The Complete Short Novels

know yourself, here, with very few exceptions, it’s all Gogol’s pig snouts.⁸ But I figured you out at once, that time at the picnic. You’re a noble soul, an honest, lofty man! I respect you and regard it as a great honor to shake your hand!’’ he went on rapturously. ‘‘To change your life as sharply and summarily as you did, one must have lived through a complex inner process, and to continue that life now and be constantly at the height of your convictions, you must work intensely in your mind and heart day after day. Now, to begin our conversation, tell me, don’t you find that if you expended this willpower, this intensity, this whole potential on something else, for instance, so as to become in time a great scholar or artist, your life would then expand more widely and deeply, and would be more productive in all respects?’’

We fell to talking, and when we began to discuss physical labor, I expressed the following thought: it is necessary that the strong not enslave the weak, that the minority not be parasites on the majority or a pump constantly pumping its best juices out of it; that is, it is necessary that everyone without exception—the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor—participate equally in the struggle for existence, each for himself, and there is no better means of leveling in this respect than physical labor in the quality of a common service obligatory for everyone.

‘‘So, in your opinion, everyone without exception should be occupied with physical labor?’’ asked the doctor.

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘But don’t you find that if everyone, including the best people, the thinkers and great scholars, as they participate in the struggle for existence, each for himself, begins to spend time crushing stone and painting roofs, it may pose a serious threat to progress?’’

‘‘What’s the danger?’’ I asked. ‘‘Progress lies in works of love, in the fulfillment of the moral law. If you don’t enslave anyone, are not a burden to anyone, what more progress do you want?’’

‘‘But excuse me!’’ Blagovo suddenly flared up, getting to his feet. ‘‘But excuse me! If the snail in its shell is occupied with personal self-perfection and dabbles in the moral law, do you call that progress?’’

‘‘Why dabbles?’’ I was offended. ‘‘If you don’t make your neighbors feed you, clothe you, drive you around, protect you from enemies, then isn’t that progress in a life that’s all built on slavery? In my opinion, that is the most genuine progress, and perhaps the only kind possible and necessary for man.’’

‘‘The limits of universally human world progress lie in infinity, and to speak of some ‘possible’ progress, limited by our needs or temporary views—that, forgive me, is even strange.’’

‘‘If the limits of progress lie in infinity, as you say, that means its goals are undefined,’’ I said. ‘‘To live and not know definitely what you’re living for!’’

‘‘So be it! But this ‘not knowing’ is not as boring as your ‘knowing.’ I’m climbing the ladder known as progress, civilization, culture, I go on and on without knowing definitely where I’m going, but really, for the sake of this wonderful ladder alone, life is worth living; while you know what you’re living for—so that some people will not enslave others, so that an artist and the man who grinds pigments for him will have the same dinner. But that is the gray, philistine, kitchen side of life, and to live for that alone—isn’t that disgusting? If some insects enslave others, devil take them, let them eat each other! We shouldn’t think about them—they’ll die and rot anyway, no matter how you save them from slavery—we must think about that great X that awaits all mankind in the distant future.’’

Blagovo argued hotly with me, but at the same time, he was noticeably troubled by some extraneous thought.

‘‘Your sister probably won’t come,’’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘‘Yesterday she visited my family and said she’d be here. You keep saying slavery, slavery...’ he went on. ‘‘But that is a specific problem, and all such problems get solved by mankind gradually, of themselves.’’

We began to talk about gradualness. I said that each of us resolves the question of whether to do good or evil for himself, without waiting until mankind approaches the resolution of the question by way of gradual development. Besides, gradualness was a stick with two ends. Alongside the process of the gradual development of humane ideas, there could be observed the gradual growth of ideas of a different sort. There is no serfdom, but capitalism is growing instead. And at the very height of liberating ideas, the majority, just as in the times of Batu Khan,⁹ feeds, clothes, and protects the minority while going hungry, naked, and unprotected itself. This order gets along splendidly with all trends and currents, because the art of enslavement is also gradually cultivated. We no longer thrash our lackeys in the stable, but we endow slavery with refined forms, or at least we know how to find a justification for it in each particular case. With us, ideas are ideas, but if now, at the end of the nineteenth century, it were possible to heap our most unpleasant physiological functions on workers, we would do it and then, of course, say in order to justify ourselves that if the best people, the thinkers and great scholars, started wasting their precious time on these functions, it might seriously threaten progress.

But then my sister came. Seeing the doctor, she began bustling, worrying, and right away began saying it was time for her to go home to father.

‘‘Cleopatra Alexeevna,’’ Blagovo said persuasively, pressing both hands to his heart, ‘‘what will happen to your dear papa if you spend a mere half hour with me and your brother?’’

He was simple-hearted and knew how to communicate his animation to others. My sister, having thought for a moment, laughed and became all merry suddenly, unexpectedly, like the other time at the picnic. We went into the fields and, settling in the grass, continued our conversation and looked at the town, where all the windows to the west seemed bright gold because of the setting sun.

After that, each time my sister came to see me, Blagovo appeared as well, and the two greeted each other as if their meeting at my place was accidental. My sister listened to me and the doctor arguing, and her expression then was joyfully rapturous, tender, and curious, and it seemed to me that a different world was gradually opening before her eyes, which she had never seen before even in dreams, and which she now tried to puzzle out. Without the doctor, she was quiet and sad, and if she wept occasionally, sitting on my bed, it was now for reasons she did not speak about.

In August, Radish told us to get ready to go to the railway line. A couple of days before we were ‘‘herded’’ out of town, my father came to see me. He sat down and wiped his red face unhurriedly, without looking at me, then took our town Messenger from his pocket and slowly, emphasizing each word, read that my peer, the son of the office manager of the State Bank, had been appointed head of a section in the treasury department.

‘‘And now look at yourself,’’ he said, folding the newspaper, ‘‘a beggar, a ragamuffin, a scoundrel! Even tradesmen and peasants get educated in order to become human beings, while you, a Poloznev, with noble, wellborn forebears, are striving towards the mud! But I haven’t come here to talk to you; I’ve already waved you aside,’’ he went on in a stifled voice, getting up. ‘‘I’ve come to find out where your sister is, you scoundrel! She left home after dinner, and it’s now past seven o’clock, and she’s not back. She’s started going out frequently without telling me, she’s less respectful—and I see in it your wicked, mean influence. Where is she?’’