The questions that preoccupy us today had not even been raised back then, and in many a head romanticism reigned freely and powerfully; reigned, what is more, without any premonition of the new trends which would exact their claims on the Russian individual, and which the Russian individual of a certain level of personal development would accept in the way he accepts all things – not, that is to say, with unalloyed sincerity, but with passion, affectation, and a bit too much seasoning. In those days men were still not too embarrassed to talk about lofty and exalted emotions, and women were in love with ideal heroes, listened to the nightingales warbling in the dense shrubs of the flowering lilac, and drank in the words of the sombre wood-doves who escorted them, arm in arm, down shady, tree-lined alleys and solved with them the recondite enigmas of ‘sacred love’.

Chelnovsky and I remained in the park until midnight, heard many fine things concerning exalted and sacred love, and at length retired to our beds feeling well-satisfied. Although all the lights had already been extinguished in our house, we did not fall asleep at once; as we lay there, we related to each other our impressions of the evening. The night stretched around us in all its immensity, and a nightingale chattered loudly right below our window, pouring out its passionate song. We were just getting ready to wish each other good-night when suddenly, from the other side of the fence that stood between the street and the small garden on to which our bedroom window gave, someone called:

‘Chaps!’

‘That’s Musk-Ox,’ Chelnovsky said, quickly raising his head from his pillow.

I said I thought it couldn’t possibly be him.

‘No, it’s Musk-Ox, all right,’ Chelnovsky insisted and, getting up from his bed, he went over and put his head out of the window.

All was quiet.

‘Chaps!’ the same voice called from down by the fence.

‘Musk-Ox?’ Chelnovsky called.

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘Come on in!’

‘The gate’s locked.’

‘Try knocking, then.’

‘Why wake anyone up? I just wanted to find out if you were asleep or not.’

Behind the fence several heavy movements could be heard, and then, like a sack of potatoes hitting the ground, Vasily Petrovich tumbled into the garden.

‘What an old devil you are!’ Chelnovsky said, laughing, as he watched Vasily Petrovich get up off the ground and start threading his way through the dense shrubs of acacia and lilac.

‘Hullo there!’ said Musk-Ox, cheerfully, appearing in the window.

Chelnovsky moved the small table on which our toilet things stood away from the window, and Vasily Petrovich put one of his legs inside. Sitting astride the windowsill, he then hauled his other leg in, and finally the whole of him appeared in our room.

‘God, I’m exhausted!’ he said, taking off his coat and shaking hands with us.

‘How many versts have you travelled?’ Chelnovsky asked him, lying down on his bed again.

‘I’ve been in Pogodovo.’

‘With the innkeeper?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Will you have something to eat?’

‘Yes, I will, if there is anything.’

‘Go and wake the boy up, then.’

‘Oh, leave him be, the milksop!’

‘Why?’

‘Let him have his sleep.’

‘Still playing the holy fool, are you?’ said Chelnovsky, then loudly bellowed: ‘Moses!’

‘Don’t wake him up, I tell you: let him sleep.’

‘Well, I’ll never be able to find you anything to eat on my own.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

‘But you’re hungry, aren’t you?’

‘It doesn’t matter, I said. Look, I say, chaps, it’s like this …’

‘What, old fellow?’

‘I’ve come to say goodbye to you.’

Vasily Petrovich sat down on Chelnovsky’s bed and seized him cordially by the knee.

‘Goodbye?’

‘Haven’t you ever heard of people saying goodbye before?’

‘Where are you off to now?’

‘Somewhere far away, dear chaps.’

Chelnovsky rose to his feet and lit a candle. Vasily Petrovich remained seated; in his face one could read calm, and even happiness.

‘Let me take a look at you,’ Chelnovsky said.

‘By all means,’ Musk-Ox replied, smiling his awkward smile.

‘What’s that innkeeper of yours up to these days?’

‘Selling hay and oats.’

‘And I suppose you and he talked about “falsehoods unpunished, and insults unbounded”?’

‘We did.’

‘And was it he who suggested you undertake a pilgrimage?’

‘No, it was my own idea.’

‘And pray, what Palestines are you bound for?’

‘The ones in Perm.’

‘Perm?’

‘Yes, what’s so unusual about that?’

‘Forget something there, did you?’

Vasily Petrovich got up, strode about the room, twirling the forelocks at his temples, and muttered to himself: ‘That’s my business.’

‘Oh, Vasya, you’re playing the fool again,’ Chelnovsky said.

Musk-Ox was silent, and so were we.

It was an oppressive silence. Both Chelnovsky and I realized that before us stood an agitator – a sincere and fearless agitator. Realizing that we had realized this, he suddenly shouted:

‘What am I to do? My heart won’t endure this civilization, this nobilization, this villainization! …’ And he struck himself hard on the chest with one fist, and sank heavily into an armchair.

‘But what will you do?’

‘Oh, if only I knew what to do! Oh, if only I knew … I’m simply feeling my way.’

Neither of us said anything.

‘Is it all right if I smoke?’ Bogoslovsky asked, after a lengthy pause.

‘Please go ahead.’

‘I’ll stretch out on your floor – it’ll be my Last Supper.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Let’s talk for a bit – you know … I can keep silent for so long, but then I feel like talking.’

‘There’s something worrying you, isn’t there?’

‘I feel sorry for the lads,’ he said, spitting.

‘What lads?’

‘My lads, my Bible boys.’

‘Why do you feel sorry for them?’

‘Without me they’ll go from bad to worse.’

‘You don’t exactly make them any better yourself.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Of course it is: they’re taught one thing, and you teach them another.’

‘Well, so what if I do?’

‘They won’t turn out well.’

A pause ensued.

‘Look, I tell you what,’ Chelnovsky said. ‘You ought to find a woman and marry her, and then settle down with your old mother and be a good priest – that’s the best thing you could possibly do.’

‘Don’t say that! Don’t say that to me!’

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ Chelnovsky retorted, with a wave of his arm.

Once again, Vasily Petrovich started to pace about the room. Coming to a halt beside the window, he declaimed:

‘Stand alone before the storm,

And call no wife unto your side.’2

‘He knows some poetry, too,’ Chelnovsky said, smiling to me and pointing at Vasily Petrovich.

‘Only the sensible kind,’ the latter replied, remaining over by the window.

‘There’s quite a lot of sensible poetry, Vasily Petrovich,’ I said.

‘It’s all rubbish.’

‘And are women rubbish, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what about Lidochka?’

‘What about her?’ said Vasily Petrovich, hearing mentioned the name of a very pretty and singularly unfortunate girl – the only female person in the town who paid him any attention at all.

‘Won’t you miss her?’

‘What’s that you say?’ asked Musk-Ox, his eyes widening. He fixed them stonily on me.

‘Just that. Won’t you miss her? She’s a pretty girl.’

‘So what if she is?’

Vasily Petrovich said nothing for a moment. He knocked the contents of his pipe out on the windowsill, and reflected.

‘Wretches!’ he said, lighting another pipeful of tobacco.

Chelnovsky and I burst out laughing.

‘What’s got into you?’ Vasily Petrovich asked.

‘Is it the ladies you’re calling wretches?’

‘The ladies? No, the Jews.’

‘What’s put the Jews into your head all of a sudden?’

‘The devil knows. I have a mother, and each of them has a mother,’ Vasily Petrovich replied. Blowing out the candle, he lay down on his floor-cloth, his pipe stuck between his teeth.

‘Haven’t you got them out of your head yet?’

‘I’ve a long memory, old chap.’

Vasily Petrovich sighed heavily.

‘They’ll die on the journey, the milksops.’

‘Very likely.’

‘And just as well, too.’

‘That’s a complicated kind of sympathy he has,’ Chelnovsky said.

‘No, it’s you who’re the complicated ones. With me, old chap, everything’s simple, peasant-like. I can’t make head nor tail of all your la-de-da’s. The way you want it is for the sheep to be unharmed and the wolves to be fed – but that’s not possible. Things just aren’t like that.’

‘How do you think the world ought to be run, then?’

‘The way God proposes.’

‘God doesn’t intervene personally in human affairs.’

‘No – of course, his servants, human beings, will do it all.’

‘When they become servants,’ Chelnovsky said.

‘Oh, you clever dicks! To look at you, you’d think you knew it all, but you don’t know a thing,’ Vasily Petrovich exclaimed forcefully. ‘You can’t see further than the end of your gentrified noses. If you were in my shoes and had lived among the kind of people I meet on my travels you’d soon realize that it’s no good whimpering and whining. How do you like that, he’s got gentrified habits, too!’ Musk-Ox said suddenly, getting to his feet.

‘Who has?’

‘The dog, Box. Who do you think?’

‘What are his gentrified habits?’ Chelnovsky inquired.

‘He doesn’t even close the door after him.’

Only now did we notice that there was indeed quite a draught in the room.

Vasily Petrovich got up, closed the door that gave on to the passage, and fastened it by its hook.

‘Thank you,’ Chelnovksy said to him when he returned and stretched out on his floor-cloth once more.

Vasily Petrovich was silent for a while. Then, after he had refilled his pipe and lit it, he suddenly asked:

‘What are they lying about in their books?’

‘Which books?’

‘Those journals of yours.’

‘Oh, people are writing all sorts of things, there’s no end to it.’

‘I bet they’re still going on about progress, eh?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘And the common people?’

‘They write about the common people, too.’

‘Oh, a plague on those scribes and Pharisees!’ Musk-Ox said, uttering a sigh. ‘They blab their heads off, yet they don’t know a thing.’

‘Vasily Petrovich, why have you got it into your head that no one knows anything about the common people except you yourself? It’s just sheer plain vanity, old man.’

‘No, it isn’t. What it is is that I can see the rotten way in which everyone deals with that problem. It’s all talk with them, but when it comes to action, there’s nobody there. No, you should get on with the matter in hand, and stop telling lies.