We drove on. I remained silent and felt better because I was looking forward to a rest and hoped that the discomfort would pass. We went on and on in the darkness for a terribly long time as it seemed to me. We reached the town. Everybody was already in bed. Mean little houses showed up through the darkness, and the sound of our jingling bells and the clatter of the horses’ feet re-echoed, especially near the houses, and all this was far from cheerful. We passed large white houses here and there. I was impatient to get to the post-station and a samovar, and to lie down and rest.
At last we came up to a small house with a post beside it. The house was white, but appeared terribly melancholy to me, so much so that it seemed uncanny and I got out of the carriage slowly.
Sergéy briskly took out all that would be wanted, running clattering up the porch, and the sound of his steps depressed me. I entered a little corridor. A sleepy man with a spot on his cheek (which seemed to me terrifying) showed us into a room. It was gloomy. I entered, and the uncanny feeling grew worse.
‘Haven’t you got a bedroom? I should like to rest.’
‘Yes, we have. This is it.’
It was a small square room, with whitewashed walls. I remember that it tormented me that it should be square. It had one window with a red curtain, a birchwood table, and a sofa with bent-wood arms. We went in. Sergéy prepared the samovar and made tea, while I took a pillow and lay down on the sofa. I was not asleep and heard how Sergéy was busy with the tea and called me to have some. But I was afraid of getting up and arousing myself completely, and I thought how frightful it would be to sit up in that room. I did not get up but began to doze. I must have fallen asleep, for when I awoke I found myself alone in the room and it was dark. I was again as wide awake as I had been in the chaise. I felt that to sleep would be quite impossible. ‘Why have I come here? Where am I betaking myself? Why and whither am I escaping? I am running away from something dreadful and cannot escape it. I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor. Here I am, the whole of me. Neither the Pénza nor any other property will add anything to or take anything from me. And it is myself I am weary of and find intolerable and a torment. I want to fall asleep and forget myself and cannot. I cannot get away from myself!’
I went out into the passage. Sergéy was sleeping on a narrow bench with one arm hanging down, but he was sleeping peacefully and the man with the spot was also asleep. I had gone out into the corridor thinking to escape from what tormented me. But it had come out with me and cast a gloom over everything. I felt just as filled with horror or even more so.
‘But what folly this is!’ I said to myself. ‘Why am I depressed? What am I afraid of?’
‘Me!’ answered the voice of Death, inaudibly. ‘I am here!’
A cold shudder ran down my back. Yes! Death! It will come – here it is – and it ought not to be. Had I been actually facing death I could not have suffered as much as I did then. Then I should have been frightened. But now I was not frightened. I saw and felt the approach of death, and at the same time I felt that such a thing ought not to exist.
My whole being was conscious of the necessity and the right to live, and yet I felt that Death was being accomplished. And this inward conflict was terrible. I tried to throw off the horror. I found a brass candlestick, the candle in which had a long wick, and lighted it. The red glow of the candle and its size – little less than the candlestick itself— told me the same thing. Everything told me the same: ‘There is nothing in life. Death is the only real thing, and death ought not to exist.’
I tried to turn my thoughts to things that had interested me – to the estate I was to buy, and to my wife – but found nothing to cheer me. It had all become nothing. Everything was hidden by the terrible consciousness that my life was ebbing away. I needed sleep. I lay down, but the next instant I jumped up again in terror. A fit of the spleen seized me – spleen such as the feeling before one is sick, but spiritual spleen. It was uncanny and dreadful. It seems that death is terrible, but when remembering and thinking of life it is one’s dying life that is terrible. Life and death somehow merged into one another. Something was tearing my soul apart and could not complete the severance. Again I went to look at the sleepers, and again I tried to go to sleep. Always the same horror: red, white, and square. Something tearing within that yet could not be torn apart. A painful, painfully dry and spiteful feeling, no atom of kindliness, but just a dull and steady spitefulness towards myself and towards that which had made me.
What created me? God, they say. God … what about prayer? I remembered. For some twenty years I had not prayed, and I did not believe in anything, though as a matter of propriety I fasted and went to Communion every year. Now I began to pray. ‘Lord have mercy!’ ‘Our Father’. ‘Holy Virgin’. I began to compose new prayers, crossing myself, bowing down to the ground and glancing around me for fear that I might be seen. This seemed to divert me – the fear of being seen distracted my terror – and I lay down. But I had only to lie down and close my eyes for the same feeling of terror to knock and rouse me. I could bear it no longer. I woke the hotel servant and Sergéy, gave orders to harness, and we drove off again.
The fresh air and the drive made me feel better. But I realized that something new had come into my soul and poisoned my former life.
* * *
By nightfall we reached our destination. The whole day I had been fighting my depression and had mastered it, but it had left its terrible dregs in my soul as if some misfortune had befallen me, and I could forget it only for a time. There it remained at the bottom of my soul and had me in its power.
The old steward of the estate received me well, though without any pleasure. He was sorry the estate was to be sold.
The furniture in the little rooms was upholstered. There was a new, brightly polished samovar, a large-sized tea-service, and honey for tea. Everything was good. But I questioned him about the estate unwillingly, as if it were some old forgotten lesson. However, I fell asleep without any depression, and this I attributed to my having prayed again before going to bed.
After that I went on living as before, but the fear of that spleen always hung over me. I had to live without stopping to think, and above all to live in my accustomed surroundings. As a schoolboy repeats a lesson learnt by heart without thinking, so I had to live to avoid falling a prey to that awful depression I had first experienced at Arzamás.
I returned home safely. I did not buy the estate – I had not enough money – and I continued to live as before, only with this difference, that I began to pray and went to church. As before – it seemed to me, but I now remember that it was not as before – I lived on what had been previously begun. I continued to go along the rails already laid by my former strength, but I did not undertake anything new. And I took less part in those things I had previously begun. Everything seemed dull to me and I became pious. My wife noticed this, and scolded and nagged me on account of it. But my spleen did not recur at home.
But once I had unexpectedly to go to Moscow. I got ready in the afternoon and left in the evening. It was in connexion with a lawsuit. I arrived in Moscow cheerful. On the way I had talked with a landowner from Khárkov about estate-management and banks, and about where to put up, and about the theatre. We both decided to stop at the Moscow Hotel on the Myasnítsky Street, and to go to see Faust that same evening.
When we arrived I was shown into a small room. The oppressive air of the corridor filled my nostrils. A porter brought in my portmanteau and a chambermaid lighted a candle. The wick was lighted and then as usual the flame went down. In the next room someone coughed, probably an old man. The maid went out, but the porter remained and asked if he should uncord my luggage. The flame of the candle burnt up, revealing the blue wall-paper with yellow stripes on the partition, a shabby table, a small sofa, a looking-glass, a window, and the narrow dimensions of the room. And suddenly I was seized with an attack of the same horror as in Arzamás. ‘My God! How can I stay here all night?’ I thought.