THE COMPLETE NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I can do what I like with him, that is, for his good. Horrid man that Semyon Ivanovitch! And what a nasty phiz he has!… ‘Flog him in the police station,’ he said that on purpose. No, you are talking rubbish; you can flog, but I’m not going to; I shall punish Trifon with words, I shall punish him with reproaches, he will feel it. As for flogging, h’m! … it is an open question, h’m!… What about going to Emerance? Oh, damnation take it, the cursed pavement!” he cried out, suddenly tripping up. “And this is the capital. Enlightenment! One might break one’s leg. H’m! I detest that Semyon Ivanovitch; a most revolting phiz. He was chuckling at me just now when I said they would embrace each other in a moral sense. Well, and they will embrace each other, and what’s that to do with you? I am not going to embrace you; I’d rather embrace a peasant…. If I meet a peasant, I shall talk to him. I was drunk, though, and perhaps did not express myself properly. Possibly I am not expressing myself rightly now…. H’m! I shall never touch wine again. In the evening you babble, and next morning you are sorry for it. After all, I am walking quite steadily…. But they are all scoundrels, anyhow!”

      So Ivan Ilyitch meditated incoherently and by snatches, as he went on striding along the pavement. The fresh air began to affect him, set his mind working. Five minutes later he would have felt soothed and sleepy. But all at once, scarcely two paces from the Great Prospect, he heard music. He looked round. On the other side of the street, in a very tumbledown-looking long wooden house of one storey, there was a great fête, there was the scraping of violins, and the droning of a double bass, and the squeaky tooting of a flute playing a very gay quadrille tune. Under the windows stood an audience, mainly of women in wadded pelisses with kerchiefs on their heads; they were straining every effort to see something through a crack in the shutters. Evidently there was a gay party within. The sound of the thud of dancing feet reached the other side of the street. Ivan Ilyitch saw a policeman standing not far off, and went up to him.

      “Whose house is that, brother?” he asked, flinging his expensive fur coat open, just far enough to allow the policeman to see the imposing decoration on his breast.

      “It belongs to the registration clerk Pseldonimov,” answered the policeman, drawing himself up instantly, discerning the decoration.

      “Pseldonimov? Bah! Pseldonimov! What is he up to? Getting married?”

      “Yes, your Honour, to a daughter of a titular councillor, Mlekopitaev, a titular councillor … used to serve in the municipal department. That house goes with the bride.”

      “So that now the house is Pseldonimov’s and not Mlekopitaev’s?”

      “Yes, Pseldonimov’s, your Honour. It was Mlekopitaev’s, but now it is Pseldonimov’s.”

      “H’m! I am asking you, my man, because I am his chief. I am a general in the same office in which Pseldonimov serves.”

      “Just so, your Excellency.”

      The policeman drew himself up more stiffly than ever, while Ivan Ilyitch seemed to ponder. He stood still and meditated….

      Yes, Pseldonimov really was in his department and in his own office; he remembered that. He was a little clerk with a salary of ten roubles a month. As Mr. Pralinsky had received his department very lately he might not have remembered precisely all his subordinates, but Pseldonimov he remembered just because of his surname. It had caught his eye from the very first, so that at the time he had had the curiosity to look with special attention at the possessor of such a surname. He remembered now a very young man with a long hooked nose, with tufts of flaxen hair, lean and ill-nourished, in an impossible uniform, and with unmentionables so impossible as to be actually unseemly; he remembered how the thought had flashed through his mind at the time: shouldn’t he give the poor fellow ten roubles for Christmas, to spend on his wardrobe? But as the poor fellow’s face was too austere, and his expression extremely unprepossessing, even exciting repulsion, the goodnatured idea somehow faded away of itself, so Pseldonimov did not get his tip. He had been the more surprised when this same Pseldonimov had not more than a week before asked for leave to be married. Ivan Ilyitch remembered that he had somehow not had time to go into the matter, so that the matter of the marriage had been settled offhand, in haste. But yet he did remember exactly that Pseldonimov was receiving a wooden house and four hundred roubles in cash as dowry with his bride. The circumstance had surprised him at the time; he remembered that he had made a slight jest over the juxtaposition of the names Pseldonimov and Mlekopitaev. He remembered all that clearly.

      He recalled it, and grew more and more pensive. It is well known that whole trains of thought sometimes pass through our brains instantaneously as though they were sensations without being translated into human speech, still less into literary language. But we will try to translate these sensations of our hero’s, and present to the reader at least the kernel of them, so to say, what was most essential and nearest to reality in them. For many of our sensations when translated into ordinary language seem absolutely unreal. That is why they never find expression, though every one has them. Of course Ivan Ilyitch’s sensations and thoughts were a little incoherent. But you know the reason.

      “Why,” flashed through his mind, “here we all talk and talk, but when it comes to action — it all ends in nothing. Here, for instance, take this Pseldonimov: he has just come from his wedding full of hope and excitement, looking forward to his wedding feast…. This is one of the most blissful days of his life…. Now he is busy with his guests, is giving a banquet, a modest one, poor, but gay and full of genuine gladness…. What if he knew that at this very moment I, I, his superior, his chief, am standing by his house listening to the music? Yes, really how would he feel? No, what would he feel if I suddenly walked in? H’m!… Of course at first he would be frightened, he would be dumb with embarrassment…. I should be in his way, and perhaps should upset everything. Yes, that would be so if any other general went in, but not I…. That’s a fact, any one else, but not I….

      “Yes, Stepan Nikiforovitch! You did not understand me just now, but here is an example ready for you.

      “Yes, we all make an outcry about acting humanely, but we are not capable of heroism, of fine actions.

      “What sort of heroism? This sort. Consider: in the existing relations of the various members of society, for me, for me, after midnight to go in to the wedding of my subordinate, a registration clerk, at ten roubles the month — why, it would mean embarrassment, a revolution, the last days of Pompeii, a nonsensical folly. No one would understand it. Stepan Nikiforovitch would die before he understood it. Why, he said we should break down. Yes, but that’s you old people, inert, paralytic people; but I shan’t break down, I will transform the last day of Pompeii to a day of the utmost sweetness for my subordinate, and a wild action to an action normal, patriarchal, lofty and moral. How? Like this. Kindly listen….

      “Here … I go in, suppose; they are amazed, leave off dancing, look wildly at me, draw back. Quite so, but at once I speak out: I go straight up to the frightened Pseldonimov, and with a most cordial, affable smile, in the simplest words, I say: ‘This is how it is, I have been at his Excellency Stepan Nikiforovitch’s. I expect you know, close here in the neighbourhood….’ Well, then, lightly, in a laughing way, I shall tell him of my adventure with Trifon. From Trifon I shall pass on to saying how I walked here on foot…. ‘Well, I heard music, I inquired of a policeman, and learned, brother, that it was your wedding. Let me go in, I thought, to my subordinate’s; let me see how my clerks enjoy themselves and … celebrate their wedding. I suppose you won’t turn me out?’ Turn me out! What a word for a subordinate! How the devil could he dream of turning me out! I fancy that he would be half crazy, that he would rush headlong to seat me in an armchair, would be trembling with delight, would hardly know what he was doing for the first minute!

      “Why, what can be simpler, more elegant than such an action? Why did I go in? That’s another question! That is, so to say, the moral aspect of the question. That’s the pith.

      “H’m, what was I thinking about, yes!

      “Well, of course they will make me sit down with the most important guest, some titular councillor or a relation who’s a retired captain with a red nose. Gogol describes these eccentrics so capitally. Well,