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Earl Derr Biggers - "The Agony Column"

Frances E. W. Harper - "Poems, by Frances E. W. Harper"

Robert Louis Stevenson - "Memories and Portraits"

Frances E. W. Harper - "Poems, by Frances E. W. Harper"

Notes from the Underground, by Feodor Dostoevsky

J >> Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. >> Notes from the Underground, by Feodor Dostoevsky




"That cannot be," he answered, with the most unnatural
self-confidence.

"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word of honour, it shall
be!"

"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for," he went on,
as though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. "Why,
besides, you called me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you
at the police-station at any time for insulting behaviour."

"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this very minute, this
very second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!"

But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my
loud calls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and
without looking round.

"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have
happened," I decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I
went myself behind his screen with a dignified and solemn air,
though my heart was beating slowly and violently.

"Apollon," I said quietly and emphatically, though I was
breathless, "go at once without a minute's delay and fetch the
police-officer."

He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his
spectacles and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he
burst into a guffaw.

"At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can't imagine what
will happen."

"You are certainly out of your mind," he observed, without even
raising his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading
his needle. "Whoever heard of a man sending for the police
against himself? And as for being frightened--you are upsetting
yourself about nothing, for nothing will come of it."

"Go!" I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should
strike him in a minute.

But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly
open at that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin
staring at us in perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame,
and rushed back to my room. There, clutching at my hair with
both hands, I leaned my head against the wall and stood
motionless in that position.

Two minutes later I heard Apollon's deliberate footsteps. "There
is some woman asking for you," he said, looking at me with
peculiar severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He
would not go away, but stared at us sarcastically.

"Go away, go away," I commanded in desperation. At that moment
my clock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.


IX

"Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be."

I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused,
and I believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the
skirts of my ragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had
imagined the scene not long before in a fit of depression. After
standing over us for a couple of minutes Apollon went away, but
that did not make me more at ease. What made it worse was that
she, too, was overwhelmed with confusion, more so, in fact, than
I should have expected. At the sight of me, of course.

"Sit down," I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table,
and I sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and
gazed at me open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at
once. This naivete of expectation drove me to fury, but I
restrained myself.

She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had
been as usual, while instead of that, she...and I dimly felt that
I should make her pay dearly for _all this_.

"You have found me in a strange position, Liza," I began,
stammering and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin.
"No, no, don't imagine anything," I cried, seeing that she had
suddenly flushed. "I am not ashamed of my poverty...On the
contrary, I look with pride on my poverty. I am poor but
honourable....One can be poor and honourable," I muttered.
"However...would you like tea?...."

"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute."

I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room
somehow.

"Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before
him the seven roubles which had remained all the time in my
clenched fist, "here are your wages, you see I give them to you;
but for that you must come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen
rusks from the restaurant. If you won't go, you'll make me a
miserable man! You don't know what this woman is....This
is--everything! You may be imagining something....But you don't
know what that woman is! ..."

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his
spectacles again, at first glanced askance at the money without
speaking or putting down his needle; then, without paying the
slightest attention to me or making any answer, he went on
busying himself with his needle, which he had not yet threaded.
I waited before him for three minutes with my arms crossed a la
Napoleon. My temples were moist with sweat. I was pale, I felt
it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to pity, looking at
me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up from his
seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off
his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally
asking me over his shoulder: "Shall I get a whole portion?"
deliberately walked out of the room. As I was going back to
Liza, the thought occurred to me on the way: shouldn't I run away
just as I was in my dressing-gown, no matter where, and then let
happen what would?

I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes
we were silent.

"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my
fist so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

"What are you saying!" she cried, starting.

"I will kill him! kill him!" I shrieked, suddenly striking the
table in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully
understanding how stupid it was to be in such a frenzy. "You
don't know, Liza, what that torturer is to me. He is my
torturer....He has gone now to fetch some rusks; he ..."

And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack.
How ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not
restrain them.

She was frightened.

"What is the matter? What is wrong?" she cried, fussing about
me.

"Water, give me water, over there!" I muttered in a faint voice,
though I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very
well without water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I
was, what is called, _putting it on_, to save appearances, though
the attack was a genuine one.

She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment
Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this
commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry
after all that had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked
at Apollon with positive alarm. He went out without a glance at
either of us.

"Liza, do you despise me?" I asked, looking at her fixedly,
trembling with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

"Drink your tea," I said to her angrily. I was angry with
myself, but, of course, it was she who would have to pay for it.
A horrible spite against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I
believe I could have killed her. To revenge myself on her I
swore inwardly not to say a word to her all the time. "She is
the cause of it all," I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table;
we did not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely
refraining from beginning in order to embarrass her further; it
was awkward for her to begin alone. Several times she glanced at
me with mournful perplexity. I was obstinately silent. I was,
of course, myself the chief sufferer, because I was fully
conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful stupidity,
and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

"I want to...get away...from there altogether," she began, to
break the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what
she ought not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a
man so stupid as I was. My heart positively ached with pity for
her tactless and unnecessary straightforwardness. But something
hideous at once stifled all compassion in me; it even provoked me
to greater venom. I did not care what happened. Another five
minutes passed.

"Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly, hardly audibly,
and was getting up.

But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I
positively trembled with spite, and at once burst out.

"Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?" I began, gasping
for breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I
longed to have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even
trouble how to begin. "Why have you come? Answer, answer," I
cried, hardly knowing what I was doing. "I'll tell you, my good
girl, why you have come. You've come because I talked
sentimental stuff to you then. So now you are soft as butter and
longing for fine sentiments again. So you may as well know that
I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you now. Why
are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been
insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that
evening before me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them,
an officer; but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to
avenge the insult on someone to get back my own again; you turned
up, I vented my spleen on you and laughed at you. I had been
humiliated, so I wanted to humiliate; I had been treated like a
rag, so I wanted to show my power.... hat's what it was, and you
imagined I had come there on purpose to save you. Yes? You
imagined that? You imagined that?"

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in
exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it,
very well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as
a handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked
painfully; but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled
by an axe. And all the time afterwards she listened to me with
her lips parted and her eyes wide open, shuddering with awful
terror. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words overwhelmed
her....

"Save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up
and down the room before her. "Save you from what? But perhaps
I am worse than you myself. Why didn't you throw it in my teeth
when I was giving you that sermon: 'But what did you come here
yourself for? was it to read us a sermon?' Power, power was what
I wanted then, sport was what I wanted, I wanted to wring out
your tears, your humiliation, your hysteria--that was what I
wanted then! Of course, I couldn't keep it up then, because I am
a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the devil knows why,
gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I got home,
I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I
hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I
only like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know,
what I really want is that you should all go to hell. That is
what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a
farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the
world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the
world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did
you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a
blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I have been
shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your coming.
And do you know what has worried me particularly for these three
days? That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see
me in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told
you just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as
well know that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than
of anything, more afraid of it than of being found out if I were
a thief, because I am as vain as though I had been skinned and
the very air blowing on me hurt. Surely by now you must realise
that I shall never forgive you for having found me in this
wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at Apollon like a
spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying like a
mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was
jeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears I
could not help shedding before you just now, like some silly
woman put to shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I
shall never forgive you either! Yes--you must answer for it all
because you turned up like this, because I am a blackguard,
because I am the nastiest, stupidest, absurdest and most envious
of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit better than I am,
but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion; while I
shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! And
what is it to me that you don't understand a word of this! And
what do I care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to
ruin there or not? Do you understand? How I shall hate you now
after saying this, for having been here and listening. Why, it's
not once in a lifetime a man speaks out like this, and then it is
in hysterics! ...What more do you want? Why do you still stand
confronting me, after all this? Why are you worrying me? Why
don't you go?"

But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed
to think and imagine everything from books, and to picture
everything in the world to myself just as I had made it up in my
dreams beforehand, that I could not all at once take in this
strange circumstance. What happened was this: Liza, insulted and
crushed by me, understood a great deal more than I imagined. She
understood from all this what a woman understands first of all,
if she feels genuine love, that is, that I was myself unhappy.

The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed
first by a look of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling
myself a scoundrel and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the
tirade was accompanied throughout by tears) her whole face worked
convulsively. She was on the point of getting up and stopping
me; when I finished she took no notice of my shouting: "Why are
you here, why don't you go away?" but realised only that it must
have been very bitter to me to say all this. Besides, she was so
crushed, poor girl; she considered herself infinitely beneath me;
how could she feel anger or resentment? She suddenly leapt up
from her chair with an irresistible impulse and held out her
hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and not daring to
stir.... At this point there was a revulsion in my heart too.
Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst
into tears. I, too, could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I
never had before...

"They won't let me...I can't be...good!" I managed to articulate;
then I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on
it for a quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close
to me, put her arms round me and stayed motionless in that
position. But the trouble was that the hysterics could not go on
for ever, and (I am writing the loathsome truth) lying face
downwards on the sofa with my face thrust into my nasty leather
pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a far-away, involuntary
but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward now for me to
raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was I
ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too,
came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely
changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed
and humiliated creature as she had been before me that
night--four days before.... And all this came into my mind during
the minutes I was lying on my face on the sofa.

My God! surely I was not envious of her then.

I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of
course, I was still less able to understand what I was feeling
than now. I cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising
over someone, but ... there is no explaining anything by
reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so
sooner or later...and I am convinced to this day that it was just
became I was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was
suddenly kindled and flamed up in my heart...a feeling of mastery
and possession. My eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her
hands tightly. How I hated her and how I was drawn to her at
that minute! The one feeling intensified the other. It was
almost like an act of vengeance. At first there was a look of
amazement, even of terror on her face, but only for one instant.
She warmly and rapturously embraced me.


X

A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the
screen and peeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on
the floor with her head leaning against the bed, and must have
been crying. But she did not go away, and that irritated me.
This time she understood it all. I had insulted her finally,
but...there's no need to describe it. She realised that my
outburst of passion had been simply revenge, a fresh humiliation,
and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred was added now a
_personal hatred_, born of envy....Though I do not maintain
positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she
certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and
what was worse, incapable of loving her.

I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is
incredible to be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added
that it was strange I should not love her, or at any rate,
appreciate her love. Why is it strange? In the first place, by
then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving meant
tyrannising and showing my moral superiority. I have never in my
life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have
nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that love really
consists in the right--freely given by the beloved object--to
tyrannise over her.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the
subjugated object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since
I had succeeded in so corrupting myself, since I was so out of
touch with "real life," as to have actually thought of
reproaching her, and putting her to shame for having come to me
to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even guess that she had
come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me, because to a
woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of ruin, and
all moral renewal is included in love and can only show itself in
that form.

I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the
room and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only
insufferably oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to
disappear. I wanted "peace," to be left alone in my underground
world. Real life oppressed me with its novelty so much that I
could hardly breathe.

But several minutes passed and she still remained, without
stirring, as though she were unconscious. I had the
shamelessness to tap softly at the screen as though to remind
her....She started, sprang up, and flew to seek her kerchief, her
hat, her coat, as though making her escape from me....Two minutes
later she came from behind the screen and looked with heavy eyes
at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was forced, however, to
_keep up appearances_, and I turned away from her eyes.

"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.

I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in
it and closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in
haste to the other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....

I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness,
through losing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will
say straight out that I opened her hand and put the money in
it...from spite. It came into my head to do this while I was
running up and down the room and she was sitting behind the
screen. But this I can say for certain: though I did that cruel
thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart, but came
from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so purposely
made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that I
could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid
seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I
opened the door in the passage and began listening.

"Liza! Liza!" I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not
boldly.

There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower
down on the stairs.

"Liza!" I cried, more loudly.

No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door
open heavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up
the stairs.

She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt
horribly oppressed.

I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat
and looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I
started; straight before me on the table I saw .... In short, I
saw a crumpled blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into
her hand a minute before. It was the same note; it could be no
other, there was no other in the flat. So she had managed to
fling it from her hand on the table at the moment when I had
dashed into the further corner.

Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I
have expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in
respect for my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she
would do so. I could not endure it. A minute later I flew like
a madman to dress, flinging on what I could at random and ran
headlong after her. She could not have got two hundred paces
away when I ran out into the street.

It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and
falling almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the
empty street as though with a pillow. There was no one in the
street, no sound was to be heard. The street lamps gave a
disconsolate and useless glimmer. I ran two hundred paces to the
cross-roads and stopped short.

Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?

Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her
feet, to entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole
breast was being rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall
that minute with indifference. But--what for? I thought.
Should I not begin to hate her, perhaps, even tomorrow, just
because I had kissed her feet today? Should I give her
happiness? Had I not recognised that day, for the hundredth
time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?

I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and
pondered this.

"And will it not be better?" I mused fantastically, afterwards at
home, stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams.
"Will it not be better that she should keep the resentment of the
insult for ever? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a
most stinging and painful consciousness! Tomorrow I should have
defiled her soul and have exhausted her heart, while now the
feeling of insult will never die in her heart, and however
loathsome the filth awaiting her--the feeling of insult will
elevate and purify her...by hatred...h'm!...perhaps, too, by
forgiveness.... Will all that make things easier for her though?
..."

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question:
which is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well,
which is better?

So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the
pain in my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse,
yet could there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from
my lodging that I should turn back half-way? I never met Liza
again and I have heard nothing of her. I will add, too, that I
remained for a long time afterwards pleased with the phrase about
the benefit from resentment and hatred in spite of the fact that
I almost fell ill from misery.

. . . . .

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil
memory. I have many evil memories now, but...hadn't I better end
my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to
write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been
writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a
corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I
have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner,
through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real
life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly
not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for
an anti-hero are _expressly_ gathered together here, and what
matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we
are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us,
more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a
sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded
of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an
effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that
it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes?
Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know
what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant
prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for
instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the
spheres of our activity, relax the control and we...yes, I assure
you...we should be begging to be under control again at once. I
know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and
will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will
say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don't
dare to say all of us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying
myself with that "all of us." As for what concerns me in
particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you
have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken
your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in
deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more
life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we
don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is
called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in
confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to
cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what
to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real
individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a
disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible
generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have
been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better
and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall
contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't
want to write more from "Underground"...

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