The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

innocence!) all about her childhood, her infancy, her parental home, her father and mother. But I immediately doused all this ecstasy at once with cold water. It was in this that my idea lay. To her raptures I responded with silence, benevolent, of course… but all the same she quickly saw that we were different, and that I was—a riddle. And I was, above all, aiming at a riddle! It was for the sake of posing a riddle, perhaps, that I did all this stupidity! First of all, sternness—so it was under sternness that I brought her into my house. In short, though I was very pleased, I set about creating a whole system then. Oh, it poured out by itself quite effortlessly. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, I had to create this system, owing to an irresistible circumstance—what am I doing, in fact, slandering myself! The system was a true one. No, listen, if you’re going to judge a man, you must know the case… Listen!

How shall I begin, because it’s very difficult. Once you start justifying yourself—it gets difficult. You see: young people, for instance, despise money—I right away emphasized money; I stressed money. And I emphasized it so much that she began to grow more and more silent. She’d open her big eyes, listen, look, and keep silent. You see: young people are magnanimous, that is, the good ones are, magnanimous and impulsive, but they have little tolerance, the moment something’s not right—there’s scorn. And I wanted breadth, I wanted to implant breadth right in her heart, implant it in her own heart’s view, isn’t that so? I’ll take a banal example: how, for instance, should I explain my pawnshop to such a character? Naturally, I didn’t speak of it directly, otherwise it would have come out that I was asking forgiveness for the pawnshop, but I acted, so to speak, through pride, I spoke almost silently. And I’m a master of speaking silently, I’ve spent my whole life speaking silently and have silently lived through whole tragedies with myself. Oh, but I was also unhappy! I had been discarded by everyone, discarded and forgotten, and no one, no one knows it! And suddenly this sixteen-year-old girl snatched all sorts of details from mean people afterward and thought she knew everything, but the secret meanwhile remained only in this man’s breast! I kept silent, and especially, especially kept silent with her, right up till yesterday—why did I keep silent? As a proud man. I wanted her to find out herself, without me, not from mean people’s talk now, but that she should guess herself about this man and comprehend him! Receiving her into my house, I wanted full respect. I wanted her to stand before me entreatingly for the sake of my suffering—and I was worth it. Oh, I was always proud, I always wanted all or nothing! That’s precisely why, because I’m no halfway man in happiness, but wanted all, that’s precisely why I was forced to act as I did then, as if to say: “Guess yourself, and appreciate it!” Because, you must agree, if I myself had begun explaining and prompting, shuffling and begging for respect—it would have been as if I were begging alms… But anyhow… but anyhow, why am I talking about that?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! Directly and mercilessly (and I emphasize that it was mercilessly), I explained to her then, in a few words, that the magnanimity of youth is lovely, but—not worth a groat. Why not? Because it comes

cheap, it’s acquired without living, it’s all, so to speak, “the first impressions of being,”⁵ but let’s see you do any work! Cheap magnanimity is always easy, and even to give your life—that, too, is cheap, because here it’s just hot blood and surplus strength,⁶ one passionately desires beauty! No, take a deed of magnanimity that’s difficult, quiet, inaudible, unglamorous, with calumny, where there’s much sacrifice and not a drop of glory—where you, a shining man, are presented as a scoundrel before everyone, whereas you’re more honest than anyone else on earth—go and try that deed, no, you’d give it up! And I—all I’ve done all my life is bear that deed. At first she argued, and how she argued, but then she began to grow silent, even completely, only widening her eyes terribly as she listened, such big, big eyes, so attentive. And… and besides that, I suddenly saw a smile, mistrustful, silent, not nice. It was with this smile that I brought her into my house. It’s also true that she had nowhere else to go …

IV

PLANS AND MORE PLANS

Which of us was the first to begin it then?

Neither. It began by itself from the first step. I said I brought her into my house under sternness, yet from the first step I softened it. It was explained to her, while still a fiancee, that she would be occupied with taking the pledges and handing out the money, and she said nothing then (note that). What’s more—she took to the business even with zeal. Well, of course, the apartment, the furniture—it all remained the same. The apartment has two rooms: one, a big room with a partition, beyond which is the shop; and the other, also a big one, our living room, as well as bedroom. My furniture is scanty; even her aunts had better. My icon stand with the icon lamp is in the other room, where the shop is; in my room there is my bookcase with a few books in it, and a trunk, to which I kept the keys; also a bed, tables, chairs. While she was still my fiancee I told her that one rouble a day, no more, was allotted for our keep, that is, food for me, her, and Lukerya, whom I had lured to us: “I need thirty thousand in three years,” I said, “otherwise one can’t make money.” She didn’t object, but I raised it thirty kopecks myself. The same with the theater. I had told my fiancee there would be no theater, and yet I decided there should be theater once a month, and that decently, in the orchestra. We went together, three times it was, to see Pursuit of Happiness and Songbirds,⁷ I think. (Oh, spit on it, who cares!) We went silently, and came home silently. Why, why did we start being silent from the very beginning? In the beginning there were no quarrels, but there was silence. She kept looking at me then, I remember, somehow on the sly; when I noticed it, I intensified my silence. True, it was I who stressed silence, not she. Once or twice there were impulses on her part, she would rush to embrace me; but since these were morbid, hysterical impulses, and I needed firm happiness, along with respect from her, I took it coldly. And I was right: each time after such an impulse, there was a quarrel the next day.

That is, again, there were no quarrels, but there was silence and—and a more and more bold look on her part. “Rebellion and independence”—that’s what it was, only she didn’t know how. Yes, that meek face was becoming bolder and bolder. Would you believe, I was becoming repugnant to her, I studied it thoroughly. And there was no doubting the fact that she had fits of temper. So, for example, after getting out of such filth and beggarliness, after having scrubbed floors, she would suddenly start sniffing at our poverty! You see, sirs: it wasn’t poverty, it was economy, and, where necessary, even luxury—with linens, for instance, with cleanliness. I had always dreamed, before, that cleanliness in a husband is attractive to a wife. However, it wasn’t at poverty, it was at my supposed stinginess in economy: “He has goals, he shows a firm character.” She suddenly gave up the theater herself. And more and more of this mocking wrinkle… and I was intensifying my silence, intensifying my silence.

I couldn’t go justifying myself, could I? It was mainly this pawnshop. Excuse me, sirs: I knew that a woman, and a sixteen-year-old one at that, can’t help submitting wholly to a man. There’s no originality in women, that— that is an axiom, even now it’s an axiom for me! What is it that’s lying there in the other room: truth is truth, and even Mill⁸ himself can do nothing about it! And a woman who loves, oh, a woman who loves—will deify even the vices, even the villainies of the beloved being. He himself wouldn’t seek out such justifications for his villainies as she will find for him. This is magnanimous, but unoriginal. Woman has been ruined by unoriginality alone. And what, I repeat, what are you pointing to there on the table? Is that original, what’s there on the table? Ohh!

Listen: I was sure of her love then. And she did throw herself on my neck then. So she loved me, or rather— wished to love. Yes, that’s how it was: she wished to love, she sought to love. And the main thing is that there were no such villainies for which she would have to seek justifications. You say: a pawnbroker, and everybody says it. But what if I am a pawnbroker? It means there are reasons, if the most magnanimous of men became a pawnbroker. You see, gentlemen, there are ideas… that is, you see, certain ideas, once they’re uttered, expressed in words, come out terribly stupid. They come out shameful for oneself. And why? No why. Because we’re all trash and can’t bear the truth, or else I don’t know why. I said “the most magnanimous of men” just now. It’s ridiculous, and yet that’s how it was. That was the truth, that is, the most, the very most truthful truth! Yes, I had the right then to want to provide for myself and to open this pawnshop: “You rejected me, you people, that is, you drove me away with scornful silence. To my passionate impulse toward you, you responded by offending