“There aren’t any moral ideas now; suddenly not one can be found, and, above all, it looks as if there never were any.”
“Before there weren’t?”
“Better drop that,” he said with obvious fatigue.
I was touched by his woeful seriousness. Ashamed of my egoism, I started to fall into his tone.
“The present time,” he began himself, after a couple of minutes of silence and still staring somewhere into space, “the present time is a time of the golden mean and insensibility, a passion for ignorance, idleness, an inability to act, and a need to have everything ready-made. No one ponders; rarely does anyone live his way into an idea.”
He broke off again and was silent for a little while. I listened.
“Now they’re deforesting Russia, exhausting her soil, turning it into steppe, and preparing it for the Kalmyks.19 If a man of hope were to appear and plant a tree, everyone would laugh: ‘Do you think you’ll live so long?’ On the other hand, those who desire the good talk about what will be in a thousand years. The binding idea has disappeared completely. Everyone lives as if in a flophouse, and tomorrow it’s up and out of Russia; everyone lives only so far as there’s enough for him . . .”
“Excuse me, Kraft, you said, ‘They’re concerned about what will be in a thousand years.’ Well, but your despair . . . about the fate of Russia . . . isn’t it the same sort of concern?”
“That . . . that is the most urgent question there is!” he said irritably and quickly got up from his place.
“Ah, yes! I forgot!” he said suddenly in a completely different voice, looking at me in bewilderment. “I invited you on business, and meanwhile . . . For God’s sake, forgive me.”
It was as if he suddenly came out of some sort of dream, almost embarrassed; he took a letter from a briefcase that lay on the table and gave it to me.
“That is what I was to deliver to you. It is a document having a certain importance,” he began with attentiveness and with a most businesslike air.
Long afterwards I was struck when I remembered this ability of his (at such a time for him!) to treat another’s business with such heartfelt attentiveness, to tell of it so calmly and firmly.
“This is a letter of that same Stolbeev, following whose death a case arose between Versilov and the Princes Sokolsky over his will. That case is now being decided in court and will surely be decided in Versilov’s favor; the law is with him. Meanwhile, in this letter, a personal one, written two years ago, the testator himself sets forth his actual will, or, more correctly, his wish, and sets it forth rather in the princes’ favor than in Versilov’s. At least the points that the Princes Sokolsky base themselves on in disputing the will gain much strength from this letter. Versilov’s opponents would give a lot for this document, which, however, has no decisive legal significance. Alexei Nikanorovich (Andronikov), who was handling Versilov’s case, kept this letter and, not long before his death, gave it to me, charging me to ‘stow it away’—perhaps fearing for his papers in anticipation of his death. I have no wish now to judge Alexei Nikanorovich’s intentions in this matter, and, I confess, after his death I was painfully undecided about what to do with this document, especially in view of the impending decision of the court case. But Marya Ivanovna, in whom Alexei Nikanorovich seems to have confided very much while he lived, brought me out of this difficulty: three weeks ago she wrote to me very resolutely that I should give the document precisely to you, and that this would also
“Listen,” I said, puzzled by such unexpected news, “what am I going to do now with this letter? How am I to act?”
“That’s as you will.”
“Impossible, I’m terribly unfree, you must admit! Versilov has been waiting so for this inheritance . . . and, you know, he’ll die without this help—and suddenly there exists such a document!”
“It exists only here in this room.”
“Can it be so?” I looked at him attentively.
“If you yourself can’t find how to act in this case, what advice can I give you?”
“But I can’t turn it over to Prince Sokolsky either; I’ll kill all Versilov’s hopes and, besides that, come out as a traitor before him . . . On the other hand, by giving it to Versilov, I’ll reduce innocent people to poverty, and still put Versilov in an impossible position: either to renounce the inheritance or to become a thief.”
“You greatly exaggerate the significance of the matter.”
“Tell me one thing. Does this document have a decisive, definitive character?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m not much of a jurist. The lawyer for the opposing side would, of course, know how to put this document to use and derive all possible benefit from it; but Alexei Nikanorovich found positively that this letter, if presented, would have no great legal significance, so that Versilov’s case could be won anyway. This document sooner represents, so to speak, a matter of conscience . . .”
“But that’s the most important thing of all,” I interrupted, “that’s precisely why Versilov will be in an impossible position.”
“He can destroy the document, however, and then, on the contrary, he’ll deliver himself from any danger.”
“Do you have special grounds for supposing that of him, Kraft? That’s what I want to know, it’s for that that I’m here!”
“I think anyone in his place would do the same.”
“And you yourself would do the same?”
“I’m not getting an inheritance, and therefore don’t know about myself.”
“Well, all right,” I said, putting the letter in my pocket. “The matter’s finished for now. Listen, Kraft. Marya Ivanovna, who, I assure you, has revealed a lot to me, told me that you and you alone could tell the truth about what happened in Ems a year and a half ago between Versilov and the Akhmakovs. I’ve been waiting for you like a sun that would light up everything for me. You don’t know my position, Kraft. I beseech you to tell me the whole
