Part + 

III + 

In my excitement of the last few days I have accused myself of many unjust things. Excitement is a poor guide when a man wants to take a sober view of things. I must have been too upset by these unexpected revelations that flowed from the mouths of our Duma Ciceros as freely as abundance from the horn of plenty. If I had been blind, what were our Ciceros doing? Their eyes, at any rate, ought to have been more penetrating. I don’t deny that I am powerless, but unfortunately it is not my fault that I am so. I am what I am. Had I been born a Samson or a Joffre, I should have been a Samson or a Joffre. No man is fool enough, knowing me to be no mathematician, to set me a problem of integral calculus to solve; in the same way, how can I be expected to solve the problem of the Great War and Russian corruption? I didn’t begin the war! I’m not responsible for the filthy mess we have got into, and I don’t see why it should be put upon my shoulders! It’s both absurd and unjust. To tell a man to clear away a mountain, and not give him so much as a spade to do it with! I should like to see those gentlemen tackling the job! + 

The office has settled down quietly again, thank God, and I’m glad to say the children are well. Mother had a slight stomach trouble, but is better now. The old lady is very tough, and may outlast the lot of us, I shouldn’t wonder. But she has absolutely no memory. + 

I’ve thought of having the walls in the nursery and the study repapered at my own expense. The paper in my study reminds me of those terrible white July nights, when, like a madman, I used to sit, almost naked, on my windowsill, or paced the floor, barefoot. I used to count each flower in the pattern, and knew each curve and spot by heart. + 

I was uncertain at first, whether this was the right time for doing it, but on reflection, I came to the conclusion that this was the very best time indeed. Why should one let circumstances get the better of one, and because there’s a war, live like a pig? The war may go on if it likes, but my house and my children are my own. + 

Jena made me laugh last night when I watched him getting to bed. The little rascal has grown quite fat and rosy of late. He’s a dear boy! When he had finished a prayer I had taught him, in which he prayed for his father and mother and the soldiers at the front, and ended up with the words, “Merciful God, let me wake tomorrow, sinner that I am,” he promptly stood on his head, exposing his naked little body, and turned a somersault with huge delight. I wish all sinners could be like him. + 

Sashenka approved of my letter to her brother. She thought it showed fine feeling. He hasn’t replied, but I hardly expected him to. + 

I am putting the house to rights. It has been woefully neglected. The heavy curtains and the couch and chairs in my study are full of moth. Just to make a change, I have shifted the furniture and converted the dining-room into my study. I am not sure that it looks better, but it is certainly an improvement to get a different view from my window. I come to hate my former view of the smug house opposite with its many windows. They used to depress me and make me feel sick at heart. Many was the time I could see myself falling past them and past the flat, disgusting walls. How strangely man is constituted! I couldn’t help reflecting on this as I helped the porter move the furniture. Birds migrate to the south when they feel the winter coming on, while man begins to find a new attraction for his little box of a home, and sets about making it as comfortable as he can for the stormy weather. The moving would have amused and distracted me, had not the face of my darling Lidotchka, that is ever before my eyes, made me recall former years when she used to help, in her own little way, and sent a pain through my heart. Lidotchka is gone, never to return. + 

Many other things are gone, too, never to return. Desolation has penetrated even to the heart of our little home. I was obliged to give up all thoughts of repapering. The cost of living has risen to such a degree as to make a poor man look with apprehension at the future. Bread and fuel.⁠ ⁠… But why should I fill my diary with the prosaic details of everyday life? Dear, dear, the war is proving a monster, indeed! + 

The Germans continue to advance from Warsaw and are getting nearer and nearer to us. No one speaks about it, and all wait anxiously for new developments. We look askance at each other for any chance of some fresh news, but what fresh news can there be? Even the Germans, it seems, know nothing, and no one in the whole world knows or understands.⁠ ⁠… The world is turned upside down. + 

Kovno has fallen. Our military experts declared this fortress impregnable, and it was cracked like a nut and consumed instantaneously. + 

Osovetz has fallen. + 

The fortress of Brest has been taken. + 

It’s a lucky thing for me that I have this diary, where I can speak of my fears without any sense of shame. One has to put on a brave countenance before others, and hide one’s horrible fear. It would be a dreadful thing indeed if the whole population of Petrograd were to begin to tremble and to scream with terror, as I feel inclined to do at any moment! And the terror is real, not silly talk calculated to alarm others, that gives the person creating the alarm a secret sense of pleasure. It makes you feel that you want to run away and hide and you don’t know where to go, nor how you’ll get the money. You seem like a tree standing at the edge of a wood exposed to a hurricane that is drawing near; you fold the leaves closer about you, while inwardly you quake to the very roots. + 

I am living in the one hope that our office may be moved. There is a lot of whispering going on about it, and gathering together of books. I only wish it were true! + 

I no longer try to understand what it is that I fear so much, both for myself and the children. The word “war” no longer conveys any meaning to me. It is a dead word we have grown accustomed to using. Something living is drawing close to us now with a wild roar, something living and immense, and it shakes the earth as it comes. “They are coming!” There are no words terrible enough to equal these. “They are coming! They are coming!” + 

The white nights after Lidotchka’s death with all their torments, would have been preferable to this. You felt safer in the light. What can one do during the dark Autumn nights, terrible enough without any Germans? Last night I couldn’t sleep for fear. Horrible pictures floated through my brain. I saw the advancing Germans, I heard their unfamiliar speech, I saw their strange Teutonic faces and guns and knives, ready for their murderous work. As in a dream I saw them bustling about a baggage-train; they were shouting at the horses in their own tongue; they were rumbling in crowds over bridges; I could hear their voices, so vivid did my vision of them appear. + 

There were millions of them⁠—preoccupied, busy men with knives for our throats⁠—and their ruthless faces were turned to us, to Petrograd, to Post Office Street, to me. They marched through country roads and villages; they scrambled into motorcars; railway trains swarmed with them; they were in aeroplanes dropping bombs from above; they leapt from hill to hill; they hid for a while, then rushed out again, coming another mile nearer to us; they showed their teeth; they dragged their knives and guns; they set fire to houses; and nearer and nearer they came. My hair stood on end. I felt myself in the midst of a lonely wood surrounded by cutthroat robbers creeping up to the house in the darkness of the night. + 

I was reduced to such a condition in the end that I lay craning for every sound, and the merest rustle made me think that someone had come ready to pounce upon me. It was unbearable! I am truly a coward, I can see that now, but I can’t help it. What can I do? It’s horrible! + 

And not so long ago I was idiotic enough to think of repapering my rooms! + 

I have come to myself, somewhat, and take a more reasonable view of our position. The newspapers say, and the fellows in the office, too, that the Germans will never get to Petrograd. I wonder if they are right? The streets are horribly dull, and if you happen to forget the Germans for a little, they seem the same dull streets as of old. There are the trams and the cabs and the shops, which are open as usual. There is more dust and dirt abroad, and a strong gust of wind nearly blinds you and chokes you with dried horse manure. Houses and palaces seem deserted and dirty too, and like clouds of dust and smoke, a thick fog hangs over the Neva, obscuring the other side of the river. + 

I read the reports of the speeches in the Duma with great agitation, but a feeling of caution prompts me not to commit my impressions to paper. I still wonder at the utter blindness that made me trust so idiotically, seeing only the outward form of things. Where was my patriotism? Any self-respecting State would have cast me out, but here I’m no worse than others, a respectable member of society, as things go, a family hen who struts about paying visits to other hens, and sets up a violent cackling over a broken egg. No more than a hen! Splendid idea! I see, now, the meaning of the phrase “chickenhearted.” My Jena is no more than a chicken. Many hens like me are to be seen in the streets with their chickens.⁠ ⁠… Stop! + 

The clerk Ilya Petrovitch Dementev is but a chickenhearted fellow. + 

The greatest misfortune has happened to me. It has taken me four days to pluck up sufficient courage to write it. I ought to have foreseen that it would happen. I ought to have known by the way business was decreasing, and the general difficulties attending it, that it was bound to come, but my wanton blindness made me trust, and kept me from worrying. Our bank has gone smash, and the office is closed. Our chief died suddenly. They say he killed himself, and that the family are keeping it dark. All the employees were paid off. Those who, like myself, had been with the firm for a long time, were generously treated and received a full month’s salary. It was certainly generous, considering the complete failure of the house. + 

What shall I do now to support myself and the children? The question is more alarming than the coming of the Germans. The Germans may or may not come, we do not know, but here am I faced by this fact. In a very little time the children and I will be starving. + 

I haven’t told Sashenka yet; I dare not; I can’t find the words with which to do it decently. At home no one knows. I leave the house at the usual time in the morning and wander about the streets, dodging acquaintances or sitting in the Taurida Garden. At five I return home as though from the office. I must think of some plan; I must make up my mind what to do. + 

For the first time in my life I find myself out of work, not counting, of course, the few occasions when in my youth, I happened to find myself without a post for two or three weeks, but one took it so lightly then, as one does everything else in youth. I even forget what the experience was like. Now I am forty-six, and have a family.⁠ ⁠… + 

What good am I to anyone now? What right have I to live? I have no justification other than my willingness to work. So long as I had work and supported my helpless little ones, I was a man with a claim to respect and consideration, but now⁠ ⁠… I’m no better than the lowest ne’er-do-well; I’m the most insignificant person on the face of the earth. I cannot even supply the needs of my own miserable existence, let alone the needs of those depending on me. A sparrow pecking manure on the road has a greater right to live than I! + 

As long as I worked I was a personality, a visible, tangible quantity; my little efforts helped to make the common wheel go round; now I am dead, as it were. I am no more than a ghost among the living, though to outward impressions alive. What a horrible condition to be in! My voice even has changed, and assumed an ingratiating quality it used not to possess; my walk has become slouching and cautious. I seem to be tiptoeing through the house, the only person awake, trying not to disturb the others. If it were not for the fact that most people were a little unlike themselves just now, mother would notice that it was only the ghost of my former self that went and came each day. I act very cleverly in Sashenka’s presence not to let her see anything, but we so rarely meet now; I do my best to avoid her as much as I can, on plea of pressing work. + 

I know that I’m not to blame for what has happened; I’m only the victim of circumstances, but that is small consolation. No self-respecting man could find consolation and satisfaction in the thought of being a victim. The more I think of it the more I hate myself for my inefficiency and limitations. My life hangs on the merest thread that any casual person can break at his will. What have I accomplished to sit calmly with folded arms. Where are the indelible traces of my personality, the fruits of my labour? Some chairs and tables, a few garments, two children, is the sum total of all my achievements.⁠ ⁠… But what am I saying? I have chests of drawers, down pillows, four hundred roubles in the savings bank, a lottery ticket in my pocket with which I stand the chance of winning two hundred thousand roubles. It would be both interesting and instructive to make a complete inventory of the things I have acquired by my own efforts during the whole of my life. + 

It’s overwhelming and shameful to think what little there is! I can’t stay in this flat for more than another month, and then.⁠ ⁠… Poor children, what a wretched father you possess! + 

I have made the round of my acquaintances, entered some two hundred doors with my letters of recommendation, but no one seems to have any use for “an honest, conscientious worker.” Many are not slow to give advice. One man advised me, from the height of his patriotic self-satisfaction, to get some war work, and to “mobilise industry” with the millionaire Riabushinsky, those of a more practical turn of mind told me to worm myself in, and to suck the war as a newborn babe its mother’s breast, and, judging by my brother-in-law, this seems to be a very nourishing form of diet. + 

I would profit by their wise and patriotic councils did not the thought of who would “mobilise” my Peter and Jena have a deterring effect. As for the latter suggestion, I am sorry that I don’t know where to find the beneficent breasts into which to dig my teeth. + 

I’m stupid and unadaptable; I can only do work I’m used to. God! how I envy the rich! With what despair and avarice do I look at their big houses with the plate-glass windows, and their motorcars and carriages, and showy, loathsome clothes; their gold and diamonds! I hate to think that I can’t do what they do! Since all are plundering, why must I starve for some empty word like honour, which people only laugh at, if they think of it at all? + 

I’d die sooner than tell Sashenka that I’ve lost my work and can’t keep the family. If only I hadn’t been so overbearing in days gone by! If only I hadn’t been so exacting and presumptuous! To think of the way I used to come out with, “You might be more careful about my food! What would happen to you all if I were to fall ill?” or, “Do keep the place quiet! I must get a little rest!” or, “Why is the tea cold? Why isn’t my coat brushed? Look at the fluff on the sleeve!” The presumptuousness of it! + 

I try to economise by going without food as much as I can. I never take any supper at all now, easily excusing myself on account of my precious digestion; however, I very rarely feel hungry. I was overcome by the alarming thought yesterday that, running about as much as I do, I should wear out my boots, and I promptly went into the Rumiantsev Garden, where I sat for a couple of hours, to spare them. It will come to going about naked soon, to spare my clothes! + 

How long shall I be able to endure it? My misery knows no bounds. Every sensitive spot in me has been pierced by the thorn. When I try to picture my heart it seems like a lump of stringy sausage made of dog flesh, rather than the keeper of lofty feelings and desires. What have I done to deserve it all? Why must I bear this inhuman pain? + 

To make sport of a man like this? How long will my patience last? Why must I cringe and scrape? Am I a coward? + 

As I wandered through the square yesterday, gazing at the dusty pavement, bestrewn with cigarette ends, at the trembling leaves on the trees, at the houses on the other side of the river, the thought suddenly occurred to me that, did I but choose, I could join my darling Lidotchka in a few moments, my dear, eternally beloved child. Happiness smiled to me at the thought, a heavenly light seemed to descend upon my unfortunate head. I was, for the moment, rich and free, the richest and freest being in the whole world. + 

Why do I go on struggling against odds? Why am I careful of my boots, like a respectable pauper, when freedom and happiness are so close at hand in the deep, fastly-flowing river? + 

There’s nothing to say. + 

On the advice of a former fellow-clerk, who had managed to get himself a job with an army contractor, I set out to a certain café on the Nevsky, where business men were known to gather. Luck would depend entirely on an easygoing self-confident manner. I should have to tell a few lively stories, introduce myself to people, and then worm my way in. + 

It turned out quite differently, though. I told no stories, nor could I put on a self-confident manner. I merely smiled, in the hope of attracting some sympathetic eye. I ordered some tea and a meat pie in an offhand way, and when they were brought to me, I lapsed into a stony silence; I seemed to lose the power of speech. I was stunned by the voices around me, by the alertness of the men to whom they belonged. It was a sight to see them walk in and roll their eyes about till they settled on the individual approaching them. They would be seated together in a moment, smoking and chatting like veritable old cronies, abusing each other one moment, and ready to fall on each other’s necks the next. Though their talk was sufficiently loud and communicative at times, it was difficult to gather what they were driving at. One thing, however, seemed clear⁠—something was being bought and sold, someone was being robbed, ruined, or betrayed. That was the way the money was made. + 

They hadn’t an air of money about them to look at. Most of them were shabby; only two wore real diamonds in scarf-pins, studs and rings, the rest wore imitation ones. Their pocketbooks, however, which most took out now and again, were all fat, and stuffed not with common paper, but with banknotes. The sordidness may have been a matter of form, the livery essential to these men’s service. Disgusting crowd! + 

I will say frankly that I set out to the café with my mind fully made up, and without any moral scruples. Had one of them said to me, “Look here, Ilya Petrovitch, we want to break open a safe tonight,” or, “We want to counterfeit money, will you join us for good pay?” I should have accepted the commission without the smallest hesitation. At any rate, that is what I thought, but when I had been sitting there for an hour in stony silence, looking at their ties and faces, their dirty finger nails and diamond rings, I was filled with a loathing towards these men⁠—not so much to what they stood for⁠—I had no clear knowledge of that⁠—as to the men themselves, to the infamy in their faces. Horrible crowd! + 

I was so struck by a certain black moustached man among them that I forgot, for a time, the hopelessness of my own position. He was not old, robust and strong, and the only one among the rabble who was well-dressed; he held himself with a calmness and dignity that inspired awe. He listened more than he spoke, smiling now and again, and refused to shake hands with a grubby man who approached him. Neither the man nor anyone else paid any heed to that; it was taken as a matter of course. Once he let his black eye fall on me, cruel and indifferent; and, knowing him by instinct to be the rogue and swindler he was, still felt the servile impulse to incline my head in an ingratiating way. I don’t suppose he noticed me, or if he did, he must have soon sized me up at my true value, and turned his attention to someone else. He allowed no one to pay for his tea when he got up to go; but five men followed him to the door, deferential even to his back. I learned afterwards from the remarks of the others, that the man had made several millions. Three or four was the figure mentioned, but even if half had been exaggerated, it still left the sufficient sum of two millions. + 

I thought of the man for the rest of the day after I had left the café. What had he done to earn two millions? What robberies and treacheries did they represent? What manner of man must he be? What kind of soul must he possess to be so calm, to fear neither the bloodshed, nor God, nor the devil? I found it hard to believe that he was made of the same stuff as myself. I marvelled as I tried to recall his face, his powerful, robust figure, his calmness. I compared him to mother during dinner⁠—mother who grudged herself every morsel she ate. I tried to recall Pavel, and the awful moment when informed her of his death, and still more did I marvel at the mysteries of human life. + 

No amount of reflection on the rights and wrongs of it could have so completely killed the desire to take my share of the plunder as the sight of that man. To be a big rogue, you must be born a big rogue, and I haven’t the quickness, the ease of manner, nor lightness of heart to make a small one. It is given to some men to possess millions, to others a conscience⁠—a truly wise division of wealth! + 

I’ve had a fit of extravagance. I enjoyed my supper. + 

Earlier in the day I went into Eliseyev’s and, throwing a rouble on the counter in the lordly way of a man who possessed four millions, I asked for a pound of Moscow sausage of which mother and the children are very fond. Why shouldn’t they enjoy a good meal for once, and think kindly of the man who was able to supply it? I bought two pounds of choice sweets, too, and two thousand cigarettes, which I took to Sashenka for her soldiers. I received her tender kiss and thanks without the smallest qualms of conscience. I hadn’t courage enough to rob in the café, but didn’t mind robbing at home. + 

Despite the satisfaction of a hearty meal, I am filled with remorse at this moment, as though I had indeed committed a robbery in the highway. A full stomach, however, is stronger than remorse and conscience, and I soon began to yawn with the callousness of a millionaire. This is the first time I have felt sleepy since I lost my work. + 

I did not sleep, however, even though I did feel sleepy. I no sooner got to bed than all desire for sleep left me. I lay tossing about or smoking the whole night trying to think of some honest work I could do. A waiter in a restaurant seemed to me a possible idea, or a tram-conductor since men were scarce now, but with morning and the sun, I realised the futility of it. How could I do a waiter’s difficult task with my poor health and inexperience. Such work was not for me! + 

I am getting to know Petrograd as well as a tourist or a philosopher. I spend hours staring at monuments as though I had never seen them before. I try to understand their symbolic meaning. I inspect the palaces and new buildings. I am quite stirred by good architecture. With the greatest interest did I walk round the new Turkish Mosque near the Troitsky Bridge, to get a good view of it from all sides. I felt as though I were travelling in the Far East. I had my lunch on a bench in the Square, and meditated on the many different religions. I went into the Alexander III Museum and admired the pictures. Acquaintances, only, I can’t bear to meet, and disappear down a side street when I catch sight of one in the distance. + 

About the doings of the Germans I only learn from the staff bulletins on the public notices; I never buy any newspapers now. To judge by people’s countenances, things are going badly with us, and the Germans are still advancing. I don’t know how it will end, and I care very little; my own end will come first. It escaped my notice, somehow, that on the 3rd of the month Grodno was taken. + 

A ghost among the living, I abandon myself for hours together to ghostly reflections. I can see life as an outsider; I seem to get a bird’s-eye view of it from above, I philosophise; mentally I arrange the affairs of men and governments. The rumbling motor vehicles, the burdened horses, the tense activity made me realise why there was a war. A man wants to possess more than his fellows, that is why we have war. And I approved of his desire. + 

With a curiosity the living would not understand, I study the plan of the town. I like to know why it is laid out in roads and streets and squares. I can see the full importance of the tramway. I like the look of the block of flats and the porters; I like the stone quay. I saw the Ochta Bridge open to let a steamer pass one day, and I liked that, too. I like the bustling crowds at the railway stations; I never miss going to them every day. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t mind if the whole thing collapsed. It would be an interesting spectacle to watch. I try to picture the flames and the ruins. The town would look very flat when it was over. + 

I saw two aeroplanes in the sky today from the Krestovsky Island; one made a circuit round the edge of a large cloud. Mentally I was up there flying with them, not without a sense of pleasure. I take a very lordly view of life, on the whole. I mean this in all seriousness. At times I am in the best of moods. I don’t mind how much money I spend, and buy presents and sweets for the children in the most lordly way. I took another basket of fruit to Sashenka, and gave it to her very gallantly. + 

A lord, indeed! + 

The town is in a ferment like a disturbed ant hill. Voices are raised loudly in altercation. The Duma has been dismissed. Our only hope was in the Duma. How bold the citizens of Petrograd have become all at once! They shout things out in the streets they would have been afraid to speak of in a whisper in the privacy of their own bedrooms but a short time ago! Trouble is feared. With the murmur of discontented voices in my ears, I think, “It’s all very fine, my brave fellows.⁠ ⁠… But what has it to do with me?” + 

From sheer lack of something else to do, I went to the Taurida Palace. It looked just the same as on any ordinary day. A small crowd of us stood watching the members coming out. There seemed nothing unusual about them too; they were men like other men, only a little grave and satisfied, perhaps, that it had fallen to their lot to participate in such a great historic event. To be dismissed in the hour when “the country was in danger”! They came out with dignity, and sat stiff and upright in their carriages, looking grave, with the air of a specialist who had just finished a patient. When I smiled and happened to pass some jocular remark, a young man near me said something about the black hundreds. I resolve to get away before I was mobbed, and really, what business had I there at all? I went to the Ochta Bridge afterwards and expended six kopeks to go down the Neva on a steamer as far as the Vasily Island. + 

The water has a strange attraction for me. I was very soothed to sit on the fore part of the ship, with the wind and spray beating against my face. It gave a pleasantness to my hopelessness and despair. + 

I know now what emptiness means. How very weird and strange it is! Emptiness is everywhere; it stretches from the moon, at which I gazed last night, to the English embankment. The houses are full of it; it clings to walls and ceilings; there is not a room that does not contain it; knock down every wall, and nothing will remain between me and the stars but emptiness. + 

I realised this very vividly at dawn yesterday. I had been dreaming that Lidotchka had come to see me, and I awoke. I was too restless to go to sleep again afterwards, so I got up and went into my study, where I sat down on the windowsill. It was getting light, but it was raining, and everything seemed grey and monotonous. There was no beginning or end to anything. It was still and quiet around me. A sense of the emptiness shot through me, of the emptiness within, and the emptiness without, the two stretching together throughout eternity. Emptiness was everywhere; within it was heated, so that people should not perish of the eternal cold. And that thing sitting on the windowsill (I went on thinking) is a man, and the emptiness is all about him. The emptiness that is heated is called a house, and soon I shall have no house.⁠ ⁠… + 

Then I realised where I was. Like a lunatic, once more I was sitting on my windowsill in my pants. My legs seemed so long and my beard so grey. Your end has come, Ilya Petrovitch! + 

I would have gone to bed just now, but the moon peeped in at my window, so I think I’ll go out and look at it, I don’t like having to wake the porter each time I go in and out; I have only the key of our own flat. I shouldn’t like everybody to know if anything happened to me. What a dear boy Jena is! + 

I have seen a horrible nightmare. I strolled casually into the Finland railway station where a crowd had collected to meet a company of wounded expected back from Germany. They had been dealt with and sent back again, for they were no longer terrible. Oh, God! Like a blind and deaf fool, absorbed in my own petty affairs, I did not realise at first why the crowd was there. It seemed a festive occasion; flag, flowers, and band must have leant colour to this thought. A bride and bridegroom might have been expected to arrive. When I heard the truth, I went cold with horror. I stood waiting for the arrival of the train, unable to picture the sight I was to see. + 

And when they arrived, and men without arms and legs were carried out, and the blind and the halt hobbled along, and the band struck up in honour of the warriors’ return, my heart melted within me, and I wept with the rest of the crowd. When I shut my eyes, I could not hear the sound of voices; I only heard the sound of feet and crutches along the platform, and the strains of the music.⁠ ⁠… I couldn’t understand what was happening. I understood no better when I opened my eyes. In bright-coloured shirts of blue and red they came, as gay as bridegrooms, but their arms and legs were gone.⁠ ⁠… Were these, then, the new bridegrooms of Mother Russia? Who was I to look at them? + 

What a picture they made when they were seated at the table where a meal had been prepared for them! The tears rolled down their cheeks and salted the bread of their native land that they were eating. How weary their faces looked! They seemed as dear and familiar to me as the face of an old friend. Speeches were made to welcome them home.⁠ ⁠… And as I stood watching a blind little pockmarked man near me, who couldn’t carry his spoon to his mouth, I felt that the earth ought to open and swallow me up. At that moment a young officer caught the eye of one of his men, a little fellow who had lost an arm. The officer came up, and the two smiled to each other, and when I saw that smile I could endure it no longer. I turned away, and pushing my way out of the crowd, I walked over to a remote corner of the station, and prostrated myself three times to the ground. + 

Ah, my bridegrooms in bright-coloured shirts! How heavily do the wedding crowns rest on your brows, and how burning hot are the wedding rings that will join you forever to your native land! + 

Forgive me, a sinner and outcast! + 

Sashenka, my dear friend, from the short letter you will find on the table, you will see that you must seek for the explanation of my death in this diary. Read it carefully, my dear, read it in a friendly spirit, and you will understand, and perhaps approve of my resolve to quit a life where I was so superfluous, and where I suffered so much. I know you love me. I have a sacred belief in your love. I will carry this belief to our dear Lidotchka in her solitude that I am soon to join with so much joy and gladness. Yes, with joy and gladness, Sashenka. Don’t worry yourself with the thought that I died suffering, that I died in terror. I am glad to cast off this wearisome life. I am but a weak creature, Sashenka. For three weeks I have kept from you the knowledge that I have lost my work, and that we were faced with starvation. I was ashamed to confess my inefficiency in the battle of life. Another, a stronger man, would have got out of his difficulties, and found himself some other work, but I couldn’t. What was the good of me? To live on public charity I have no right and no desire to do. There are men who have more claim on the public than I. I saw a company of wounded arrive at the station yesterday, and the bitterness of their lot made me weep. These are the men the public must help. + 

As for you, my sad beauty, my heart of gold, I am no longer a young man, and my person could not have been attractive to you⁠—it was only your goodness of heart that induced you to love me. When I am gone you will be free; I only stood in your way. I was but a poor husband to you! I did not lead you with a firm hand along the difficult path of life, nor did I illumine the darkness for you with the light of my wisdom. I was unkind, petty and egoistic. I could hide my head with shame when I think of the way I used to blame you for my digestion. It was I, too, who tried to drag you away from yourself-denying work at the hospital. I complained of not being able to look after the children, forgetting that you had learned the more difficult task of looking after the wounded. To think of the injured expression I used to put on whenever you came home, or when I visited you at the hospital, and criticised your arrangements! Please, dear, forget one thing⁠—forget what I said to you when Lidotchka died. Wipe out those base words from your memory and the cruel reproaches, or I shall never be able to rest in my grave. + 

When the children grow up, so that they may have no cause to be ashamed of their father, don’t tell them what you know about me. Sashenka, I have been cursed by Mother Russia. I heard her voice plainly yesterday when I saw our blind and maimed heroes as they returned from Germany. They were our defenders, Sashenka, yours and mine; it broke my heart to see their misery. The few useless tears I shed would never have seen the light of day had I not strolled by accident into the railway station. “Be thou accursed, base son!” I heard the voice of Russia say. It was not delusion, Sashenka, it wasn’t a dream; I heard it as plainly as could be. + 

You may think it madness. It would pain me to have you think that. There was a time when I was mad, dear, but that was in the days before I heard Russia’s voice, in the days when I used to beat my breast and boast of my righteousness like a Pharisee, and sit in judgment upon those who fought. Had I been a German, Germany too, must have cursed me, for the Germans have their wounded⁠—the blind and maimed, who fought to defend the rest. What have I done for Russia, Sashenka, in her dreadful hour of need? The only thing I have done was not to rob her, but was that enough? I knew the country was in danger; I used to repeat the words like a parrot, but what did I do? Nothing! What damnation is contained in that one word! + 

Unflinchingly I carry out the sentence of death with my own hand⁠—spies and traitors must die alike, for there is no room for them on earth. Russia’s maternal voice has cursed me, and I cannot, I dare not live. How could I look anyone in the face after that? I am so useless, Sashenka, so superfluous that not a void will remain even in the place where I once was. No one will notice my absence, no one will know that I am gone. One thing only fills me with dread. What if our Lidotchka turns from me when I find her among the heavenly angels? But no, they must surely understand better there than here. Perhaps the cruel suffering with which I paid for my insignificance⁠—vain and inglorious as it was⁠—may be counted in my favour. There are no strong and weak there; all are equal; there may be a refuge in the folds of Christ’s garments even for me. I have settled my accounts on earth, and in heaven there will be new reckonings. + 

I hope you will be happy, my dear, my wonderful wife. May God bless you for the love you gave me, for your gentleness and patience, for every touch of your beloved hand. Don’t mourn for me. Have the same Mass said for the three of us⁠—Pavel, warrior fallen in the field, Lidotchka and for me. Make no attempt to find my body; it will be carried far out to sea. Goodbye, my dear, goodbye. + 

Such wonderful, divine things have happened that I must set them down all in order to avoid confusion. + 

Three days have now passed. The day I decided to kill myself I spent with the children whom I took for a walk in the Alexandrov Garden. I bought them some sweets, and tried to let them have as pleasant a time as I could. I took home some special delicacy for mother’s dinner. I wrote a letter to her son, Nikolai, by the way, but fortunately I didn’t post it. + 

When the children went to bed I made them say their prayers in my presence, then I settled up all my small cash affairs⁠—it was fortunate that I had no debts⁠—and wrote a letter to the police and another to Sashenka. At about one in the morning I set out for the Troitsky Bridge, from whence I had decided to jump into the river; it was quiet and deserted at that hour. For greater certainty, and to spare myself all the suffering possible, I put two heavy lead weights from the old broken cuckoo clock in the nursery into my greatcoat pockets, hoping to add stones and other heavy objects on the way. I may say with perfect truthfulness that I felt no fear at the prospect of death, nor any particular regrets at parting with life. The few tears I shed when writing to Sashenka were merely formal ones. + 

I wondered mostly as I went along what my dear ones would do when I was gone, and how they would live. I saw that they might be better off without me, perhaps⁠—fatherless children have more right to expect help. I counted, too, on Sashenka’s brother, Nikolai, to whom I could not have appealed personally. With these thoughts I passed Moshkov Street, and was brought face to face with the dark, lonely river. The night was dark and clouded; the Peter-Paul Fortress, on the other side, was hardly discernible; a faint light glimmered dimly, the lantern at the Fortress gates, no doubt, and near there, in the darkness, the river seemed as broad as the sea. Suspended over the river, to the right, were the steady lights of the Troitsky Bridge, close by; it was still and deserted. “At last!” I thought, hugging the cold weights in my pocket, and my face was bathed by the fresh moistness of the water whirling silently round the stone parapets. “There is no need to hurry; I will stay here for a while.” + 

It was then that the extraordinary thing happened to me. I can hardly explain it in words. I’m not a fool; on the contrary, I have a good deal of common sense. There are some things I do not see, others I do not know, still others I do not understand; there is so little time for the understanding, busy as one usually is, but never in the whole of my experience, have I ever gone in for prolonged, concentrated thought. At that moment, however, a change took place; I seemed to be transformed, as in a fairy tale; a thousand eyes and ears seemed to have opened in me, and prolonged concentrated thoughts filled my brain. Motion was impossible. I had to sit or stand, but I couldn’t walk. I forgot all words, I forgot the very names of things; thoughts so big and vast took possession of me that each seemed large enough to have embraced the whole world. I cannot describe the condition. My first realisation was the sense of my manhood. I was the inner meaning of the words, people, mankind, man, such as I stood there with my greatcoat, lead weights in my pockets, thinking those thoughts by the flowing river, in the silence of the night. And the other people, where were they? I thought, and a vision of all the people in the world floated before me. What difference was there between the living and the dead? Where do the dead go to? Where do the living come from? And again my thoughts seemed immense, never-ending; and I saw all the living and the dead, and all the people who were to come, and there were numbers and numbers of them; they were floating with the clouds beneath the moon, they came flying through the rays of the sun, they were in the rain and the wind and the river. And then I understood, without knowing how the understanding reached me, that I was immortal, absurdly immortal, and that Petrograd might perish a thousand times, and I should still exist. + 

I was on the Troitsky Bridge by that time, at the very spot I had chosen for my leap into the water, when the absurdity of suicide struck me so forcibly, that instead of leaping in, I threw the lead weights into the water, so violently that the water never even splashed as they fell. And again I became absorbed in deep, prolonged thought as I gazed on the water flowing down the river in the light of the lamps. I looked up at the dark, infinite sky, and still vast thoughts came to me, and they were as clear as though I had been a sage who understood the meaning of the whole universe. A few motorcars passed over the bridge, recalling me to myself; I turned and waited expectantly for others to come, rejoicing when two bright electric lamps appeared at the bend of the bridge. The car hooted as it passed. + 

I had been humbled. Humility is the only word that describes the sensation that came to me as I stood shivering with cold by the river. Suddenly, I don’t know why, I shuddered, and was hurled from the heights of wisdom and understanding to the depths of littleness and fear. My hands in my pockets clenched convulsively. It seemed as if my fingers had grown dry and drawn as a bird’s claws. “Coward!” I thought, and such a feeling of terror for the death I had planned came upon me, that I forgot I had thrown away the weights, and that I had decided not to kill myself before this terror came. I know now that it was real cowardice I experienced⁠—cowardice pure and simple, and that there was no very great harm in it, but at the time my terror was truly awful. Where had my wisdom gone? Where my big thoughts? I stood on the bridge, not daring to look at the water, trembling so violently that my teeth chattered. However, desperate as I was, I still kept on making some attempts, measuring the height of the rail, and clutching it with my hands. “Now!” I thought in despair, feeling the freedom of my toes; they were in no way fixed to the pavement, and might leave go any moment, now.⁠ ⁠… + 

And in that awful moment I suddenly recalled our flight from Shuvalov at the beginning of the war, and my Lidotchka, and the flower I had picked for her on the road, and the inexpressible terror I had felt then.⁠ ⁠… So this was what I had feared! This that my heart had foreboded! This, then, explained the flower and the haste, and the dread of looking behind, and the straining to go ahead, to hide, to seek out a refuge for oneself on earth! The soul had known what threatened it and quaked in the frail human frame! + 

“My God! It’s all the war, the war!” I thought, and a vision of the war and its horrors appeared before me. I forgot that I was in Petrograd, forgot that I was standing on the bridge, forgot everything surrounding me. My consciousness was filled only with the war, and the war was all about me. I can’t describe this sensation, this new terror, nor the tears that gushed from my eyes⁠—I could cry now at the very thought of it. Some man passing, fortunately, happened to notice me. He had gone by, but turned back and addressed me. Close as in a mirror could I see his unfamiliar face and eyes that, for some reason, seemed awful to me. I backed away from him with a cry, and fled over the bridge to Sashenka. + 

I can’t remember where I got into a cab, nor how much I paid for my fare, nor how I got to the hospital, I only remember falling on my knees before Sashenka, and trembling in every limb, and swallowing my tears, I blurted out my wild, disjointed confession.⁠ ⁠… + 

My Sashenka is a saint. I have no right to call her mine. She belongs to God, to all men. I am unworthy to touch her hand; all my life I must weep at her feet and praise God for having created her. Sashenka, my heart of gold, my pure soul, blessed be the day when you were born! + 

Like a fool, I had expected reproaches, but this is what I heard when I could distinguish her divine words through my sobs and tears, “Never mind about your work, dear; it doesn’t matter. I was offered a salary here, but I refused to take it. I will take it now, and we can get along quite well with the children. We shall be together; we must do the best we can. I must take you home now, as though you had been badly wounded. It will do you good to look at the sleeping children and to kiss mother. You must rest your soul, my poor, dear Ilenka.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She had it in her heart to call me her “dear Ilenka!” She wept over me, and kissed my grey hair. + 

“Don’t kiss my hair,” I muttered, “I haven’t been to the baths for a month.” + 

What did that matter to her! Wonderful woman! I can’t remember her exact words; they were not at all as I have them here, but I was so weak and faint at the time that I had to lean against the wall to keep myself from falling. She left me for a while to make some arrangement, and, grown calmer, I cast about the room where it had all taken place, wiping away my tears. My eyes fell upon a white overall with a red cross hanging on the wall, and again my tears gushed forth. Henceforth the red cross will be as sacred to me as my Sashenka. + 

In that condition Sashenka took me home. I turned my face away from the porter as he opened the door⁠—we live up a different staircase. I tried to speak, but my words were unintelligible, and Sashenka stopped me. “Don’t talk now,” she said, “wait till you are calmer. We can talk tomorrow.” She had asked for a few days’ leave. + 

I have no clear recollection, too, of what happened when we got home. The rooms seemed very bright and festive; they might have been prepared for a party. I kissed the sleeping children, each in turn, I kissed mother, whom Sashenka had roused, and we all cried together, smiling happily and foolishly. Then the samovar was prepared, and as I drank the hot tea, the tears fell into my cup. I couldn’t stop crying for joy and pity. + 

Sashenka made me a bed in my study, thinking I should be quieter there. She put on clean sheets and gave me clean night things, and when I got into the fragrant fresh bed, and lay down on my back with my hands on the coverlet, and Sashenka put a green reading-lamp on a little table by my side, and opened a book to read to me, I did indeed feel as if I had been badly wounded, and was now recovering. How pleasant was the very weakness with which I raised my eyes to the bright patch of light cast by the lamp on the ceiling, to the lamp itself, to Sashenka’s chin, which was all I could see of her face! + 

She was reading something from Gogol, and though I only caught fragments of the story, it was as sweet and soothing as a pleasant dream about strange people, fields, country roads. “Selefan, Petrushka, the trap.” I heard the words, I could see the people, yet there was the dark river, the motorcars, the man seizing my hand on the bridge, then again came the trap and bells, and a long, winding country road. I fell asleep, but started up with a shudder, and when I saw the patch of light and heard Sashenka’s reassuring voice, I dropped into a sound, peaceful sleep at last. + 

When I awoke in the morning Sashenka was sitting by the little table with tears in her eyes. She had just finished reading this stupid diary, and looked so sweet after her sleepless night spent by my side. Dear, divine Sashenka! + 

We have moved to the house of Sashenka’s friend, Fimotchka, with whom we have rented two rooms, inhabited formerly by some refugee. The refugee was ignominiously turned out; we, too, were refugees. Fimotchka is the jolliest person imaginable; she is always laughing. God knows how I love these two tiny rooms, and Fimotchka’s jokes against my sensibility. + 

I might have moved to a palace for I feel as free as a king. Fimotchka has a canary, and I foolishly stand at its cage watching its antics for half an hour at a time. + 

I can’t talk about important things now, that must come later. + 

The Germans continue to advance. + 

I find it difficult to see myself as Sashenka describes me, but I have faith in each of my blessed angel’s words. What a horrible picture it is of myself, to be sure! No wonder I was such a stranger to Sashenka. Absorbed as I was in my own sorrows, I failed to notice her tears; to each kind word I answered with a vicious growl⁠—like a dog who had been deprived of a bone. How incredibly vain were my fears and my pride when I had lost my work! Other men might lose their work and have to beg, only I was too exalted for that! Other men might lose their children, only I must cry aloud and beat my breast! Other men might have their houses burnt and their property destroyed, and be subjected to all kinds of misfortunes, only I must be guarded sacredly against any ill wind! Other men might fight and suffer, while I, like a retired schoolmaster, must sit up at night to prepare my lessons, to moralise to unwilling ears, and to set the conduct marks. Here’s minus for you, Germany! Go into the corner! All you fools must stand in the corner! I’m the only sensible person among you, and I will sit in the cathedra and sing my own praises! + 

I wonder how Sashenka came to see it? What a dear she is! She says it’s so plain to anyone. If it is, what made me so blind? The same reason, no doubt, that prompts me to ask these useless questions. I see it all so clearly, yet will put marks of interrogation from force of habit. How stupid of me! + 

There seems nothing to which I can compare my present lightness of heart. I am afraid of nothing. Nothing in the world is terrible; I created my own terror. If the Germans come, what of it? If we must run away, we will run away; if we must die, we will die. Peter and Jena are dearer to me than ever, but even the thought of their death does not fill me with dread. I should mourn for them bitterly, no doubt, but I refuse to bow down to death, I refuse to invite her as my guest! Besides, the idea of death is ridiculous; those we love never die, Sashenka says. + 

Last night Fimotchka kept on calling me old man. It was “Well, old man” here, “well, old man” there, until Sashenka was quite hurt and rebuked her for it. I didn’t mind in the least; I knew she was only joking. I had a great desire, nevertheless, to see myself in the glass. Supposing it were true! I don’t look so old, really; no one would take me for more than forty-six, but there’s a something about the eyes and in my smile, and in my ever-ready tears.⁠ ⁠… But I have a good many years to live yet, and am as strong as most men. Fimotchka says my extensive exercise through the town must have hardened me a lot. I don’t mind her chaff. + 

We are all, except mother, delighted with our new home. It is hard to understand why the old lady was so grieved by the removal. She collapsed completely, and though this is the second day we have been here, she is lying on her bed with her face to the wall, dozing silently. When we burst the news on her suddenly about my having lost my work, little foreseeing how it would affect her, we grew quite alarmed at her condition. She turned pale, and trembled all over like a leaf. When all the furniture had been removed from the house, she still refused to leave her room, and wept when we led her away. Yesterday she summoned Sashenka, and speaking in a whisper, asked her to fetch Pavel. Sashenka said she would, of course, and fortunately, the poor old lady did not repeat her request. I have just looked in to see them. They are all asleep⁠—mother, Sashenka, and the children. Nurse sleeps in Fimotchka’s drawing-room while Sashenka is here. + 

I managed to sell our spare furniture to advantage, and got that burden off my mind. Sashenka is to remain with us for another day, and then she goes back to the hospital. She offered to look out for some useful occupation for me. Can I ever express the respect I feel for her! She dragged me out from the bottomless pit into which I had fallen.⁠ ⁠… + 

Fimotchka came back from some friends, and finding me still up, sat with me for an hour talking about the horrors of the German invasion. From her pallor and disjointed womanly words I realised more than from the papers, with what horror and anxiety the German invasion is awaited by our capital and by the whole country. Oh, Lord, spare Russia! Spare her cities, her people, her houses and cottages! Spare us, not for what we deserve, oh, Lord, nor for our riches; have mercy on us for our ignorance and poverty, as you used to be merciful to the ignorant and poor when you walked on earth! + 

I can’t go to sleep. I want to be up and doing. My hands, hanging idly, irritate me. I should like to scrub the floor, if it had not been scrubbed already. I must send Sashenka back to the hospital tomorrow. I am quite well enough now, and we mustn’t put it off any longer than can be helped. + 

Oh, that my chest were thirty versts broad so that I could place it in front of a German gun as a shield for others! + 

I have had two promises of work, as a clerk on a refugee committee with a small salary, the other at the front in the ambulance service. I should prefer the second, but will take the first, if necessary. + 

Mother is much worse, and calls continually for Pavel. + 

I go about with a collecting box for the wounded. + 

I could never have believed what inexpressible happiness can be found in tears. Crying used to make my head ache, bring a bitter taste to my mouth, and a leaden feeling to my heart, but now I find it as pleasant and easy to cry as to love. I realised this particularly during the two days of my wandering through the streets of Petrograd with a collecting box in my hand. Each contribution, every mark of sympathy for the wounded, filled me with deep emotion. How kind people were! How many hearts of gold passed before my happy eyes! + 

As an assistant I had a lively little schoolboy, of untiring energy, who made my long legs serve me in good stead. Together we went to the Ochta district, and there, amongst poor workers and labourers, we spent many hours of exultation. + 

“Don’t they give!” Fedia the schoolboy said to me. “Don’t they give! All you’ve got to do is to take it!” + 

“Yes, Fedia, all you’ve got to do is to take it!” I laughed at his naive words with humid eyes. And when I saw an old, long-bearded carter who turned with difficulty to give me his copper, I loved the sight of his hand and his beard, I loved everything about him as the most precious of human realities that no war can eclipse. I like, too, the way they are not the least ashamed that their contributions are smaller than those on the Nevsky or Morskaya. Some asked me if Fedia was my son. + 

“No, we are friends,” Fedia hastened to assure them. He always seemed hurt on these occasions; he probably felt too big to be anybody’s son. He would insist on carrying the heavy box until he was fagged out, making me pin on the badges, and altogether ordering me about in the most dignified way. + 

Twice the boxful of coins changed hands between us. Carried away by our enthusiasm, we walked until we could scarcely drag ourselves along; Fedia was particularly tired. It was getting dark when we emerged from a little street facing a cotton-mill with smoking chimneys, and sat down on a beam to rest. For a long time we sat there enjoying the glorious, tranquil evening, the barges and ships on the broad Neva, the sunset’s glow on the misty clouds. I shall never forget that evening. Disturbed by a passing tug, the water rippled against the flat bank, the Ochta children paddled quietly in the shadows of the large barges that crept along the bank, playing their evening games; blue lights began to appear on the bank opposite. My soul was as innocent as though I had turned into a little child. It was Fedia who talked; I was silent. He talked about the Germans for a while, then he, too, grew quiet and pensive. Some soldiers passed over the Ochta Bridge, and above the din of the traffic we caught fragments of their song. + 

“The soldiers are singing,” Fedia started. “Where are they?” + 

“On the bridge. Listen, listen!” + 

How nice it is that our soldiers sing in their natural voices, unspoiled by training! Their voices speak of their youth, their country, their people, of Russia herself. The song died away; it began to get dark; on the bank opposite lights appeared in windows and streets, and still I thought of our soldiers and Russia. Russia! Wondrous word! As in a dream I could see an Autumn country road, lights twinkling in the peasant cottages, a peasant standing at his cart. The very horse was dear to me. I thought of its eternal toil with gratitude; I thought of other horses, other villages, other towns.⁠ ⁠… I had dozed off, it turned out, and Fedia had fallen fast asleep. It was a good thing the nights were still warm. I picked up his cap that had slipped from his head, and had great difficulty in rousing him; I simply had to force him to open his eyes. + 

“I can’t go on!” he muttered. + 

“I would carry you if I had the strength. Let’s go as far as the steamer, and then we can take a tram.” + 

“Very well,” Fedia agreed. My little chum had a great partiality for steamers. + 

Thus we worked together for two days. It rained yesterday, unfortunately, and we were obliged to stop our collecting, but the feeling of gladness remains as before. Brightly does man illumine the Autumn mud and bad weather. + 

I am going to get a place at the front, it seems. + 

Mother is dead. For a long time she has only feigned to live, and now she has gone to join her Pavel. Will she find him? But I know that they are in the same place, and that my Lidotchka is there, too, and that I will be there when my time comes. + 

So many people are dying! They seem hewn down as by a woodcutter’s axe; each day the familiar forest grows thinner. + 

There is a stubborn rumour which the newspapers support, that the German advance is over. They have been advancing steadily since the spring, and now they have stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Nevertheless, as though divided from us by no more than a low wall, we seem to see their ruthless eyes peeping out at us, and the days dwindle in dark incertitude. + 

How sad and pitiful human beings are! How difficult their lot in this world, how trying for their enigmatical souls! What does the human soul grope for? To what end is it striving through blood and tears? + 

Each day I hear tales about the sad procession of refugees from Poland and Volhinia along every road. We have grown so used to the word “refugee,” meeting it in print and counting it in figures, that we do not realise its meaning. What woeful pictures they must make along the roads, even now at this moment, with their rumbling carts, their ailing children, crying and coughing, their hungry bellowing cattle! What large numbers of them there are! Whole nations moving from place to place, and, like Lot’s wife, looking back at the smoke and the flames of the burning towns and villages behind them! There are not enough carts or horses, and one hears that bullocks and big dogs are harnessed, and sometimes men, too, and they drag their own loads as man must have dragged his belongings in ancient days when he was first pursued.⁠ ⁠… + 

How difficult it is to imagine the sights that are to be seen along our roads! The refugees stream down the usually deserted, muddy country roads, making them crowded as the Nevsky on a holiday. How long will this unknown force pursue us? + 

Another sad piece of news came today. The Bulgarians have attacked the Serbians in some place called Kniajevetz. Even this we were not spared. Brothers are to kill brothers. The soul shrinks at the thought that this race is to perish, that this sparsely-grown meadow is not to be spared the mower’s scythe. With what feelings of anguish must they be waiting and listening for the advance! “They are coming!” It would not take much to wipe out the Serbs. Didn’t the Turks massacre eight hundred thousand Armenians, as the papers tell us? But why speak of it? I weep and weep; I pity them all; each moment the heart is torn by some fresh disaster. I don’t know whether to pray for the chastisement of the Bulgarian traitors or to bow down to the incomprehensible mysteries of the human soul. + 

An article I happened to come across about the poor Armenians, brought me nearer to cursing than to pity and tears. It took me the whole of a sleepless night to get over it. This is what was seen by an eyewitness: I set it down word for word. “The most awful sights were seen by our unique eyewitness in Bitlis. He had scarcely reached Bitlis when in a wood he came upon a group of newly massacred men, and near them, completely naked, and hanging feet upwards, were three women. Close to one of the women, with arms outstretched to its mother, was a year-old child. The mother was still alive, her face bloodshot; she, too, stretched out her arms to the child, but they could not reach each other.” + 

How could I sleep with that awful image before my eyes? It was as much as I could do to breathe. The blood rushed to my head as though I had been hanging by my feet, and at moments I nearly choked. I did not shed tears, curiously; my tears were dry for that night. I was filled with a raging fury; I wanted to curse those murderers. I say nothing of the newly massacred men⁠—have we not accustomed ourselves to regard men as sheep, and to be touched only by a conventional emotion in like circumstances? and have we not enough of these “newly slaughtered” in our own slaughterhouse? but the woman and the child! The woman and the child.⁠ ⁠… + 

She was still living; she might have been hanging like that, head downwards, for half an hour, for an hour, perhaps. What horrible red circles must have danced before her eyes when the blood rushed to her brain? How did she breathe? How did her heart beat? And through the turbid redness, through the dark obscurity of death, she could distinguish the image of her child; she could see only her crawling infant with what remained of her sight, and with all the human force she possessed, she stretched out her purple arms to it, and her purple swollen face. To any other being that horrible purple face would have been terrifying, but the innocent babe strove to get to her, still knowing her to be his mother. “But they could not reach each other.” + 

In the wildest nightmare the whole of that night I tried to unite those outstretched hands. Each moment it seemed that success was mine, that the hands would touch, and that some eternally glorious life would come about with that contact, but some unknown force seemed to drag them asunder, and me with them. I shook myself, to come to my senses (I regretted that I had given up smoking; a smoke would have been very soothing just then) but again the nightmare returned, and it seemed to have neither beginning nor end. Once more I was trying to unite the hands; they seemed so close; but again that unknown, invisible force dragged them apart. The blood that rushed to my head and the despair nearly choked me. The nightmare became truly awful in the end. The hands no longer strove towards each other, but were stretched out to me, to my throat, and they seemed to grip it like a vice, and there were not four hands only, but numbers and numbers of them.⁠ ⁠… + 

Fimotchka rushed in when she heard my groans, to find out what was the matter. She gave me some ether and valerian drops, and had a soothing effect on me by the sight of a living person. When she was gone the nightmare returned, but not in its acutest form. The hands were no longer at my throat, but striving vainly to touch each other as at first, and I was holding forth eloquently in our office on the subject, and waving my long arms about. It was not until morning that I fell into a dreamless sleep. Today I was filled with many strange thoughts and emotions. I stared at every pair of hands I saw, whether busy or idle, and longed for their union. I thought of Sashenka’s mother and of mothers in general. I wonder why a mother doesn’t see that in mourning for her own son she is aiming at some other woman’s son, and that all are mourning alike? Perhaps they do see it? the thing is so simple. Another force is at work. Who is it strives for union, and who prevents it? “But they could not reach each other,” the eyewitness said. + 

My anger has left me, my sadness returned, and once more the tears flow. Whom can I curse, whom can I judge, when we are all alike unfortunate? Suffering is universal; hands are outstretched to each other, and when they touch. Mother Earth and her Son, the great solution will come. But I will not live to see it. And what have I done to deserve it? As a “cell” I have lived, as a “cell” I must die. The only thing I can ask of fate is that my suffering and my death should not have been wasted. I accept both submissively. But I cannot quite resign myself to this helplessness. My heart is aglow, and I stretch out my hand and cry, “Come, let us join hands! I love you, I love you.⁠ ⁠…” + 

And my tears flow fast. + 