XVII
Till now, I had been very fond of Titus. We had been schoolfellows; although he was much older than I. Poor Titus was rather ill provided with brains, learned everything with incredible effort, and regarded me with adoring admiration. I, in my heart, appreciated the energy with which he overcame difficulties, rendered almost unconquerable by his stupidity, and highly valued his good-nature, his sincere affection for myself, and his sound common-sense—a quality which I completely lacked.
I was often deeply touched by the sight of his arduous toil.
When preparing for examinations he would arm himself with notes a long time beforehand, sit down at the table, stop his ears, schoolboy fashion, and begin to mumble over his book, repeating every sentence again and again. At these moments his face wore a mixed expression of suffering and stern resolve. When he thought that he had got a sentence by heart, he would cover it with his hand, turn up his eyes, and repeat it, first with effort, afterwards more easily. Then a contented look would cross his weary face, only, however, to be replaced with the old careworn expression when he turned over a new page.
He was not ashamed to cram thus in my presence. I knew him well, and knew how hard it was for him, and how sometimes he would despair and imagine that he should never get his diploma. I knew, too, how much he needed his diploma—that all his future depended on it. In some faraway little western town his old mother was struggling on earning her living among strangers, and supporting an invalid daughter by arduous effort. For his sake these two women practised a ferocious economy, putting all their trust in Titus, and looking forward to the completion of his course, for the fruition of their hopes and redemption from the dreary slavery of their lot. And Titus did his best.
I knew all this, and therefore it never entered into my head to laugh at him when he sat rocking himself backwards and forwards with half-shut eyes and an agonized face; or when, on going to bed, he put his book under his pillow according to the schoolboy superstition that he should thereby get its contents into his head during the night. I understood that at this moment, Titus was not in the mood for discussions on rationalism. When he went up to the examination table and held out his hand for the ticket, I trembled for him more than for myself. And when he answered, as was his wont, word for word from the notes which he had learned by rote, I used to fear that the professor would notice the senseless monotony of his voice and his occasional strange mistakes.
All this bound us together in a close friendship. I always did my best to keep Titus out of the complications into which I flung myself with enthusiasm and which might, in one way or another, have spoiled his career. Indeed, when he did occasionally appear at our meetings, in was only as a listener. He himself never uttered a word; and only afterwards, when alone with me, would he venture to submit some idea of his own for discussion. In this there was much that was pathetic. Poor Titus would doubtless have liked to cultivate “ideas,” but he knew that for him this was a forbidden luxury, that his business was to grind at his notes and get his degree. A certain shade of melancholy might therefore be observed in his Platonic affection for “ideas,” which he called by the generic name of “Philosophy,” esteeming them in his own particular fashion from afar, and through me, as people esteem the distinguished acquaintances of an intimate friend. Sometimes I would try to explain these ideas to him, eagerly and enthusiastically, as was my wont. In these talks and expositions he greatly delighted, listening attentively and earnestly, and never interrupting me, however late at night it might be. But when I left off and went comfortably to bed, Titus, with a sigh, would light the lamp on his table, put his fingers in his ears, and try to make up for lost time. And if I awoke, even after a long sleep, I could still hear his weary but persistent buzzing.
Now while my anxious friend was busying himself about me, I sat looking at him with a dim, unsteady gaze. My general feeling of isolation and estrangement included even him, who seemed to have strangely altered and to be no longer the old Titus.
Did you ever, when looking at a man while your thoughts were elsewhere, lose consciousness of the distance between you and him? The figure of the living man becomes like a blurred mark, the size and position of which you are unable to determine. The optic image forms itself in your eyes divested of all the impressions which usually accompany it. The sensation is a curious one; and it has sometimes happened to me, especially in childhood, to detain it for several seconds. I was interested in this arbitrary conversion of living people into mental phantasmagoria.
For several minutes my friend had been moving about before me in this way, but now I did not find it amusing. I tried to shake off the sensation. I failed. For there was something else which I saw at the same time whether I would or no—the image of the broken fragments and what lay in them—the image which had fallen into my mind on the platform. I instinctively felt that it was this that rendered Titus so different and divested him in my eyes of the quality for which I had previously esteemed him. His love for me, my tenderness for him, the recollection of his old mother, of the bitterness of her homeless life among strangers in a strange country, of her expectations and hopes—all this was gone, far away, where Urmánov’s tragedy and my late exalted enthusiasms were gone.
I was even half surprised when Titus suddenly offered me a glass of hot tea. I felt surprised that he could hold a glass, and that I could take it in my hand and find it hot and heavy.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Gavrik?” asked Titus regarding me anxiously.
“What?” I asked, not knowing how to answer, averting my eyes.
“You look so … strange.”
“No, it is nothing.”
I put the glass to my lips, but drink I could not. The tea scalded me; to cool it appeared a difficult matter, and not worth the trouble. I set the glass on the table and lay down. In a few minutes I was asleep.
I slept long and awoke just as I had gone to sleep, suddenly, without any of that twilight of awakening consciousness which, in youth, is sweeter than sleep itself. It appeared as if I suddenly remembered something and opened my eyes at once.
Titus was sitting at his table, with his side face towards me writing. The sense of strangeness touching his personality had now disappeared; for though I had not resumed my normal condition, I was getting accustomed to my new mood.
Titus was tall and spare, the muscles and sinews stood out sharply on his long neck. His head was bent to the left, and he nodded it regularly as he wrote, slightly swaying his long back, while his lips unconsciously formed the words that he wrote. All his muscles were tense, and he seemed to be writing with his whole body. He was evidently copying out a lecture. Sometimes, on finishing a sentence, he would lay down his pen with a sigh and look round at me, on which I shut my eyes tight and waited impatiently till he returned to his work.
Directly I heard his pen squeaking along the paper, I would begin to watch him again, in imagination tracing his muscular action back to his anatomical component parts. From the movement of the wrist I went on … muscular biceps, shoulder … reflex movements of the lips and neck … and all this guided by “a secretion of the brain.” For some reason the process of secretion in this case is difficult. The thought which moves under Titus’ light hair creeps along very slowly; it is therefore perhaps quite in vain that the old mother and the invalid sister look forward to help from their Titushka; the engine is none of the best.
Now Urmánov’s engine was better. The movements in the brain were stronger and more definite; the boiler worked under high pressure. Herein, of course, lay the danger; there was no safety-valve; the passions began to boil too hard and blew up the machinery. That is Urmánov’s whole history in a nutshell. The American went away. Urmánov died. How simple it all is, how very simple!
How lean and bony Titus is! Evidently the brain, which he forces to perform labor beyond its strength, sucks into itself the other parts of my poor Titus. The central machine is overworked, and the levers and cogwheels are wearing out.
And still under all these thoughts lay the thing that had fallen into me on the platform. I had only to look at it, and the whole picture would rise before me—the boiler smashed, its contents spilt, and the cogwheels and levers scattered about, an utter breakdown. That means that a man is dead.
And this is life. … And this death.
There is some physical law moving it. This is life; you may surround it with as many decorations as you like. Stop the movement with a mere touch … death! You can dress it up in gorgeous and funereal fictions. For my part, it seemed to me at that moment that I saw both sides of the medal; both with the same meaning; both leading to the same result. It is quite simple, clear, and … disgusting.
Titus left off writing, looked at his watch, and carefully put up his notes.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Titus started and looked round.
“Ah! you are awake! It is two o’clock—time for the fifth lecture. Will you come?”
“All right!”
I got up languidly. I did not want either to go or to stay.
“What is going on there today?” I asked.
“Bratoshka lectures.”
“Ah!”
“What do you think, Gavrik; will they hiss him or not?”
I looked at Titus in surprise. His question reminded me of something that seemed to have happened long before the storm, or in a dream. Yes, of course, yesterday someone had got excited and said objectionable things to Professor Byelichka, and, if I remembered rightly, I also got excited yesterday about the same matter, and shouted like the others. But now I yawned carelessly.
“How the deuce should I know?”
Titus accounted for my indifference in his own way. He looked mournfully at me and sighed.
“Are you all right again? Are you well?”
“What should be wrong with me?”
“Well, I was quite frightened about you; you were awful to look at; perfectly livid and your eyes quite strange. Ah Gavrik! Gavrik! you were too sure of your nerve.”
It occurred to me that in truth I was not quite well. I felt a kind of nausea in my soul, as though I wanted to get rid of something to throw off something. For the first time I understood what it was that I wanted to throw off. It was the phantasm which had taken possession of me on the platform. But I no longer tried to get rid of it; I had either got used to it, or felt instinctively that it was useless to struggle.
“Yes … poor Urmánov!” said Titus with another sigh.
I looked at him with inexplicable annoyance.
“For pity’s sake, Titus, don’t let us have any nonsense.”
“I … why, what did I say?” asked my friend with amazement. “It was Urmánov there … Why, don’t you know?”
I looked at him again, trying the while to discern why his pity and his sighs should irritate me so.
“Yes, very well; I know. Urmánov … But you see, there isn’t any Urmánov. Well. Is there?”
“No-n-no … Of course, now … when … like that … ,” he stammered.
“Well; there you are; like … That is to say, you are pitying a person who … a thing which … do you understand me properly … doesn’t exist at all …”
Titus raised his eyebrows, looked at me timidly, as though trying to understand; he then gently submitted a fresh argument:
“But listen, Gavrik. All the same, you know … he … however that may be … he used to exist.”
“Well?”
“Well, then, that’s it. I am sorry for the man that was.”
I shrugged my shoulders. Titus had never before seemed so stupid and pitiable; and I wanted to tell him so point-blank.
“Look here, Titus! Wasn’t it I who painted Urmánov in such grand colors to you? Just try and remember.”
“That’s just it: there you see …”
“No, no; wait a bit! It is I who am talking to you now; and you may take my word for it, … there isn’t anything there at all; … do you understand? There is nothing whatsoever; and … there never was anything. Now let us go to lecture.”
I did not want to hear what Titus would say, or to talk any more myself. Did it ever happen to you to write verses or to prove a difficult syllogism in your sleep? It all goes so beautifully, so clearly. You wake up and eagerly recall what you have thought out, in the hope that you have hit upon something grand only to discover that there is no rhythm in the verses and that the syllogism is a glaring absurdity. Something of this kind befell me at that moment. I thought myself extremely keen-witted; everything I said sounded even cruelly brilliant; and only long afterwards did I understand that the stupider of the two was myself and not Titus.