Near me stood a fellow with a swollen face and a red beard, in a torn coat with worn galoshes on his bare feet. (And it was well below freezing!) I met his look three or four times, and felt so near him that instead of being ashamed to speak to him, I should have been ashamed not to say something. So I asked where he came from. He answered readily and began talking, while others drew near. He was from Smolensk and had come to seek work, hoping to be able to buy corn and pay his taxes. ‘There is no work to be had,’ he said. ‘The soldiers have taken all the work. So I’m wandering about, and, as God knows, I haven’t eaten for two days!’ He spoke timidly, trying to smile. A seller of hot drinks (made of honey and spices) stood nearby. I called him, and he poured out a glass. The man took the drink in his hands and tried to contain the heat as he cupped his hands around the glass. While doing so, he told me about his adventures (the adventures or stories told by these men were almost all the same). He had had a little work, but it came to an end; then his purse, with his passport and what money he had, had been stolen, right here in the Lyapinsky House. Now he couldn’t get away from Moscow. He said that during the day he warmed himself in the drink shops and ate scraps of bread, which were sometimes given to him; but often they drove him away. He got his night’s lodging free here. He was now only waiting for the police to arrest him for having no passport, to imprison him or send him on foot, under escort, back to his native town. ‘They say there will be a police search on Thursday,’ he said. Prison or escort home were, for him, the Promised Land.
As he was talking, two or three others from among the crowd confirmed his words and said they were in the same mess. A skinny kid, pale, long nosed, with nothing over his shirt (which had a tear at the shoulder) and wearing a peakless cap, pushed his way sidelong to me through the crowd. He shivered violently all over, but he tried to smile contemptuously at the beggar’s speech, hoping thereby to adapt himself to my attitude. He looked me in the eye, and I offered him, too, a hot drink. On taking the glass he also warmed both hands around it, but he had only begun to speak when he was pushed aside by a big, black, Roman-nosed fellow in a print shirt and a vest but wearing no cap. The Roman-nosed man also asked for a hot drink, followed by a tall, drunken old man with a pointed beard who wore an overcoat tied around the waist with a cord and bast shoes. Then came along a dwarfish fellow with puffy cheeks and watery eyes who wore a brown nankeen pea jacket; his bare knees poked through the holes in his summer trousers and knocked together from the cold. He shivered so badly he could hardly hold the glass and spilled the contents all over himself. The rest began to abuse him, but he only smiled rather pitifully and shivered. Then came a crooked, deformed man in rags, with strips of linen tied round his bare feet; then something that looked like an officer, then something that looked like a cleric, then something strange and noseless: all were hungry, freezing, importunate, and submissive, drawing round me and pressing near the seller of hot drinks, who dispatched what he had till all was gone.
One man asked for money, and I gave him some. Another asked, then a third, and soon the whole crowd besieged me. Disorder and a crush ensued. A porter from the next house shouted to the mob to get off the sidewalk, and they submissively obeyed his command. Organizers appeared among the crowd, and they took me under their protection. They hoped to extricate me from the crush, but the crowd, which at first had stretched in a line along the sidewalk, had gathered around me in a circle. They implored me with their looks, begging. Each face was more pitiful, more jaded, more degraded than the last. I gave away everything I had with me, which was not much, and followed the crowd into the Night-Lodging House.
It was an immense building, consisting of four stories. On the top story were the men’s lodgings and, on the lower stories, the women’s. First, I entered the women’s quarters: a big room filled with bunks, arranged in two tiers, above and below. Women old and young – bizarrely dressed, ragged, with no outdoor garments – entered and took possession of their bunks. Some of the older ones crossed themselves and prayed for the founder of this refuge. Others merely laughed and swore.
I went upstairs to the men’s lodging. Among them I saw a man whom I had just given money. Seeing him, I felt suddenly ashamed, dreadfully so, and hurried away. Feeling as if I had committed a crime, I left the house and went home. There I entered the carpeted, elegant hallway of my house. Taking off my fur coat, I sat down to a five-course dinner. Five lackeys with white ties and white gloves served me the meal.
Thirty years ago, in Paris, I once saw how, in the presence of thousands of spectators, they cut a man’s head off with a guillotine. I knew he was a horrible criminal, and I knew all the arguments written in defense of that kind of action. I also knew his crime was done deliberately and intentionally. But at the moment the head and body separated, with the head toppling into the box, I gasped and realized not with my mind but with my heart and my whole soul that all the arguments in favor of capital punishment are wicked nonsense and that however many people may combine to commit murder – the worst of all crimes – and whatever they may call themselves, murder remains murder. I knew that a crime had been committed before my eyes, and that I, by my very presence and nonintervention, had approved and shared in that crime.
In the same way now, at the sight of the hunger, cold, and degradation of thousands of people, I understood not only with my mind or heart but with my very soul that the existence of tens of thousands of such people in Moscow – while I and thousands of others gorge ourselves on beefsteaks and sturgeon and cover our horses and floors with cloth or carpets – no matter what all the learned men in the world may say about its necessity, is a crime, and one committed not once but constantly. I knew that I, with my luxury, shared fully the responsibility for this crime.
29
Sasha
Papa fell asleep over his diaries, and I didn’t dare wake him. I glanced at what he had written: ‘I feel that I should go away, leaving a letter, but I’m afraid for Sonya, though I suppose it would benefit her, too.’
My hand was trembling. I turned the page and read: ‘Help me, O God, universal spirit, origin and point of life, help me, at least now in these last days and hours of my life on earth, help me to serve Thee, to live for Thee alone.’
I closed the diary so that Mama wouldn’t see. I couldn’t bear another bout of hysteria.
Papa, on the other hand, is not hysterical, though Andrey and Leo, my brothers, have been talking in the most distressing way about having a doctor declare Papa feebleminded. What they fear, of course, is the secret will. The disposition of Papa’s manuscripts and diaries preoccupies them. They are so money grubbing! Everything they do is calculated to sustain the luxury they adore.
The gloom of it all overwhelmed me, so I went into Varvara’s room. She cradled me in her arms, saying, ‘One or the other will die soon. You can count on that much. Time plays a useful function here.’
She is right, of course. The physical effects of my parents’ struggle have grown obvious to everyone. Mama’s pulse races frantically, while Papa is barely able to cross the room some days. Pale, unsteady on his feet, he is often confused. Somehow, he continues to ride Delire in the afternoons. That horse will kill him if the tension doesn’t.
One day Papa told me about an old man who had become weary of life and whose family had grown weary of him. Saying nothing, the man saddled his horse and rode off at dawn into the misty woodlands, never to be seen again.