The Bet, and other stories
grown used to this feeling, and I have it every morning. I button up my
frock-coat nervously, ask Nicolas unnecessary questions, get angry....
It is as though I were afraid; but it is not fear, but something else
which I cannot name nor describe.
Unnecessarily, I look at my watch and say:
“Well, it’s time to go.”
And we march in, in this order: Nicolas with the preparations or the
atlases in front, myself next, and after me, the cart-horse, modestly
hanging his head; or, if necessary, a corpse on a stretcher in front
and behind the corpse Nicolas and so on. The students rise when I
appear, then sit down and the noise of the sea is suddenly still. Calm
begins.
I know what I will lecture about, but I know nothing of how I will
lecture, where I will begin and where I will end. There is not a single
sentence ready in my brain. But as soon as I glance at the audience,
sitting around me in an amphitheatre, and utter the stereotyped “In
our last lecture we ended with....” and the sentences fly out of
my soul in a long line--then it is full steam ahead. I speak with
irresistible speed, and with passion, and it seems as though no earthly
power could check the current of my speech. In order to lecture well,
that is without being wearisome and to the listener’s profit, besides
talent you must have the knack of it and experience; you must have
a clear idea both of your own powers, of the people to whom you are
lecturing, and of the subject of your remarks. Moreover, you must be
quick in the uptake, keep a sharp eye open, and never for a moment lose
your field of vision.
When he presents the composer’s thought, a good conductor does twenty
things at once. He reads the score, waves his baton, watches the
singer, makes a gesture now towards the drum, now to the double-bass,
and so on. It is the same with me when lecturing. I have some hundred
and fifty faces before me, quite unlike each other, and three hundred
eyes staring me straight in the face. My purpose is to conquer this
many-headed hydra. If I have a clear idea how far they are attending
and how much they are comprehending every minute while I am lecturing,
then the hydra is in my power. My other opponent is within me. This
is the endless variety of forms, phenomena and laws, and the vast
number of ideas, whether my own or others’, which depend upon them.
Every moment I must be skilful enough to choose what is most important
and necessary from this enormous material, and just as swiftly as
my speech flows to clothe my thought in a form which will penetrate
the hydra’s understanding and excite its attention. Besides I must
watch carefully to see that my thoughts shall not be presented as
they have been accumulated, but in a certain order, necessary for the
correct composition of the picture which I wish to paint. Further, I
endeavour to make my speech literary, my definitions brief and exact,
my sentences as simple and elegant as possible. Every moment I must
hold myself in and remember that I have only an hour and forty minutes
to spend. In other words, it is a heavy labour. At one and the same
time you have to be a savant, a schoolmaster, and an orator, and it is
a failure if the orator triumphs over the schoolmaster in you or the
schoolmaster over the orator.
After lecturing for a quarter, for half an hour, I notice suddenly that
the students have begun to stare at the ceiling or Peter Ignatievich.
One will feel for his handkerchief, another settle himself comfortably,
another smile at his own thoughts. This means their attention is tried.
I must take steps. I seize the first opening and make a pun. All the
hundred and fifty faces have a broad smile, their eyes flash merrily,
and for a while you can hear the boom of the sea. I laugh too. Their
attention is refreshed and I can go on.
No sport, no recreation, no game ever gave me such delight as reading
a lecture. Only in a lecture could I surrender myself wholly to
passion and understand that inspiration is not a poet’s fiction, but
exists indeed. And I do not believe that Hercules, even after the
most delightful of his exploits, felt such a pleasant weariness as I
experienced every time after a lecture.
This was in the past. Now at lectures I experience only torture. Not
half an hour passes before I begin to feel an invincible weakness in
my legs and shoulders. I sit down in my chair, but I am not used to
lecture sitting. In a moment I am up again, and lecture standing. Then
I sit down again. Inside my mouth is dry, my voice is hoarse, my head
feels dizzy. To hide my state from my audience I drink some water now
and then, cough, wipe my nose continually, as though I was troubled
by a cold, make inopportune puns, and finally announce the interval
earlier than I should. But chiefly I feel ashamed.
Conscience and reason tell me that the best thing I could do now is to
read my farewell lecture to the boys, give them my last word, bless
them and give up my place to someone younger and stronger than I. But,
heaven be my judge, I have not the courage to act up to my conscience.
Unfortunately, I am neither philosopher nor theologian. I know quite
well I have no more than six months to live; and it would seem that
now I ought to be mainly occupied with questions of the darkness
beyond the grave, and the visions which will visit my sleep in the
earth. But somehow my soul is not curious of these questions, though
my mind grants every atom of their importance. Now before my death it
is just as it was twenty or thirty years ago. Only science interests
me.--When I take my last breath I shall still believe that Science is
the most important, the most beautiful, the most necessary thing in the
life of man; that she has always been and always will be the highest
manifestation of love, and that by her alone will man triumph over
nature and himself. This faith is, perhaps, at bottom naive and unfair,
but I am not to blame if this and not another is my faith. To conquer
this faith within me is for me impossible.
But this is beside the point. I only ask that you should incline to my
weakness and understand that to tear a man who is more deeply concerned
with the destiny of a brain tissue than the final goal of creation away
from his rostrum and his students is like taking him and nailing him up
in a coffin without waiting until he is dead.
Because of my insomnia and the intense struggle with my increasing
weakness a strange thing happens inside me. In the middle of my
lecture tears rise to my throat, my eyes begin to ache, and I have
a passionate and hysterical desire to stretch out my hands and moan
aloud. I want to cry out that fate has doomed me, a famous man, to
death; that in some six months here in the auditorium another will be
master. I want to cry out that I am poisoned; that new ideas that I
did not know before have poisoned the last days of my life, and sting
my brain incessantly like mosquitoes. At that moment my position seems
so terrible to me that I want all my students to be terrified, to jump
from their seats and rush panic-stricken to the door, shrieking in
despair.
It is not easy to live through such moments.
II
After the lecture I sit at home and work. I read reviews,
dissertations, or prepare for the next lecture, and sometimes I write
something. I work with interruptions, since I have to receive visitors.
The bell rings. It is a friend who has come to talk over some business.
He enters with hat and stick. He holds them both in front of him and
says:
“Just a minute, a minute. Sit down, cher confrère. Only a word or two.”
First we try to show each other that we are both extraordinarily polite
and very glad to see each other. I make him sit down in the chair,
and he makes me sit down; and then we touch each other’s waists, and
put our hands on each other’s buttons, as though we were feeling each
other and afraid to burn ourselves. We both laugh, though we say nothing
funny. Sitting down, we bend our heads together and begin to whisper to
each other. We must gild our conversation with such Chinese formalities
as: “You remarked most justly” or “I have already had the occasion to
say.” We must giggle if either of us makes a pun, though it’s a bad
one. When we have finished with the business, my friend gets up with a
rush, waves his hat towards my work, and begins to take his leave. We
feel each other once more and laugh. I accompany him down to the hall.
There I help my friend on with his coat, but he emphatically declines
so great an honour. Then, when Yegor opens the door my friend assures
me that I will catch cold, and I pretend to be ready to follow him into
the street. And when I finally return to my study my face keeps smiling
still, it must be from inertia.
A little later another ring. Someone enters the hall, spends a
long time taking off his coat and coughs. Yegor brings me word
that a student has come. I tell him to show him up. In a minute a
pleasant-faced young man appears. For a year we have been on these
forced terms together. He sends in abominable answers at examinations,
and I mark him gamma. Every year I have about seven of these people
to whom, to use the students’ slang, “I give a plough” or “haul them
through.” Those of them who fail because of stupidity or illness,
usually bear their cross in patience and do not bargain with me; only
sanguine temperaments, “open natures,” bargain with me and come to my
house, people whose appetite is spoiled or who are prevented from going
regularly to the opera by a delay in their examinations. With the first
I am over-indulgent; the second kind I keep on the run for a year.
“Sit down,” I say to my guest. “What was it you wished to say?”
“Forgive me for troubling you, Professor....” he begins, stammering
and never looking me in the face. “I would not venture to trouble you
unless.... I was up for my examination before you for the fifth time
... and I failed. I implore you to be kind, and give me a ‘satis,’
because....”
The defence which all idlers make of themselves is always the same.
They have passed in every other subject with distinction, and failed
only in mine, which is all the more strange because they had always
studied my subject most diligently and know it thoroughly. They failed
through some inconceivable misunderstanding.
“Forgive me, my friend,” I say to my guest. “But I can’t give you a
‘satis’--impossible. Go and read your lectures again, and then come.
Then we’ll see.”
Pause. I get a desire to torment the student a little, because he
prefers beer and the opera to science; and I say with a sigh:
“In my opinion, the best thing for you now is to give up the Faculty of
Medicine altogether. With your abilities, if you find it impossible to
pass the examination, then it seems you have neither the desire nor the
vocation to be a doctor.”
My sanguine friend’s face grows grave.
“Excuse me, Professor,” he smiles, “but it would be strange, to say the
least, on my part. Studying medicine for five years and suddenly--to
throw it over.”
“Yes, but it’s better to waste five years than to spend your whole life
afterwards in an occupation which you dislike.”
Immediately I begin to feel sorry for him and hasten to say:
“Well, do as you please. Read a little and come again.”
“When?” the idler asks, dully.
“Whenever you like. To-morrow, even.”
And I read in his pleasant eyes. “I can come again; but you’ll send me
away again, you beast.”
“Of course,” I say, “you won’t become more learned because you have to
come up to me fifteen times for examination; but this will form your
character. You must be thankful for that.”
Silence. I rise and wait for my guest to leave. But he stands there,
looking at the window, pulling at his little beard and thinking. It
becomes tedious.