Notes from the Underground
instance, how I live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero to her, while now,
h’m! It’s horrid, though, that I have let myself go so, the room looks
like a beggar’s. And I brought myself to go out to dinner in such a
suit! And my American leather sofa with the stuffing sticking out. And
my dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such tatters, and she will
see all this and she will see Apollon. That beast is certain to insult
her. He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me. And I, of
course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing and
scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall
begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn’t the
beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more important,
more loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying
mask again! ...”
When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.
“Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night. I
remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to excite
an honourable feeling in her.... Her crying was a good thing, it will
have a good effect.”
Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come
back home, even after nine o’clock, when I calculated that Liza could
not possibly come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came
back to my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all that
had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the moment
when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its look
of torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a distorted
smile she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that fifteen
years later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always with the
pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face at that
minute.
Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to
over-excited nerves, and, above all, as _exaggerated_. I was always
conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of
it. “I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong,” I repeated to
myself every hour. But, however, “Liza will very likely come all the
same,” was the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so
uneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: “She’ll come, she is certain
to come!” I cried, running about the room, “if not today, she will come
tomorrow; she’ll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure
hearts! Oh, the vileness—oh, the silliness—oh, the stupidity of these
‘wretched sentimental souls!’ Why, how fail to understand? How could
one fail to understand? ...”
But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.
And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how
little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic
too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my
will. That’s virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!
At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, “to tell her all,” and
beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me
that I believed I should have crushed that “damned” Liza if she had
chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have
spat at her, have turned her out, have struck her!
One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I
began to grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine
o’clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for
instance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me
and my talking to her.... I develop her, educate her. Finally, I notice
that she loves me, loves me passionately. I pretend not to understand
(I don’t know, however, why I pretend, just for effect, perhaps). At
last all confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing, she flings
herself at my feet and says that I am her saviour, and that she loves
me better than anything in the world. I am amazed, but.... “Liza,” I
say, “can you imagine that I have not noticed your love? I saw it all,
I divined it, but I did not dare to approach you first, because I had
an influence over you and was afraid that you would force yourself,
from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart
a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ... because
it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off
at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George
Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure,
you are good, you are my noble wife.
‘Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be’.”
Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In fact,
in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out my
tongue at myself.
Besides, they won’t let her out, “the hussy!” I thought. They don’t let
them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some reason I
fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o’clock precisely).
Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there yet, and had
certain rights; so, h’m! Damn it all, she will come, she is sure to
come!
It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at
that time by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was the
bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been
squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated
him! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him,
especially at some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who
worked part of his time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he
despised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably.
Though, indeed, he looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at that
flaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his
forehead and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth,
compressed into the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was
confronting a man who never doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to the
most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and with
that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in love
with every button on his coat, every nail on his fingers—absolutely in
love with them, and he looked it! In his behaviour to me he was a
perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me, and if he chanced to glance
at me he gave me a firm, majestically self-confident and invariably
ironical look that drove me sometimes to fury. He did his work with the
air of doing me the greatest favour, though he did scarcely anything
for me, and did not, indeed, consider himself bound to do anything.
There could be no doubt that he looked upon me as the greatest fool on
earth, and that “he did not get rid of me” was simply that he could get
wages from me every month. He consented to do nothing for me for seven
roubles a month. Many sins should be forgiven me for what I suffered
from him. My hatred reached such a point that sometimes his very step
almost threw me into convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his
lisp. His tongue must have been a little too long or something of that
sort, for he continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it,
imagining that it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow,
measured tone, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the
ground. He maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to
himself behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading!
But he was awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow,
even, sing-song voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that
that is how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over
the dead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at
that time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were
chemically combined with my existence. Besides, nothing would have
induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished
lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in
which I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me,
for some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I
could not turn him away.
To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was
impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known
where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during
those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object
to _punish_ Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that
were owing him. I had for a long time—for the last two years—been
intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself
airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his
wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely
silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the
first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out of
a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I
won’t, I won’t, I simply won’t pay him his wages, I won’t just because
that is “what I wish,” because “I am master, and it is for me to
decide,” because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;
but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to
him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a
whole month....
But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out
for four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there
had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be
observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by
heart). He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare,
keeping it up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me
or seeing me out of the house. If I held out and pretended not to
notice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further
tortures. All at once, _à propos_ of nothing, he would walk softly and
smoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand
at the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other,
and fix upon me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I
suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but
continue staring at me persistently for some seconds, then, with a
peculiar compression of his lips and a most significant air,
deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room. Two hours
later he would come out again and again present himself before me in
the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask him
what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously and
began staring back at him. So we stared at one another for two minutes;
at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went back again for
two hours.
If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my
revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,
deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral
degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing
completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he
wanted.
This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost
my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance
apart from him.
“Stay,” I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,
with one hand behind his back, to go to his room. “Stay! Come back,
come back, I tell you!” and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he
turned round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he
persisted in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.