Demons, p.79
Demons, page 79
Forgive me for writing so much. I've come to my senses, and this is accidental. This way a hundred pages are too little and ten lines are enough. To call for a "nurse," ten lines are enough.
Since I left, I've been living six stations away, in the stationmaster's house. I got to know him while I was on a spree in Petersburg five years ago. No one knows I'm living here. Write care of him. I enclose the address.
Nikolai Stavrogin.
Darya Pavlovna went at once and showed the letter to Varvara Petrovna. She read it and asked Dasha to step out so that she could read it again by herself; but she somehow very quickly called her again. "Will you go?" she asked, almost timidly.
"I will," Dasha replied.
"Get ready! We're going together."
Dasha looked at her questioningly.
"And what is there for me to do here now? Does it make any difference? I, too, will register in Uri and live in the ravine... Don't worry, I won't bother you."
They quickly began getting ready, in order to catch the noon train. But before half an hour had gone by, Alexei Yegorych came from Skvoreshniki. He reported that Nikolai Vsevolodovich had "suddenly" arrived that morning, on the early train, and was in Skvoreshniki, but "in such a state that he wouldn't answer any questions, walked through all the rooms, and locked himself in his half..."
"I concluded on coming to report without his orders," Alexei Yegorych added, with a very imposing air.
Varvara Petrovna gave him a piercing look and asked no questions. The carriage was readied instantly. She went with Dasha. On the way, it is said, she crossed herself frequently.
All the doors in "his half were open, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich was nowhere to be found.
"Maybe in the attic, ma'am?" Fomushka said cautiously.
Remarkably, several servants followed Varvara Petrovna into "his half; the rest of the servants all waited in the reception room. Never before would they have allowed themselves such a breach of etiquette. Varvara Petrovna noticed it but said nothing.
They went upstairs to the attic. There were three rooms there; no one was found in any of them.
"Could he maybe have gone up there?" someone pointed at the door to the garret. Indeed, the permanently closed door to the garret was now unlocked and standing wide open. It led to a long, very narrow, and terribly steep wooden stairway that went up almost under the roof. There was a sort of little room there, too.
"I won't go up there. Why on earth would he climb up there?" Varvara Petrovna turned terribly pale, looking around at the servants. They stared at her and said nothing. Dasha was trembling.
Varvara Petrovna rushed up the stairs; Dasha followed her; but as soon as she entered the garret, she cried out and fell unconscious.
The citizen of canton Uri was hanging just inside the door. On the table lay a scrap of paper with the penciled words: "Blame no one; it was I." With it on the table there also lay a hammer, a piece of soap, and a big nail, evidently prepared in reserve. The strong silk cord upon which Nikolai Vsevolodovich had hanged himself, evidently prepared and chosen beforehand, was heavily soaped. Everything indicated premeditation and consciousness to the last minute.
Our medical men, after the autopsy, completely and emphatically ruled out insanity.
Appendix
The Original Part Two, Chapter 9
At Tikhon's
I
Nikolai Vsevolodovich did not sleep that night and spent the whole of it sitting on the sofa, often turning his fixed gaze towards one point in the corner by the chest of drawers. His lamp burned all night. Around seven in the morning he fell asleep sitting up, and when Alexei Yegorovich, as their custom had been established once and for all, came into his room at exactly half past nine with a morning cup of coffee, and woke him up by his appearance, he, having opened his eyes, seemed unpleasantly surprised that he could have slept so long and that it was already so late. He hastily drank his coffee, hastily dressed, and hurriedly left the house. To Alexei Yegorovich's cautious inquiry: "Will there be any orders?"—he answered nothing. He walked along the street, looking at the ground, deep in thought, and only at moments raising his head and suddenly showing now and then some vague but intense disquiet. At one intersection, still not far from his house, a crowd of men crossed his path, fifty or more; they walked decorously, almost silently, in deliberate order. By the shop near which he had to wait for about a minute, someone said they were "Shpigulin workers." He barely paid any attention to them. Finally, at around half past ten, he reached the gates of our Savior - St. Yefimi Bogorodsky monastery,[211] on the outskirts of town, by the river. It was only here that he suddenly seemed to remember something, stopped, hastily and anxiously felt for something in his side pocket—and grinned. Entering the grounds, he asked the first server he met how to find Bishop Tikhon, who was living in retirement in the monastery. The server began bowing and led him off at once. By the porch at the end of a long, two-storied monastery building, they met a fat and gray-haired monk, who imperiously and deftly took him over from the server and led him through a long, narrow corridor, also kept bowing (although, being unable to bend down owing to his fatness, he merely jerked his head frequently and abruptly) and kept inviting him to please come in, though Stavrogin was following him even without that. The monk kept posing all sorts of questions and talked about the father archimandrite;[212] receiving no answers, he became more and more deferential. Stavrogin noticed that he was known there, though, as far as he could remember, he had come there only in childhood. When they reached the door at the very end of the corridor, the monk opened it as if with an imperious hand, inquired familiarly of the cell attendant who sprang over to him whether they could come in, and, without even waiting for an answer, flung the door wide and, inclining, allowed the "dear" visitor to pass by: then, having been rewarded, he quickly vanished, all but fled. Nikolai Vsevolodovich entered a small room, and at almost the same moment there appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room a tall and lean man of about fifty-five, in a simple household cassock, who looked as if he were somewhat ill, with a vague smile and a strange, as if shy, glance. This was the very Tikhon of whom Nikolai Vsevolodovich had heard for the first time from Shatov, and of whom, since then, he had managed to gather certain information.
The information was diverse and contradictory, but there was something common to all of it—namely, that those who loved and those who did not love Tikhon (there were such), all somehow passed over him in silence—those who did not love him, probably out of scorn, and his devotees, even the ardent ones, out of some sort of modesty, as if they wished to conceal something about him, some weakness of his, perhaps holy folly.[213] Nikolai Vsevolodovich learned that he had been living in the monastery for some six years and that he was visited by the simplest people as well as the noblest persons; that even in far-off Petersburg he had ardent admirers, chiefly lady admirers. On the other hand, he heard from one of our dignified little old "club" gentlemen, a pious gentleman himself, that "this Tikhon is all but mad, a totally giftless being in any case, and unquestionably a tippler." I will add, running ahead of myself, that this last is decidedly nonsense, that he simply had a chronic rheumatic condition in his legs and now and then some nervous spasms. Nikolai Vsevolodovich also learned that, either from weakness of character or from "an absentmindedness unpardonable and unbefitting his rank," the retired bishop had proved unable to inspire any particular respect for himself in the monastery. It was said that the father archimandrite, a stern and strict man with regard to his duties as a superior, and known, besides, for his learning, even nursed a certain hostility towards him, as it were, and denounced him (not to his face, but indirectly) for careless living and almost for heresy. The monastery brethren, too, seemed to treat the ailing bishop not so much carelessly as, so to speak, familiarly. The two rooms that constituted Tikhon's cell were also furnished somehow strangely. Alongside clumpish old-style furniture with worn-through leather stood three or four elegant pieces: a luxurious easy chair, a big desk of excellent finish, an elegantly carved bookcase, little tables, whatnots—all given to him. There was an expensive Bukhara carpet, and straw mats alongside it. There were prints of "secular" subjects and from mythological times, and right there in the corner, on a big icon stand, icons gleaming with gold and silver, among them one from ancient times with relics. The library, they say, had also been assembled in a much too varied and contrasting way: alongside the writings of great Christian hierarchs and ascetics, there were theatrical writings "and maybe even worse." After the first greetings, spoken for some reason with obvious mutual awkwardness, hastily and even indistinctly, Tikhon led his visitor to the study, sat him down on the sofa facing the table, and placed himself next to him in a wicker armchair. Nikolai Vsevolodovich was still greatly distracted by some inner anxiety that was oppressing him. It looked as if he had resolved upon something extraordinary and unquestionable but at the same time almost impossible for him. For a minute or so he looked around the study, apparently not noticing what he was looking at; he was thinking and, of course, did not know what about. He was roused by the silence, and it suddenly seemed to him that Tikhon looked down somehow bashfully and even with some unnecessary and ridiculous smile. This instantly aroused loathing in him; he wanted to get up and leave, the more so as Tikhon, in his opinion, was decidedly drunk. But the man suddenly raised his eyes and gave him a look that was so firm and so full of thought, and at the same time so unexpected and enigmatic in its expression, that he almost jumped. He imagined somehow that Tikhon already knew why he had come, had already been forewarned (though no one in the whole world could have known the reason), and that if he did not start speaking first, it was to spare him, for fear of humiliating him.
"Do you know me?" he suddenly asked curtly. "Did I introduce myself to you when I came in? I'm rather distracted..."
"You did not introduce yourself, but I had the pleasure of seeing you once, four years ago, here at the monastery ... by chance."
Tikhon spoke very unhurriedly and evenly, in a soft voice, pronouncing the words clearly and distinctly.
"I wasn't in this monastery four years ago," Nikolai Vsevolodovich objected, somehow even rudely, "I was here only as a little child, when you weren't here at all."
"Perhaps you've forgotten?" Tikhon observed cautiously and without insistence.
"No, I haven't forgotten; and it would be funny not to remember," Stavrogin insisted somehow excessively. "Perhaps you simply heard about me and formed some idea, and so you confused that with seeing me."
Tikhon held his peace. Here Nikolai Vsevolodovich noticed how a nervous twitch would occasionally pass over his face, the sign of an old nervous disorder.
"I can see only that you are not well today," he said, "and I think it will be better if I leave."
He even made as if to get up from his place.
"Yes, today and yesterday I've been feeling severe pain in my legs, and I got little sleep last night..."
Tikhon stopped. His visitor again and suddenly fell back into his former vague pensiveness. The silence lasted a long time, about two minutes.
"Have you been watching me?" he suddenly asked, anxiously and suspiciously.
"I was looking at you and recalling your mother's features. For all the lack of external resemblance, there is much resemblance inwardly, spiritually."
"No resemblance at all, especially spiritually. None what-so-ever!" Nikolai Vsevolodovich, anxious again, insisted unnecessarily and excessively, himself not knowing why. "You're just saying it. . . out of sympathy for my position and—rubbish," he suddenly blurted out. "Hah! does my mother come to see you?"
"She does."
"I didn't know. Never heard it from her. Often?"
"Almost every month, or oftener."
"I never, never heard. Never heard. And you, of course, have heard from her that I'm crazy," he suddenly added.
"No, not really that you're crazy. However, I have also heard this notion, but from others."
"You must have a very good memory, then, if you can recall such trifles. And have you heard about the slap?"
"I've heard something."
"Everything, that is. You have an awful lot of spare time. And about the duel?"
"And about the duel."
"You've heard quite a lot here. No need for newspapers in this place. Did Shatov warn you about me? Eh?"
"No. I do know Mr. Shatov, however, but it's a long time since I've seen him."
"Hm... What's that map you've got there? Hah, a map of the last war! How do you have any need for that?"
"I was checking the chart against the text. A most interesting description."
"Show me. Yes, it's not a bad account. Strange reading for you, however."
He drew the book to him and took a fleeting glance at it. It was a voluminous and talented account of the circumstances of the last war,[214]though not so much in a military as in a purely literary sense. He turned the book over in his hands and suddenly tossed it aside impatiently.
"I decidedly do not know why I've come here," he said with disgust, looking straight into Tikhon's eyes, as if expecting him to reply.
"You, too, seem to be unwell?"
"Yes, unwell."
And suddenly, though in the most brief and curt expressions, so that some things were even hard to understand, he told how he was subject, especially at night, to hallucinations of a sort; how he sometimes saw or felt near him some malicious being, scoffing and "reasonable," "in various faces and characters, but one and the same, and I always get angry..."
These revelations were wild and incoherent, and indeed came as if from a crazy man. But, for all that, Nikolai Vsevolodovich spoke with such strange sincerity, never before seen in him, with such simple-heartedness, completely unlike him, that it seemed the former man, suddenly and inadvertently, had vanished in him completely. He was not in the least ashamed to show the fear with which he spoke about his phantom. But all this was momentary and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
"This is all rubbish," he said quickly and with awkward vexation, recollecting himself. "I'll go to a doctor."
"You certainly should," Tikhon confirmed.
"You say it so affirmatively ... Have you seen such people as I, with such visions?"
"I have, but very rarely. I remember only one such in my life, an army officer, after he lost his wife, an irreplaceable life's companion for him. The other I only heard about. They were both cured abroad... And how long have you been subject to this?"
"About a year, but it's all rubbish. I'll go to a doctor. It's all rubbish, terrible rubbish. It's I myself in various aspects and nothing more. Since I've just added this... sentence, you must be thinking I'm still doubtful and am not certain that it's I and not actually a demon?"
Tikhon gave him a questioning look.
"And ... do you see him really?" he asked, so as to remove all doubt that it was undoubtedly a false and morbid hallucination, "do you actually see some sort of image?"
"It's strange that you should insist about it, when I've already told you I do," Stavrogin again began to grow more irritated with every word, "of course I do, I see it, just as I see you... and sometimes I see it and am not sure I see it, though I do see it... and sometimes I'm not sure I see it, and I don't know what's true: he or I. . . it's all rubbish. And you, can't you somehow suppose that it's actually a demon?" he added, laughing, and changing too abruptly to a scoffing tone. "Wouldn't that be more in line with your profession?"
"It's more likely an illness, although..."
"Although what?"
"Demons undoubtedly exist, but the understanding of them can vary greatly."
"You lowered your eyes again just now," Stavrogin picked up with irritable mockery, "because you were ashamed for me, that I believe in the demon, and yet in the guise of not believing I slyly asked you the question: does he or does he not actually exist?"
Tikhon smiled vaguely.
"And, you know, lowering your eyes is totally unbecoming to you: unnatural, ridiculous, and affected, and to give satisfaction for my rudeness I will tell you seriously and brazenly: I believe in the demon, believe canonically in a personal demon, not an allegory, and I have no need to elicit anything from anyone, there you have it. You must be terribly glad ..."
He gave a nervous, unnatural laugh. Tikhon was gazing at him with curiosity, his eyes gentle and as if somewhat timid.
"Do you believe in God?" Stavrogin suddenly blurted out.
"I do."
"It is said that if you believe and tell a mountain to move, it will move[215]... that's rubbish, however. But, still, I'm curious: could you move a mountain, or not?"
"If God told me to, I could," Tikhon said softly and with restraint, again beginning to lower his eyes.
"Well, but that's the same as if God moved it himself. No, you, you, as a reward for your belief in God?"
"Perhaps not."
“‘Perhaps'? That's not bad. And why do you doubt?"
"I don't believe perfectly."
"What, you? not perfectly? not fully?"
"Yes... perhaps not to perfection."
"Well! In any case you still believe that at least with God's help you could move it, and that's no small thing. It's still a bit more than the très peu[ccxxiv] of a certain also archbishop—under the sword, it's true.[216] You are, of course, a Christian, too?"
"Let me not be ashamed of thy cross, O Lord," Tikhon almost whispered in a sort of passionate whisper, inclining his head still more. The corners of his lips suddenly moved nervously and quickly.
"And is it possible to believe in a demon, without believing at all in God?" Stavrogin laughed.
"Oh, quite possible, it happens all the time," Tikhon raised his eyes and also smiled.
"And I'm sure you find such faith more respectable than total disbelief... Oh, you cleric!" Stavrogin burst out laughing. Tikhon again smiled to him.
