«Let me out,» said Ivan Dmitritch, and his voice quivered.
«I cannot.»
«But why, why?»
«Because it is not in my power. Think, what use will it be to you if I do let you out? Go. The townspeople or the police will detain you or bring you back.»
«Yes, yes, that’s true,» said Ivan Dmitritch, and he rubbed his forehead. «It’s awful! But what am I to do, what?»
Andrey Yefimitch liked Ivan Dmitritch’s voice and his intelligent young face with its grimaces. He longed to be kind to the young man and soothe him; he sat down on the bed beside him, thought, and said:
«You ask me what to do. The very best thing in your position would be to run away. But, unhappily, that is useless. You would be taken up. When society protects itself from the criminal, mentally deranged, or otherwise inconvenient people, it is invincible. There is only one thing left for you: to resign yourself to the thought that your presence here is inevitable.»
«It is no use to anyone.»
«So long as prisons and madhouses exist someone must be shut up in them. If not you, I. If not I, some third person. Wait till in the distant future prisons and madhouses no longer exist, and there will be neither bars on the windows nor hospital gowns. Of course, that time will come sooner or later.»
Ivan Dmitritch smiled ironically.
«You are jesting,» he said, screwing up his eyes. «Such gentlemen as you and your assistant Nikita have nothing to do with the future, but you may be sure, sir, better days will come! I may express myself cheaply, you may laugh, but the dawn of a new life is at hand; truth and justice will triumph, and — our turn will come! I shall not live to see it, I shall perish, but some people’s great-grandsons will see it. I greet them with all my heart and rejoice, rejoice with them! Onward! God be your help, friends!»
With shining eyes Ivan Dmitritch got up, and stretching his hands towards the window, went on with emotion in his voice:
«From behind these bars I bless you! Hurrah for truth and justice! I rejoice!»
«I see no particular reason to rejoice,» said Andrey Yefimitch, who thought Ivan Dmitritch’s movement theatrical, though he was delighted by it. «Prisons and madhouses there will not be, and truth, as you have just expressed it, will triumph; but the reality of things, you know, will not change, the laws of nature will still remain the same. People will suffer pain, grow old, and die just as they do now. However magnificent a dawn lighted up your life, you would yet in the end be nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole.»
«And immortality?»
«Oh, come, now!»
«You don’t believe in it, but I do. Somebody in Dostoevsky or Voltaire said that if there had not been a God men would have invented him. And I firmly believe that if there is no immortality the great intellect of man will sooner or later invent it.»
«Well said,» observed Andrey Yefimitch, smiling with pleasure; its a good thing you have faith. With such a belief one may live happily even shut up within walls. You have studied somewhere, I presume?»
«Yes, I have been at the university, but did not complete my studies.»
«You are a reflecting and a thoughtful man. In any surroundings you can find tranquillity in yourself. Free and deep thinking which strives for the comprehension of life, and complete contempt for the foolish bustle of the world — those are two blessings beyond any that man has ever known. And you can possess them even though you lived behind threefold bars. Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of the earth.»
«Your Diogenes was a blockhead,» said Ivan Dmitritch morosely. «Why do you talk to me about Diogenes and some foolish comprehension of life?» he cried, growing suddenly angry and leaping up. «I love life; I love it passionately. I have the mania of persecution, a continual agonizing terror; but I have moments when I am overwhelmed by the thirst for life, and then I am afraid of going mad. I want dreadfully to live, dreadfully!»
He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and said, dropping his voice:
«When I dream I am haunted by phantoms. People come to me, I hear voices and music, and I fancy I am walking through woods or by the seashore, and I long so passionately for movement, for interests. . . . Come, tell me, what news is there?» asked Ivan Dmitritch; «what’s happening?»
«Do you wish to know about the town or in general?»
«Well, tell me first about the town, and then in general.»
«Well, in the town it is appallingly dull. . . . There’s no one to say a word to, no one to listen to. There are no new people. A young doctor called Hobotov has come here recently.»
«He had come in my time. Well, he is a low cad, isn’t he?»
«Yes, he is a man of no culture. It’s strange, you know. . . . Judging by every sign, there is no intellectual stagnation in our capital cities; there is a movement — so there must be real people there too; but for some reason they always send us such men as I would rather not see. It’s an unlucky town!»
«Yes, it is an unlucky town,» sighed Ivan Dmitritch, and he laughed. «And how are things in general? What are they writing in the papers and reviews?»
It was by now dark in the ward. The doctor got up, and, standing, began to describe what was being written abroad and in Russia, and the tendency of thought that could be noticed now. Ivan Dmitritch listened attentively and put questions, but suddenly, as though recalling something terrible, clutched at his head and lay down on the bed with his back to the doctor.
«What’s the matter?» asked Andrey Yefimitch.
«You will not hear another word from me,» said Ivan Dmitritch rudely. «Leave me alone.»
«Why so?»
«I tell you, leave me alone. Why the devil do you persist?»
Andrey Yefimitch shrugged his shoulders, heaved a sigh, and went out. As he crossed the entry he said: «You might clear up here, Nikita . . . there’s an awfully stuffy smell.»
«Certainly, your honour.»
«What an agreeable young man!» thought Andrey Yefimitch, going back to his flat. «In all the years I have been living here I do believe he is the first I have met with whom one can talk. He is capable of reasoning and is interested in just the right things.»
While he was reading, and afterwards, while he was going to bed, he kept thinking about Ivan Dmitritch, and when he woke next morning he remembered that he had the day before made the acquaintance of an intelligent and interesting man, and determined to visit him again as soon as possible.
X
Ivan Dmitritch was lying in the same position as on the previous day, with his head clutched in both hands and his legs drawn up. His face was not visible.
«Good-day, my friend,» said Andrey Yefimitch. «You are not asleep, are you?»
«In the first place, I am not your friend,» Ivan Dmitritch articulated into the pillow; «and in the second, your efforts are useless; you will not get one word out of me.»
«Strange,» muttered Andrey Yefimitch in confusion. «Yesterday we talked peacefully, but suddenly for some reason you took offence and broke off all at once. . . . Probably I expressed myself awkwardly, or perhaps gave utterance to some idea which did not fit in with your convictions. . . .»
«Yes, a likely idea!» said Ivan Dmitritch, sitting up and looking at the doctor with irony and uneasiness. His eyes were red. «You can go and spy and probe somewhere else, it’s no use your doing it here. I knew yesterday what you had come for.»
«A strange fancy,» laughed the doctor. «So you suppose me to be a spy?»
«Yes, I do. . . . A spy or a doctor who has been charged to test me — it’s all the same —«
«Oh excuse me, what a queer fellow you are really!»
The doctor sat down on the stool near the bed and shook his head reproachfully.
«But let us suppose you are right,» he said, «let us suppose that I am treacherously trying to trap you into saying something so as to betray you to the police. You would be arrested and then tried. But would you be any worse off being tried and in prison than you are here? If you are banished to a settlement, or even sent to penal servitude, would it be worse than being shut up in this ward? I imagine it would be no worse. . . . What, then, are you afraid of?»
These words evidently had an effect on Ivan Dmitritch. He sat down quietly.
It was between four and five in the afternoon — the time when Andrey Yefimitch usually walked up and down his rooms, and Daryushka asked whether it was not time for his beer. It was a still, bright day.
«I came out for a walk after dinner, and here I have come, as you see,» said the doctor. «It is quite spring.»
«What month is it? March?» asked Ivan Dmitritch.
«Yes, the end of March.»
«Is it very muddy?»
«No, not
