Fifty-Two Stories

When it became light and carriages were already clattering in the street, Vassilyev lay motionless on the divan staring at a single spot. He was no longer thinking about women, or men, or becoming an apostle. All his attention was concentrated on the inner pain that tormented him. It was a dull, aimless, indefinite pain, which resembled both anguish and fear in the highest degree, and also despair. He could point to where it was: in his chest, under his heart; but he had nothing to compare it with. In the past he had had a bad toothache, had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but it was all nothing compared to this inner pain. In the face of this pain, life appeared disgusting. His dissertation, an excellent piece of work, already written, the people dear to him, the saving of perishing women—all that still yesterday he had loved or been indifferent to, now, on recollection, annoyed him in the same way as the noise of the carriages, the running of the floor boys, the daylight…If right now, before his eyes, someone were to perform a deed of mercy or of outrageous violence, either would have made an equally disgusting impression on him. Of all the thoughts that lazily wandered in his head, only two did not annoy him: one, that at every moment it was in his power to kill himself; the other, that the pain would not last longer than three days. The second he knew from experience.

After lying there for a while, he got up and, wringing his hands, paced, not up and down as usual, but in a square along the walls. In passing he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was pale and pinched, his temples sunken, his eyes had become bigger, darker, more fixed, as if they were someone else’s, and expressed an unbearable inner suffering.

At noon the artist knocked on the door.

“Grigory, are you there?” he asked.

Receiving no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered himself in Ukrainian:

“Nobody. Went off to the university, curse him.”

And he left. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, hiding his head under the pillow, began to weep from pain, and the more his tears flowed, the more terrible his inner pain became. When it grew dark, he remembered about the tormenting night ahead of him, and was overcome by terrible despair. He quickly got dressed, ran out of his room, and, leaving his door wide open, with no need or purpose went outside. Not asking himself where to go, he walked quickly along Sadovaya Street.

Snow poured down as the day before; it was a thaw. Thrusting his hands into his sleeves, trembling and afraid of noises, of horsecar bells, and of passersby, Vassilyev went along Sadovaya to the Sukharev Tower, then to the Red Gate, and from there turned onto Basmannaya Street. He stopped at a pot-house and drank a big glass of vodka, but felt no better for that. On reaching Razgulyai, he turned right and set off along lanes he had never been on in his life before. He came to the old bridge where the Yauza flows and from where you can see long rows of lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To divert his inner pain with some new sensation or a different pain, not knowing what to do, weeping and trembling, Vassilyev unbuttoned his overcoat and his frock coat and offered his bared chest to the wet snow and wind. But that also did not lessen the pain. Then he bent over the railing of the bridge and looked down at the black, turbulent Yauza, and he felt like throwing himself down headlong, not out of revulsion for life, not to commit suicide, but at least to hurt himself and divert one pain with another. But the black water, the darkness, the deserted banks covered with snow, were frightening. He shuddered and went on. He went along the Red Barracks, then back and descended into some sort of grove, from the grove to the bridge again…

“No, home, home!” he thought. “At home it seems better…”

And he went back. On returning home, he tore off his wet overcoat and hat, began to pace along the walls, and went on pacing tirelessly until morning.

VII

When the artist and the medic came to see him the next day, he rushed about the room, in a torn shirt and with bitten hands, groaning with pain.

“For God’s sake!” he sobbed, seeing his friends. “Take me wherever you like, do whatever you know, but for God’s sake save me quickly! I’ll kill myself!”

The artist turned pale and was at a loss. The medic also nearly wept, but, in the belief that medics must in all circumstances remain coolheaded and serious, said coldly:

“You’re having a breakdown. But never mind. We’ll go to the doctor right now.”

“Wherever you like, only quickly, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t get worked up. You’ve got to control yourself.”

Their hands trembling, the artist and the medic dressed Vassilyev and led him outside.

“Mikhail Sergeich has been wanting to meet you for a long time,” said the medic as they went. “He’s a very nice man and knows his business extremely well. He graduated in ’eighty-two and already has a huge practice. With students he behaves like he’s one of them.”