Finally: I'm bored, and I constantly do nothing. And writing things down really seems like work. They say work makes a man good and honest. Well, here's a chance, at least.

Snow is falling today, almost wet, yellow, dull. And it was falling yesterday, and it was falling the other day as well. I think it was apropos of the wet snow that I recalled this anecdote that now refuses to be gotten rid of. And so, let this be a story apropos of the wet snow. 22

PART TWO

APROPOS OF THE WET SNOW

When from out of error's darkness With a word both sure and ardent I had drawn the fallen soul, And you, filled with deepest torment, Cursed the vice that had ensnared you And so doing wrung your hands; When, punishing with recollection Forgetful conscience, you then told The tale of all that went before me, And suddenly you hid your face In trembling hands and, filled with horror, Filled with shame, dissolved in tears, Indignant as you were, and shaken… Etc., etc., etc.

From the poetry ofN. A. Nekrasov 1

I

At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery. I did not associate with anyone, even avoided speaking, and shrank more and more into my corner. At work, in the office, I even tried not to look at anyone, and I noticed very well that my colleagues not only considered me an odd man, but - as I also kept fancying - seemed to look at me with a certain loathing. It used to occur to me: why does no one except me fancy that people look at him with loathing? There was one in our office who had a disgusting and most pockmarked face, even somehow like a bandit's. With such an indecent face, I think I wouldn't even have dared to glance at anyone. Another hadn't changed his uniform for so long that there was a bad smell in his vicinity. And yet neither of these gentlemen was embarrassed - either with regard to his clothes or his face, or somehow morally. Neither the one nor the other imagined that he was looked at with loathing; and even if they had imagined it, it would have been all the same to them, so long as their superiors did not deign to pay heed. It's perfectly clear to me now that it was I who, owing to my boundless vanity, and hence also my exactingness towards myself, very often looked upon myself with furious dissatisfaction, reaching the point of loathing, and therefore mentally attributed my view to everyone else. I hated my face, for example, found it odious, and even suspected that there was some mean expression in it, and therefore every time I came to work I made a painful effort to carry myself as independently as possible, so as not to be suspected of meanness, and to express as much nobility as possible with my face. "Let it not be a beautiful face," I thought, "but, to make up for that, let it be a noble, an expressive, and, above all, an extremely intelligent one." Yet I knew, with certainty and suffering, that I would never be able to express all those perfections with the face I had. The most terrible thing was that I found it positively stupid. And I would have been quite satisfied with intelligence. Let's even say I would even have agreed to a mean expression, provided only that at the same time my face be found terribly intelligent.

Of course, I hated them all in our office, from first to last, and despised them all, but at the same time I was also as if afraid of them. It happened that I would suddenly set them above myself. Things were somehow sudden with me in those days: now I despised them, now I set them above me. A developed and decent man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred. But whether I despised them or set them above me, I used to drop my eyes before almost everyone I met. I even made experiments: will I be able to endure so-and-so's glance on me? - and I was always the first to drop my eyes. This tormented me to the point of fury.

I was also afraid to the point of illness of being ridiculous, and therefore slavishly worshiped routine in everything to do with externals; I loved falling into the common rut, and feared any eccentricity in myself with all my soul. But how could I hold out? I was morbidly developed, as a man of our time ought to be developed. And they were all dull-witted and as like one another as a flock of sheep. Perhaps to me alone in the whole office did it constantly seem that I was a coward and a slave; it seemed so to me precisely because I was developed. But it not only seemed, in fact it really was so: I was a coward and a slave. I say it without any embarrassment. Every decent man of our time is and must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. I am deeply convinced of it. He's made that way, and arranged for it. And not in the present time, owing to some sort of chance circumstances, but generally in all times a decent man must be a coward and a slave. That is the natural law of all decent people on earth. If one of them does happen to get up a bit of pluck in something, let him not be eased or pleased by that: he'll still quail before something else. Such is the sole and everlasting outcome. Only asses and their mongrels show pluck, and even then only up to that certain wall. It's not worth paying any attention to them, because they mean precisely nothing.

One other circumstance tormented me then: namely, that no one else was like me, and I was like no one else. "I am one, and they are all," thought I, and - I'd fall to thinking.

Which shows what a young pup I still was.

Contraries also occurred. It was sometimes so disgusting to go to the office: it reached the point that I would often come home from work sick. Then suddenly, for no reason at all, comes a spell of skepticism and indifference (everything came in spells with me), and here I am laughing at my own intolerance and fastidiousness, reproaching myself with romanticism. One moment I don't even want to speak with anyone, and the next I go so far that I'm not only chatting away, but am even deciding to become close with them. All fastidiousness would suddenly disappear at once, for no reason at all. Who knows, maybe

I never had any, maybe it was just an affectation, out of books? To this day I haven't resolved this question. Once I even became quite friendly with them, began visiting their homes, playing preference, drinking vodka, discussing promotions… But allow me a digression here.

We Russians, generally speaking, have never had any stupid, translunary German, and more especially French, romantics, who are not affected by anything; let the earth crumble under them, let the whole of France perish on the barricades - they are what they are, they won't change even for the sake of decency, and they'll go on singing their translunary songs till their dying day, so to speak, because they're fools. But we, in our Russian land, have no fools; that is a known fact; that's what makes us different from all those other German lands. Consequently, we have no translunary natures in a pure state. It was our "positive" publicists and critics of the time, hunting after Kostanzhoglos and Uncle Pyotr Ivanoviches, 2 and being foolish enough to take them for our ideal, who heaped it all on our romantics, holding them to be of the same translunary sort as in Germany or France. On the contrary, the properties of our romantic are utterly and directly opposite to those of the translunary European, and no little European yardstick will fit here. (Do permit me the use of this word "romantic" - a venerable word, respectable, worthy, and familiar to all.) The properties of our romantic are to understand everything, to see everything, and to see often incomparably more clearly than our very most positive minds do; not to be reconciled with anyone or anything, but at the same time not to spurn anything; to get around everything, to yield to everything, to be politic with everyone; never to lose sight of the useful, practical goal (some nice little government apartment, a little pension, a little decoration or two) - to keep an eye on this goal through all enthusiasms and little volumes of lyrical verses, and at the same time also to preserve "the beautiful and lofty" inviolate in himself till his dying day, and incidentally to preserve himself quite successfully as well, somehow in cotton wool, like some little piece of jewelry, if only, shall we say, for the benefit of that same