here, it seems he’s the first with whom one can talk. He knows how to reason and is interested in precisely the right things.”
Reading and then lying in bed, he kept thinking about Ivan Dmitrich, and waking up the next morning, he remembered that he had made the acquaintance of an intelligent and interesting man yesterday and resolved to visit him again at the first opportunity
X
Ivan Dmitrich lay in the same posture as yesterday, his head clutched in his hands and his legs drawn up. His face could not be seen.
“Good day, my friend,” said Andrei Yefimych. “Are you asleep?”
“First of all, I’m not your friend,” Ivan Dmitrich said into the pillow, “and second, you’re troubling yourself in vain: you won’t get a single word out of me.”
“Strange …” Andrei Yefimych murmured in embarrassment. “Yesterday we talked so peaceably, but for some reason you suddenly became offended and broke off all at once … I probably expressed myself somehow awkwardly, or perhaps voiced a thought that doesn’t agree with your convictions …”
“Yes, I’ll believe you just like that!” said Ivan Dmitrich, rising a little and looking at the doctor mockingly and with alarm; his eyes were red. “You can do your spying and testing somewhere else, you’ve got no business here. I already understood yesterday why you came.”
“Strange fantasy!” smiled the doctor. “So you think I’m a spy?”
“Yes, I do … A spy or a doctor assigned to test me—it’s all the same.”
“Ah, really, what a … forgive me … what an odd man you are!”
The doctor sat down on a stool by the bed and shook his head reproachfully.
“But suppose you’re right,” he said. “Suppose I treacherously try to snatch at some word in order to betray you to the police. You’ll be arrested and then tried. But will it be worse for you in court or prison than it is here? And if you’re sent into exile or even to hard labor, is that worse than sitting in this annex? I suppose not … So what are you afraid of?”
These words obviously affected Ivan Dmitrich. He quietly sat up.
It was between four and five in the afternoon, the time when Andrei Yefimych usually paced his rooms and Daryushka asked him whether it was time for his beer. The weather outside was calm and clear.
“I went for a stroll after dinner and stopped by, as you see,” said the doctor. “Spring has come.”
“What month is it now? March?” asked Ivan Dmitrich.
“Yes, the end of March.”
“Is it muddy outside?”
“No, not very. There are footpaths in the garden already.”
“It would be nice to go for a ride in a carriage somewhere out of town now,” said Ivan Dmitrich, rubbing his red eyes as if he had just woken up, “then come back home to a warm, cozy study and … have a decent doctor treat your headache … I haven’t lived like a human being for so long. It’s vile here! Insufferably vile!”
After yesterday’s agitation he was tired and sluggish and spoke reluctantly. His fingers trembled, and one could see by his face that he had a bad headache.
“There’s no difference between a warm, cozy study and this ward,” said Andrei Yefimych. “A man’s peace and content are not outside but within him.”
“How so?”
“An ordinary man expects the good or the bad from outside, that is, from a carriage and a study, but a thinking man expects them from himself.”
“Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it’s warm and smells of wild orange, it doesn’t go with the climate here. Who was I talking about Diogenes with? Was it you, eh?”
“Yes, with me, yesterday.”
“Diogenes didn’t need a study and a warm room; it’s hot there as it is. You can lie in a barrel and eat oranges and olives. But if he lived in Russia, he’d ask for a room not only in December but even in May. He’d be doubled up with cold.”
“No. Like all pain in general, it’s possible not to feel cold. Marcus Aurelius14 said: ‘Pain is the living notion of pain: make an effort of will to change this notion, remove it, stop complaining, and the pain will disappear.’ That is correct. The wise man, or simply the thinking, perceptive man, is distinguished precisely by his scorn of suffering; he is always content and is surprised at nothing.”
“Then I’m an idiot, since I suffer, am discontent, and am surprised at human meanness.”
“You needn’t be. If you reflect on it more often, you will understand how insignificant is everything external that troubles us. We must strive for the comprehension of life, therein lies the true blessing.”
“Comprehension …” Ivan Dmitrich winced. “External, internal … Excuse me, but I don’t understand that. I only know,” he said, getting up and looking angrily at the doctor, “I know that God created me out of warm blood and nerves, yes, sir! And organic tissue, if it’s viable, must react to any irritation. And I do react! I respond to pain with cries and tears, to meanness with indignation, to vileness with disgust. In my opinion, this is in fact called life. The lower the organism, the less sensitive it is and the more weakly it responds to irritation, and the higher, the more susceptible it is and the more energetically it reacts to reality. How can you not know that? You’re a doctor and you don’t know such trifles! To scorn suffering, to be always content and surprised at nothing, you must reach that condition”—and Ivan Dmitrich pointed to the obese, fat-swollen peasant—“or else harden yourself with suffering to such a degree that you lose all sensitivity to it, that is, in other words, stop living. Forgive me, I’m not a wise man or a philosopher,” Ivan Dmitrich went on irritably, “and I understand nothing about it. I’m unable to reason.”
“On the contrary, your reasoning is excellent.”
