The Gift

secondly, of preparing a letter (to “Aleksey Nikolaevich”) that would furnish proof of Chernyshevski’s active participation in the revolutionary movement. Both the one and the other were then and there concocted by Kostomarov. The forgery of the handwriting is quite evident: at the beginning the forger still took pains but then he seems to have grown bored by the work and to be in a hurry to get it over: to take but the word “I,” ya (formed in Russian script somewhat like a proofreader’s dele). In Chernyshevski’s genuine manuscripts it ends with an outgoing stroke which is straight and strong—and even curves a little to the right—while here, in the forgery, this stroke curves with a kind of queer jauntiness to the left, toward the head, as if the ya were saluting.

While these preparations went on, Nikolay Gavrilovich was held in the Alekseevski Ravelin of the Peter-and- Paul Fortress, in close proximity to the twenty-two-year-old Pisarev, who had been imprisoned there four days before him: the hypotenuse is drawn, CP, and the fateful triangle CPK is consolidated. At first, life in prison did not oppress Chernyshevski: the absence of importunate visitors even seemed refreshing… but the hush of the unknown soon began to chafe him. A “deep” matting swallowed without a trace the steps of the sentries pacing along the corridors…. The only sound that came from the outside was a clock’s classic striking which vibrated long in one’s ears…. It was a life whose portrayal demands from a writer an abundance of dots…. It was that unkind Russian isolation from which sprang the Russian dream of a kind multitude. By lifting a corner of the green baize curtain the sentry could look through the peephole in the door at the prisoner sitting on his green wooden bed or on a green chair, wearing a dressing gown of frieze and a peaked cap—one was permitted to keep one’s own headgear as long as it was not a top hat—which does credit to the government’s sense of harmony but creates by the law of negatives a rather tenacious image (as for Pisarev, he sported a fez). He was allowed a goose-quill pen, and one could write on a small green table with a sliding drawer, “whose bottom, like Achilles’ heel, had remained unpainted” (Strannolyubski).

Autumn passed. A small rowan tree grew in the prison yard. Prisoner number nine was not fond of walking; at the beginning, however, he went out every day, reasoning (a quirk of thought extremely characteristic for him) that during this time the cell was searched—consequently a refusal to go out for a walk would cause the administration to suspect he was hiding something there; but when he had become convinced that this was not so (by leaving threads here and there as marks), he sat down to write with a light heart: by winter he had finished his translation of Schlosser and had begun to translate Gervinus and T. B. Macaulay. He also wrote one or two things of his own. Let us recall the “Diary”—and from one of our much earlier paragraphs let us pick up the loose ends of some sentences dealing in advance with his writings in the fortress… or no—let us go, if you please, even further back, to the “lachrymatory theme,” which began to rotate on the initial pages of our mysteriously revolving story.

Before us is Chernyshevski’s famous letter to his wife dated December 5, 1862: a yellow diamond among the dust of his numerous works. We examine this harsh-looking and ugly but amazingly legible handwriting, with its resolute strokes at the tails of the words, with loopy R’s and P’s and the broad, fervent crosses of the “hard signs”—and our lungs dilate with a pure emotion such as we have not experienced for a long time. Strannolyubski justly designates this letter as the beginning of Cherynshevski’s brief flowering. All the fire, all the power of will and mind allotted him, everything that was supposed to burst forth at the hour of a national uprising, to burst forth and clutch in its hold, even if only for a short time, the supreme power… to jerk violently the bridle and perhaps to crimson the lip of Russia, the rearing steed, with blood—all this now found a sick outlet in his correspondence. One can say, in fact, that here was the aim and crown of all his life’s dialectic, which had long been accumulating in muffled depths—these iron, fury-driven epistles to the commission examining his case, which he included in letters to his wife, the exultant rage of his arguments and this chain-rattling megalomania. “Men will remember us with gratitude,” he wrote to Olga Sokratovna, and he turned out to be right: it was precisely this sound which echoed and spread through all the remaining space of the century, making the hearts of millions of intellectual provincials beat with sincere and noble tenderness. We have already referred to that part of the letter where he talks of his plans for compiling dictionaries. After the words “as was Aristotle” come the words: “I have begun speaking, however, of my thoughts: they are a secret; you must not tell anyone about what I say to you alone.” “Here,” comments Steklov, “on these two lines a teardrop has fallen and Chernyshevski had to repeat the blurred letters.” This is not quite right. The teardrop fell (near the fold of the sheet) before the writing of these two lines; Chernyshevski had to rewrite two words, “secret” and “about” (one at the beginning of the first line, the other at the beginning of the second), words which he had started to trace each time on the wet place and which remained therefore unfinished.

Two days afterwards, getting more and more angry and more and more believing in his invulnerability, he began to “maul” his judges. This second letter to his wife can be divided up into points: 1) I told you in connection with the rumors about my possible arrest that I was not mixed up in any affair and that the government would be forced to apologize if it arrested me. 2) I assumed this because I knew they were following me—they boasted that they were doing it very well, and I relied on their boast, for my calculation was that, knowing how I lived and what I did, they would know that their suspicions were groundless. 3) It was a stupid calculation. For I also knew that in our country, people are incapable of doing anything properly. 4) Thus by my arrest they have compromised the government. 5) What can “we” do? Apologize? But what if “he” doesn’t accept the apology, but says: You have compromised the government, it is my duty to explain this to the government. 6) Therefore “we” shall postpone the unpleasantness. 7) But the government asks from time to time whether Chernyshevski is guilty—and finally the government will obtain an answer. 8) It is that answer I am waiting for.

“The copy of a rather curious letter from Chernyshevski,” added Potapov in pencil. “But he is mistaken: no one will have to apologize.”

A few days after that he began to write his novel, What to Do?— and by January 15th he had sent the first portion to Pypin; a week later he sent a second, and Pypin handed both to Nekrasov for The Contemporary, which had again been permitted (beginning with February). At the same time The Russian Word was also allowed after a similar eight-month suspension; and in the impatient expectation of journalistic profit, the dangerous fezzed neighbor had already dipped his pen.

It is gratifying to be able to state that at this juncture some mysterious force resolved to try and save Chernyshevski at least from this mess. He was having a particularly hard time—how could one fail to have compassion? On the 28th, because the government, exasperated by his attacks, had refused him permission to see his wife, he began a hunger strike: hunger strikes were then a novelty in Russia and the exponent they found was clumsy. The guards noticed that he was wasting, but the food seemed to be getting eaten…. When, however, four days later, struck by the putrid smell in the cell, the warders searched it, they established that the solid food had been hidden among the books while the cabbage soup had been poured into cracks. On Sunday, February 3, at about one P.M., the military doctor attached to the fortress examined the prisoner and found that he was pale, his tongue fairly clear, his pulse a little weak—and on that same day at that same hour Nekrasov, on his way home (corner of Liteynaya and Basseynaya streets) in a hackney sleigh, lost the pink-paper package containing two manuscripts, each threaded through at the corners and entitled What to Do? While remembering with the lucidity of despair the whole of his route, he did not recall the fact that when nearing his house he had laid the package beside him in order to take out his purse—and just then the sleigh had turned… a crunch as it skidded… and What to Do? rolled off unnoticed: this was the attempt of the mysterious force—in this case centrifugal—to confiscate the book whose success was destined to have such a disastrous effect upon the fate of its author. But the attempt failed: on the snow near the Maryinski Hospital the pink package was picked up by a poor clerk burdened with a large family. Having plodded home, he donned his spectacles and examined his find… he saw that it was the beginning of some kind of literary work and without a tremor, and not burning his sluggish fingers, he put it aside. “Destroy it!” begged a hopeless voice: in vain. A notice of its loss was printed in the Saint Petersburg Police Gazette. The clerk carried the package to the indicated address, for which he received the promised reward: fifty silver rubles.

In the meantime his jailers had begun to give Nikolay Gavrilovich appetite-stimulating drops; twice he took them and then, suffering greatly, he announced that he would take no more, for he was refusing to eat not from absence of appetite but from caprice. On the morning of the 6th, “owing to lack of experience in discerning the symptoms of suffering,” he ended his hunger strike and had breakfast. On the 12th, Potapov informed the commandant that the commission could not permit Chernyshevski to see his wife until he had completely recovered. The following day the commandant reported that Chernyshevski was well and writing at full blast. Olga Sokratovna