And he paces up and down the room.
Without thinking anything, I went out onto the porch and saw that there was no carriage there at all, and went back.
As I go back it sounds as if someone had given a knock with a cue.
I go into the billiard-room – there’s a strange smell.
I look: and there he lies on the floor covered with blood, with a pistol thrown down beside him. I was so frightened that I could not say a word.
He jerked his leg again and again and stretched himself. Then his throat rattled, and he stretched out like this.
And why such a sinful thing happened to him – I mean, why he ruined his soul – God alone knows: he left nothing but this paper behind, but I can’t understand it at all.
Really, what things gentlemen do! … Gentlefolk – that’s it – gentlefolk!
‘God gave me everything man can desire: wealth, a name, intelligence, and noble aspirations. I wanted to enjoy myself and trampled in the mire all that was good in me.
‘I am not dishonoured, not unfortunate, have committed no crime; but I have done worse – I have killed my feelings, my reason, my youth.
‘I am enmeshed in a dirty net from which I cannot free myself and to which I cannot get used. I continually fall and fall, feel myself falling, and cannot stop.
‘It would be easier if I were dishonoured, unfortunate, or a criminal. Then there would be some consolation of gloomy greatness in my despair. If I were dishonoured I could raise myself above the perception of honour held in our society and could despise it.
‘If I were unfortunate I could complain. If I had committed a crime I might redeem it by repentance or by suffering punishment: but I am merely base, nasty – I know it and cannot raise myself.
‘And what has ruined me? Had I some strong passion which could be my excuse? No.
‘Sevens, aces, champagne, the yellow in the middle pocket, grey or rainbow-coloured currency notes, cigarettes, women who could be bought – those are my recollections!
‘One terrible moment when I forgot myself, a humiliation I shall never wipe out, has made me recollect myself. I was horrified when I saw what an immeasurable gulf separates me from what I wished to be and might have been. In my imagination the dreams and thoughts of my youth reappeared.
‘Where are those bright thoughts of life, of eternity, of God, which filled my soul so clearly and powerfully? Where is that force of love – not confined to any person – that filled my soul with such joyful warmth? Where is my hope of development, my sympathy with all that is excellent, my love of my relations, neighbours, work, and fame? Where is my sense of duty?
‘I was insulted – and challenged the man to a duel and thought I had fully satisfied the demands of honour. I needed money to satisfy my vices and vanity, and I ruined a thousand families entrusted to me by God and did it without shame – I who so well understood those sacred obligations. A dishonourable man told me that I had no conscience and that I wished to steal – and I remained friends with him because he was a dishonourable man and told me that he had not meant to offend me. I was told that it was ridiculous to be chaste and I abandoned without regret the flower of my soul – my innocence – to a purchasable woman.
‘And how good and happy I might have been had I trodden the path which on entering life my fresh mind and my childlike, genuine feeling indicated to me! More than once I tried to escape from the rut in which my life was moving and get back to that bright path. I told myself: I will use all the will I have – but I could not. When I remained alone I felt awkward and afraid of myself. When I was with others I no longer heard the inner voice at all, and sank lower and lower.
‘At last I reached the terrible conviction that I could not rise, and left off thinking of doing so and tried to forget myself; but hopeless remorse tormented me still more. Then the idea – terrible to others but comforting to me – of suicide first occurred to me. But in that respect also I was mean and base. Only yesterday’s stupid affair with the hussar gave me sufficient resolution to carry out my intention. Nothing honourable remained in me – only vanity, and out of vanity I am doing the one good action of my life. I formerly thought that the proximity of death would uplift my soul. I was mistaken. In a quarter of an hour I shall be no more, yet my views have not changed at all. I still see, still hear, still think, in the same way. There is the same strange inconsistency, inconsequence, vacillation, and levity in my thoughts – so contrary to the unity and clarity that man is – God knows why – able to conceive of. Thoughts of what will be beyond the tomb and of what will be said tomorrow about my death at Aunt Rtíshcheva’s present themselves to me with equal force.’
1 Pan in Polish and Ukrainian means ‘squire’ or ‘gentleman’.
2 The players put the money they staked in the pockets of the billiard-table, and the player who pocketed a ball took the money when he took the ball out.
3 In the game of ‘five balls’ to pot the yellow ball in the middle pocket scores twelve, and to run in off it counts six, so that the two together at one stroke scores eighteen.
THE SNOW STORM
A SHORT STORY
I
HAVING drunk tea towards seven o’clock in the evening, I left a station, the name of which I have forgotten, though I know it was somewhere in the district of the Don Cossack Army near Novocherkássk. It was already dark when, having wrapped myself in my fur coat, I took my seat under the apron beside Alëshka in the sledge. Near the post-station it seemed mild and calm. Though no snow was falling, not a star was visible overhead and the sky looked extremely low and black, in contrast to the clean snowy plain spread out before us.
We had hardly passed the dark shapes of the windmills, one of which clumsily turned its large sails, and left the settlement behind us, when I noticed that the road had become heavier and deeper in snow, that the wind blew more fiercely on the left, tossing the horses’ tails and manes sideways, and that it kept carrying away the snow stirred up by the hoofs and sledge-runners. The sound of the bell began to die down, and through some opening in my sleeve a stream of cold air forced its way behind my back, and I recalled the station-master’s advice, not to start for fear of going astray all night and being frozen on the road.
‘Shan’t we be losing our way?’ I said to the driver, and not receiving an answer I put my question more definitely: ‘I say, driver, do you think we shall reach the next station without losing our way?’
‘God only knows,’ he answered without turning his head. ‘Just see how the snow drifts along the ground! Nothing of the road to be seen. O Lord!’
‘Yes, but you’d better tell me whether you expect to get me to the next station or not?’ I insisted. ‘Shall we get there?’
‘We ought to manage it,’ said the driver, and went on to add something the wind prevented my hearing.
I did not feel inclined to turn back, but the idea of straying about all night in the frost and snow storm on the perfectly bare steppe which made up that part of the Don Army district was also far from pleasant. Moreover, though I could not see my driver very well in the dark, I did not much like the look of him and he did not inspire me with confidence. He sat exactly in the middle of his seat with his legs in, instead of to one side; he was too big, he spoke lazily, his cap, not like those usually worn by drivers, was too big and flopped from side to side; besides, he did not urge the horses on properly, but held the reins in both hands, like a footman who had taken the coachman’s place on the box. But my chief reason for not believing in him was because he had a kerchief tied over his ears. In a word he did not please me, and that solemn stooping back of his looming in front of me seemed to bode no good.