"You know what else Karmazinov says? That essentially our teaching is a denial of honor, and that it's easiest of all to carry the Russian man with us by an open right to dishonor."
"Excellent words! Golden words!" Stavrogin cried. "He's put his finger on it! The right to dishonor—and everyone will come running to us, no one will stay there! Listen, Verkhovensky, you're not from the higher police, eh?"
"Whoever has such questions in his mind doesn't voice them."
"I understand, but we're among ourselves."
"No, so far I'm not from the higher police. Enough, we're here. Concoct your physiognomy, Stavrogin; I always do when I come to them. Add some extra gloom, that's all, no need for anything else; it's quite a simple thing."
7: With Our People
I
Virginsky lived in his own house, that is, in his wife's house, on Muravyiny Street. It was a one-story wooden house, and there were no other lodgers in it. Under the pretense of the host's birthday about fifteen guests had gathered; but the party in no way resembled an ordinary provincial name-day party. From the very beginning of their cohabitation, the Virginsky spouses mutually resolved once and for all that to invite guests for one's name day was perfectly stupid, and besides "there's nothing at all to be glad about." In a few years they had somehow managed to distance themselves completely from society. He, though a man of ability, and by no means a "poor sort," for some reason seemed to everyone an odd man who loved solitude and, moreover, spoke "arrogantly." While Madame Virginsky herself, who practiced the profession of midwife, by that alone stood lowest of all on the social ladder, even lower than the priest's wife, despite her husband's rank as an officer. As for the humility befitting her station, this could not be observed in her at all. And after a most stupid and unforgivably open liaison, on principle, with a certain crook, one Captain Lebyadkin, even the most lenient of our ladies turned away from her with remarkable disdain. Yet Madame Virginsky took it all as if it were just what she wanted. Remarkably, the very same severe ladies, should they happen to be in an interesting condition, turned if possible to Arina Prokhorovna (Virginsky, that is), bypassing the other three accoucheusesof our town. She was summoned even by country landowners' wives—so great was everyone's belief in her knowledge, luck, and adroitness in critical cases. The end was that she began to practice solely in the wealthiest houses; and she loved money to the point of greed. Having fully sensed her power, she finally stopped restraining her character altogether. Perhaps it was even on purpose that, while working in the most distinguished houses, she would frighten a nervous woman in childbed with some unheard-of nihilistic forgetting of decency, or, finally, with her mockery of "all that's holy," precisely at moments when "the holy" might have been most useful. Our army doctor, Rozanov, an accoucheurhimself, bore positive witness that once, when a woman in labor was howling in pain and calling on the almighty name of God, it was precisely one of these freethinking outbursts from Arina Prokhorovna, sudden "like a rifle shot," that, by affecting the patient with fright, contributed to a most speedy delivery. But, though a nihilist, in case of necessity Arina Prokhorovna would not shrink at all, not only from social, but even from age-old, most prejudiced customs, if they could be of use to her. Not for anything would she miss, for example, the baptism of a baby she had delivered, and she would appear wearing a green silk dress with a train, and with her chignon combed into curls and ringlets, while at all other times she reached the point of reveling in her own slovenliness. And though she always maintained "a most insolent air" during the performance of the sacrament, to the embarrassment of the clergy, once the rite had been performed, it was she who unfailingly brought out the champagne (this was why she came, and got so dressed up), and woeto anyone who tried to take a glass from her without paying something "into the pot."
The guests who gathered at Virginsky's this time (almost all men) had some sort of accidental and urgent look. [146]There were no refreshments or cards. In the middle of the big drawing room, papered with supremely old blue wallpaper, two tables had been moved together and covered with a big tablecloth, not quite clean, incidentally, and on them two samovars were boiling. A huge tray with twenty-five glasses and a basket of ordinary French bread cut up into many slices, somewhat as in upper-class male and female children's boarding schools, occupied the end of the table. Tea was poured by a thirty-year-old maiden lady, the hostess's sister, browless and pale-haired, a silent and venomous being, but who shared in the new views, and of whom Virginsky, in his domestic existence, was terribly afraid. All together there were three ladies in the room: the hostess herself, her browless sister, and Virginsky's sister, the young Miss Virginsky, who had just got in from Petersburg. Arina Prokhorovna, an imposing lady of about twenty-seven, not bad-looking, somewhat unkempt, in a non-festive woolen dress of a greenish shade, was sitting and looking over her guests with a dauntless gaze, as if hastening to say with her eyes: "See how I'm not afraid of anything at all." The visiting Miss Virginsky, also not bad-looking, a student and a nihilist, well fed and well packed, like a little ball, with very red cheeks, and of short stature, had placed herself next to Arina Prokhorovna, still almost in her traveling clothes, with some bundle of papers in her hand, and was studying the guests with impatient, leaping eyes. Virginsky himself was somewhat unwell that evening, but he nevertheless came out and sat in an armchair at the tea table. The guests were all sitting down as well, and this decorous disposition on chairs around a table gave the suggestion of a meeting. Obviously they were all waiting for something, and, while waiting, engaged each other in loud but as if irrelevant conversation. When Stavrogin and Verkhovensky appeared, everything suddenly became hushed.
But I will allow myself some comments by way of clarification.
I believe that all these gentlemen had indeed gathered then in the pleasant hope of hearing something especially curious, and had been so informed before they gathered. They represented the flower of the most bright red liberalism in our ancient town and had been quite carefully selected by Virginsky for this "meeting." I will also note that some among them (though very few) had never visited him before. Of course, the majority of the guests had no clear notion of why they had been so informed. True, at that time they all took Pyotr Stepanovich for a visiting foreign emissary with plenary powers; this idea had somehow immediately taken root and, naturally, was flattering. And yet in this bunch of citizens gathered under the pretense of a name-day celebration, there were some to whom certain proposals had already been made. Pyotr Verkhovensky had managed to slap up a "fivesome" in our town, similar to the one he already had going in Moscow and also, as it now turns out, among the officers in our district. They say he had one in Kh—— province as well. These five elect were now sitting at the general table and managed to feign quite skillfully the look of the most ordinary people, so that no one could recognize them. These were—since it is no longer a secret—first, Liputin, then Virginsky himself, long-eared Shigalyov (Mrs. Virginsky's brother), Lyamshin, and, finally, a certain Tolkachenko—a strange character, already a man of forty, and famous for his vast study of the people, predominantly crooks and robbers, for which purpose he frequented the pot-houses (not only to study the people, however), and who flaunted among us his bad clothing, tarred boots, squintingly sly look, and frilly folk expressions. Lyamshin had already brought him once or twice to Stepan Trofimovich's evenings, where, however, he had produced no special effect. He would appear in town every so often, mostly when he was out of a job, and he used to work for the railroad. All five of these activists made up this first crew in the warm belief that it was just one unit among hundreds and thousands of fivesomes of the same sort scattered all over Russia, and that they all depended on some central, enormous, but secret place, which in turn was organically linked with Europe's world revolution. But, unfortunately, I must confess that even then there had begun to be discord among them. The thing was that though they had been expecting Pyotr Verkhovensky since spring, as had been announced to them first by Tolkachenko and then by the newly arrived Shigalyov, though they were expecting extraordinary miracles from him, and though they had all come at once, without the slightest criticism and at his first call, to join the circle, yet they had no sooner made up the fivesome than they all at once became offended, as it were, and precisely, I suppose, because of the quickness of their consent. They had joined, of course, out of a magnanimous sense of shame, so that no one could say later that they had not dared to join; but, still, Pyotr Verkhovensky ought really to have appreciated their noble deed and at least have told them some foremost anecdote as a reward. But Verkhovensky did not have the slightest wish to satisfy their legitimate curiosity, and would not tell them anything unnecessary; generally, he treated them with remarkable sternness and even casualness. This was decidedly irritating, and member Shigalyov was already instigating the others "to demand an accounting," but, of course, not now, at Virginsky's, where so many outsiders had gathered.