to
new and different defects, which are quite indispensable, but will in their
turn give the timid a fright. Students' shortcomings often annoy me, but the
annoyance is nothing in comparison with the joy I have had these thirty years
in speaking with my pupils, lecturing to them, studying their relations and
comparing them with people of a different class.
Mikhail Fiodorovich is a slanderer. Katy listens and neither of them notices
how deep is the pit into which they are drawn by such an outwardly innocuous
recreation as condemning one's neighbours. They don't realise how a simple
conversation gradually turns into mockery and derision, or how they both
begin even to employ the manners of calumny.
"There are some queer types to be found," says Mikhail Fiodorovich.
"Yesterday I went to see our friend Yegor Pietrovich. There I found a student,
one of your medicos, a third-year man, I think. His face ... rather in the style of
Dobroliubov—the stamp of profound thought on his brow. We began to talk.
'My dear fellow—an extraordinary business. I've just read that some German
or other—can't remember his name—has extracted a new alkaloid from the
human brain—idiotine.' Do you know he really believed it, and produced an
expression of respect on his face, as much as to say, 'See, what a power we
are.'"
"The other day I went to the theatre. I sat down. Just in front of me in the
next row two people were sitting: one, 'one of the chosen,' evidently a law
student, the other a whiskery medico. The medico was as drunk as a cobbler.
Not an atom of attention to the stage. Dozing and nodding. But the moment
some actor began to deliver a loud monologue, or just raised his voice, my
medico thrills, digs his neighbour in the ribs. 'What's he say? Something
noble?' 'Noble,' answers 'the chosen.'
"'Brrravo!' bawls the medico. 'No—ble. Bravo.' You see the drunken
blockhead didn't come to the theatre for art, but for something noble. He wants
nobility."
Katy listens and laughs. Her laugh is rather strange. She breathes out in
swift, rhythmic, and regular alternation with her inward breathing. It's as
though she were playing an accordion. Of her face, only her nostrils laugh. My
heart fails me. I don't know what to say. I lose my temper, crimson, jump up
from my seat and cry:
"Be quiet, won't you? Why do you sit here like two toads, poisoning the air
with your breath? I've had enough."
In vain I wait for them to stop their slanders. I prepare to go home. And it's
time, too. Past ten o'clock.
"I'll sit here a little longer," says Mikhail Fiodorovich, "if you give me
leave, Ekaterina Vladimirovna?"
"You have my leave," Katy answers.
"Bene. In that case, order another bottle, please."
Together they escort me to the hall with candles in their hands. While I'm
putting on my overcoat, Mikhail Fiodorovich says:
"You've grown terribly thin and old lately. Nicolai Stiepanovich. What's
the matter with you? Ill?
"Yes, a little."
"And he will not look after himself," Katy puts in sternly.
"Why don't you look after yourself? How can you go on like this? God
helps those who help themselves, my dear man. Give my regards to your
family and make my excuses for not coming. One of these days, before I go
abroad, I'll come to say good-bye. Without fail. I'm off next week."
I came away from Katy's irritated, frightened by the talk about my illness
and discontented with myself. "And why," I ask myself, "shouldn't I be
attended by one of my colleagues?" Instantly I see how my friend, after
sounding me, will go to the window silently, think a little while, turn towards
me and say, indifferently, trying to prevent me from reading the truth in his
face: "At the moment I don't see anything particular; but still, cher confrère, I
would advise you to break off your work...." And that will take my last hope
away.
Who doesn't have hopes? Nowadays, when I diagnose and treat myself, I
sometimes hope that my ignorance deceives me, that I am mistaken about the
albumen and sugar which I find, as well as about my heart, and also about the
anasarca which I have noticed twice in the morning. While I read over the
therapeutic text-books again with the eagerness of a hypochondriac, and
change the prescriptions every day, I still believe that I will come across
something hopeful. How trivial it all is!
Whether the sky is cloudy all over or the moon and stars are shining in it,
every time I come back home I look at it and think that death will take me
soon. Surely at that moment my thoughts should be as deep as the sky, as
bright, as striking ... but no! I think of myself, of my wife, Liza, Gnekker, the
students, people in general. My thoughts are not good, they are mean; I juggle
with myself, and at this moment my attitude towards life can be expressed in
the words the famous Arakheev wrote in one of his intimate letters: "All good
in the world is inseparably linked to bad, and there is always more bad than
good." Which means that everything is ugly, there's nothing to live for, and the
sixty-two years I have lived out must be counted as lost. I surprise myself in
