III
Pavel Semenovich, thus left without an audience, looked around in despair. Soon his gray eyes met mine. In his gaze I noticed an obstinate idea like that of a maniac. …
“You … understand?” he said frankly, wholly undisturbed by the fact that he was talking to a stranger.
“I think so,” I answered.
“Good,” he said, with evident satisfaction, and then he went on, as if he were talking to the same person.
“I had, you know, a school friend named Kalugin, Petr Petrovich. As a young man he was infected with the tendencies of his age, but he was a rare type. He said little. He preferred to listen, and he watched how others failed, and he tried, as is said, to turn the wheel of history. … But you could feel his rapture and his devotion in his silence. … He finally came to the conclusion: ‘Everything is good and extraordinarily fine, but there is no lever. Money is the lever. And you can’t do a thing without a hundred thousand.’ You know, he succeeded in convincing several of his friends of this and they formed a small savings association. Of course, nothing came of it: one simply got tired; fate placed another too far from the source of gain. But Petr Petrovich held on and won. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was of a good character, and that kind of men get along well in business. He first went into some sort of an institution along the Volga. It wasn’t a bank nor a loan association. To get ahead, he didn’t despise even this, and all of a sudden he put new life into it, as they say. In three years’ time, he was making about six thousand a year. … He put the question this way: ‘Five twenties make a hundred! I’ll keep one thousand a year and put five thousand away for the cause. In twenty years my lever’ll be ready.’ More than that, he did it. Of course he had to have a self-sacrificing character. And system! First, to avoid all foolish accidents, he left his old friends ‘for a time,’—those who tried to catch the wheel of history in their bare hands. ‘I’ve got my problem. … Ingratitude … accidental notes … do me the favor, it’s not necessary.’ … And he held out. He mastered his life and counted every detail. Nothing—except making money! He got up every day, not like Budnikov at seven o’clock, but at thirteen minutes to seven. Second by second! He gave up his personal life. … Up to that time he had had only one pleasure: he got intimate with a girl, but on a free basis. They gave each other their word ‘not to bind each other.’ What a stupid phrase! A child gave its word to no one. … It just appeared and demanded its rights. … She was glad. … He was angry. This unpleasant event might be repeated, he thought, and, with an eye on his great cause, he determined to enjoy his freedom. ‘I’ll give the child a certain sum,’ he said, ‘even though it interferes with my great cause.’ … The woman also had character. She never touched a cent of the money, but snatched up the child—and away forever. … How he felt afterwards, no one knows, but he worked harder than ever to save money. … After various successes and failures, after twenty years, during which he regularly got up at thirteen minutes to seven, he congratulated himself on his success. He had a hundred thousand. He went to his work at the usual time, walked into the office of his superior and said: ‘I’ll leave in two months.’ They opened their mouths in amazement. ‘Are you crazy? Why? Can we raise your salary? Give you a share of the profits?’ No! He told why, and in two months he went to Moscow to take up his old life. And he had a hundred thousand in his pocket.”
“Oh, ho!” said Petr Petrovich, who just then came back from the restaurant. … “Still talking about Budnikov?”
“No,” answered Pavel Semenovich. “I was talking about someone else.”
“Someone else! Go on, I don’t care. … Go on with the hundred thousand. I hope that’s not terrible. …”
His voice sounded as if it were mocking. Pavel Semenovich looked at him in mild surprise and turned to me.
“Yes, it’s like this. … He went to Moscow—to his past, you see. … He thought life would wait, till he got rich. … He’d go to the same newspaper corner, find the same arguments and the same people, and they’d be grabbing at the wheel of history with their hands as ever. … He’d show his lever. … ‘Permit me! You have fine ideas. … Here’s my money to carry them out.’ But there wasn’t a soul to offer it to; there were other people in the corner, and they talked differently. The others had perished under the wheel of history, or had given up. … Life is like a train. … If you leave the station for a time, when you come back the train’s gone. Sometimes you can’t even find the station. You understand this tragedy, my friend?”
“But, excuse me,” said Petr Petrovich. “A hundred thousand! Free! Many a man will be willing to have this tragedy. …”
“Yes? But this man, I tell you, was sincere.”
“What of it?”
“Just this. … He wandered around among his old and new friends and kept looking for the train. … He disgusted everyone. … The thing for which he had given his own life and another’s was unintelligible; it’s just like losing a finger when you don’t know what for. You understand—various, respectable affairs like a ‘people’s home’ or a paper or an ‘ideal book store’ don’t satisfy a seventy-year-old man. … He’s ready then to give up interest and capital. …”
“But at six percent you can live modestly. … You can live!”
“Of course. … But if you want to do something. … This was an act of heroism. … He gave his life as others do theirs. … And not only his. … Would you do that for a little miserly interest? … And there was no reason for his heroism. … To sum up, one fine day they found him in a lonely room in a hotel with a bullet in his head. … And he had gotten rid of his money somehow, quickly and quietly. … I saw him the day before at a meeting of some society. No one noticed him especially. They greeted him and passed on; he was but a respectable man. Of a strong character and the best of intentions. But unusually dull!”
“H-m, yes!” said the mathematician. “There are such cranks.” And he lay down to sleep. His face, with its fat, clipped mustache, again disappeared in the shadow, and you could see only his feet and his checkered trousers. “I think,” he growled from his corner, “that Budnikov is more interesting. You’re not through with him. …”
“Yes. … I … excuse me—it was all due to chance. … I sat up all night recently. … I was reading Budnikov’s correspondence with his ‘distant’ friend. Believe me, I could not tear myself away, and you never would think that it was written by that same Semen Nikolayevich Budnikov, who drank tea and rum in my rooms, sent Gavrilo downtown, and whose soul imperceptibly, but almost before my eyes, dried up and grew barren in our little house. … And it remained, so to speak, without reverence for anything.”