So there remained only those unfortunate idle people: officials, copyists, footmen out of places, beggars, drunkards, prostitutes, and children, whom it was impossible to help at once with money, but whom it would be necessary to get to know well, to think about, and to find places for. I looked for people unfortunate merely from poverty and whom we could help by sharing our superfluity with them; and by some peculiar mischance (as it seemed to me) I did not find any such, but found only unfortunates of a kind to whom it would be necessary to devote much time and care.
CHAPTER VII
unfortunates I had noted down seemed to me to fall naturally into three classes: first, those who had lost advantageous positions and were awaiting a return to them (there were such both from the lower and higher ranks); then dissolute women, of whom there were very many in these houses; and thirdly, children. Most of all I found and noted people of the first class, who had lost their former advantageous position and wished to return to it. People of that kind, especially from among the gentry and officials, were very numerous. In almost all the tenements to which we went with the landlord, Ivan Fedotych, he told us: ‘Here there will be no need for you to fill in the list of lodgers yourselves. There is a man here who can do all that, if only he is not drunk to-day.’
And Ivan Fedotych would call the man out by name, and he was always one of those who had fallen from a better position. At Fedotych’s call there would creep out from some dark corner a once rich gentleman or official, usually drunk and always half-undressed. If not drunk he always readily undertook the task offered him: nodding with an air of importance, knitting his brows, and introducing learned terminology into his remarks, and holding with careful tenderness the clean, printed, red card in his trembling, dirty hands, he would look round on his fellow lodgers with pride and contempt as if triumphing now, by his superior education, over those who had so often humiliated him. He was evidently glad to come into touch with the world in which red cards are printed-the world to which he once belonged. Almost always in reply to my inquiries about his life the man would begin, not only readily but with enthusiasm; to tell the story, fixed in his mind like a prayer, of the misfortunes he had endured and especially of that former position which by his education he felt ought to be his.
There are very many such people scattered in various corners of Rzhanov House. One tenement was entirely taken up by them-men and women. When we approached it Ivan Fedotych told us: ‘Now here are the gentry.’ The lodging was quite full: they were almost all (some forty persons) at home. In the whole house there were none more degraded and unhappy than these: the old shrivelled, and the young pale and haggard. I talked with some of them. The story was almost always the same, differing only in degree of development. Each of them had been rich, or had a father, brother, or uncle who had been or still was rich, or his father or he himself had had an excellent place.
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.
