Then a misfortune occurred, caused either by some envious people or by his own imprudent good-nature, or by some accident, and now he had lost everything and had to perish in these unsuitable, hateful surroundings-lousy and tattered, amid drunken and debauched people, feeding on bullock’s liver and bread, and holding out his hand for alms. All the thoughts, wishes, and memories of these people were turned solely to the past. The present appeared to them unnatural, abhorrent, and unworthy of attention. None of them had a present.
They had only recollections of the past and expectations of a future, which might at any moment be realized and for the realization of which very little was needed, but that little was always just beyond their reach, so their life was wasting in vain. One had been in this plight for a year, another for five, and a third for thirty years. One of them need only be decently dressed to go to see a well-known person favourably disposed towards him; another need only be dressed, pay some debts, and get to the town of Orel; a third need only redeem his things from pawn and find a little money to continue a lawsuit he is bound to win, and then all would again be well. They all say they only need some external thing in order to resume the position they consider natural and happy for themselves.
Had I not been befogged by my pride as benefactor, I need only have looked a little into their faces-young and old-generally weak and sensual but good-natured, to understand that their misfortune could not be repaired by external means and that unless their views of life were changed they could not be happy in any position; and that they were not peculiar people in specially unfortunate circumstances, but were just such people as surround us and as we are ourselves. I remember that I found intercourse with this kind of unfortunates particularly trying, and I now understand why. In them I saw myself as in a looking-glass. Had I thought of my own life and that of the people of our circle, I should have seen that between us and these people there was no essential difference.
If those now about me do not live in Rzhanov House, but in large apartments or houses of their own in the best streets, and if they eat and drink dainty food instead of only bread with bullock’s liver or herrings, this does not prevent their being similarly unfortunate. They too are dissatisfied with their position, regret the past and want something better; and the better positions they desire are just like those the dwellers in Rzhanov House want: namely, positions in which they can do less work and make others do more for them. The difference is merely in degree.
Had I then reflected, I should have understood this; however, I did not reflect, but only questioned these people and noted them down, intending, after learning the details of their various circumstances and needs, to help them later on. I did not then understand that such men can only be helped by changing their outlook on life; and to change another man’s outlook one must oneself have a better one and live in accord with it; and I was myself living according to the view of life that had to be altered before these people could cease to be unhappy.
I did not see that, metaphorically speaking, they were unhappy not because they lacked nourishing food but because their digestions were spoilt, and that they were demanding not what was nourishing but what excited their appetites. I did not see that the help they needed was not food, but a cure for their spoilt digestions. Though I anticipate, I will here remark that of all the people I noted down I really helped none, though what they asked-and what seemed as though it would set them on their feet-was done for some of them.
Of these I know three particularly well. All three, after being repeatedly set on their feet, are now again just in the same position as they were three years ago.
CHAPTER VIII
second category of unfortunates whom I also hoped to help later on were the loose women, of whom there were very many of all sorts in Rzhanov House-from young ones who looked like women, to terrible and horrible old ones who had lost human semblance. The hope of being able to help these women, whom at first I had not had in view, came to me from the following incident.
It was in the midst of our round. We had already formed a systematic plan for doing our business.
On entering each new tenement we at once inquired for its master. One of us then sat down and cleared a place to write at, while another went round from corner to corner and questioned each person in the lodgings separately, bringing the information to the one who wrote.
On entering one basement-lodging a student went to find the master, while I began to question those in the lodging. The lodging was arranged thus: in the middle of a square fourteen-foot room was a brick stove. From it ran four partitions star-wise, forming four separate lodgings or cubicles. In the first of these, a passage partition which contained four bunks, were two people-an old man and a woman. Straight through this was a long cubicle occupied by the landlord of the tenement, a very pale young man dressed respectably in a drab cloth coat. To the left of the first cubicle was another in which was a sleeping man (probably drunk) and a woman in a pink blouse loose in front and tight behind. The fourth cubicle was beyond a partition; the entrance to it was through the landlord’s cubicle.
The student went into the landlord’s cubicle while I remained in the first one questioning the old man and the woman. The man was a working printer, now without means of livelihood. The woman was a cook’s wife. I went into the third cubicle and asked the woman in the blouse about the sleeping man. She said he was a visitor. I asked her who she was. She said she was a Moscow peasant-woman. ‘What is your occupation?’ She laughed and did not reply. ‘How do you get your living?’ I repeated, thinking she had not. understood my question. ‘I sit in the tavern,’ said she. I did not understand her and again asked, ‘What do you live on?’
She did not reply, but laughed. From the fourth cubicle which we had not yet entered, there also came the sound of women’s laughter. The landlord came out of his cubicle and joined us. He had evidently heard my questions and the woman’s replies. He looked severely at her and addressing me said: ‘She’s a prostitute,’ evidently pleased that he knew this word used by the officials, and could pronounce it correctly.1 Having said this to me with a scarcely perceptible smile of respectful satisfaction, he turned to the woman. As soon as he spoke to her his whole face changed; and with a peculiar, contemptuously rapid utterance such as people use to a dog, he said without looking at her:
1 ‘Prostitute’ is a hard, foreign word, little used by common people in Russia.-A. M.
‘Why talk nonsense? “I sit in a tavern,” indeed! If you sit there, then speak plainly and say you’re a prostitute.’ Again he used that word and added, ‘She doesn’t know what to call herself.’
His tone exasperated me. ‘It is not for us to shame her,’ said I; ‘if we all lived godly lives there would not be any such as she.’
‘Yes, that’s the way of it,’ said the landlord with an unnatural smile.
‘Then it is not for us to reproach them but to pity them. Is it their fault?’
I don’t remember exactly what I said; but I know that the contemptuous tone of this young landlord of a lodging full of women he called prostitutes, revolted me; and I felt sorry for the woman, and expressed both feelings. And hardly had I spoken, before in the room from which the laughter had come, the boards of the bunks creaked and above the partition (which did not reach to the ceiling) appeared the dishevelled curly hair and small swollen eyes of a woman with a shiny red face, and then a second, and a third. They had evidently got up on their bunks and were all three stretching their necks with bated breath and strained attention, silently looking at us.
An awkward silence ensued. The student who had been smiling became serious; the landlord lowered his eyes abashed; and the women, not drawing a breath, looked at me and waited. I was more abashed than any of them. I had not at all expected that a word casually dropped would produce such an effect. It was as when Ezekiel’s field of death strewn with bones quivered at the touch of the spirit and the dead bones moved. I had spoken a chance word of love and pity, and it had acted on all as though they had only been waiting for that word to cease to be corpses and to become alive. They all looked at me and waited for what would follow.
They waited for me to speak the words and do the deeds
