He spoke mournfully and yet I didn’t know whether he was sincere or not. He always had a manner which nothing would have made him drop.
4
Then I besieged him with questions, I fell upon him like a starving man on bread. He always answered me readily and straightforwardly, but in the end always went off into the widest generalizations, so that in reality one could draw no conclusions from it. And yet these questions had worried me all my life, and I frankly confess that even in Moscow I had put off settling them till I should meet him in Petersburg. I told him this plainly, and he did not laugh at me — on the contrary, I remember he pressed my hand.
On general politics and social questions I could get nothing out of him, and yet in connection with my “idea” those subjects troubled me more than anything. Of men like Dergatchev I once drew from him the remark that “they were below all criticism,” but at the same time he added strangely that “he reserved the right of attaching no significance to his opinions.” For a very long time he would say nothing on the question how the modern state would end, and how the social community would be built up anew, but in the end I literally wrenched a few words out of him.
“I imagine that all that will come about in a very commonplace way,” he said once. “Simply un beau matin, in spite of all the balance-sheets on budget days, and the absence of deficits, all the states without exception will be unable to pay, so that they’ll all be landed in general bankruptcy. At the same time all the conservative elements of the whole world will rise up in opposition to everything, because they will be the bondholders and creditors, and they won’t want to allow the bankruptcy. Then, of course, there will follow a general liquidation, so to speak; the Jews will come to the fore and the reign of the Jews will begin: and then all those who have never had shares in anything, and in fact have never had anything at all, that is all the beggars, will naturally be unwilling to take part in the liquidation. . . . A struggle will begin, and after seventy-seven battles the beggars will destroy the shareholders and carry off their shares and take their places as shareholders, of course. Perhaps they’ll say something new too, and perhaps they won’t. Most likely they’ll go bankrupt too. Further than that, my dear boy, I can’t undertake to predict the destinies by which the face of this world will be changed. Look in the Apocalypse though . . .”
“But can it all be so materialistic? Can the modern world come to an end simply through finance?”
“Oh, of course, I’ve only chosen one aspect of the picture, but that aspect is bound up with the whole by indissoluble bonds, so to speak.”
“What’s to be done?”
“Oh dear, don’t be in a hurry; it’s not all coming so soon. In any case, to do nothing is always best, one’s conscience is at rest anyway, knowing that one’s had no share in anything.”
“Aië, do stop that, talk sense. I want to know what I’m to do and how I’m to live.”
“What you are to do, my dear? Be honest, never lie, don’t covet your neighbour’s house; in fact, read the Ten Commandments — it’s written there once for all.”
“Don’t talk like that, all that’s so old, and besides . . . it’s all words; I want something real.”
“Well, if you’re fearfully devoured by eunui, try to love some one or something, or at any rate to attach yourself to something.”
“You’re only laughing! Besides, what can I do alone with your Ten Commandments?”
“Well, keep them in spite of all your doubts and questions, and you’ll be a great man.”
“Whom no one will know of.”
“‘There is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest.’”
“You’re certainly laughing.”
“Well, if you take it so to heart you’d better try as soon as possible to specialize, take up architecture or the law, and then when you’re busy with serious work you’ll be more settled in your mind and forget trifles.”
I was silent. What could I gather from this? And yet, after every such conversation I was more troubled than before. Moreover I saw clearly that there always remained in him, as it were, something secret, and that drew me to him more and more.
“Listen,” I said, interrupting him one day, “I always suspect that you say all this only out of bitterness and suffering, but that secretly you are a fanatic over some idea, and are only concealing it, or ashamed to admit it.”
“Thank you, my dear.”
“Listen, nothing’s better than being useful. Tell me how, at the present moment, I can be most of use. I know it’s not for you to decide that, but I’m only asking for your opinion. You tell me, and what you say I swear I’ll do! Well, what is the great thought?”
“Well, to turn stones into bread. That’s a great thought.”
“The greatest? Yes, really, you have suggested quite a new path. Tell me, is it the greatest?”
“It’s very great, my dear boy, very great, but it’s not the greatest. It’s great but secondary, and only great at the present time. Man will be satisfied and forget; he will say: ‘I’ve eaten it and what am I to do now?’ The question will remain open for all time.”
“You spoke once of the ‘Geneva ideas.’ I didn’t understand what was meant by the ‘Geneva ideas.’”
“The ‘Geneva idea’ is the idea of virtue without Christ, my boy, the modern idea, or, more correctly, the ideas of all modern civilization. In fact, it’s one of those long stories which it’s very dull to begin, and it will be a great deal better if we talk of other things, and better still if we’re silent about other things.”
“You always want to be silent!”
“My dear, remember that to be silent is good, safe, and picturesque.”
“Picturesque?”
“Of course. Silence is always picturesque, and the man who is silent always looks nicer than the man who is speaking.”
“Why, talking as we do is no better than being silent. Damn such picturesqueness, and still more damn such profitableness.”
“My dear,” he said suddenly, rather changing his tone, speaking with real feeling and even with a certain insistence, “I don’t want to seduce you from your ideals to any sort of bourgeois virtue, I’m not assuring you that ‘happiness is better than heroism’; on the contrary ‘heroism is finer than any happiness,’ and the very capacity for it alone constitutes happiness. That’s a settled thing between us. I respect you just for being able in these mawkish days to set up some sort of an ‘idea’ in your soul (don’t be uneasy, I remember perfectly well). But yet one must think of proportion, for now you want to live a resounding life, to set fire to something, to smash something, to rise above everything in Russia, to call up storm-clouds, to throw every one into terror and ecstasy, while you vanish yourself in North America. I’ve no doubt you’ve something of that sort in your heart, and so I feel it necessary to warn you, for I really love you, my dear.”
What could I gather from that either? There was nothing in it but anxiety for me, for my material prosperity; it betrayed the father with the father’s kindly but prosaic feelings. Was this what I wanted by way of an idea for the sake of which any honest father would send his son to face death, as the ancient Roman Horatius sent his sons for the idea of Rome?
I often pressed him on the subject of religion, but there the fog was thicker than ever. When I asked him what to do about that, he answered in the stupidest way, as though to a child: