The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

Indeed, I must go by foot more often. So what? On Bolshoi Prospect I’ll find a cab at once. A nice night! What wretched little houses here. Must all be petty folk, clerks… merchants, maybe… that Stepan Nikiforovich! and what retrogrades they all are, the old nightcaps! Precisely nightcaps, c’est le mot! ⁹ He’s an intelligent man, though; he has this bon sens¹⁰ a sober, practical understanding of things. No, but these old men, old men! They lack… what do you call it? Well, they lack something… We won’t hold out! What did he mean by that? He even fell to thinking when he said it. By the way, he didn’t understand me at all. But how could he not? It’s harder not to understand than to understand. Above all, I’m convinced, convinced in my soul. Humaneness… love of mankind. Restore man to himself… revive his personal dignity, and then… with this ready material get down to business. Seems clear! Yes, sir! I beg your pardon, Your Excellency, take the syllogism: we meet a clerk, for instance, a poor, downtrodden clerk. ‘Well… what are you?’ Answer: ‘A clerk.’ All right, so he’s a clerk; then: ‘What kind of a clerk?’ Answer: such-and-such kind. ‘You’re in the civil service?’ ‘I am!’ ‘Want to be happy?’ ‘I do.’ ‘What does one need for happiness?’ This and that. ‘Why?’ Because… And so the man understands me after a couple of words: the man is mine, the man is caught, so to speak, in the net, and I can do whatever I like with him—for his own good, that is. A nasty man, this Semyon Ivanych! And such a nasty mug… A whipping at the police station—he said it on purpose. No, lies, you do the whipping, I won’t; I’ll get Trifon with words, I’ll get him with reproaches, and he’ll feel it. About birch rods,¹¹ hm… an unsolved problem, hm… But shouldn’t I stop at Emerance’s? Pah, the devil, you cursed planks!” he cried, suddenly tripping. “And this is the capital! Enlightenment! You could break a leg. Hm. I hate this Semyon Ivanych; a most disgusting mug. He sniggered at me tonight when I said they’d embrace each other morally. So they will, and what do you care? You I won’t embrace; sooner a peasant… I’ll meet a peasant, and talk with a peasant. Anyhow, I was drunk, and maybe didn’t express myself properly. Maybe I’m not expressing myself properly now either… Hm. I’m never going to drink. You babble in the evening, then the next day you repent. So what, I’m not staggering as I walk… And anyhow, they’re all rogues!”

So Ivan Ilyich reasoned, desultorily and incoherently, as he went on down the sidewalk. The fresh air affected him and, so to speak, got him going. Another five minutes and he would have calmed down and wanted to sleep. But suddenly, about two steps from Bolshoi Prospect, he heard music. He looked around. On the other side of the street, in a very decrepit, one-story, but long wooden house, a great feast was going on, fiddles hummed, a string bass droned, and a flute spouted shrilly to a very merry quadrille tune. The public was standing under the windows, mostly women in quilted coats with kerchiefs on their heads; they strained all their efforts to make something out through the chinks in the blinds. Obviously there was merriment. The sound of the dancers’ stomping reached the other side of the street. Ivan Ilyich noticed a policeman not far away and went up to him.

“Whose house is that, brother?” he said, throwing his expensive fur coat open slightly, just enough so that the policeman could notice the important decoration on his neck.

“The clerk Pseldonymov’s, a legistrar,”¹² the policeman, who instantly managed to make out the decoration, replied, straightening up.

“Pseldonymov? Hah! Pseldonymov!… What’s he doing, getting married?”

“Getting married, Your Honor, to a titular councillor’s daughter. Mlekopitaev,¹³ a titular councillor… served on the board. That house comes with the bride, sir.”

“So it’s already Pseldonymov’s house, not Mlekopitaev’s?”

“Pseldonymov’s, Your Honor. Used to be Mlekopitaev’s, and now it’s Pseldonymov’s.”

“Hm. I’m asking, brother, because I’m his superior. I’m general over the place where Pseldonymov works.”

“Right, Your Excellency.” The policeman drew himself all the way up, but Ivan Ilyich seemed to have lapsed into thought. He was standing and reflecting …

Yes, Pseldonymov actually was from his department, from his own office; he recalled that. He was a petty clerk, with a salary of about ten roubles a month. Since Mr. Pralinsky had taken over his office still very recently, he might not have remembered all his subordinates in too much detail, but Pseldonymov he did remember, precisely apropos of his last name. It had leaped out at him from the very first, so that he had been curious right then to have a closer look at the owner of such a name. He now recalled a man still very young, with a long, hooked nose, with blond and wispy hair, skinny and malnourished, in an impossible uniform, and unmentionables impossible even to the point of indecency. He remembered how the thought had flashed in him right then: should he not award the wretch some ten roubles to fix himself up for the holiday? But since the wretch’s face was all too lenten, and had an extremely unpleasant look, even causing disgust, the good thought somehow evaporated of itself, and so Pseldonymov remained without a bonus. The greater was his amazement when this same Pseldonymov, not more than a week ago, put in a request to get married.¹⁴ Ivan Ilyich remembered that he had somehow had no time to occupy himself with the matter more thoroughly, so that the matter of the wedding had been decided lightly, hastily. But all the same he remembered with precision that Pseldonymov was taking his bride together with a wooden house and four hundred roubles in cash; this circumstance had surprised him then; he remembered even cracking a light joke about the encounter of the names Pseldonymov and Mlekopitaev. He clearly recalled it all.

As he went on recollecting, he fell to thinking more and more. It is known that whole trains of thought sometimes pass instantly through our heads, in the form of certain feelings, without translation into human language, still less literary language. But we shall attempt to translate all these feelings of our hero’s and present the reader if only with the essence of these feelings, with what, so to speak, was most necessary and plausible in them. Because many of our feelings, when translated into ordinary language, will seem perfectly implausible. That is why they never come into the world, and yet everybody has them. Naturally, Ivan Ilyich’s feelings and thoughts were a bit incoherent. But you know the reason why.

“What then!” flashed in his head. “So we all talk and talk, but once it gets to business, only a fig comes out. Here’s an example, this very same Pseldonymov: he’s just come from the church, all excited, all hopeful, expecting to taste… This is one of the most blissful days of his life… Now he’s busy with the guests, giving a feast—modest, poor, but merry, joyful, sincere… What, then, if he knew that at this very moment I, I, his superior, his chief superior, am standing right here by his house and listening to his music! But how, in fact, would it be with him? No, how would it be with him if I should suddenly up and walk in now? hm… Naturally, he’d be frightened at first, numb with bewilderment. I’d be interfering with him, I’d probably upset everything… Yes, that’s how it would be if any other general walked in, but not I… Here’s the thing, that any other, only not I…

“Yes, Stepan Nikiforovich! You didn’t understand me just now, but here’s a ready example for you.

“Yes, sir. We all shout about humaneness, but heroism, a great deed, that we’re not capable of.

“What kind of heroism? This kind. Just consider: given the present-day relations between all members of society, for me, for me to come after midnight to the wedding of my subordinate, a registrar, who makes ten roubles—after all, this is bewilderment, this is a turnabout of ideas, the last day of Pompeii,¹⁵ bedlam! No one will understand it. Stepan Nikiforovich would die before he understood it. Didn’t he say: we won’t hold out. Yes, but that’s you old people, people of paralysis and stagnation, but I will hold out! I’ll turn the last day of Pompeii into the sweetest day for my subordinate, and a wild act into a normal, patriarchal, lofty and e-thi-cal one. How? Like this. Be so good as to listen …