“I demand an explanation, Dmitri.”
“There’s none to give. There is nothing, and there is nothing to explain, and there is nothing to understand. You are getting excited over mere nothing.”
“No, I cannot let you go so.” Kirsánof took Lopukhóf by the arm as he started to leave. “Sit down; you began to speak when it was not necessary. You don’t realize what you ask of me. You must hear me now to the end.”
Lopukhóf sat down.
“What right have you”—Kirsánof began in a voice of greater indignation than before—“what right have you to ask of me what is hard for me? Is there anything that I owe you? What does this mean? It’s absurd. Try to clear your brain of romantic nonsense. Whatever you and I regard as a normal life will come to be so, only after the ideas of general society have entirely changed. There must be absolute reorganization, that is true. It will be reorganized according as life is developed. Whoever gets the new training, helps others, that is true. But until this new education is accomplished, as long as things are not completely changed, you have no right to risk the happiness of another. This is a horrible thing; do you understand it, or have you lost your senses?”
“No; I do not understand anything at all, Aleksandr. I do not know what you are talking about. You are pleased to see a wonderful design in the simple request of a friend, not to forget him, because he likes to see you at his house. I don’t understand why you need to get excited about it.”
“No, Dmitri; in such talk you will not get rid of me with a jest. I must show you that you are crazy, in thinking about such a miserable piece of work. There are a good many things that you and I don’t acknowledge, aren’t there? We don’t acknowledge that a box on the ear carries with it something dishonorable; it is a stupid prejudice, a harmful prejudice, and nothing more. But have you the right now to subject a man to the risk of getting a boxing? That would be on your part, a mean, low abomination, for you would have taken away from a man the peace of his life. Do you understand what I mean, stupid? Do you understand that if I love this person, and you ask me to give him a box in the ear, which, according to my ideas and yours, is a trifle—do you understand that if you asked me to do this, I should consider you a fool and a low fellow; and if you compelled me to do it, I should kill either you or myself, according to whose life were the less desirable—I would kill either you or myself, but I would not do this. Do you understand this, you stupid fellow? I am speaking about a man and a slap, which is a trifle, but which takes away the peace of life from a man. Besides men, there are in this world women, who are also human beings; besides slaps, there are other kinds of trifles, which, according to your idea and mine, and which are really trifles, but which also deprive people of the peace of life. Do you understand that to subject any person, even though it be a woman, to any such thing, which, according to your opinion and mine, and in reality are trifles—well, to do any such thing, it does not matter what—do you understand, that to subject anyone to such a thing, is mean, contemptible, dishonest? Do you hear me? I say that you have dishonorable thoughts.”
“My friend, you speak the exact truth about what is honorable and dishonorable; only I do not know what you are saying these things for, and I do not understand what relation it may have to me. I have not told you anything at all, nor have I said anything about any intention of risking the peace of life of anybody in the world! nothing of the kind! You are indulging in fancies, and that’s all there is of it. I ask of you, my friend, not to forget me, because it is agreeable to me, as your friend, to spend time with you, and that’s all. Will you fulfil your friend’s request?”
“It is dishonorable, I told you, and I don’t act dishonorably.”
“It is very praiseworthy of you that you don’t; but you got angry over some fancy or other, and you dashed off into theory. You apparently wanted to theorize without any reason, without any applicability to what we were talking about. Now I also am going to theorize, also absolutely without any direct intention, I will ask you a question that has no relation, whatever to anything except the explanation of an abstract truth, without any application to anyone in particular. If anyone without any distaste to himself can afford to give another pleasure, then common sense, according to my view, demands that he give it to him, because he himself will get pleasure from it; isn’t that so?”
“That’s nonsense, Dmitri! You are off the point.”
“I am not saying anything, Aleksandr; I am only indulging myself in theoretical speculations. Here is still another: If any desire, whatsoever, is awakened for anything, does our attempt to stifle this desire ever lead to anything good? Is not that so? No, such an attempt would lead to no good. It leads only to the necessity increasing threefold; it becomes injurious or takes a false direction; it is both harmful and miserable, or if the desire is stifled also, life is stifled; that is pitiful.”
“That is not the point, Dmitri. I am going to put your theoretical problem in another form: Has anybody a right to subject a person to
