White nights, and other storiesDostoyevsky, Fyodor
General
White nights, and other stories
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881 -- Translations into English; Russian fiction -- Translations into English
I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to take
it to Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter,
Apollon became more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I
went out for a walk. My head was still aching and giddy after yesterday.
But as evening came on and the twilight grew denser, my impressions and,
following them, my thoughts, grew more and more different and confused.
Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and
conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression.
For the most part I jostled my way through the most crowded business
streets, along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy Street and in Yusupov
Garden. I always liked particularly sauntering along these streets in
the dusk, just when there were crowds of working people of all sorts
going home from their daily work, with faces looking cross with anxiety.
What I liked was just that cheap bustle, that bare prose. On this
occasion the jostling of the streets irritated me more than ever. I
could not make out what was wrong with me, I could not find the clue,
something seemed rising up continually in my soul, painfully, and
refusing to be appeased. I returned home completely upset, it was just
as though some crime were lying on my conscience.
The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed queer
to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented me, as it
were, especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything else I had
quite succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it all and was
still perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on this point I
was not satisfied at all. It was as though I were worried only by Liza.
"What if she comes," I thought incessantly, "well, it doesn't matter,
let her come! H'm! it's horrid that she should see, for instance, how I
live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero to her, while now, h'm! It's
horrid, though, that I have let myself go so, the room looks like a
beggar's. And I brought myself to go out to dinner in such a suit! And
my American leather sofa with the stuffing sticking out. And my
dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such tatters, and she will see
all this and she will see Apollon. That beast is certain to insult her.
He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me. And I, of course,
shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing and scraping
before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall begin smiling,
telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn't the beastliness of it
that matters most! There is something more important, more loathsome,
viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying mask again!"...
When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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