SHATOV (leaping backward): Oh, why am I condemned to believe in you and to love you? I cannot tear you from my heart, Nicholas Stavrogin. I shall kiss your footprints on the floor when you have left.
STAVROGIN (with the same expression): I regret to have to tell you, but I cannot love you, Shatov. SHATOV: I know it. You cannot love anyone because you are a man without roots and without
faith. [Only men who have roots in the soil can love and believe and build. The others destroy. And you destroy everything without intending to, and you are even drawn to idiots like Verkhovensky who want to destroy for their own comfort, simply because it is easier to destroy than not to destroy.] But I shall lead you back to your former way. You will find peace and I shall cease being alone with what you have taught me. STAVROGIN: Thank you for your good intentions. But until you have a chance to help me find the hare, you could do me the more modest service I came to ask of you.
SHATOV: And what is it?
STAVROGIN: If I happened to disappear in one way or another, I should like you to take care of my wife.
SHATOV: Your wife? Are you married? STAVROGIN: Yes, to Maria Timofeyevna. [I know that you have considerable influence over her. You are the only one who can . . .]
SHATOV: SO it is true that you married her? STAVROGIN: Four years ago in Petersburg. SHATOV: Were you obliged to marry her? STAVROGIN: Obliged? No.
SHATOV: Have you a child by her?
STAVROGIN: She has never had a child and couldn’t have one. Maria Timofeyevna is still a virgin. But I ask you simply to take care of her.
(SHATOV, dazed, watches him leaving. Then he runs after him.)
SHATOV: Ah! I understand. I know you. I know you. You married her to punish yourself for a dreadful crime, (STAVROGIN makes a gesture of impatience.) Listen, listen, go and see Tihon.
STAVROGIN: Who is Tihon?
SHATOV: A former bishop who has retired here to the Monastery of St. Euthymia. He will help you.
STAVROGIN (staring at him): Who in this world could help me? Not even you, Shatov. And I’ll never ask you anything again. Good night.
SCENE 7
A bridge at night, STAVROGIN is walking in another direction under the rain, having opened his umbrella, FEDKA pops up behind him.
FEDKA: Might I, sir, take advantage of your umbrella?
(STAVROGIN stops. He and FEDKA face each other under the umbrella.)
STAVROGIN: Who are you?
FEDKA: No one important. But you, you are Mr. Stavrogin, a noble lord!
STAVROGIN: You are Fedka, the convict! FEDKA: I am not a convict any more. I was sent up for life, to be sure. But I found time dragging and changed my status.
STAVROGIN: What are you doing here?
FEDKA: Nothing. I need a passport. In Russia it’s impossible to make a move without a passport. Fortunately, a man you know, Peter Verkhovensky, promised me one. Meanwhile, I was lying in wait for you in the hope that Your Grace would give me three rubles.
STAVROGIN: Who gave you the order to lie in wait for me?
FEDKA: No one, no one! Although Peter Verkhovensky told me incidentally that perhaps with my talents I could do a service for Your Grace, in certain circumstances, by ridding you of people
who are in your way. As he told me also that you would go over this bridge to see a certain party on the other side of the river, I have been waiting for you the past three nights. You see that I deserve my three rubles.
STAVROGIN: Good. Listen. I like to be understood. You will not receive a kopeck from me and I neither have nor shall have need of you. If I ever find you in my way again on this bridge or anywhere else, I’ll bind you and hand you over to the police.
FEDKA: Yes, but / need you. STAVROGIN: Begone or I’ll strike you.
FEDKA: Please take into consideration, sir, that I am a poor defenseless orphan and that it is raining!
STAVROGIN: I give you my word of honor that if I meet you again, I’ll bind you up.
FEDKA: I’ll wait for you anyhow. You never know!
(He disappears, STAVROGIN stares in his direction for a moment.)
BLACKOUT
SCENE 8
The Leby atklni dwelling, STAVROGIN is already in the room, LEBYATKIN is relieving him of his umbrella.
LEBYATKIN: What frightful weather! Oh, you are all wet. (He pushes up an armchair.) I beg you, I beg you. (He straightens up.) Ah, you are looking at this room. You see, I live like a monk. Abstinence, solitude, poverty, according to the three vows of the knights of old.
STAVROGIN: Do you think the knights of old took such vows?
LEBYATKIN: I don’t know. I am perhaps confusing things.
STAVROGIN: You are certainly confusing things. I hope that you haven’t been drinking.
LEBYATKIN: Hardly at all.
STAVROGIN: I asked you not to get drunk. LEBYATKIN: Yes. Odd request!
STAVROGIN: Where is Maria Timofeyevna? LEBYATKIN: In the next room.
STAVROGIN: Is she sleeping?
LEBYATKIN: Oh, no, she is telling her fortune. She is expecting you. As soon as she heard the news, she got all dressed up.
STAVROGIN: I shall see her in a moment. But first I have something to settle with you!
LEBYATKIN: I hope so. So many things have piled up in my heart. I should like to be able to talk freely with you, as I used to do. Oh, you have played such a great part in my life. And now I am treated so cruelly.
STAVROGIN: I see, Captain, that you haven’t changed at all in the past four years. (He stares at him silently.) [So they are right, those who claim that the second half of a human life is determined by the habits acquired during the first half.
LEBYATKIN: Oh! What sublime words! Why, the enigma of life is solved! And yet] I insist that I am casting my skin like a serpent. Besides, I have written my will.
STAVROGIN: That’s odd. To bequeath what and to whom?
LEBYATKIN: I want to leave my skeleton to the medical students.
[STAVROGIN: And you hope for payment during your lifetime?
LEBYATKIN: And why not? You see, I read the biography of an American in the newspapers. He bequeathed his huge fortune to scientific foundations, his skeleton to the medical students of the city, and his skin to be made into a drum on which the American national anthem would be beaten night and day. But, alas, we are merely pygmies in comparison to the Americans and their boldness of thought. If I tried to do the same, I’d be accused of being a socialist and my skin would be confiscated. Consequently, I had to be satisfied with the students. I want to leave them my skeleton on condition that a label will be stuck to my skull saying: “A repentant freethinker.”]
STAVROGIN: So you know that you are in danger of death.
LEBYATKIN (giving a start): No, not at all. What do you mean? What a joke!
STAVROGIN: Didn’t you write a letter to the governor to denounce Verkhovensky’s group, to which you belong nevertheless?
LEBYATKIN: I don’t belong to their group. I agreed to hand out proclamations, but only to do a service, as it were. I wrote the governor to explain something of the sort to him. But if Verkhovensky really thinks . . . Oh, I must get to.
St. Petersburg. That’s why I was waiting for you. Anyway, my dear benefactor, I need money to go there.
STAVROGIN: You will have nothing from me. I have already given you too much.
LEBYATKIN: That’s true. But I accepted the shame of it.
STAVROGIN: What shame is *there in the fact that your sister is my legitimate wife?
LEBYATKIN: But the marriage is kept secret! It is kept secret and there is a fatal mystery about it! I receive money from you—ail right, that’s normal. Then I am asked: “Why do you receive that money?” I am bound by my word and cannot answer, thus wronging my sister and the honor of my family.
STAVROGIN: I have come to tell you that I am going to make up for that outrage done to your noble family. Tomorrow, probably, I shall announce our marriage officially. Hence the question of the family dishonor will be settled. And likewise, of course, the question of the allowance that I shan’t have to pay you.
LEBYATKIN (panicstricken). But it’s not possible. You can’t make this marriage public. She is half crazy.
STAVROGIN : I’ll take care of that.
LEBYATKIN: What will your mother say? You will have to take your wife into your house. STAVROGIN: That doesn’t concern you. LEBYATKIN: But what shall / become? You are casting me off like an old wornout shoe. STAVROGIN: Yes, like an old shoe. That’s the correct expression. Now call Maria Timofeyevna, (LEBYATKIN goes out and brings back MARIA TIMOFEYEVNA, who stands in the middle of the room.)
STAVROGIN (to LEBYATKIN): Leave now. No, not that way. I’m afraid you would listen to us. I mean outside.
LEBYATKIN: But it’s raining. STAVROGIN: Take my umbrella.
LEBYATKIN (bewildered): Your umbrella—really, am I worthy of that honor?
STAVROGIN: Every man is worthy of an umbrella. LEBYATKIN: Yes, yes, of course, that’s a part of the rights of man! (He goes out.) MARIA: May I kiss your hand? STAVROGIN: No. Not yet.
MARIA: All right. Sit down in the light so that I can see you.
(To reach the armchair, STAVROGIN walks toward her. She crouches down with her arm raised as if to protect herself, an expression of fright on her
