Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

Unlimited in the exercise of his willpower, why does he limit it through obedience?—For his own sake,—says reason.—For his own sake,—says an inner voice.—For his own sake,—says wise legislation. It follows that where it is not in his interest to be a citizen there is no citizen. It follows, therefore, that whoever wants to deprive him of the advantage of being a citizen is his enemy. He seeks in the law defense and retribution against his enemy. If the law either does not have the power to defend him or does not wish to do so, or lacks the power to help him immediately in his present woe, then the citizen uses his natural right of defense, preservation, welfare. For the citizen, insofar as he has become a citizen, does not cease to be a person whose first duty, stemming from his organism, is preservation, defense, welfare. The assessor murdered by the peasants violated with his bestial actions their rights as citizens. At that moment when he condoned the violence of his sons, when to the heartache of the betrothed he added rape, when he threatened punishment because they resisted his hellish domination, at that moment the law intended to protect the citizen was remote and its efficacity was negligible. That was when the law of nature awakened and the insulted citizen’s power, which positive law does not take away when he is injured, came into force. The peasants who killed the bestial assessor are innocent before the law. Based on the conclusions of reason, my heart acquits them; and the death of the assessor, while violent, was just. Let no one conceive of basing political decisions on prudence, basing the condemnation of the murder of the assessor who gasped his last breath in such malice on the desire for social calm. No matter the station of life into which he was fated to have been born, the citizen is and always will be a person, and for as long as he is a person, the law of nature as the abundant source of benefits will never dry up in him. And one who dares to damage what is in him a natural and indestructible property is a criminal. Woe unto him if the civil law does not punish him. He will be tainted, marked out as despicable among his fellow citizens and every person of adequate strength should avenge the injury done by him.’ I fell silent. The governor-general did not address a word to me. Now and again he raised toward me sullen looks charged with the rage of impotence and malignancy of revenge. Everyone remained silent, expecting that I would be taken into custody for offending against all privileges. Now and again from the lips of the servile, one heard a rumbling of indignation. Everyone averted their eyes from me. Terror, it seems, gripped those standing near me. They imperceptibly withdrew as though from someone afflicted with a fatal plague. Fed up with the spectacle of such a mixture of arrogance and the most craven baseness, I departed from this assembly of lickspittles.

“Having failed to find a way to save the innocent murderers whom my heart absolved, I did not want to be complicit in their punishment or be its witness. I petitioned for retirement, received it, and here I am now journeying to lament the pathetic state of the peasants’ station, and to alleviate my distress by associating with friends.” We parted on this note, and each headed off in his direction.—

My trip that day was not a success. The horses were bad and had to be changed over and over; and finally as we went down a small hill the axle of the carriage splintered and I was unable to advance.—I am accustomed to walking. Seizing my staff, off I marched to the postal station. But for a resident of St. Petersburg a walk along the highway is not very pleasant and bears no resemblance to a stroll in the Summer Garden or the Baba.58 I got worn out quite quickly and needed to sit down.

While I sat on a stone and drew figures of one kind or another in the sand, sometimes irregular and not at right angles, and thought about this and that, a carriage raced past me. The passenger spotted me and ordered the coach to stop. In him I recognized my acquaintance. “What are you doing?” he asked me. “I am having a think. There is more than enough time for reflection. An axle splintered. What’s new?” “Same old rubbish. The weather changes with the wind, now sleet, now fair weather. Ah! … There is something new. Duryndin has got married.” “That can’t be true—he’s about eighty.” “That’s right. Look, here is a letter for you…. Read it at your leisure, but I have to be getting on. Bye—,” and we parted.

The letter was from my friend. Avid for all sorts of news items, he promised to supply me with them during my absence and kept his word. In the meanwhile they had fitted to my carriage a new axle, fortunately kept as a spare. As I rode I read:

Petersburg

My dear!

Recently a marriage has taken place here between a seventy-eight-year-old young chap and a sixty-two-year-old missy. The reason for so antique a coupling will be a tad hard to guess if I don’t tell it. Open your ears, my friend, and you shall hear.—Mrs. Sh …, sixty-two years old, widowed from the age of twenty-five, is a hero of a kind and not the least of them. She was married to a merchant who had not been a success in business. She had a pretty face. Left a poor orphan after the death of her husband, and well aware of how hard-hearted her husband’s mates were, she declined to have recourse to asking for charity from the haughty but deemed it proper to feed herself through her own efforts. As long as the beauty of youth stayed on her face, she