Absorbed in his sensations, he trudged dejectedly after his tormentor, who seemed to have forgotten his existence, though he gave him a rude and careless shove with his elbow now and then. Suddenly Pyotr Stepanovitch halted in one of the principal thoroughfares and went into a restaurant.
“What are you doing?” cried Liputin, boiling over. “This is a restaurant.”
“I want a beefsteak.”
“Upon my word! It is always full of people.”
“What if it is?”
“But … we shall be late. It’s ten o’clock already.”
“You can’t be too late to go there.”
“But I shall be late! They are expecting me back.”
“Well, let them; but it would be stupid of you to go to them. With all your bobbery I’ve had no dinner. And the later you go to Kirillov’s the more sure you are to find him.”
Pyotr Stepanovitch went to a room apart. Liputin sat in an easy chair on one side, angry and resentful, and watched him eating. Half an hour and more passed. Pyotr Stepanovitch did not hurry himself; he ate with relish, rang the bell, asked for a different kind of mustard, then for beer, without saying a word to Liputin. He was pondering deeply. He was capable of doing two things at once—eating with relish and pondering deeply. Liputin loathed him so intensely at last that he could not tear himself away. It was like a nervous obsession. He counted every morsel of beefsteak that Pyotr Stepanovitch put into his mouth; he loathed him for the way he opened it, for the way he chewed, for the way he smacked his lips over the fat morsels, he loathed the steak itself. At last things began to swim before his eyes; he began to feel slightly giddy; he felt hot and cold run down his spine by turns.
“You are doing nothing; read that,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly, throwing him a sheet of paper. Liputin went nearer to the candle. The paper was closely covered with bad handwriting, with corrections in every line. By the time he had mastered it Pyotr Stepanovitch had paid his bill and was ready to go. When they were on the pavement Liputin handed him back the paper.
“Keep it; I’ll tell you afterwards. … What do you say to it, though?”
Liputin shuddered all over.
“In my opinion … such a manifesto … is nothing but a ridiculous absurdity.”
His anger broke out; he felt as though he were being caught up and carried along.
“If we decide to distribute such manifestoes,” he said, quivering all over, “we’ll make ourselves, contemptible by our stupidity and incompetence.”
“H’m! I think differently,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, walking on resolutely.
“So do I; surely it isn’t your work?”
“That’s not your business.”
“I think too that doggerel, ‘A Noble Personality,’ is the most utter trash possible, and it couldn’t have been written by Herzen.”
“You are talking nonsense; it’s a good poem.”
“I am surprised, too, for instance,” said Liputin, still dashing along with desperate leaps, “that it is suggested that we should act so as to bring everything to the ground. It’s natural in Europe to wish to destroy everything because there’s a proletariat there, but we are only amateurs here and in my opinion are only showing off.”
“I thought you were a Fourierist.”
“Fourier says something quite different, quite different.”
“I know it’s nonsense.”
“No, Fourier isn’t nonsense. … Excuse me, I can’t believe that there will be a rising in May.”
Liputin positively unbuttoned his coat, he was so hot.
“Well, that’s enough; but now, that I mayn’t forget it,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, passing with extraordinary coolness to another subject, “you will have to print this manifesto with your own hands. We’re going to dig up Shatov’s printing press, and you will take it tomorrow. As quickly as possible you must print as many copies as you can, and then distribute them all the winter. The means will be provided. You must do as many copies as possible, for you’ll be asked for them from other places.”
“No, excuse me; I can’t undertake such a … I decline.”
“You’ll take it all the same. I am acting on the instructions of the central committee, and you are bound to obey.”
“And I consider that our centres abroad have forgotten what Russia is like and have lost all touch, and that’s why they talk such nonsense. … I even think that instead of many hundreds of quintets in Russia, we are the only one that exists, and there is no network at all,” Liputin gasped finally.
“The more contemptible of you, then, to run after the cause without believing in it … and you are running after me now like a mean little cur.”
“No, I’m not. We have a full right to break off and found a new society.”
“Fool!” Pyotr Stepanovitch boomed at him threateningly all of a sudden, with flashing eyes.
They stood facing one another for some time. Pyotr Stepanovitch turned and pursued his way confidently.
The idea flashed through Liputin’s mind, “Turn and go back; if I don’t turn now I shall never go back.” He pondered this for ten steps, but at the eleventh a new and desperate idea flashed into his mind: he did not turn and did not go back.
They were approaching Filipov’s house, but before reaching it they turned down a side street, or, to be more accurate, an inconspicuous path under a fence, so that for some time they had to walk along a steep slope above a ditch where they could not keep their footing without holding the fence. At a dark corner in the slanting fence Pyotr Stepanovitch took out a plank, leaving a gap, through which he promptly scrambled. Liputin was surprised, but he crawled through after him; then they replaced the plank after them. This was the secret way by which Fedka used to visit Kirillov.
“Shatov mustn’t know that we are here,” Pyotr Stepanovitch whispered sternly to Liputin.
III
Kirillov was sitting
