Under Western Eyes

'Stoicism! That's a pose of the Greeks and the Romans. Let's leave it to them. We are Russians, that is— children; that is—sincere; that is—cynical, if you like. But that's not a pose.'

A long silence ensued. They strolled slowly under the lime-trees. Peter Ivanovitch had put his hands behind his back. Razumov felt the ungravelled ground of the deeply shaded walk damp and as if slippery under his feet. He asked himself, with uneasiness, if he were saying the right things. The direction of the conversation ought to have been more under his control, he reflected. The great man appeared to be reflecting on his side too. He cleared his throat slightly, and Razumov felt at once a painful reawakening of scorn and fear.

'I am astonished,' began Peter Ivanovitch gently. 'Supposing you are right in your indictment, how can you raise any question of calumny or gossip, in your case? It is unreasonable. The fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch, there is not enough known of you to give hold to gossip or even calumny. Just now you are a man associated with a great deed, which had been hoped for, and tried for too, without success. People have perished for attempting that which you and Haldin have done at last. You come to us out of Russia, with that prestige. But you cannot deny that you have not been communicative, Kirylo Sidorovitch. People you have met imparted their impressions to me; one wrote this, another that, but I form my own opinions. I waited to see you first. You are a man out of the common. That's positively so. You are close, very close. This taciturnity, this severe brow, this something inflexible and secret in you, inspires hopes and a little wonder as to what you may mean. There is something of a Brutus....'

'Pray spare me those classical allusions!' burst out Razumov nervously. 'What comes Junius Brutus to do here? It is ridiculous! Do you mean to say,' he added sarcastically, but lowering his voice, 'that the Russian revolutionists are all patricians and that I am an aristocrat?'

Peter Ivanovitch, who had been helping himself with a few gestures, clasped his hands again behind his back, and made a few steps, pondering.

'Not all patricians,' he muttered at last. 'But you, at any rate, are one of us.'

Razumov smiled bitterly.

'To be sure my name is not Gugenheimer,' he said in a sneering tone. 'I am not a democratic Jew. How can I help it? Not everybody has such luck. I have no name, I have no....'

The European celebrity showed a great concern. He stepped back a pace and his arms flew in front of his person, extended, deprecatory, almost entreating. His deep bass voice was full of pain.

'But, my dear young friend!' he cried. 'My dear Kirylo Sidorovitch....'

Razumov shook his head.

'The very patronymic you are so civil as to use when addressing me I have no legal right to—but what of that? I don't wish to claim it. I have no father. So much the better. But I will tell you what: my mother's grandfather was a peasant—a serf. See how much I am one of you. I don't want anyone to claim me. But Russia can't disown me. She cannot!'

Razumov struck his breast with his fist.

'I am it!'

Peter Ivanovitch walked on slowly, his head lowered. Razumov followed, vexed with himself. That was not the right sort of talk. All sincerity was an imprudence. Yet one could not renounce truth altogether, he thought, with despair. Peter Ivanovitch, meditating behind his dark glasses, became to him suddenly so odious that if he had had a knife, he fancied he could have stabbed him not only without compunction, but with a horrible, triumphant satisfaction. His imagination dwelt on that atrocity in spite of himself. It was as if he were becoming light-headed. 'It is not what is expected of me,' he repeated to himself. 'It is not what is—I could get away by breaking the fastening on the little gate I see there in the back wall. It is a flimsy lock. Nobody in the house seems to know he is here with me. Oh yes. The hat! These women would discover presently the hat he has left on the landing. They would come upon him, lying dead in this damp, gloomy shade—but I would be gone and no one could ever...Lord! Am I going mad?' he asked himself in a fright.

The great man was heard—musing in an undertone.

'H'm, yes! That—no doubt—in a certain sense....' He raised his voice. 'There is a deal of pride about you....'

The intonation of Peter Ivanovitch took on a homely, familiar ring, acknowledging, in a way, Razumov's claim to peasant descent.

'A great deal of pride, brother Kirylo. And I don't say that you have no justification for it. I have admitted you had. I have ventured to allude to the facts of your birth simply because I attach no mean importance to it. You are one of us—un des notres. I reflect on that with satisfaction.'

'I attach some importance to it also,' said Razumov quietly. 'I won't even deny that it may have some importance for you too,' he continued, after a slight pause and with a touch of grimness of which he was himself aware, with some annoyance. He hoped it had escaped the perception of Peter Ivanovitch. 'But suppose we talk no more about it?'

'Well, we shall not—not after this one time, Kirylo Sidorovitch,' persisted the noble arch-priest of Revolution. 'This shall be the last occasion. You cannot believe for a moment that I had the slightest idea of wounding your feelings. You are clearly a superior nature—that's how I read you. Quite above the common—h'm—susceptibilities. But the fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch, I don't know your susceptibilities. Nobody, out of Russia, knows much of you—as yet!'

'You have been watching me?' suggested Razumov.

'Yes.'

The great man had spoken in a tone of perfect frankness, but as they turned their faces to each other Razumov felt baffled by the dark spectacles. Under their cover, Peter Ivanovitch hinted that he had felt for some time the need of meeting a man of energy and character, in view of a certain project. He said nothing more precise, however; and after some critical remarks upon the personalities of the various members of the committee of revolutionary action in Stuttgart, he let the conversation lapse for quite a long while. They paced the alley from end to end. Razumov, silent too, raised his eyes from time to time to cast a glance at the back of the house. It offered no sign of being inhabited. With its grimy, weather-stained walls and all the windows shuttered from top to bottom, it looked damp and gloomy and deserted. It might very well have been haunted in traditional style by some doleful, groaning, futile ghost of a middle-class order. The shades evoked, as worldly rumour had it, by Madame de S— to meet statesmen, diplomatists, deputies of various European Parliaments, must have been of another sort. Razumov