I write this diary in the evenings on the pretext of working on some papers I sometimes bring home from the office. My wife is a wonderful creature in every respect; she is a woman in a thousand, good-natured, intelligent and responsive, still, even a man’s nearest and dearest hinder him from expressing his thoughts as he would like. To secure freedom of thought and expression, I must be perfectly sure that no one will read what I write. Apart from the fact that one doesn’t like to disclose certain things even to those one loves, there are dangers and pitfalls to be avoided that a man less wary than I might fall into. I don’t interfere with other people’s thoughts, and I don’t want anyone to interfere with me.
I am going to make a great confession. Notwithstanding the general misery I am a shamelessly happy man! Over there a bloody war is raging, full of horrors, while here, Sashenka, my wife, is bathing the children. She has finished darling little Lidotchka and that rascal Peter, and is doing Jena. How sweetly she is smiling to herself! When she has put the children to bed she will go about her own affairs, such as getting things ready for tomorrow, which will be Sunday, or she will play something on the piano, perhaps.
Yesterday we had a postcard from her brother Pavel, so Sashenka will be happy and contented for a week. Of course, we can’t tell what may happen, but if we don’t look too far ahead, our life may be said to be a truly happy one. Sashenka’s piano is a hired one; Sashenka is very fond of music, and was to have entered the conservatoire. To economise in wartime she offered to give up the piano, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Five roubles a month is a paltry sum for which to deprive the household of the pleasure of hearing her play. And Lidotchka, too, is beginning to learn. She shows remarkable talent for a child of six and a half.
Yes, I am truly a happy man. I will mention some of the reasons of my happiness here, though I would not talk of them to a living soul. For one thing, I am forty-five years old, and no matter what happens I will never under any circumstances be called to the colours. This is a thing it would hardly be safe to say to others; it might lead to so much misunderstanding. I have to be somewhat of a humbug at times and pretend, as all the rest do, that if I were younger and stronger and so on, I should most certainly join as a volunteer, but at bottom I can’t help rejoicing, that without in any way breaking the law, I can stop at home and not have to expose myself to some silly bullet.
I confess, too, that when the men in our office stand round the map loudly maintaining that this is a great war, essential to some great purpose, I make no attempt to argue with them. What would be the use of any little objection I might make? They would only laugh at or make sport of me, as they did of Vasia, the bookkeeper, a day or two ago, almost reducing the poor man to tears. Besides, a few indiscreet words in the mood people are in now might be harmful. No one knows how they might be interpreted.
Still, in spite of what the men in our office say, and the newspapers too, I am firmly convinced that I do not like this war at all. Greater minds than mine, such as those of scholars, politicians, or writers, may see some sense in this ugly brawl, but my small mind fails to see any good in it whatever. When I imagine myself standing in some clear field at the front, men aiming at me with rifle and gun with intent to kill—aiming, straining, bursting to hit me—I find it ridiculous; it seems like some silly practical joke. Where is the particular spot they would find so tempting to fire at? Is it my forehead, my chest, or my stomach? But no matter how much I touch myself, nor look myself up and down, I can discover nothing remarkable about me. I am a man, just an ordinary man, and no one but a fool would want to fire at me, I had some excuse to talk of silly bullets! And when my imagination carries me a little further, and I see a German on the other side of the field feeling his stomach and thinking what a fool I am, it is more than absurd, it becomes disgusting.
Let us suppose even that the German was not feeling his stomach, but aiming with every intent to kill me, does he know why he wants to do it? It’s quite possible that I’m a fool and a coward; we won’t argue about that, but supposing I’m not the only one? Supposing there are thousands, a hundred thousand men in St. Petersburgh like me, who keep diaries and rejoice that they will never be called up nor be killed, and who argue in exactly the same way as I do?
I admit there is nothing to be proud of in the fact of being afraid of one’s skin; I hardly expect to receive the St. George Cross for it; I wasn’t made for the St. George Cross, and I never set up to be a hero of the Malakhov Hill. I have never harmed anyone in my life, and I have a perfect right to demand that no one shall harm me by shooting me down like a sparrow. I didn’t want the war. Wilhelm did not send his ambassadors to me to find out if I wanted to fight; he just said “fight,” and that’s all. Needless to say, I love my country, Russia, and should any fool or madman come to attack it, I should be bound to defend it, regardless of my skin. Were I of military age (and this in all honesty) I should not evade my duties under pretext of medical unfitness, or take advantage of influence and hide behind Auntie’s skirts in the rear. I should be in my place at the front with the others, ready to kill or be killed.
This is as plain as broad daylight; but it so happens that I am forty-five and have a perfect right to stay where I am, to think as I choose, to be a coward or a fool, if I like. It is the hand of fate! Instead of being Ilya Petrovitch Dementev, living in Post Office Street in St. Petersburgh, I might have been a Belgian, a Maeterlinck; I might have perished beneath a German shell, but I am Ilya Petrovitch, forty-five years old, and do live in Post Office Street in St. Petersburgh, where no German shell can reach me, and I am happy in the consciousness thereof.
All sorts of things might have been. Instead of working in our particular bank, which is as sound as any banking house can well be, and likely to withstand any war, I might have been working in some wretched little business that would have collapsed with the first breath of war, as so many of them have done, and I might have been left homeless with my Lidotchka, nothing but a lottery ticket in my pocket and five hundred roubles in the savings bank—a pleasant prospect indeed! Or I might have been a Pole or a Jew in Galicia and lain as carrion in the dust, or dangling from a tree. No man escapes his fate!
It is useless, however, to speculate on things that are not, and no matter how sorry I might feel for the Belgians or for our own soldiers in the trenches, I can’t help rejoicing that I am what I am. God! to think that instead of my dear Sashenka I might have had some wretched woman for a wife, of whom there are so many in the world! That, too, would have been fate; as it is, I can’t help gloating over the happiness that is mine.
Sashenka has just been playing the Belgian National Anthem. What beautiful music it is! How exhilarating, and what love of freedom and country it expresses! The tears came into my eyes as I listened. A feeling of pity for the poor Belgians came over me. Their beautiful anthem and their love of their native land availed them nothing; they are being crushed by the confounded Germans.
Yes, no matter what the politicians in our office may say, I can never agree that this war is a good war. How absurd to think of it! People are being crushed and butchered, yet they maintain that there is no harm in it, for when we take Berlin, they argue, justice will be done. What kind of justice, and for whom? What use would justice be to an unfortunate Belgian—a man of my age, let us say? And there must be many men like me.
Sashenka says it’s late and time for bed. It’s not my fault that after a hard, honest day’s work I am well pleased at the prospect of a peaceful night’s rest!