“And I won’t drink to your health,” the dadais suddenly turned to me, “not because I wish for your death, but so that you won’t drink anymore here today.” He uttered it gloomily and weightily. “Three glasses are enough for you. I see you’re looking at my unwashed fist?” he went on, displaying his fist on the table. “I don’t wash it, and rent it out to Lambert unwashed as it is, for crushing other people’s heads on occasions that Lambert finds ticklish.” And, having said that, he suddenly banged his fist on the table with such force that all the plates and glasses jumped. Besides us, there were people dining at four other tables in this room, all of them officers and various imposing-looking gentlemen. It was a fashionable restaurant; for a moment everybody stopped talking and looked at our corner. And it seems we had long been arousing some curiosity. Lambert turned all red.
“Hah, he’s at it again! I believe I asked you to behave yourself, Nikolai Semyonovich,” he said to Andreev in a fierce whisper. The man looked him over with a long and slow stare:
“I don’t want my new friend Dolgorowky to drink much wine here today.”
Lambert turned still more red. The pockmarked one listened silently, but with visible pleasure. For some reason he liked Andreev’s escapade. I was the only one who didn’t understand why I shouldn’t drink.
“He only does it to get money! You’ll get another seven roubles, do you hear, after dinner—only let us finish eating, don’t disgrace us,” Lambert rasped to him.
“Aha!” the dadais grunted victoriously. This quite delighted the pockmarked one, and he sniggered maliciously.
“Listen, you’re much too . . .” Trishatov said to his friend with uneasiness and almost with suffering, evidently wishing to restrain him. Andreev fell silent, but not for long; that was not how he reckoned. At a table about five steps away from us, two gentlemen were dining and having a lively conversation. They were both middle-aged gentlemen of an extremely ticklish appearance. One was tall and very fat, the other also very fat but small. They were talking in Polish about the current Parisian events. The dadais had long been glancing at them curiously and listening. The little Pole obviously struck him as a comic figure, and he hated him at once, after the manner of all bilious and liverish people, to whom this always happens suddenly even without any cause. Suddenly the little Pole spoke the name of the deputy Madier de Montjau,23 but following the habit of a great many Poles, he pronounced it in a Polish manner, that is, with the stress on the next-to-last syllable, and it came out not as Madiér de Montjáu, but as Mádier de Móntjau. That was all the dadais needed. He turned to the Poles and, drawing himself up importantly, suddenly said distinctly and loudly, as though asking them a question:
“Mádier de Móntjau?”
The Poles turned to him fiercely.
“What do you want?” the big fat Pole cried menacingly in Russian. The dadais bided his time.
“Mádier de Móntjau?” he suddenly repeated for the whole room to hear, without giving any further explanations, just as he had stupidly repeated “Dolgorowky?” as he came at me earlier by the door. The Poles jumped up from their places, Lambert jumped up from the table, rushed first to Andreev, but then abandoned him, leaped over to the Poles, and humbly began apologizing to them.
“They’re buffoons, panie,87 buffoons!” the little Pole repeated contemptuously, all red as a carrot with indignation. “Soon it will be impossible to come here!” There was a stirring in the room, some murmuring was heard, but more laughter.
“Leave . . . please . . . let’s go now!” Lambert murmured, completely at a loss, trying somehow to get Andreev out of the room. Giving Lambert a searching look and figuring that at this point he could get money from him, the man agreed to follow him. It was probably not the first time he had used this shameless method to knock money out of Lambert. Trishatov also made as if to run after them, but looked at me and stayed.
“Ah, how nasty!” he said, covering his eyes with his slender fingers.
“Very nasty, sirs,” the pockmarked one whispered this time with a very angered air. Meanwhile Lambert came back almost completely pale and, with lively gesticulations, began whispering something to the pockmarked one. The latter meanwhile ordered the waiter to quickly serve coffee. He listened squeamishly; he evidently wanted to leave quickly. And, nevertheless, the whole incident was merely a schoolboy prank. Trishatov, with his cup of coffee, came over from his place and sat next to me.
“I like him very much,” he began, addressing me with such a candid air as though he had always been talking to me about it. “You wouldn’t believe how unhappy Andreev is. He ate and drank up his sister’s dowry, and ate and drank up everything they had, the year he served in the army, and I can see how he suffers now. And as for his not washing—it’s from despair. And he has terribly strange thoughts: he suddenly tells you that a scoundrel and an honest man are all the same and there’s no difference; and that there’s no need to do anything, either good or bad, or it’s all the same—you can do either good or bad, but the best thing of all is to lie there without taking your clothes off for a month at a time, drink, eat, sleep—and that’s all. But, believe me, he just says it. And you know, I even think he carried on like that just now because he wanted to finish completely with Lambert. He spoke of it yesterday. Believe me, sometimes at night or when he’s been sitting alone for a long time, he begins to weep, and, you know, when he weeps, it’s in some special way, as no one else weeps: he starts howling, howling terribly, and that, you know, is still more pitiful . . . And besides, he’s so big and strong, and suddenly—he’s just howling. Such a poor fellow, isn’t it so? I want to save him, but I’m such a nasty, lost little brat myself, you wouldn’t believe it! Will you let me in, Dolgoruky, if I ever come to see you?”
“Oh, do come, I even like you.”
“What on earth for? Well, but thank you. Listen, let’s drink another glass. Though—what’s the matter with me?—you’d better not drink. It’s true what he said, that you mustn’t drink more,” he suddenly winked at me significantly, “but I’ll drink even so. I’m all right now, but, believe me, I can’t restrain myself in anything. Just tell me I’m not to dine in restaurants anymore, and I’m ready for anything just to go and do it. Oh, we sincerely want to be honest, I assure you, only we keep postponing it.
And the years go by—all the best years!24
And I’m terribly afraid he’ll hang himself. He’ll go and not tell anybody. He’s like that. Nowadays they all hang themselves; who knows—maybe there are a lot like us? I, for instance, simply can’t live without spare cash. The spare cash is much more important for me than the necessary. Listen, do you like music? I’m terribly fond of it. I’ll play something for you when I come to see you. I play the piano very well, and I studied for a long time. I studied seriously. If I were to write an opera, you know, I’d take the subject from Faust.25 I like that theme very much. I keep creating the scene in the cathedral, just so, imagining it in my head. A Gothic cathedral, inside, choirs, hymns, Gretchen enters, and, you know, the choirs are medieval, so that you can just hear the fifteenth century. Gretchen is in grief, first there’s a recitative, quiet but terrible, tormenting, but the choirs rumble gloomily, sternly, indifferently:
Dies irae, dies illa!26
And suddenly—the devil’s voice, the devil’s song. He’s invisible, it’s just a song, alongside the hymns, together with the hymns, it almost coincides with them, and yet it’s quite different—it has to be done that way somehow. The song is long, tireless, it’s a tenor, it must be a tenor. He starts quietly, tenderly: ‘Remember, Gretchen, how you, still innocent, still a child, used to come with your mama to this cathedral and prattle out your prayers from an old book?’ But the song grows stronger, more passionate, more impetuous; the notes get higher: there are tears in it, anguish, tireless, hopeless, and, finally, despair: ‘There is no forgiveness, Gretchen, there is no forgiveness for you here!’ Gretchen wants to pray, but only cries burst from her breast—you know, when your breast is contracted with tears—but Satan’s song doesn’t stop, ever more deeply it pierces the soul, like a sharp point, ever higher—and suddenly it breaks off almost with a shout: ‘It’s all over, you are cursed!’ Gretchen falls on her knees, clasps her hands before her—and here comes her prayer, something very short, half recitative, but naïve, without any polish, something medieval in the highest degree, four lines, only four lines in all—there are several such notes in Stradella27—and at the last note she swoons! Commotion. She’s lifted, borne up—and here suddenly a thundering choir. It’s like an assault of voices, an inspired chorus, victorious, overwhelming, something like our ‘Up-borne-by-the-an-gel-ichosts’28—so that everything’s shaken to its foundations, and everything changes into an ecstatic, exultant, universal exclamation —‘Hosanna!’—as if it were the cry of the whole universe, and she’s borne up, borne up, and
