No More Learning

IX

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

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

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

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

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

"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was frightened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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 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 tyrannising over someone, 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 realised 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 tyrannising 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 tyrannise 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 tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?
Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognised 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! Tomorrow 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 halfway, 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 generalised 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. ]









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