No More Learning

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. She was sitting on the ground with her
head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But she did not
go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it all. I had
insulted her finally, but . . . there's no need to describe it. She
realized that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge, a fresh
humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred was added
now a _personal hatred_, born of envy. . . . Though I do not maintain
positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she certainly
did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what was worse,
incapable of loving her.

I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to
be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange
I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it
strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I
repeat, with me loving meant tyrannizing and showing my moral
superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort
of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that
love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved
object--to tyrannize over her.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated
object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded in
so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life," as
to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to shame
for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even guess
that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me, because
to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of ruin, and all
moral renewal is included in love and can only show itself in that form.

I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room
and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably
oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted
"peace," to be left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressed
me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as
though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at
the screen as though to remind her. . . . She started, sprang up, and flew
to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her escape
from me. . . . 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!