a Chinese Prince! . . . Though sometimes it is a good
thing to dream! But, goodness knows! Especially when one has something
to think of apart from dreams," added the girl, this time rather
seriously.

"Excellent! If you have been married to a Chinese Emperor, you will
quite understand me. Come, listen. . . . But one minute, I don't know your
name yet. "

"At last! You have been in no hurry to think of it! "

"Oh, my goodness! It never entered my head, I felt quite happy as it
was. . . . "

"My name is Nastenka. "

"Nastenka! And nothing else? "

"Nothing else! Why, is not that enough for you, you insatiable person? "

"Not enough? On the contrary, it's a great deal, a very great deal,
Nastenka; you kind girl, if you are Nastenka for me from the first. "

"Quite so! Well? "

"Well, listen, Nastenka, now for this absurd history. "

I sat down beside her, assumed a pedantically serious attitude, and
began as though reading from a manuscript:--

"There are, Nastenka, though you may not know it, strange nooks in
Petersburg. It seems as though the same sun as shines for all Petersburg
people does not peep into those spots, but some other different new one,
bespoken expressly for those nooks, and it throws a different light on
everything. In these corners, dear Nastenka, quite a different life is
lived, quite unlike the life that is surging round us, but such as
perhaps exists in some unknown realm, not among us in our serious,
over-serious, time. Well, that life is a mixture of something purely
fantastic, fervently ideal, with something (alas! Nastenka) dingily
prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar. "

"Foo! Good Heavens! What a preface! What do I hear? "

"Listen, Nastenka. (It seems to me I shall never be tired of calling you
Nastenka. ) Let me tell you that in these corners live strange
people--dreamers. The dreamer--if you want an exact definition--is not a
human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part
he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light
of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or,
anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature,
which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise.
Why do you suppose he is so fond of his four walls, which are invariably
painted green, grimy, dismal and reeking unpardonably of tobacco smoke?
Why is it that when this absurd gentleman is visited by one of his few
acquaintances (and he ends by getting rid of all his friends), why does
this absurd person meet him with such embarrassment, changing
countenance and overcome with confusion, as though he had only just
committed some crime within his four walls; as though he had been
forging counterfeit notes, or as though he were writing verses to be
sent to a journal with an anonymous letter, in which he states that the
real poet is dead, and that his friend thinks it his sacred duty to
publish his things? Why, tell me, Nastenka, why is it conversation is
not easy between the two friends? Why is there no laughter? Why does no
lively word fly from the tongue of the perplexed newcomer, who at other
times may be very fond of laughter, lively words, conversation about the
fair sex, and other cheerful subjects? And why does this friend,
probably a new friend and on his first visit--for there will hardly be a
second, and the friend will never come again--why is the friend himself
so confused, so tongue-tied, in spite of his wit (if he has any), as he
looks at the downcast face of his host, who in his turn becomes utterly
helpless and at his wits' end after gigantic but fruitless efforts to
smooth things over and enliven the conversation, to show his knowledge
of polite society, to talk, too, of the fair sex, and by such humble
endeavour, to please the poor man, who like a fish out of water has
mistakenly come to visit him? Why does the gentleman, all at once
remembering some very necessary business which never existed, suddenly
seize his hat and hurriedly make off, snatching away his hand from the
warm grip of his host, who was trying his utmost to show his regret and
retrieve the lost position? Why does the friend chuckle as he goes out
of the door, and swear never to come and see this queer creature again,
though the queer creature is really a very good fellow, and at the same
time he cannot refuse his imagination the little diversion of comparing
the queer fellow's countenance during their conversation with the
expression of an unhappy kitten treacherously captured, roughly handled,
frightened and subjected to all sorts of indignities by children, till,
utterly crestfallen, it hides away from them under a chair in the dark,
and there must needs at its leisure bristle up, spit, and wash its
insulted face with both paws, and long afterwards look angrily at life
and nature, and even at the bits saved from the master's dinner for it
by the sympathetic housekeeper? "

"Listen," interrupted Nastenka, who had listened to me all the time in
amazement, opening her eyes and her little mouth. "Listen; I don't know
in the least why it happened and why you ask me such absurd questions;
all I know is, that this adventure must have happened word for word to
you. "

"Doubtless," I answered, with the gravest face.

"Well, since there is no doubt about it, go on," said Nastenka, "because
I want very much to know how it will end. "

"You want to know, Nastenka, what our hero, that is I--for the hero of
the whole business was my humble self--did in his corner? You want to
know why I lost my head and was upset for the whole day by the
unexpected visit of a friend? You want to know why I was so startled,
why I blushed when the door of my room was opened, why I was not able to
entertain my visitor, and why I was crushed under the weight of my own
hospitality? "

"Why, yes, yes," answered Nastenka, "that's the point. Listen. You
describe it all splendidly, but couldn't you perhaps describe it a
little less splendidly? You talk as though you were reading it out of a
book. "

"Nastenka," I answered in a stern and dignified voice, hardly able to
keep from laughing, "dear Nastenka, I know I describe splendidly, but,
excuse me, I don't know how else to do it. At this moment, dear
Nastenka, at this moment I am like the spirit of King Solomon when,
after lying a thousand years under seven seals in his urn, those seven
seals were at last taken off. At this moment, Nastenka, when we have met
at last after such a long separation--for I have known you for ages,
Nastenka, because I have been looking for some one for ages, and that is
a sign that it was you I was looking for, and it was ordained that we
should meet now--at this moment a thousand valves have opened in my
head, and I must let myself flow in a river of words, or I shall choke.
And so I beg you not to interrupt me, Nastenka, but listen humbly and
obediently, or I will be silent. "

"No, no, no! Not at all. Go on! I won't say a word! "

"I will continue. There is, my friend Nastenka, one hour in my day which
I like extremely. That is the hour when almost all business, work and
duties are over, and every one is hurrying home to dinner, to lie down,
to rest, and on the way all are cogitating on other more cheerful
subjects relating to their evenings, their nights, and all the rest of
their free time. At that hour our hero--for allow me, Nastenka, to tell
my story in the third person, for one feels awfully ashamed to tell it
in the first person--and so at that hour our hero, who had his work too,
was pacing along after the others. But a strange feeling of pleasure set
his pale, rather crumpled-looking face working. He looked not with
indifference on the evening glow which was slowly fading on the cold
Petersburg sky. When I say he looked, I am lying: he did not look at it,
but saw it as it were without realizing, as though tired or preoccupied
with some other more interesting subject, so that he could scarcely
spare a glance for anything about him. He was pleased because till next
day he was released from business irksome to him, and happy as a
schoolboy let out from the class-room to his games and mischief. Take a
look at him, Nastenka; you will see at once that joyful emotion has
already had an effect on his weak nerves and morbidly excited fancy. You
see he is thinking of something. . . . Of dinner, do you imagine? Of the
evening? What is he looking at like that? Is it at that gentleman of
dignified appearance who is bowing so picturesquely to the lady who
rolls by in a carriage drawn by prancing horses? No, Nastenka; what are
all those trivialities to him now! He is rich now with his _own
individual_ life; he has suddenly become rich, and it is not for
nothing that the fading sunset sheds its farewell gleams so gaily before
him, and calls forth a swarm of impressions from his warmed heart. Now
he hardly notices the road, on which the tiniest details at other times
would strike him. Now 'the Goddess of Fancy' (if you have read
Zhukovsky, dear Nastenka) has already with fantastic hand spun her
golden warp and begun weaving upon it patterns of marvellous magic
life--and who knows, maybe, her fantastic hand has borne him to the
seventh crystal heaven far from the excellent granite pavement on which
he was walking his way? Try stopping him now, ask him suddenly where he
is standing now, through what streets he is going--he will, probably
remember nothing, neither where he is going nor where he is standing
now, and flushing with vexation he will certainly tell some lie to save
appearances. That is why he starts, almost cries out, and looks round
with horror when a respectable old lady stops him politely in the middle
of the pavement and asks her way. Frowning with vexation he strides on,
scarcely noticing that more than one passer-by smiles and turns round to
look after him, and that a little girl, moving out of his way in alarm,
laughs aloud, gazing open-eyed at his broad meditative smile and
gesticulations. But fancy catches up in its playful flight the old
woman, the curious passers-by, and the laughing child, and the peasants
spending their nights in their barges on Fontanka (our hero, let us
suppose, is walking along the canal-side at that moment), and
capriciously weaves every one and everything into the canvas like a fly
in a spider's web. And it is only after the queer fellow has returned to
his comfortable den with fresh stores for his mind to work on, has sat
down and finished his dinner, that he comes to himself, when Matrona who
waits upon him--always thoughtful and depressed--clears the table and
gives him his pipe; he comes to himself then and recalls with surprise
that he has dined, though he has absolutely no notion how it has
happened. It has grown dark in the room; his soul is sad and empty; the
whole kingdom of fancies drops to pieces about him, drops to pieces
without a trace, without a sound, floats away like a dream, and he
cannot himself remember what he was dreaming. But a vague sensation
faintly stirs his heart and sets it aching, some new desire temptingly
tickles and excites his fancy, and imperceptibly evokes a swarm of fresh
phantoms. Stillness reigns in the little room; imagination is fostered
by solitude and idleness; it is faintly smouldering, faintly simmering,
like the water with which old Matrona is making her coffee as she moves
quietly about in the kitchen close by. Now it breaks out spasmodically;
and the book, picked up aimlessly and at random, drops from my dreamer's
hand before he has reached the third page. His imagination is again
stirred and at work, and again a new world, a new fascinating life opens
vistas before him. A fresh dream--fresh happiness! A fresh rush of
delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him! To his corrupted
eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in
his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our
life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as
though ill-humoured among us. . . . Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it
is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so
enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him
in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in
the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious
person. See what varied adventures, what an endless swarm of ecstatic
dreams. You ask, perhaps, what he is dreaming of. Why ask that? --why, of
everything . . . of the lot of the poet, first unrecognized, then crowned
with laurels; of friendship with Hoffmann, St. Bartholomew's Night, of
Diana Vernon, of playing the hero at the taking of Kazan by Ivan
Vassilyevitch, of Clara Mowbray, of Effie Deans, of the council of the
prelates and Huss before them, of the rising of the dead in 'Robert the
Devil' (do you remember the music, it smells of the churchyard! ), of
Minna and Brenda, of the battle of Berezina, of the reading of a poem at
Countess V. D. 's, of Danton, of Cleopatra _ei suoi amanti_, of a
little house in Kolomna, of a little home of one's own and beside one a
dear creature who listens to one on a winter's evening, opening her
little mouth and eyes as you are listening to me now, my angel. . . . No,
Nastenka, what is there, what is there for him, voluptuous sluggard, in
this life, for which you and I have such a longing? He thinks that this
is a poor pitiful life, not foreseeing that for him too, maybe, sometime
the mournful hour may strike, when for one day of that pitiful life he
would give all his years of phantasy, and would give them not only for
joy and for happiness, but without caring to make distinctions in that
hour of sadness, remorse and unchecked grief. But so far that
threatening has not arrived--he desires nothing, because he is superior
to all desire, because he has everything, because he is satiated,
because he is the artist of his own life, and creates it for himself
every hour to suit his latest whim. And you know this fantastic world of
fairyland is so easily, so naturally created! As though it were not a
delusion! Indeed, he is ready to believe at some moments that all this
life is not suggested by feeling, is not mirage, not a delusion of the
imagination, but that it is concrete, real, substantial! Why is it,
Nastenka, why is it at such moments one holds one's breath? Why, by what
sorcery, through what incomprehensible caprice, is the pulse quickened,
does a tear start from the dreamer's eye, while his pale moist cheeks
glow, while his whole being is suffused with an inexpressible sense of
consolation? Why is it that whole sleepless nights pass like a flash in
inexhaustible gladness and happiness, and when the dawn gleams rosy at
the window and daybreak floods the gloomy room with uncertain, fantastic
light, as in Petersburg, our dreamer, worn out and exhausted, flings
himself on his bed and drops asleep with thrills of delight in his
morbidly overwrought spirit, and with a weary sweet ache in his heart?
Yes, Nastenka, one deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real
true passion is stirring one's soul; one unconsciously believes that
there is something living, tangible in one's immaterial dreams! And is
it delusion? Here love, for instance, is bound up with all its
fathomless joy, all its torturing agonies in his bosom. . . . Only look at
him, and you will be convinced! Would you believe, looking at him, dear
Nastenka, that he has never known her whom he loves in his ecstatic
dreams? Can it be that he has only seen her in seductive visions, and
that this passion has been nothing but a dream? Surely they must have
spent years hand in hand together--alone the two of them, casting off
all the world and each uniting his or her life with the other's? Surely
when the hour of parting came she must have lain sobbing and grieving on
his bosom, heedless of the tempest raging under the sullen sky, heedless
of the wind which snatches and bears away the tears from her black
eyelashes? Can all of that have been a dream--and that garden, dejected,
forsaken, run wild, with its little moss-grown paths, solitary, gloomy,
where they used to walk so happily together, where they hoped, grieved,
loved, loved each other so long, "so long and so fondly? " And that queer
ancestral house where she spent so many years lonely and sad with her
morose old husband, always silent and splenetic, who frightened them,
while timid as children they hid their love from each other? What
torments they suffered, what agonies of terror, how innocent, how pure
was their love, and how (I need hardly say, Nastenka) malicious people
were! And, good Heavens! surely he met her afterwards, far from their
native shores, under alien skies, in the hot south in the divinely
eternal city, in the dazzling splendour of the ball to the crash of
music, in a _palazzo_ (it must be in a _palazzo_), drowned in
a sea of lights, on the balcony, wreathed in myrtle and roses, where,
recognizing him, she hurriedly removes her mask and whispering, 'I am
free,' flings herself trembling into his arms, and with a cry of
rapture, clinging to one another, in one instant they forget their
sorrow and their parting and all their agonies, and the gloomy house and
the old man and the dismal garden in that distant land, and the seat on
which with a last passionate kiss she tore herself away from his arms
numb with anguish and despair. . . . Oh, Nastenka, you must admit that one
would start, betray confusion, and blush like a schoolboy who has just
stuffed in his pocket an apple stolen from a neighbour's garden, when
your uninvited visitor, some stalwart, lanky fellow, a festive soul fond
of a joke, opens your door and shouts out as though nothing were
happening: 'My dear boy, I have this minute come from Pavlovsk. ' My
goodness! the old count is dead, unutterable happiness is close at
hand--and people arrive from Pavlovsk! "

Finishing my pathetic appeal, I paused pathetically. I remembered that I
had an intense desire to force myself to laugh, for I was already
feeling that a malignant demon was stirring within me, that there was a
lump in my throat, that my chin was beginning to twitch, and that my
eyes were growing more and more moist.

I expected Nastenka, who listened to me opening her clever eyes, would
break into her childish, irrepressible laugh; and I was already
regretting that I had gone so far, that I had unnecessarily described
what had long been simmering in my heart, about which I could speak as
though from a written account of it, because I had long ago passed
judgment on myself and now could not resist reading it, making my
confession, without expecting to be understood; but to my surprise she
was silent, waiting a little, then she faintly pressed my hand and with
timid sympathy asked--

"Surely you haven't lived like that all your life? "

"All my life, Nastenka," I answered; "all my life, and it seems to me I
shall go on so to the end. "

"No, that won't do," she said uneasily, "that must not be; and so,
maybe, I shall spend all my life beside grandmother. Do you know, it is
not at all good to live like that? "

"I know, Nastenka, I know! " I cried, unable to restrain my feelings
longer. "And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best
years! And now I know it and feel it more painfully from recognizing
that God has sent me you, my good angel, to tell me that and show it.
Now that I sit beside you and talk to you it is strange for me to think
of the future, for in the future--there is loneliness again, again this
musty, useless life; and what shall I have to dream of when I have been
so happy in reality beside you! Oh, may you be blessed, dear girl, for
not having repulsed me at first, for enabling me to say that for two
evenings, at least, I have lived. "

"Oh, no, no! " cried Nastenka and tears glistened in her eyes.