The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best story books to read TXT) 📖

of the submissive subordinates, je m'y connais. I was still asleep, and, would you believe it, he asked to have a look at my books and manuscripts! Oui, je m'en souviens, il a employe ce mot. He did not arrest me, but only the books. Il se tenait a distance, and when he began to explain his visit he looked as though I... enfin il avait Vair de croire que je tomberai sur lui immediatement et que je commen-cerai a le battre comme platre. Tous ces gens du bas etage sont comme ca when they have to do with a gentleman. I need hardly say I understood it all at once. Voild vingt ans que je m'y prepare. I opened all the drawers and handed him all the keys; I gave them myself, I gave him all. J'etais digne et calme. From the books he took the foreign edition of Herzen, the bound volume of The Sell, four copies of my poem, et enfin tout fa. Then he took my letters and my papers et quelques-unes de mes ebauches historiques, critiques et politiques. All that they carried off. Nastasya says that a soldier wheeled them away in a barrow and covered them with an apron; oui, c'est cela, with an apron." It sounded like delirium. Who could make head or tail of it? I pelted him with questions again. Had Blum come alone, or with others? On whose authority? By what right? How had he dared? How did he explain it?

"Il etait seul, bien seul, but there was some one else dans l'antichambre, oui, je m'en souviens, et puis... Though I believe there was some one else besides, and there was a guard standing in the entry. You must ask Nastasya; she knows all about it better than I do. J'etais surexcite, voyez-vous. Il parlait, il parlait... un tas de chases; he said very little though, it was I said all that.... I told him the story of my life, simply from that point of view, of course. J'etais surexcite, mais digne, je vous assure.... I am afraid, though, I may have shed tears. They got the barrow from the shop next door."

"Oh, heavens! how could all this have happened? But for mercy's sake, speak more exactly, Stepan Trofimovitch. What you tell me sounds like a dream."

"Cher, I feel as though I were in a dream myself.... Savez-vous! Il a prononce le nom de Telyatnikof, and I believe that that man was concealed in the entry. Yes, I remember, he suggested: calling the prosecutor and Dmitri Dmitritch, I believe...; qui me doit encore quinze roubles I won at cards, soit Ait en passant. Enfin, je n'ai pas trop compris. But I got the better of them, and what do I care for Dmitri Dmitritch? I believe I begged him very earnestly to keep it quiet; I begged him particularly, most particularly. I am afraid I demeaned myself, in fact, comment croyez-vous? Enfin il a consenti. Yes, I remember, he suggested that himself--that it would be better to keep it quiet, for he had only come 'to have a look round' et rien de plus, and nothing more, nothing more... and that if they find nothing, nothing will happen. So that we ended it all en amis, je suis tout a fait content."

"Why, then he suggested the usual course of proceedings in such cases and regular guarantees, and you rejected them yourself," I cried with friendly indignation.

"Yes, it's better without the guarantees. And why make a scandal? Let's keep it en amis so long as we can. You know, in our town, if they get to know it... mes ennemis, et puis, a quoi bon, le procureur, ce cochon de notre procureur, qui deux fois m'a manque de politesse et qu'on a rosse a plaisir Vautre annee chez cette charmante et belle Natalya Pavlovna quand il se cacha dans son boudoir. Et puis, mon ami, don't make objections and don't depress me, I beg you, for nothing is more unbearable when a man is in trouble than for a hundred friends to point out to him what a fool he has made of himself. Sit down though and have some tea. I must admit I am awfully tired.... Hadn't I better lie down and put vinegar on my head? What do you think?"

"Certainly," I cried, "ice even. You are very much upset. You are pale and your hands are trembling. Lie down, rest, and put off telling me. I'll sit by you and wait."

He hesitated, but I insisted on his lying down. Nastasya brought a cup of vinegar. I wetted a towel and laid it on his head. Then Nastasya stood on a chair and began lighting a lamp before the ikon in the corner. I noticed this with surprise; there had never been a lamp there before and now suddenly it had made its appearance.

"I arranged for that as soon as they had gone away," muttered Stepan Trofimovitch, looking at me slyly. "Quand on a de ces choses-la dans sa chambre et qu'on vient vous arreter it makes an impression and they are sure to report that they have seen it...."

When she had done the lamp, Nastasya stood in the doorway, leaned her cheek in her right hand, and began gazing at him with a lachrymose air.

"Eloignez-la on some excuse," he nodded to me from the sofa. "I can't endure this Russian sympathy, et puis ca m'embete."

But she went away of herself. I noticed that he kept looking towards the door and listening for sounds in the passage.

"Il faut etre prit, voyez-vous," he said, looking at me significantly, "chaque moment... they may come and take one and, phew!--a man disappears."

"Heavens! who'll come? Who will take you?"

"Voyez-vous, mon cher, I asked straight out when he was going away, what would they do to me now."

"You'd better have asked them where you'd be exiled!" I cried out in the same indignation.

"That's just what I meant when I asked, but he went away without answering. Voyez-vous: as for linen, clothes, warm things especially, that must be as they decide; if they tell me to take them--all right, or they might send me in a soldier's overcoat. But I thrust thirty-five roubles" (he suddenly dropped his voice, looking towards the door by which Nastasya had gone out) "in a slit in my waistcoat pocket, here, feel.... I believe they won't take the waistcoat off, and left seven roubles in my purse to keep up appearances, as though that were all I have. You see, it's in small change and the coppers are on the table, so they won't guess that I've hidden the money, but will suppose that that's all. For God knows where I may have to sleep to-night!"

I bowed my head before such madness. It was obvious that a man could not be arrested and searched in the way he was describing, and he must have mixed things up. It's true it all happened in the days before our present, more recent regulations. It is true, too, that according to his own account they had offered to follow the more regular procedure, but he "got the better of them" and refused.... Of course not long ago a governor might, in extreme cases.... But how could this be an extreme case? That's what baffled me.

"No doubt they had a telegram from Petersburg," Stepan Trofimovitch said suddenly.

"A telegram? About you? Because of the works of Herzen and your poem? Have you taken leave of your senses? What is there in that to arrest you for?"

I was positively angry. He made a grimace and was evidently mortified--not at my exclamation, but at the idea that there was no ground for arrest.

"Who can tell in our day what he may not be arrested for?" he muttered enigmatically.

A wild and nonsensical idea crossed my mind.

"Stepan Trofimovitch, tell me as a friend," I cried, "as a real friend, I will not betray you: do you belong to some secret society or not?"

And on this, to my amazement, he was not quite certain whether he was or was not a member of some secret society.

"That depends, voyez-vous."'

"How do you mean 'it depends'?"

"When with one's whole heart one is an adherent of progress and... who can answer it? You may suppose you don't belong, and suddenly it turns out that you do belong to some thing."

"Now is that possible? It's a case of yes or no."

"Cela date de Petersburg when she and I were meaning to found a magazine there. That's what's at the root of it. She gave them the slip then, and they forgot us, but now they've remembered. Cher, cher, don't you know me?" he cried hysterically. "And they'll take us, put us in a cart, and march us off to Siberia for ever, or forget us in prison."

And he suddenly broke into bitter weeping. His tears positively streamed. He covered his face with his red silk handkerchief and sobbed, sobbed convulsively for five minutes. It wrung my heart. This was the man who had been a prophet among us for twenty years, a leader, a patriarch, the Kukolnik who had borne himself so loftily and majestically before all of us, before whom we bowed down with genuine reverence, feeling proud of doing so--and all of a sudden here he was sobbing, sobbing like a naughty child waiting for the rod which the teacher is fetching for him. I felt fearfully sorry for him. He believed in the reality of that "cart" as he believed that I was sitting by his side, and he expected it that morning, at once, that very minute, and all this on account of his Herzen and some poem! Such complete, absolute ignorance of everyday reality was touching and somehow repulsive.

At last he left off crying, got up from the sofa and began walking about the room again, continuing to talk to me, though he looked out of the window every minute and listened to every sound in the passage. Our conversation was still disconnected. All my assurances and attempts to console him rebounded from him like peas from a wall. He scarcely listened, but yet what he needed was that I should console him and keep on talking with that object. I saw that he could not do without me now, and would not let me go for anything. I remained, and we spent more than two hours together. In conversation he recalled that Blum had taken with him two manifestoes he had found.

"Manifestoes!" I said, foolishly frightened. "Do you mean to say you..."

"Oh, ten were left here," he answered with vexation (he talked to me at one moment in a vexed and haughty tone and at the next with dreadful plaintiveness and humiliation), "but I had disposed of eight already, and Blum only found two." And he suddenly flushed with indignation. "Vous me mettez avec ces gens-la! Do you suppose I could be working with those scoundrels, those anonymous libellers, with my son Pyotr Stepanovitch, avec ces esprits forts de la achete? Oh, heavens!"

"Bah! haven't they mixed you up perhaps?... But it's nonsense, it can't be so," I observed.

"Savez-vous," broke from him suddenly, "I feel at moments que je ferai id-bas quelque esclandre. Oh, don't go away, don't leave me alone! Ma carriere est finie aujourd'hui, je le sens. Do you know, I might fall on somebody there and bite him, like that lieutenant."

He looked at me with a strange expression--alarmed, and at the same time anxious to alarm me. He certainly was getting more and more exasperated