Demons

'What gives you that idea?'

'You're obliged to speak now.'

Stavrogin even stopped in surprise in the middle of the street, not far from a streetlamp. Pyotr Stepanovich met his gaze boldly and calmly. Stavrogin spat and walked on.

'And are you going to speak?' he suddenly asked Pyotr Stepanovich.

'No, I'd rather listen to you.'

'Devil take you! In fact, you're giving me an idea!'

'What idea?' Pyotr Stepanovich popped up.

'Maybe I will speak there, in fact, but then I'm going to give you a beating, and a good one, you know.'

'By the way, I told Karmazinov about you this morning, that you supposedly said about him that he ought to get a whipping, and not just an honorary one, but painful, the way they whip a peasant.'

'But I never said that, ha, ha!'

'Never mind. Se non e vero . . .'^[145]

'Well, thanks, I'm sincerely grateful.'

'You know what else Karmazinov says? That essentially our teaching is a denial of honor, and that it's easiest of all to carry the Russian man with us by an open right to dishonor.'

'Excellent words! Golden words!' Stavrogin cried. 'He's put his finger on it! The right to dishonor—and everyone will come running to us, no one will stay there! Listen, Verkhovensky, you're not from the higher police, eh?'

'Whoever has such questions in his mind doesn't voice them.'

'I understand, but we're among ourselves.'

'No, so far I'm not from the higher police. Enough, we're here. Concoct your physiognomy, Stavrogin; I always do when I come to them. Add some extra gloom, that's all, no need for anything else; it's quite a simple thing.'

7: With Our People

I

Virginsky lived in his own house, that is, in his wife's house, on Muravyiny Street. It was a one-story wooden house, and there were no other lodgers in it. Under the pretense of the host's birthday about fifteen guests had gathered; but the party in no way resembled an ordinary provincial name-day party. From the very beginning of their cohabitation, the Virginsky spouses mutually resolved once and for all that to invite guests for one's name day was perfectly stupid, and besides 'there's nothing at all to be glad about.' In a few years they had somehow managed to distance themselves completely from society. He, though a man of ability, and by no means a 'poor sort,' for some reason seemed to everyone an odd man who loved solitude and, moreover, spoke 'arrogantly.' While Madame Virginsky herself, who practiced the profession of midwife, by that alone stood lowest of all on the social ladder, even lower than the priest's wife, despite her husband's rank as an officer. As for the humility befitting her station, this could not be observed in her at all. And after a most stupid and unforgivably open liaison, on principle, with a certain crook, one Captain Lebyadkin, even the most lenient of our ladies turned away from her with remarkable disdain. Yet Madame Virginsky took it all as if it were just what she wanted. Remarkably, the very same severe ladies, should they happen to be in an interesting condition, turned if possible to Arina Prokhorovna (Virginsky, that is), bypassing the other three accoucheuses of our town. She was summoned even by country landowners' wives—so great was everyone's belief in her knowledge, luck, and adroitness in critical cases. The end was that she began to practice solely in the wealthiest houses; and she loved money to the point of greed. Having fully sensed her power, she finally stopped restraining her character altogether. Perhaps it was even on purpose that, while working in the most distinguished houses, she would frighten a nervous woman in childbed with some unheard-of nihilistic forgetting of decency, or, finally, with her mockery of 'all that's holy,' precisely at moments when 'the holy' might have been most useful. Our army doctor, Rozanov, an accoucheur himself, bore positive witness that once, when a woman in labor was howling in pain and calling on the almighty name of God, it was precisely one of these freethinking outbursts from Arina Prokhorovna, sudden 'like a rifle shot,' that, by affecting the patient with fright, contributed to a most speedy delivery. But, though a nihilist, in case of necessity Arina Prokhorovna would not shrink at all, not only from social, but even from age-old, most prejudiced customs, if they could be of use to her. Not for anything would she miss, for example, the baptism of a baby she had delivered, and she would appear wearing a green silk dress with a train, and with her chignon combed into curls and ringlets, while at all other times she reached the point of reveling in her own slovenliness. And though she always maintained 'a most insolent air' during the performance of the sacrament, to the embarrassment of the clergy, once the rite had been performed, it was she who unfailingly brought out the champagne (this was why she came, and got so dressed up), and woe to anyone who tried to take a glass from her without paying something 'into the pot.'

The guests who gathered at Virginsky's this time (almost all men) had some sort of accidental and urgent look.^[146] There were no refreshments or cards. In the middle of the big drawing room, papered with supremely old blue wallpaper, two tables had been moved together and covered with a big tablecloth, not quite clean, incidentally, and on them two samovars were boiling. A huge tray with twenty-five glasses and a basket of ordinary French bread cut up into many slices, somewhat as in upper-class male and female children's boarding schools, occupied the end of the table. Tea was poured by a thirty-year-old maiden lady, the hostess's sister, browless and pale-haired, a silent and venomous being, but who shared in the new views, and of whom Virginsky, in his domestic existence, was terribly afraid. All together there were three ladies in the room: the hostess herself, her browless sister, and Virginsky's sister, the young Miss Virginsky, who had just got in from Petersburg. Arina Prokhorovna, an imposing lady of about twenty-seven, not bad-looking, somewhat unkempt, in a non-festive woolen dress of a greenish shade, was sitting and looking over her guests with a dauntless gaze, as if hastening to say with her eyes: 'See how I'm not afraid of anything at all.' The visiting Miss Virginsky, also not bad-looking, a student and a nihilist, well fed and well packed, like a little ball, with very red cheeks, and of short stature, had placed herself next to Arina Prokhorovna, still almost in her traveling clothes, with some bundle of papers in her hand, and was studying the guests with impatient, leaping eyes. Virginsky himself was somewhat unwell that evening, but he nevertheless came out and sat in an armchair at the tea table. The guests were all sitting down as well, and this decorous disposition on chairs around a table gave the suggestion of a meeting. Obviously they were all waiting for something, and, while waiting, engaged each other in loud but as if irrelevant conversation. When Stavrogin and Verkhovensky appeared, everything suddenly became hushed.