II

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Erkel was a “little fool” who was only lacking in the higher form of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty—even to the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to “the cause” or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job of messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten minutes.

A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow, unreflecting nature, which was forever yearning to follow the lead of another man’s will, of course for the good of “the common” or “the great” cause. Not that that made any difference, for little fanatics like Erkel can never imagine serving a cause except by identifying it with the person who, to their minds, is the expression of it. The sensitive, affectionate and kind-hearted Erkel was perhaps the most callous of Shatov’s would-be murderers, and, though he had no personal spite against him, he would have been present at his murder without the quiver of an eyelid. He had been instructed, for instance, to have a good look at Shatov’s surroundings while carrying out his commission, and when Shatov, receiving him at the top of the stairs, blurted out to him, probably unaware in the heat of the moment, that his wife had come back to him—Erkel had the instinctive cunning to avoid displaying the slightest curiosity, though the idea flashed through his mind that the fact of his wife’s return was of great importance for the success of their undertaking.

And so it was in reality; it was only that fact that saved the “scoundrels” from Shatov’s carrying out his intention, and at the same time helped them “to get rid of him.” To begin with, it agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with such different considerations. On the contrary, he eagerly believed that Pyotr Verhovensky was running away the next day: it fell in exactly with his suspicions! Returning to the room he sat down again in a corner, leaned his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Bitter thoughts tormented him.…

Then he would raise his head again and go on tiptoe to look at her. “Good God! she will be in a fever by to-morrow morning; perhaps it’s begun already! She must have caught cold. She is not accustomed to this awful climate, and then a third-class carriage, the storm, the rain, and she has such a thin little pelisse, no wrap at all.… And to leave her like this, to abandon her in her helplessness! Her bag, too, her bag—what a tiny, light thing, all crumpled up, scarcely weighs ten pounds! Poor thing, how worn out she is, how much she’s been through! She is proud, that’s why she won’t complain. But she is irritable, very irritable. It’s illness; an angel will grow irritable in illness. What a dry forehead, it must be hot—how dark she is under the eyes, and … and yet how beautiful the oval of her face is and her rich hair, how …”

And he made haste to turn away his eyes, to walk away as though he were frightened at the very idea of seeing in her anything but an unhappy, exhausted fellow-creature who needed help—“how could he think of hopes, oh, how mean, how base is man!” And he would go back to his corner, sit down, hide his face in his hands and again sink into dreams and reminiscences … and again he was haunted by hopes.

“Oh, I am tired, I am tired,” he remembered her exclamations, her weak broken voice. “Good God! Abandon her now, and she has only eighty kopecks; she held out her purse, a tiny old thing! She’s come to look for a job. What does she know about jobs? What do they know about Russia? Why, they are like naughty children, they’ve nothing but their own fancies made up by themselves, and she is angry, poor thing, that Russia is not like their foreign dreams! The luckless, innocent creatures!… It’s really cold here, though.”

He remembered that she had complained, that he had promised to heat the stove. “There are logs here, I can fetch them if only I don’t wake her. But I can do it without waking her. But what shall I do about the veal? When she gets up perhaps she will be hungry.… Well, that will do later: Kirillov doesn’t go to bed all night. What could I cover her with, she is sleeping so soundly, but she must be cold, ah, she must be cold!” And once more he went to look at her; her dress had worked up a little and her right leg was half uncovered to the knee. He suddenly turned away almost in dismay, took off his warm overcoat, and, remaining in his wretched old jacket, covered it up, trying not to look at it.

A great deal of time was spent in righting the fire, stepping about on tiptoe, looking at the sleeping woman, dreaming in the corner, then looking at her again. Two or three hours had passed. During that time Verhovensky and Liputin had been at Kirillov’s. At last he, too, began to doze in the corner. He heard her groan; she waked up and called him; he jumped up like a criminal.

“Marie, I was dropping asleep.… Ah, what a wretch I am, Marie!”

She sat up, looking about her with wonder, seeming not to recognise where she was, and suddenly leapt up in indignation and anger.

“I’ve taken your bed, I fell asleep so tired I didn’t know what I was doing; how dared you not wake me? How could you dare imagine I meant to be a burden to you?”

“How could I wake you, Marie?”

“You could, you ought to have! You’ve no other bed here, and I’ve taken yours. You had no business to put me into a false position. Or do you suppose that I’ve come to take advantage of your charity? Kindly get into your bed at once and I’ll lie down in the corner on some chairs.”

“Marie, there aren’t chairs enough, and there’s nothing to put on them.”

“Then simply oil the floor. Or you’ll have to lie on the floor yourself. I want to lie on the floor at once, at once!”

She stood up, tried to take a step, but suddenly a violent spasm of pain deprived her of all power and all determination, and with a loud groan she fell back on the bed. Shatov ran up, but Marie, hiding her face in the pillow, seized his hand and gripped and squeezed it with all her might. This lasted a minute.

“Marie darling, there’s a doctor Frenzel living here, a friend of mine.… I could run for him.”

“Nonsense!”

“What do you mean by nonsense? Tell me, Marie, what is it hurting you? For we might try fomentations … on the stomach for instance.… I can do that without a doctor.… Or else mustard poultices.”

“What’s this,” she asked strangely, raising her head and looking at him in dismay.

“What’s what, Marie?” said Shatov, not understanding. “What are you asking about? Good heavens! I am quite bewildered, excuse my not understanding.”

“Ach, let me alone; it’s not your business to understand. And it would be too absurd …” she said with a bitter smile. “Talk to me about something. Walk about the room and talk. Don’t stand over me and don’t look at me, I particularly ask you that for the five-hundredth time!”

Shatov began walking up and down the room, looking at the floor, and doing his utmost not to glance at her.

“There’s—don’t be angry, Marie, I entreat you—there’s some veal here, and there’s tea not far off.… You had so little before.”

She made an angry gesture of disgust. Shatov bit his tongue in despair.

“Listen, I intend to open a bookbinding business here, on rational co-operative principles. Since you live here what do you think of it, would it be successful?”

“Ech, Marie, people don’t read books here, and there are none here at all. And are they likely to begin binding them!”

“Who are they?”

“The local readers and inhabitants generally, Marie.”

“Well, then, speak more clearly. They indeed, and one doesn’t know who they are. You don’t know grammar!”

“It’s in the spirit of the language,” Shatov muttered.

“Oh, get along with your spirit, you bore me. Why shouldn’t the local inhabitant or reader have his books bound?”

“Because reading books and having them bound are two different stages of development, and there’s a vast gulf between them. To begin with, a man gradually gets used to reading, in the course of ages of course, but takes no care of his books and throws them about, not thinking them worth attention. But binding implies respect for books, and implies that not only he has grown fond of reading, but that he looks upon it as something of value. That period has not been reached anywhere in Russia yet. In Europe books have been bound for a long while.”

“Though that’s pedantic, anyway, it’s not stupid, and reminds me of the time three years ago; you used to be rather clever sometimes three years ago.”

She said this as disdainfully as her other capricious remarks.

“Marie, Marie,” said Shatov, turning to her, much moved, “oh, Marie! If you only knew how much has happened in those three years! I heard afterwards that you despised me for changing my convictions. But what are the men I’ve broken with? The enemies of all true life, out-of-date Liberals who are afraid of their own independence, the flunkeys of thought, the enemies of individuality and freedom, the decrepit advocates of deadness and rottenness! All they have to offer is senility, a glorious mediocrity of the most bourgeois kind, contemptible shallowness, a jealous equality, equality without individual dignity, equality as it’s understood by flunkeys or by the French in ’93. And the worst of it is there are swarms of scoundrels among them, swarms of scoundrels!”

“Yes, there are a lot of scoundrels,” she brought out abruptly with painful effort. She lay stretched out, motionless, as though afraid to move, with her head thrown back on the pillow, rather on one side, staring at the ceiling with exhausted but glowing eyes. Her face was pale, her lips were dry and hot.

“You recognise it, Marie, you recognise it,” cried Shatov. She tried to shake her head, and suddenly the same spasm came over her again. Again she hid her face in the pillow, and again for a full minute she squeezed Shatov’s hand till it hurt. He had run up, beside himself with alarm.

“Marie, Marie! But it may be very serious, Marie!”

“Be quiet … I won’t have it, I won’t have it,” she screamed almost furiously, turning her face upwards again. “Don’t dare to look at me with your sympathy! Walk about the room, say something, talk.…”

Shatov began muttering something again, like one distraught.

“What do you do here?” she asked, interrupting him with contemptuous impatience.

“I work in a merchant’s office. I could get a fair amount of money even here if I cared to, Marie.”

“So much the better for you.…”

“Oh, don’t suppose I meant anything, Marie. I said it without thinking.”

“And what do you do besides? What are you preaching? You can’t exist without preaching, that’s your character!”

“I am preaching God, Marie.”

“In whom you don’t believe yourself. I never could see the idea of that.”

“Let’s leave that, Marie; we’ll talk of that later.”

“What sort of person was this Marya Timofyevna here?”

“We’ll talk of that later too, Marie.”

“Don’t dare to say such things to me! Is it true that her death may have been caused by … the wickedness … of these people?”

“Not a doubt of it,” growled Shatov.

Marie suddenly raised her head and cried out painfully:

“Don’t dare speak of that to me again, don’t dare to, never, never!”

And she fell back in bed again, overcome by the same convulsive agony; it was the third time, but this time her groans were louder, in fact she screamed.

“Oh, you insufferable man! Oh, you unbearable man,” she cried, tossing about recklessly, and pushing away Shatov as he bent over her.

“Marie, I’ll do anything you like.… I’ll walk about and talk.…”

“Surely you must see that it has begun!”

“What’s begun, Marie?”

“How can I tell! Do I know anything about it?… I curse myself! Oh, curse it all from the beginning!”

“Marie, if you’d tell me what’s beginning … or else I … if you don’t, what am I to make of it?”

“You are a useless, theoretical babbler. Oh, curse everything on earth!”

“Marie, Marie!” He seriously thought that she was beginning to go mad.

“Surely you must see that I am in the agonies of childbirth,” she said, sitting up and gazing at him with a terrible, hysterical vindictiveness that distorted her whole face. “I curse him before he is born, this child!”

“Marie,” cried Shatov, realising at last what it meant. “Marie … but why didn’t you tell me before.” He pulled himself together at once and seized his cap with an air of vigorous determination.

“How could I tell when I came in here? Should I have come to you if I’d known? I was told it would be another ten days! Where are you going?… Where are you going? You mustn’t dare!”

“To fetch a midwife! I’ll sell the revolver. We must get money before anything else now.”

“Don’t dare to do anything, don’t dare to fetch a midwife! Bring a peasant woman, any old woman, I’ve eighty kopecks in my purse.… Peasant women have babies without midwives.… And if I die, so much the better.…”

“You shall have a midwife and an old woman too. But how am I to leave you alone, Marie!”

But reflecting that it was better to leave her alone now in spite of her desperate state than to leave her without help later, he paid no attention to her groans, nor her angry exclamations, but rushed downstairs, hurrying all he could.

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2. Chapter 5. A Wanderer
Part 3
Novel «The Possessed or, The Devils» by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

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