“You’re having a breakdown. But never mind. We’ll go to the doctor right now.”
“Wherever you like, only quickly, for God’s sake!”
“Don’t get worked up. You’ve got to control yourself.”
Their hands trembling, the artist and the medic dressed Vassilyev and led him outside.
“Mikhail Sergeich has been wanting to meet you for a long time,” said the medic as they went. “He’s a very nice man and knows his business extremely well. He graduated in ’eighty-two and already has a huge practice. With students he behaves like he’s one of them.”
“Quickly, quickly…,” Vassilyev urged.
Mikhail Sergeich, a plump, fair-haired doctor, met the friends courteously, professionally, coldly, and smiled with only one cheek.
“The artist and Mayer have already told me about your illness,” he said. “I’m very glad to be of help. Well, sir? I humbly invite you to sit down…”
He seated Vassilyev in a big armchair by the desk and moved a box of cigarettes towards him.
“Well, sir?” he began, stroking his knees. “Let’s get to work…How old are you?”
He asked questions, and the medic answered them. He asked whether Vassilyev’s father had any particular illnesses, whether he was given to bouts of drinking, was notably cruel or in any way odd. He asked the same things about his grandfather, mother, sisters and brothers. On learning that Vassilyev’s mother had an excellent voice and occasionally performed in the theater, he suddenly perked up and asked:
“Sorry, sir, but can you recall whether the theater was your mother’s passion?”
Twenty minutes went by. Vassilyev was tired of the way the doctor kept stroking his knees and saying the same things all the time.
“As far as I understand from your questions, doctor,” he said, “you would like to know if my illness is hereditary. It is not.”
After that, the doctor asked whether at a young age Vassilyev had had any secret vices, head injuries, passions, oddities, particular predilections. Half the questions usually asked by diligent doctors can be ignored without any detriment to one’s health, but Mikhail Sergeich, the medic, and the artist looked as though if Vassilyev failed to answer even one question all would be lost. Receiving answers, the doctor for some reason wrote them down on a piece of paper. On learning that Vassilyev had already completed courses in natural science and was now studying law, the doctor fell to thinking…
“Last year he wrote an excellent paper…,” said the medic.
“Sorry, don’t interrupt me, you keep me from concentrating,” the doctor said and smiled with one cheek. “Yes, of course, and this plays a role in anamnesis. Intense mental effort, overstrain…Yes, yes…Do you drink vodka?” he addressed Vassilyev.
“Very rarely.”
Another twenty minutes went by. The medic began in a low voice to express his opinion about the immediate causes of the breakdown and told how two days ago he, the artist, and Vassilyev had gone to S——v Lane.
The indifferent, restrained, cold tones in which his friends and the doctor talked about the women and about the wretched lane seemed strange to him in the highest degree…
“Doctor, tell me just one thing,” he said, restraining himself so as not to be rude, “is prostitution evil or not?”
“Who’s disputing it, dear boy?” said the doctor, looking as if he had resolved all these questions for himself long ago. “Who’s disputing it?”
“You’re a psychiatrist?” Vassilyev asked rudely.
“Yes, sir, a psychiatrist.”
“Maybe you’ve all got it right!” Vassilyev said, getting up from the chair and starting to pace up and down. “Maybe so! But to me all this seems astonishing! I studied in two departments—that’s seen as a great feat; I wrote a paper which three years from now will be thrown out and forgotten, and for that I’m praised to the skies; but because I can’t speak of fallen women as coolheadedly as about these chairs, you send me to the doctor, call me crazy, feel sorry for me!”
For some reason, Vassilyev suddenly felt an unbearable pity for himself, and his comrades, and all those he had seen two days ago, and for this doctor. He burst into tears and fell back into the armchair.
The friends looked questioningly at the doctor. He, with the expression of someone who understood perfectly well his tears and his despair, as if he felt himself an expert in this line, went up to Vassilyev and silently gave him some drops to drink, and then, when he calmed down, undressed him and started testing the sensitivity of his skin, his knee reflexes, and all the rest.
And Vassilyev felt better. On leaving the doctor’s office, he already felt embarrassed, the noise of the carriages did not seem so annoying, and the heaviness under his heart was getting lighter and lighter, as if it was melting away. In his hand he had two prescriptions: one for potassium bromide, the other for morphine…He had taken it all before!
Outside he stood for a while, pondered, and, saying goodbye to his friends, lazily trudged off to the university.
1889
THE BET
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker paced up and down his study remembering how fifteen years ago, in the autumn, he had given a party. At this party there were many intelligent people and they had interesting conversations. Among other things they talked about capital punishment. The guests, who included not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part had a negative view of capital punishment. They found this mode of punishment outdated, unsuitable to Christian states, and immoral. In the opinion of some, capital punishment should be universally replaced by life imprisonment.
“I disagree with you,” said the banker-host. “I have never experienced either capital punishment or life imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and humane than imprisonment. Capital punishment kills at once, and life imprisonment slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few moments, or the one who draws life out of you over the course of many years?”
“Both are equally immoral,” observed one of the guests, “because they have one and the same goal—to take away life. The state isn’t God. It has no right to take away what it cannot give back if it wants to.”
Among the guests was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. When asked his opinion, he said:
“Capital punishment and life imprisonment are equally immoral, but if I were offered the choice between execution and life in prison, I would of course choose the second. To live somehow is better than not to live at all.”
An animated discussion followed. The banker, who was then younger and more high-strung, suddenly lost his temper, pounded his fist on the table, and shouted at the young lawyer:
“That’s not true! I’ll bet two million roubles that you couldn’t sit out even five years in a prison cell.”
“If you’re serious,” said the lawyer, “I’ll bet I can sit out not five but fifteen.”
“Fifteen? You’re on!” shouted the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two million!”
“I accept! You stake your millions, and I stake my freedom!” said the lawyer.
And this wild, senseless bet was made! The banker, who back then had untold millions, a spoiled and light-minded man, was delighted with the bet. At supper he made fun of the lawyer and said:
“Come to your senses, young man, before it’s too late. For me two million is a trifle, but you risk losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won’t sit it out longer. And also don’t forget, poor fellow, that voluntary confinement is much harder than compulsory. The thought that you have the right every moment to go out into freedom will poison your whole existence in the cell. I pity you!”