«Fool!» Ivan snapped out.
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«But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn’t ask out of sympathy. You needn’t answer. Now rheumatism has come in again-«
«Fool!» repeated Ivan.
«You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day.»
«The devil have rheumatism!»
«Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the con-sequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.»*
- I am Satan, and deem nothing human alien to me.
«What, what, Satan sum et nihil humanum… that’s not bad for the devil!» «I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.»
«But you didn’t get that from me.» Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming struck. «That never entered my head, that’s strange.»
«C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas?»* This time I’ll act honestly and explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests…. The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallu-cination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more.» - It’s new, isn’t it?
«You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.»
«My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method to-day, I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then, only not here but yonder.»
«Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long. Can’t you go away?» Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his head tight in both hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away in vexation. It was evidently of no use.
«Your nerves are out of order,» observed the gentleman, with a carelessly easy, though perfectly polite, air. «You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic soiree at the house of a lady of high rank in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the Ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth…. Of course, it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from
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the sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s in fleshly form, well… in brief, I didn’t think, and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there’s such a frost… at least one can’t call it frost, you fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play- they invite the unwary to lick an axe in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds. But that’s only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine it would be enough to put your finger on the axe and it would be the end of it… if only there could be an axe there.»
«And can there be an axe there?» Ivan interrupted, carelessly and disdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in the delusion and not to sink into complete insanity
«An axe?» the guest interrupted in surprise.
«Yes, what would become of an axe there?» Ivan cried suddenly, with a sort of savage and insistent obstinacy.
«What would become of an axe in space? Quelle idee! If it were to fall to any distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and the setting of the axe; Gatzuk would put it in his calendar, that’s all.»
«You are stupid, awfully stupid,» said Ivan peevishly. «Fib more cleverly or I won’t listen. You want to get the better of me by realism, to convince me that you exist, but I don’t want to believe you exist! I won’t believe it!»
«But I am not fibbing, it’s all the truth; the truth is unhappily hardly ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of me, and perhaps something fine. That’s a great pity, for I only give what I can-«
«Don’t talk philosophy, you ass!»
«Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and groaning. I’ve tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger-tips, but they’ve no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little student here, ‘You may die,’ said he, ‘but you’ll know perfectly what disease you are dying of!’ And then what a way they have of sending people to specialists! ‘We only diagnose,’ they say, ‘but go to such-and-such a specialist, he’ll cure you.’ The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only special-ists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he’ll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he’ll tell you, for I don’t cure the left nostril, that’s not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there’s a specialist who will cure your left nostril. What are you to do? I fell back on popular remedies, a German doctor ad-vised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bath-house. Solely to get an extra bath I
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went, smeared myself all over and it did me no good at all. In despair I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent me a book and some drops, bless him, and, only fancy, Hoff’s malt extract cured me! I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away completely. I made up my mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was prompted by a feeling of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a bother: not a single paper would take my letter. ‘It would be very reactionary,’ they said, ‘none will believe it. Le diable n’existe point.* You’d better remain anonymous,’ they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if it’s anonymous? I laughed with the men at the newspaper office; ‘It’s re-actionary to believe in God in our days,’ I said, ‘but I am the devil, so I may be believed in.’ ‘We quite understand that,’ they said. ‘Who doesn’t believe in the devil? Yet it won’t do, it might injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like.’ But I thought as a joke it wouldn’t be very witty. So it wasn’t printed. And do you know, I have felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position.»
- The devil does not exist.
«Philosophical reflections again?» Ivan snarled malignantly.
«God preserve me from it, but one can’t help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One can see you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn’t the only thing! I have naturally a kind and merry heart. ‘I also write vaudevilles of all sorts.’ You seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old, but my fate is a far more serious one. Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I was predestined ‘to deny’ and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. ‘No, you must go and deny, without denial there’s no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?’ Without criticism it would be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don’t meddle in that, I didn’t create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they’ve chosen their scapegoat, they’ve made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there’d be nothing without you. If everything in the universe were sensible,
