The Secret City

go. But I hope, nevertheless, that you won’t do that with this⁠—not because of any desire I may have to interest you in myself, but because of something of much more importance than either of us, something I want you to believe⁠—something you must believe.⁠ ⁠… Don’t think me mad. I am quite sane sitting here in my room writing.⁠ ⁠… Everyone is asleep. Everyone but not everything. I’ve been queer, now and again, lately⁠ ⁠… off and on. Do you know how it comes? When the inside of the world goes further and further within dragging you after it, until at last you are in the bowels of darkness choking. I’ve known such moods all my life. Haven’t you known them? Lately, of course, I’ve been drinking again. I tell you, but I wouldn’t own it to most people. But they all know, I suppose.⁠ ⁠… Alexei made me start again, but it’s foolish to put everything on to him. If I weren’t a weak man he wouldn’t be able to do anything with me, would he? Do you believe in God, and don’t you think that He intended the weak to have some compensation somewhere, because it isn’t their fault that they’re weak, is it! They can struggle and struggle, but it’s like being in a net. Well, one must just make a hole in the net large enough to get out of, that’s all. And now, ever since two days ago, when I resolved to make that hole, I’ve been quite calm. I’m as calm as anything now writing to you. Two days ago Vera told me that he was going back to England.⁠ ⁠… Oh, she was so good to me that day, Ivan Andreievitch. We sat together all alone in the flat, and she had her hand in mine, just as we used to do in the old days when I pretended to myself that she loved me. Now I know that she did not, but the warmer and more marvellous was her kindness to me, her goodness, and nobility. Do you not think, Ivan Andreievitch, that if you go deep enough in every human heart, there is this kernel of goodness, this fidelity to some ideal. Do you know we have a proverb: “In each man’s heart there is a secret town at whose altars the true prayers are offered!” Even perhaps with Alexei it is so, only there you must go very deep, and there is no time.

But I must tell you about Vera. She told me so kindly that he was going to England, and that now her whole life would be led in Nina and myself. I held her hand very close in mine and asked her, Was it really true that she loved him. And she said, yes she did, but that that she could not help. She said that she had spoken with him, and that they had decided that it would be best for him to go away. Then she begged my forgiveness for many things, because she had been harsh or cross⁠—I don’t know what things.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, she to beg forgiveness of me!

But I held her hand closer and closer, because I knew that it was the last time that I would be able so truly to hold it. How could she not see that now everything was over⁠—everything⁠—quite everything! Am I one to hold her, to chain her down, to keep her when she has already escaped? Is that the way to prove my fidelity to her?

Of course I did not speak to her of this, but for the first time in all our years together, I felt older than her and wiser. But of course Alexei saw it. How he heard I do not know, but that same day he came to me and he seemed to be very kind.

I don’t know what he said, but he explained that Vera would always be unhappy now, always, longing and waiting and hoping.⁠ ⁠… “Keep him here in Russia!” he whispered to me. “She will get tired of him then⁠—they will tire of one another; but if you send him away.⁠ ⁠…” Oh! he is a devil, Ivan Andreievitch, and why has he persecuted me so? What have I ever done to him? Nothing⁠ ⁠… but for weeks now he has pursued me and destroyed my inventions, and flung Russia in my face and made Nina, dear Nina, laugh at me, and now, when the other things are finished, he shows me that Vera will be unhappy so long as I am alive. What have I ever done, Ivan Andreievitch? I am so unimportant, why has he taken such a trouble? Today I gave him his last chance⁠ ⁠… or last night⁠ ⁠… it is four in the morning now, and the bells are already ringing for the early Mass. I said to him:

“Will you go away? Leave us all forever? Will you promise never to return?”

He said in that dreadful quiet sure way of his: “No, I will never go away until you make me.”

Vera hates him. I cannot leave her alone with him, can I? I (here there are three lines of illegible writing)⁠ ⁠… so I will think again and again of that last time when we sat together and all the good things that she said. What greatness of soul, what goodness, what splendour! And perhaps after all I am a fortunate man to be allowed to be faithful to so fine a grandeur! Many men have poor ambitions, and God bestows His gifts with strange blindness, I often think. But I am tired, and you too will be tired. Perhaps you have not got so far. I must thank you for your friendship to me. I am very grateful for it. And you, if afterwards you ever think of me, think that I always wished to⁠ ⁠… no, why should you think of me at all? But think of Russia! That is why I write this. You love Russia, and I believe