I. Velchaninov

II. The Gentleman with Crape on His Hat

III. Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky

IV. Wife, Husband, and Lover

V. Liza

VI. A New Whim of an Idle Man

VII. Husband and Lover Kiss

VIII. Liza Is Ill

IX. The Apparition

X. At the Cemetery

XI. Pavel Pavlovich Gets Married

XII. At the Zakhlebinins’

XIII. Whose Edge Is Greater

XIV. Sashenka and Nadenka

XV. Quits

XVI. Analysis

XVII. The Eternal Husband

The one who loves is always inferior to the one who is loved.

There are moments when two people who have been apart for a long time meet again, and the old wound tears open.

It is a curious thing, this strange, eternal relationship between a man and the husband of the woman he loved.

He needed humiliation to feel completely satisfied with his own suffering.

A man’s life can be ruined by a single, unwise marriage.

I

Velchaninov

Summer came, and Velchaninov, against expectations, remained in Petersburg. His trip to the south of Russia had fallen through, and his lawsuit had no foreseeable end. This lawsuit—a dispute over an estate—was taking a very bad turn. Only three months ago, it had seemed very straightforward, almost undisputed; but somehow, everything suddenly changed. “And in general, everything has started changing for the worse!” — this was a phrase Velchaninov started repeating to himself often and with malicious glee. He employed a clever, expensive, well-known lawyer and spared no expense; but out of impatience and suspiciousness, he started meddling in the case himself: he read and wrote papers that the lawyer completely rejected, ran around to the various government offices, made inquiries, and probably interfered greatly with everything; at least the lawyer complained and urged him to go to a dacha. But he did not even dare to leave for a dacha. Dust, stifling heat, the white Petersburg nights that irritated his nerves—this is what he enjoyed in Petersburg. His apartment was somewhere near the Bolshoi Theater, recently rented by him, and it also turned out badly; “nothing was working out!” His hypochondria was growing daily; but he had been prone to hypochondria for a long time.

He was a man who had lived widely and extensively, already far from young, about thirty-eight or even thirty-nine years old, and all this “old age”—as he himself put it—came upon him “almost completely unexpectedly”; but he understood that he had aged more by the “quality” of his years than by the quantity, so to speak, and that if his infirmities had begun, it was more from the inside than the outside. To look at, he still seemed a fine fellow. He was a tall, stout man, light-haired, with thick hair and not a single gray hair on his head or in his long, light-brown beard that reached almost halfway down his chest; at first glance, he seemed somewhat awkward and rundown; but, looking more closely, you would immediately recognize him as a gentleman of excellent breeding who had once received the most high-society education. Velchaninov’s manners were still free, bold, and even graceful, despite all the grumbling and clumsiness he had acquired. And even now, he was full of the most unshakable, most high-society impudent self-confidence, the extent of which he himself perhaps did not suspect, despite the fact that he was not only an intelligent man but sometimes even sensible, almost educated, and with undoubted talents. The complexion of his face, open and rosy, had in the past been distinguished by a feminine tenderness and attracted the attention of women; and even now, someone, looking at him, would say: “What a strapping fellow, blood and milk!” And yet, this “strapping fellow” was severely afflicted with hypochondria. His eyes, large and blue, also held much conquering charm ten years ago; they were such bright, cheerful, and carefree eyes that they involuntarily drew in everyone he associated with. Now, close to forty, the clarity and kindness had almost died out in these eyes, which were already surrounded by light wrinkles; they now showed, on the contrary, the cynicism of a not entirely moral and tired man, cunning, most often mockery, and yet another new shade that was not there before: a shade of sadness and pain—some kind of dispersed sadness, as if purposeless, but strong. This sadness was especially apparent when he was alone. And strangely, this noisy, cheerful, and distracted man of only two years ago, who told such wonderfully funny stories, now loved nothing so much as being completely alone. He deliberately gave up a multitude of acquaintances, whom he might not have had to give up even now, despite the final disarray of his financial affairs. True, vanity played a part here: with his suspiciousness and vanity, he could not bear his former acquaintances. But his vanity, too, gradually began to change in solitude. It did not decrease, even—on the contrary; but it began to degenerate into a peculiar kind of vanity that was not there before: it sometimes suffered from completely different reasons than usual—from unexpected and previously utterly unthinkable reasons, from “higher” reasons than before—”if one can express oneself that way, if there really are higher and lower reasons…” He added this himself.

Yes, he had come to this; he was now struggling with some higher reasons , about which he would not have thought before. In his consciousness and conscience, he called “higher” all the “reasons” at which (to his astonishment) he could not possibly laugh to himself—which had never happened before—to himself, of course; oh, in society it was another matter! He knew perfectly well that should circumstances align, the very next day he would, aloud, despite all the mysterious and reverent decisions of his conscience, quite calmly renounce all these “higher reasons” and would be the first to mock them, without admitting anything, of course. And this was indeed the case, despite a certain, even quite significant, degree of independence of thought, which he had recently won back from the “lower reasons” that had possessed him until then. And how many times had he himself, upon rising from bed in the morning, begun to be ashamed of his thoughts and feelings experienced during a sleepless night! (And lately, he had suffered constantly from insomnia). He had long ago noticed that he was becoming extremely suspicious about everything, both important and trivial, and therefore he had resolved to trust himself as little as possible. But facts did emerge that simply could not be denied as truly existing. Lately, sometimes at night, his thoughts and sensations almost completely changed compared to his usual ones, and for the most part, were entirely unlike those he had during the first half of the day. This struck him—and he even consulted a well-known doctor, a man he knew, it’s true; he spoke to him jokingly, of course. He received the reply that the fact of the change and even the doubling of thoughts and sensations at night during insomnia, and at night in general, is a universal fact among people “who think deeply and feel intensely,” that the convictions of a lifetime sometimes suddenly change under the melancholic influence of night and insomnia; suddenly, out of nowhere, the most fatal decisions were made; but that, of course, everything is within certain limits—and if, finally, the subject feels this duality too much, so that it becomes suffering, then it is undeniably a sign that a disease has developed; and consequently, something must be undertaken immediately. It is best to radically change one’s way of life, change one’s diet, or even undertake a journey. A laxative is, of course, helpful.

Velchaninov did not listen further; but the illness was completely proven to him.

“So, all this is just illness, all this ‘higher stuff’ is just illness, and nothing more!” he sometimes exclaimed sarcastically to himself. He really did not want to agree with this.

Soon, however, the same things that occurred during the exclusive nighttime hours began to repeat themselves in the mornings, but only with more bile than at night, with anger instead of repentance, with mockery instead of tenderness. In essence, these were certain incidents from his past and long-past life that came to his memory more and more often, “suddenly and God knows why,” but they came in a peculiar way. Velchaninov had long complained of memory loss, for example: he forgot the faces of acquaintances, who were offended by him at meetings; a book he had read six months ago was sometimes completely forgotten within that period. And what happened? — despite this obvious daily memory loss (which greatly worried him) — everything related to the distant past, everything that had been completely forgotten for ten or fifteen years, would suddenly come back to memory now, but with such astonishing accuracy of impressions and details that it was as if he were reliving them anew. Some of the recalled facts were so forgotten that the mere fact that they could be recalled seemed a miracle to him. But that was not all; and who among people who have lived widely does not have their own kind of memories? But the point is that all this recalled information now returned as if with a completely new, unexpected, and previously utterly unthinkable point of view on the fact, prepared by someone. Why did some memories now seem like actual crimes to him? And it was not just the verdicts of his mind: he would not have believed his own gloomy, solitary, and sick mind; but it came to curses and almost to tears, if not external, then internal. Why, only two years ago, he would not have believed it if someone had told him that he would ever cry! At first, however, what was recalled was more of the caustic than the sentimental: some social failures, humiliations, were recalled; he remembered, for example, how he was “slandered by one intriguer,” as a result of which he was no longer received in one house—how, for example, and not even so long ago, he was positively and publicly insulted, but did not challenge the man to a duel—how he was once besieged by a very witty epigram in a circle of the prettiest women, and he couldn’t think of a reply. He even remembered two or three unpaid debts, trivial ones, it’s true, but debts of honor, and to people he had stopped associating with and about whom he had spoken ill. He was also tormented (but only in the most malicious moments) by the memory of two fortunes squandered in the stupidest possible way, each of which was significant. But soon, things from the “higher” realm began to be recalled.

Suddenly, for example, “out of nowhere,” he recalled the forgotten—and highly forgotten—figure of a kindly old official, gray-haired and ridiculous, whom he had once insulted, long, long ago, publicly and with impunity, and solely out of sheer bravado: just so that a funny and successful pun, which brought him fame and was later repeated, would not be wasted. The fact was so forgotten by him that he could not even recall the old man’s surname, although the entire setting of the incident immediately appeared with incomprehensible clarity. He vividly recalled that the old man was then defending his daughter, who lived with him and was past marriageable age, and about whom some rumors had started circulating in the town. The old man began to reply and get angry, but suddenly burst into sobs in front of everyone, which even produced some impression. They ended up by having him drink champagne for a laugh and mocked him to their heart’s content. And when Velchaninov now “out of nowhere” remembered how the old man sobbed and covered his face with his hands like a child, it suddenly seemed to him as if he had never forgotten it. And strangely: it had all seemed very funny to him then; now, on the contrary, and specifically the details, specifically the covering of his face with his hands. Then he remembered how, solely for a joke, he had slandered the very pretty wife of a schoolteacher, and the slander reached the husband. Velchaninov soon left that town and did not know what the consequences of his slander had been then, but now he suddenly began to imagine what those consequences were—and God knows how far his imagination would have gone if he had not suddenly been presented with a much more recent memory of a girl, a commoner, whom he did not even like and of whom, to be honest, he was ashamed, but with whom, without knowing why, he had fathered a child, and then simply abandoned her along with the child, without even saying goodbye (he really didn’t have the time), when he left Petersburg. He later searched for this girl for a whole year, but could not find her. However, there turned out to be almost hundreds of such memories—and so much so that it was as if each memory dragged dozens of others behind it. Gradually, his vanity also began to suffer.

We have already said that his vanity had degenerated into something peculiar. This was true. At moments (rare ones, though) he sometimes reached such self-oblivion that he was not even ashamed that he did not have his own carriage, that he wandered on foot around the government offices, that he had become somewhat careless in his attire—and if someone from his old acquaintances happened to measure him with a mocking glance on the street or simply decided not to recognize him, he would truly have enough arrogance not to even wince. Seriously not wince, truly, and not just for show. Of course, this happened rarely, these were only moments of self-oblivion and irritation, but still, his vanity gradually began to move away from its former concerns and concentrate around one question that incessantly came to his mind.

“Look,” he would sometimes begin to think satirically (and he almost always began with satire when thinking about himself), “Look, someone there is indeed concerned with correcting my morality and is sending me these cursed memories and ‘tears of repentance.’ Fine, but it’s all for nothing! It’s all just firing blanks! Don’t I know for sure, more surely than sure, that despite all these tearful repentances and self-condemnations, I don’t have a drop of independence, despite my ridiculous forty years! After all, if the same temptation were to happen tomorrow, well, if circumstances aligned again, for example, so that it would be advantageous for me to spread a rumor that the schoolteacher’s wife had accepted gifts from me—I would certainly spread it, I wouldn’t flinch—and the result would be even worse, more vile than the first time, because this time it would be the second time, not the first. Well, if that little prince, the only son of his mother, whom I shot in the leg eleven years ago, were to insult me again, right now—I would immediately challenge him and put him back on a wooden leg. So, aren’t they just blanks, and what good are they! and why remind me, when I don’t know how to decently break away from myself even a little bit!”

And although the incident with the schoolteacher’s wife did not repeat itself, although he did not put anyone on a wooden leg, the mere thought that it would inevitably repeat itself if the circumstances aligned almost killed him… sometimes. One can’t really suffer from memories all the time; one can rest and take a walk—during the intermissions.

Velchaninov did this: he was ready to take a walk during the intermissions; but still, the further things went, the more unpleasant his life in Petersburg became. July was approaching. A sudden resolve sometimes flickered in him to drop everything, even the lawsuit, and leave somewhere without looking back, suddenly, unexpectedly, perhaps to the Crimea, for instance. But an hour later, he usually despised his thought and laughed at it: “These vile thoughts will not stop in any south if they have once begun and if I am even a moderately decent person, and so there is no point in running away from them, and no need.”

“And what is the point of running away,” he continued to philosophize in his anguish, “it is so dusty here, so stifling; everything in this house is so soiled; in these government offices I wander around in, among all these business people—there is so much mouse-like fuss, so much tiresome worry; in all these people who have stayed in the city, on all these faces flashing from morning to evening—all their selfishness, all their simple-minded impudence, all the cowardice of their little souls, all the chicken-heartedness of their hearts are so naively and frankly revealed—that, truly, this is a hypochondriac’s paradise, speaking most seriously! Everything is frank, everything is clear, everything does not even consider it necessary to hide, as somewhere in the summer cottages of our ladies or at spas abroad; and therefore, everything is much more worthy of complete respect for its frankness and simplicity alone… I won’t go anywhere! I’ll burst here, but I won’t go anywhere!…”