STAVROGIN: That is a very valuable trait. KIRILOV: Yes.
STAVROGIN: Go and sleep. But first tell Shatov that I want to see him.
KIRILOV: Just a minute. (He takes a stick from the comer and knocks on the side wall.) There, he’ll come now. But what about you; won’t you sleep? You are dueling tomorrow.
STAVROGIN: Even when I am tired, my hand never trembles.
KIRILOV: That’s a valuable trait. Good night. (SHATOV appears in the doorway upstage, KIRILOV smiles at him and leaves by the side door, SHATOV stares at STAVROGIN and then enters slowly.)
SHATOV: HOW you worried me! Why were you so slow in coming?
STAVROGIN: Were you so sure that I would come? SHATOV: I couldn’t imagine that you would forsake me. I can’t get along without you. Just remember the part you played in my life.
STAVROGIN: Then why did you strike me? (Shaxov says nothing.) Was it because of my affair with your wife? SHATOV: No.
STAVROGIN: Because of the rumor that started about your sister and me?
SHATOV: I don’t think so.
STAVROGIN: Good. It hardly matters anyway. As I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow evening, I came merely to give you a warning and to ask you a service. Here is the warning: you may be murdered.
SHATOV: Murdered?
STAVROGIN: By Peter Verkhovensky’s group. [SHATOV: I knew it. But how did you find it out? STAVROGIN: I belong to their group. Like you. SHATOV: You, Stavrogin, are a member of their society? You joined up with those vain and idiotic flunkies? How could you? Is that worthy of Nicholas Stavrogin?
STAVROGIN: Forgive me, but you ought to get out of the habit of looking upon me as the Tsar of all the Russias and yourself as just a speck of dust. SHATOV: Oh, don’t talk to me that way! You know very well that they are knaves and flunkies and that you don’t belong among them! STAVROGIN: Indubitably they are knaves. But what does that matter? To tell the truth, I don’t belong altogether to their society. Whenever I helped them in the past, I did so as a dabbler and because I had nothing better to do.
SHATOV: Is it possible to do such things as a dabbler?
STAVKQGIN: People sometimes get married as dabbiers, or have children and commit crimes as dabblers! But, speaking of crimes, you are the one running the risk of being killed. Not I. At least not by them.]
SHATOV: They have nothing against me. I joined their organization. But my ideas changed when I was in America. I told them so when I got back. I was very fair in telling them that we disagreed on all points. That’s my privilege, the right of my conscience. I will not accept—
STAVROGIN: Don’t shout, (KIRILOV comes in, picks up the pistol case, and leaves.) Verkhovensky won’t hesitate to liquidate you if he gets the idea that you might compromise their organization. SHATOV: They make me laugh. Their organization doesn’t even exist.
STAVROGIN: I suppose in fact that it’s all a figment of Verkhovensky’s brain. [The others think he is a delegate of an international organization and so they follow him. But he has the talent to make them accept his myth. That’s the way you form a group. And then someday, starting from the first group, he may succeed in creating the international organization.]
SHATOV: That insect, that poor fool, that idiot who doesn’t know anything about Russia! STAVROGIN: It is true that such people don’t know anything about Russia. But, after all, they know
only a little less about it than we do. Besides, even an idiot can shoot a revolver. Which is why I came to warn you.
SHATOV: Thank you. And I thank you particularly for doing so after I struck you.
STAVROGIN: Not at all. I return good for evil. (He laughs.) Don’t worry, I am a Christian. Or, rather, I should be if I believed in God. But . . . (He gets up.) . . . there is no hare.
SHATOV: No hare?
STAVROGIN: Yes, to make jugged hare, you need a hare. To believe in God, you need a God. (He laughs again, but icily this time.)
SHATOV (greatly excited): Don’t blaspheme like that! Don’t laugh! And get rid of that pose; take on a normal human manner. Speak simply and humanly, if only for once in your life! And remember what you used to say before I left for America.
STAVROGIN: I don’t remember.
SHATOV: I’ll tell you. It’s high time for someone to tell you the truth about yourself, to strike you if need be and remind you of what you are. Do you recall the time when you used to tell me that the Russian people alone would save the universe in the name of a new God? Do you remember your words: “A Russian atheist is an impossibility”? You didn’t say then that the hare doesn’t exist.
STAVROGIN: I seem indeed to remember our conversations.
SHATOV: The devil take your conversations! [There ‘were no conversations! There was simply a master proclaiming great truths and a disciple rising from the dead. I was the disciple and you were the master.
STAVROGIN: Great truths, really?
SHATOV: Yes, really.] Wasn’t it you who told me that if it were mathematically proven that truth stood apart from Christ, you would rather be with Christ than with truth? [Wasn’t it you who used to say that the blind lifeforce driving a nation in search of its god is greater than reason and science and that it alone determines good and evil, and that hence the Russian nation, if it is to march in the van of humanity, must follow its Christ? ] I believed you. The seed germinated in me, and—
STAVROGIN: I am happy for your sake. SHATOV: Drop that pose! Drop it at once or I’ll . . . Yes, you told me all that. And at the same time you used to say just the opposite to Kirilov, as I learned from him in America. You were pouring falsehood and negation into his heart. You were driving his reason toward madness. Have you seen him since? Have you contemplated your handiwork?
STAVROGIN: Let me point out to you that Kirilov himself has just told me he was utterly happy. SHATOV: That is not what I am asking you. How could you tell him one thing and me the opposite?
STAVROGIN: Probably I was trying, in both cases, to persuade myself.
SHATOV (with a note of despair): And now you are an atheist and don’t believe what you taught me?
STAVROGIN: And you?
SHATOV: I believe in Russia, in its orthodoxy, in the body of Christ. . . . I believe that the second coming will take place in Russia. I believe—
STAVROGIN”: And in God?
SHATOV: I … I shall believe in God one day. STAVROGIN: That’s just it. You don’t believe. Besides, can anyone be intelligent and still believe? It’s an impossibility.
SHATOV: NO, I didn’t say that I didn’t believe. We are all dead or half dead and incapable of believing. But men must rise up, and you must be the first. I am the only one who knows your intelligence, your genius, the breadth of your culture, of your conceptions. In the whole world each generation produces but a handful of superior men, two or three. You are one of them. You are the only one, yes, the only one who can raise the flag.
STAVROGIN: I note that everyone at the moment wants to thrust a flag into my hands. Verkhovensky, too, would like me to bear their flag. But he does so because he admires what he calls my “extraordinary aptitude for crime.” What should I make of all this?
SHATOV: I know that you are also a monster. That you have been heard to assert that you saw no difference between any bestial act and a great deed of sacrifice. [It is even said that in St. Petersburg you belonged to a secret society that indulged in revolting debauches.] They say, they also say—but I can’t believe this—that you used to attract children to your house to defile them. . . . (STAVROGIN suddenly rises.) Answer. Tell the truth. Nicholas Stavrogin cannot lie to Sha tov, who struck him in the face. Did you do that? If you did it, you could not bear the flag and I should understand your despair and your helplessness.
STAVROGIN: Enough. Such questions are unseemly. (He stares at SHATOV.) What does it matter anyway? / am interested only in more ordinary questions. Such as: should one live or should one destroy oneself?
SHATOV: Like Kirilov?
STAVROGIN (ivith a sort of melancholy): Like Kirilov. But he will go all the way. He is a Christ. SHATOV: And you . . . Would you be capable of destroying yourself?
STAVROGIN (painfully): I ought to! I ought to!
But I am afraid of being too cowardly. Perhaps I shall do so tomorrow. Perhaps never. That is the question . . . the only question I ask myself. SHATOV (hurling himself at STAVROGIN and seizing him by the shoulder): That’s what you are seeking. You are seeking punishment. Kiss the ground, water it with your tears, beg for mercy! STAVROGIN: Hands off, Shatov. (He holds him at a distance, and with an expression of pain) just
