Demons

The young man, who had been glancing sideways at Erkel, touched his hat; Erkel made him a bow.

'You know, Verkhovensky, eight hours on a train—it's a terrible fate. There's this Berestov going with us in first class, a very funny man, a colonel, from the estate next to mine; he's married to a Garin (nee de Garine), and, you know, he's a decent sort. Even has ideas. Only spent two days here. A desperate lover of bezique. How about it, eh? I've already got my eye on a fourth-—Pripukhlov, our bearded T—— merchant, a millionaire, a real one, that is, take my word for it. . . I'll introduce you, a very interesting bag of goods, we'll have a real laugh.'

'Bezique, with the greatest pleasure, and I'm terribly fond of it on the train, but I'm going second-class.'

'Eh, come, not a word of it! Get in with us. I'll tell them right now to shift you to first class. The head conductor does as I say. What have you got—a bag? a rug?'

'Wonderful! Let's go!'

Pyotr Stepanovich took his bag, rug, and book, and with the greatest readiness moved at once to first class. Erkel helped. The third bell sounded.

'Well, Erkel,' Pyotr Stepanovich hastily, and with a busy look, held out his hand to him for the last time through the car window, 'here I am sitting down to play cards with them.'

'But why explain to me, Pyotr Stepanovich, I understand, I understand everything, Pyotr Stepanovich!'

'Well, so, it's been a pleasure,' the latter suddenly turned away at the call of the young man, who invited him to meet his partners. And that was the last Erkel ever saw of his Pyotr Stepanovich!

He returned home quite sad. It was not that he was afraid at Pyotr Stepanovich's abandoning them so suddenly, but... but he had turned away from him so quickly when that young fop called him, and ... he might have found something else to say to him besides 'it's been a pleasure,' or ... or might at least have pressed his hand more firmly.

This last was the main thing. Something else was beginning to scratch at his poor little heart, something he himself did not yet understand, something connected with the previous evening.

7: The Last Peregrination of Stepan Trofimovich

I

I am convinced that Stepan Trofimovich was very much afraid as he felt the time of his insane undertaking draw near. I am convinced that he suffered very much from fear, especially the night before—that terrible night. Nastasya mentioned later that he had gone to bed late and slept. But that proves nothing; they say men sentenced to death sleep very soundly even the night before their execution. Though he started out with the light of day, when a nervous man always takes heart somewhat (the major, Virginsky's relative, even ceased believing in God as soon as the night was over), I am convinced that he could never before have imagined himself, without horror, alone on the high road and in such a situation. Of course, something desperate in his thoughts probably softened for him, in the beginning, the full force of that terrible feeling of sudden solitude in which he found himself all at once, the moment he left Stasie and the place he had been warming up for twenty years. But, anyhow: even with the clearest awareness of all the horrors awaiting him, he still would have gone out to the high road and gone down it! There was something proud here that he admired despite all. Oh, he could have accepted Varvara Petrovna's luxurious conditions and remained with her bounties 'comme un mere sponger'! But he had not accepted her bounties and had not remained. And now he himself was leaving her and raising 'the banner of a great idea' and going to die for it on the high road! That is precisely how he must have felt about it; that is precisely how his action must have presented itself to him.

The question also presented itself to me more than once: why did he precisely run away, that is, run with his feet, in the literal sense, and not simply drive off in a carriage? At first I explained it by fifty years of impracticality and a fantastical deviation of ideas under the effect of strong emotion. It seemed to me that the thought of traveling by post in a carriage (even with bells) must have appeared too simple and prosaic to him; pilgrimage, on the other hand, even with an umbrella, was much more beautiful and vengefully amorous. But now, when everything is over, I rather suppose that at the time it all happened in a much simpler way: first, he was afraid to hire a carriage because Varvara Petrovna might get wind of it and hold him back by force, which she would certainly have done, and he would certainly have submitted, and then—good-bye forever to the great idea. Second, in order to travel by post one must at least know where one is going. But to know this precisely constituted his chief suffering at the moment: he could not name or determine upon a place for the life of him. For if he were to decide upon some town, his undertaking would instantly become both absurd and impossible in his own eyes; he sensed that very well. What was he going to do precisely in this town and not in some other? To look for ce marchand?^[clxii] But what marchand? Here again that second and now most dreadful question popped up. In fact, there was nothing more dreadful for him than ce marchand whom he had so suddenly set off headlong in search of, and whom he was quite certainly afraid most of all to find in reality. No, better simply the high road, just simply to go out to it and go down it and not think of anything for as long as it was possible not to think. A high road is something very, very long, which one sees no end to—like human life, like the human dream. There is an idea in the high road; and what sort of idea is there in traveling by post? Traveling by post is the end of any idea. Vive la grande route,^[clxiii] and then it's whatever God sends.

After the sudden and unexpected meeting with Liza, which I have already described, he went on in even greater self-abandon. The high road passed within a quarter mile of Skvoreshniki, and—strangely—he did not even notice at first how he had come upon it. Sound reasoning, or clear awareness at the least, was unbearable to him at that moment. A drizzling rain kept stopping and starting again; but he did not notice the rain, either. He also did not notice how he had shouldered his bag, and how this made it easier for him to walk. He must have gone a half or three quarters of a mile when he suddenly stopped and looked around. Ahead of him the old, black, and deeply rutted road stretched in an endless thread, planted out with its willows; to the right—a bare place, fields harvested long, long ago; to the left—bushes, and beyond them—woods. And far away—far away the faintly noticeable line of the railroad running obliquely, with the smoke of some train on it; but the sound could no longer be heard. Stepan Trofimovich grew a bit timid, but only for a moment. He sighed aimlessly, placed his bag against a willow, and sat down to rest. As he went to sit down, he felt a chill and wrapped himself in a plaid; then, noticing the rain, he opened the umbrella over him. For quite a long time he went on sitting like that, occasionally munching his lips, the handle of the umbrella grasped tightly in his hand. Various images swept before him in feverish succession, rapidly supplanting one another in his mind. 'Lise, Lise, ' he thought, 'and ce Maurice with her... Strange people... But what was this strange fire there, and what were they talking about, and who was murdered? ... I suppose Stasie hasn't had time to find anything out yet and is still waiting for me with coffee... Cards? Did I ever lose people at cards? Hm ... in our Russia, during the time of so-called serfdom... Ah, my God, and Fedka?'