‘For how long? For a long time; for life sometimes,’ replied the lady, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Oh, but that happens only in novels and never in real life. In real life this preference for one may last for years (that happens very rarely), more often for months, or perhaps for weeks, days, or hours,’ he said, evidently aware that he was astonishing everybody by his views and pleased that it was so.
‘Oh, what are you saying?’ ‘But no …’ ‘No, allow me we all three began at once. Even the clerk uttered an indefinite sound of disapproval.
‘Yes, I know,’ the grey-haired man shouted above our voices, ‘you are talking about what is supposed to be, but I am speaking of what is. Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman11.’
‘Oh, what you say is awful! But the feeling that is called love does exist among people, and is given not for months or years, but for a lifetime!’
‘No, it does not! Even if we should grant that a man might prefer a certain woman all his life, the woman in all probability would prefer someone else;12 and so it always has been and still is in the world,’ he said, and taking out his cigarette-case he began to smoke.
‘But the feeling may be reciprocal,’ said the lawyer.
‘No, sir, it can’t!’ rejoined the other. ‘Just as it cannot be that in a cartload of peas, two marked peas will lie side by side. Besides, it is not merely this impossibility, but the inevitable satiety.13 To love one person for a whole lifetime is like saying that one candle will burn a whole life,’ he said, greedily inhaling the smoke.
‘But you are talking all the time about physical love. Don’t you acknowledge love based on identity of ideals, on spiritual affinity?’ asked the lady.
‘Spiritual affinity! Identity of ideals!’ he repeated, emitting his peculiar sound. ‘But in that case why go to bed together? (Excuse my coarseness!) Or do people go to bed together because of the identity of their ideals?’ he said, bursting into a nervous laugh.14
‘But permit me,’ said the lawyer. ‘Facts contradict you. We do see that matrimony exists, that all mankind, or the greater part of it, lives in wedlock, and many people honourably live long married lives.’
The grey-haired man again laughed.
‘First you say that marriage is based on love, and when I express a doubt as to the existence of a love other than sensual, you prove the existence of love by the fact that marriages exist. But marriages in our days are mere deception!’
‘No, allow me!’ said the lawyer. ‘I only say that marriages have existed and do exist.’
‘They do! But why? They have existed and do exist among people who see in marriage something sacramental, a mystery binding them in the sight of God. Among them marriages do exist. Among us, people marry regarding marriage as nothing but copulation, and the result is either deception or coercion.15 When it is deception it is easier to bear. The husband and wife merely deceive people by pretending to be monogamists, while living polygamously. That is bad, but still bearable. But when, as most frequently happens, the husband and wife have undertaken the external duty of living together all their lives,16 and begin to hate each other after a month, and wish to part but still continue to live together, it leads to that terrible hell which makes people take to drink, shoot themselves, and kill or poison themselves or one another,’ he went on, speaking more and more rapidly, not allowing anyone to put in a word and becoming more and more excited. We all felt embarrassed.
‘Yes, undoubtedly there are critical episodes in married life,’ said the lawyer, wishing to end this disturbingly heated conversation.
‘I see you have found out who I am!’ said the grey-haired man softly, and with apparent calm.
‘No, I have not that pleasure.’
‘It is no great pleasure. I am that Pózdnyshev in whose life that critical episode occurred to which you alluded; the episode when he killed his wife,’ he said, rapidly glancing at each of us.
No one knew what to say and all remained silent.
‘Well, never mind,’ he said with that peculiar sound of his. ‘However, pardon me. Ah!… I won’t intrude on you.’
‘Oh, no, if you please …’ said the lawyer, himself not knowing ‘if you please’ what.
But Pózdnyshev, without listening to him, rapidly turned away and went back to his seat. The lawyer and the lady whispered together. I sat down beside Pózdnyshev in silence, unable to think of anything to say. It was too dark to read, so I shut my eyes pretending that I wished to go to sleep. So we travelled in silence to the next station.
At that station the lawyer and the lady moved into another car, having some time previously consulted the guard about it. The clerk lay down on the seat and fell asleep. Pózdnyshev kept smoking and drinking tea which he had made at the last station.
When I opened my eyes and looked at him he suddenly addressed me resolutely and irritably:
‘Perhaps it is unpleasant for you to sit with me, knowing who I am? In that case I will go away.’
‘Oh no, not at all.’
‘Well then, won’t you have some? Only it’s very strong.’ He poured out some tea for me.
‘They talk … and they always lie …’ he remarked.
‘What are you speaking about?’ I asked.
‘Always about the same thing. About that love of theirs and what it is! Don’t you want to sleep?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then would you like me to tell you how that love led to what happened to me?’
‘Yes, if it will not be painful for you.’
‘No, it is painful for me to be silent. Drink the tea … or is it too strong?’
The tea was really like beer, but I drank a glass of it.5 Just then the guard entered. Pózdnyshev followed him with angry eyes, and only began to speak after he had left.17
III
‘WELL then, I’ll tell you.18 But do you really want to hear it?’ I repeated that I wished it very much. He paused, rubbed his face with his hands, and began:
‘If I am to tell it, I must tell everything from the beginning: I must tell how and why I married, and the kind of man I was before my marriage.19
‘Till my marriage I lived as everybody does, that is, everybody in our class. I am a landowner and a graduate of the university, and was a marshal of the gentry. Before my marriage I lived as everyone does, that is, dissolutely; and while living dissolutely I was convinced, like everybody in our class, that I was living as one has to. I thought I was a charming fellow and quite a moral man.20 I was not a seducer, had no unnatural tastes, did not make that the chief purpose of my life as many of my associates did, but I practised debauchery in a steady, decent way for health’s sake.21 I avoided women who might tie my hands by having a child or by attachment for me. However, there may have been children and attachments, but I acted as if there were not. And this I not only considered moral, but I was even proud of it.’
He paused and gave vent to his peculiar sound, as he evidently did whenever a new idea occurred to him.
‘And you know, that is the chief abomination!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dissoluteness does not lie in anything physical – no kind of physical misconduct is debauchery; real debauchery lies precisely in freeing oneself from moral relations with a woman with whom you have physical intimacy. And such emancipation I regarded as a merit. I remember how I once worried because I had not had an opportunity to pay a woman who gave herself to me (having probably taken a fancy to me) and how I only became tranquil after having sent her some money – thereby intimating that I did not consider myself in any way morally bound to her … Don’t nod as if you agreed with me,’ he suddenly shouted at me. ‘Don’t I know these things? We all, and you too unless you are a rare exception, hold those same views, just as I used to. Never mind, I beg your pardon, but the fact is that it’s terrible, terrible, terrible!’