if out of his mind then: “I can do everything now,” he says, “it’s proper for me to be at the court in St. Petersburg.” He was a most amiable man, but he had an inordinate love of extolling himself. And fate caught up with him: as soon as he received all two hundred roubles, he immediately started drinking and showing the money to everybody, boasting; and he was killed during the night, drunk, by one of our tradesmen, whom he had been drinking with, and robbed of his money. All this became known the next morning.
And it all ended in such a way that even now it’s the first thing they remember. Suddenly Maxim Ivanovich turns up at that same widow’s: she rented in a tradeswoman’s cottage at the edge of town. This time he went into the yard, stood before her, and bowed to the ground. And since those events the woman had been sick, could scarcely move. “Dear heart,” he cried, “honest widow, marry me, monster that I am, let me live in the world!” She looks at him, more dead than alive. “I want,” he says, “another boy to be born to us, and if he gets born, it would mean that that boy has forgiven us both, you and me. The boy told me to do it.” She can see the man is not in his right mind, he’s as if in a frenzy, but still she can’t help herself.
“That’s all trifles,” she said, “and nothing but faintheartedness. On account of this faintheartedness, I lost all my little ones. I can’t even bear the sight of you before me, still less take such an everlasting torment on myself.”
Maxim Ivanovich drove off, but he didn’t calm down. The whole town rumbled at such a wonder. And Maxim Ivanovich sent matchmakers. He summoned two aunts of his from the provincial capital, tradeswomen. Aunts or no aunts, they were relations, meaning it was honest; they started persuading her, turning her head, wouldn’t leave the cottage. He sent women from the towns-folk, from the merchants, sent the archpriest’s wife, and some wives of officials; the whole town surrounded her, but she even scorns them: “If,” she says, “my orphans could come back to life, but now what? To take such a sin on myself before my little orphans?” He persuaded the abbot, and he blew it into her ear: “You,” he says, “can call up a new man in him.” She was horrified. And people are astonished at her: “How is it even possible that she refuses such happiness!” And here’s what he tamed her with: “After all,” he says, “he’s a suicide, and not as a child, but already as a boy, and owing to his years, he couldn’t be admitted to holy communion directly,13 and so he still has to give some sort of answer. If you marry me, I’ll make you a great promise: I’ll build a new church only for the eternal commemoration of his soul.” She couldn’t stand up against that, and accepted him. So they were married.
And it turned out to everyone’s amazement. They began to live from the first day in great and unfeigned harmony, carefully preserving their marriage and like one soul in two bodies. She conceived that same winter, and they started going around to the churches of God and trembling before the wrath of the Lord. They visited three monasteries and heard prophecies. He constructed the promised church and built a hospital and an almshouse for the town. He allotted capital for widows and orphans. And he remembered everyone he had injured, and wished to recompense them; he started giving money away without stint, so that his spouse and the abbot restrained his hands, for “this,” they said, “is already enough.” Maxim Ivanovich obeyed: “I cheated Foma that time.” Well, so they paid Foma back. And Foma even wept: “I,” he says, “I’m so . . . There’s so much I’m content with even without that, and I’m eternally bounden to pray to God for you.” So everyone was touched by it, and that means it’s true what they say, that man will live by a good example. And they’re good people there.
His wife began to manage the factory herself, and in such a way that people still remember it. He didn’t stop drinking, but she took care of him on those days, and then also tried to cure him. His speech became decorous, and his voice itself even changed. He became filled with boundless pity, even for animals: from his window he saw a peasant beating his horse outrageously on the head and at once sent to him and bought the horse for twice the price. And he received the gift of tears:14 someone would start talking to him, and he’d just dissolve in tears. When her time came, the Lord finally heeded their prayers and sent them a son, and Maxim Ivanovich brightened up for the first time since those events; he gave away a lot of alms, forgave many debts, invited the whole town for the baptism. He invited the town, but the next day he came out black as night. His wife saw something had happened to him, she went up to him with the newborn. “The boy,” she says, “has forgiven us, and heeded our tears and prayers for him.” And it must be said that they hadn’t said a word about the matter for that whole year, but had kept it to themselves. And Maxim Ivanovich looked at her black as night. “Wait,” he says, “just consider, for the whole year he hasn’t come, but last night I saw him in a dream again.” “Here, for the first time, terror also entered my heart, after those strange words,” she remembered later.
And it was not for nothing that he had dreamed of the boy. As soon as Maxim Ivanovich mentioned it, almost, so to speak, that very minute, something happened to the newborn: he suddenly fell ill. And the baby was sick for eight days, they prayed tirelessly and invited doctors, and they sent for the foremost doctor to come by train from Moscow. The doctor arrived and was angry. “I,” he said, “am the foremost doctor, the whole of Moscow is waiting for me.” He prescribed some drops and left hurriedly. Took eight hundred roubles with him. And the baby died towards evening.
And what then? Maxim Ivanovich wrote a will leaving all his property to his gentle wife, handed all the capital and papers over to her, completed everything properly and in lawful order, then stood before her and bowed to the ground. “Let me go, my priceless wife, to save my soul while it’s still possible. If I spend my time without progress for my soul, I won’t come back anymore. I was hard and cruel, and imposed heavy burdens, but I imagine that the Lord will not leave me unrewarded for my future sorrows and wanderings, for to leave it all is no small cross and no small sorrow.” And his wife tried to soothe him with many tears: “You’re the only one I have on earth now, who can I stay with? I,” she says, “have laid up mercy in my heart during this year.” And all the town admonished him for the whole month, and begged him, and decided to keep him by force. But he didn’t listen to them, and left secretly at night, and never came back. And we hear that he performs his deeds of wandering and patience even to this day, and sends news to his dear wife every year . . .
Chapter Four
I
NOW I’M APPROACHING the final catastrophe, which concludes my notes. But in order to continue further, I must first run ahead of myself and explain something I had no idea of at the time of the action, but that I learned of and fully explained to myself only much later, that is, when everything was over. Otherwise I won’t be able to be clear, since I would have to write in riddles. And therefore I will give a direct and simple explanation, sacrificing so-called artistic quality, and I will do so as if it were not I writing, without the participation of my heart, but as if in the form of an entrefilet67 in the newspapers.
The thing was that my childhood friend Lambert may very well have belonged, even directly, to those vile gangs of petty crooks who communicate among themselves for the sake of what is now called blackmail, and for which they now seek legal definitions and punishments in the code of law. The gang Lambert was part of had begun in Moscow and had already done enough mischief there (afterwards it was partly uncovered). I heard later that in Moscow they had for a while an extremely experienced and clever, and no longer young, leader. They embarked on their ventures as a whole gang or in parts. Along with the most dirty and unprintable things (of which, however, information did appear in the newspapers), they also carried out rather complex and even clever ventures, under the leadership of their chief. I learned about some of them later, but I won’t go into the details. I will only mention that the main feature of their method consisted in finding out certain secrets of people, sometimes very honest and highly placed people; then they went to these persons and threatened to reveal the documents (which they sometimes didn’t have at all), and demanded a ransom to keep silent. There are things that are not sinful and not at all criminal, the revealing of which might frighten even a respectable and firm man. They mostly aimed at family secrets. To indicate how deftly their chief sometimes acted, I will tell, with no details and in only three lines, about one of their tricks. In a certain very honorable house something in fact both sinful and criminal occurred: namely, the wife of a well-known and respected man entered into a secret amorous liaison with a young and rich officer. They got wind of it, and here is what they did: they directly gave the young man to know that they were going to
