I gave her a ruble, and remember being very glad that others saw it. The old woman, seeing this, also asked me for money. It was so pleasant to give, that without considering whether it was or was not necessary, I gave to the old woman also. She then accompanied me on my way out, and some people standing in the corridor heard her thank me. Probably the questions I had asked about poverty had raised expectations, and some people were following us about. In the corridor again they began to ask me for money. There were among these people some evident drunkards who aroused an unpleasant feeling in me, but having given something to the old woman I had no right to refuse these and I began distributing money.
While I gave, more and more people came up. Excitement arose in all the lodgings. On the staircases and in the galleries people appeared, watching me. As I came out into the yard a boy ran quickly down from one of
the staircases, pushing through among the people. He did not see me and rapidly shouted, ‘He gave Agafya a ruble.’ Having run down the stairs the boy joined the crowd that was following me. I went out into the street; various people walked with me and asked for money. I gave away what small change I had and went to a trading-stall there, asking the man who kept it to change ten rubles for me.
And here there occurred what had happened at Lyapin House. A terrible confusion arose. Old women, broken down gentry, peasants, and children, crowded to the stall holding out their hands; I gave them money and questioned some of them about their lives, entering them in my note-book. The owner of the stall, having turned in the fur corners of his winter overcoat, sat like a statue, occasionally glancing at the crowd and again directing his eyes past us.
He evidently, like the rest, felt that it was stupid, but could not say so.
In Lyapin House I had been horrified by the wretchedness and degradation of the people and felt myself guilty, and felt a wish and a possibility of being better. But now a similar scene produced on me quite a different effect: I experienced, in the first place, a feeling of ill-will towards many of those who besieged me, and, secondly, I was uneasy as to what the shopkeepers and yard-porters thought of me.
On returning home that day I was ill at ease. I felt that what I was doing was stupid and immoral, and as always happens in consequence of an inner perplexity, I talked much about the business I had started, as though I did not at all doubt its success.
The next day I went alone to see those of the people I had noted down who seemed most to be pitied and whom I thought it would be easiest to help. As I have said, I did not really help any of them. To help them proved harder than I had expected. And whether because of my incompetence or because it really was impossible, I only disturbed them and did not help them. I visited Rzhanov House several times before the final Census-round was made, and the same thing happened each time. I was besieged by a crowd of suppliants among whom I was quite lost.
I felt the impossibility of achieving anything because there were too many of them, and I therefore felt angry with them for being so numerous; but besides that, taking them separately, they did not attract me. I felt that each of them was telling me lies or not telling the whole truth, and saw in me merely a purse from which money might be extracted. And it very often seemed to me that the money a man wheedled out of me would do him more harm than good. The oftener I went to the place and the more I got to know the people there the plainer the impossibility of doing anything became, but I did not abandon my enterprise till the last night of the Census.
I am particularly ashamed to remember that last visit. Previously I had gone alone, but now we went some twenty of us together. At seven o’clock those who wished to take part in this last night’s round collected at my house. They were nearly all strangers to me: students, an officer, and two of my society acquaintances, who saying in the usual way C’est tres interessant! asked me to include them among the Census-takers.
My society acquaintances had dressed specially in shooting jackets and high travelling boots, a costume in which they went on hunting expeditions, and which in their opinion was adapted for a visit to the night-lodging-houses. They took with them peculiar notebooks and extraordinary pencils. They were in that special state of excitement people are in when preparing for a hunt, a duel, or to start for the war. In their case the stupidity and falseness of our position was particularly noticeable, but the rest of us were in the same false situation. Before we started we held a consultation, like a council of war, as to how and with what to begin, how to divide our party, and so forth.
The consultation was just like those which take place in councils, assemblies, and committees that is to say, everybody spoke not because he had something that needed saying or because he wanted to learn something, but each devised something to say so as not to seem to lag behind the others. But in the course of these conversations no one referred to charity, of which I had spoken to them all so often.
Abashed as I was I felt that I must again refer to charity, that is to the need of entering up during our round all whom we found to be in a state of poverty. I had always felt ashamed to speak of this, but now, amid our excited preparations for the campaign, I could scarcely utter it. All listened to me as it seemed with regret, and at the same time all agreed verbally; but it was evident that they all knew it was folly and that nothing would come of it, and all immediately began to talk about something else. This continued till it was time to start and we drove off.
We arrived at the dark tavern, roused the attendants, and began to sort our papers. When we were told that the people had heard of our visit and were leaving the quarters, we asked the landlord to have the gates closed, and ourselves went out into the yard to reassure those who were leaving, telling them that no one would ask to see their passports.1 I remember the strange and unpleasant impression those excited night-lodgers produced on me: tattered, half-dressed, by the light of the lamp In the dark yard all appearing to me to be tall; frightened and terrible in their fright they stood in a group near the stinking privy and heard our assurances but did not believe them. Evidently, like hunted animals, they were ready for anything merely to escape from us.
Gentlemen in various guises-as police-officers in town or country, as examining magistrates, and as Judges-had harassed them all their lives in the towns and in the villages and on the highroads and in the streets and in taverns and dosshouses, and now suddenly these gentlemen had come and shut the gates on them merely to count them; it was as hard for them to believe this as it would be for hares to believe that dogs had come not to catch them but to count them. But the gates were closed, and the alarmed night lodgers went back to their quarters, and having separated Into groups we set to work. With me went the two society men and two students. Before us in the darkness went Vanya in overcoat and white trousers, carrying a lantern, and we followed him.
We visited lodgings I already knew and in which I also knew some of the lodgers, but most of the people were new and the spectacle was new and terrible-more terrible than I had seen at Lyapin House. All the lodgings were full, all the bunks were occupied, and often by two people. The sight was horrible from the way they were crowded together, and from the mingling of women and men.
All the women who were not dead drunk were sleeping with men. Many women with children were sleeping with strange men on the narrow bunks. Terrible was the sight of these people’s destitution, dirt, raggedness, and terror. And terrible, above all, was the immense number in this condition. One tenement, another, a third, a tenth, a twentieth, and no end to them! Everywhere the same stench, the same stifling atmosphere, the same overcrowding, the same mingling of the sexes, the same spectacle of men and women drunk to stupefaction, and the same fear, submissiveness, and culpability on all faces; and again I felt pained and ashamed of
1 To be without a passport, or to have a false one, was a serious offence in Russian law and police practice.-A.M.
myself as I had done in Lyapin House, and I understood that what I had undertaken was horrid, stupid, and therefore impossible. And I no longer questioned anyone or took notes about anything, knowing that nothing would come of it.
I suffered profoundly, at Lyapin House I had been like one who happens to see a horrible sore on a man’s body, he is sorry for
