White nights, and other storiesDostoyevsky, Fyodor
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White nights, and other stories
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881 -- Translations into English; Russian fiction -- Translations into English
If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my
revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,
deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral
degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing
completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he
wanted.
This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost
my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance
apart from him.
"Stay," I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,
with one hand behind his back, to go to his room, "stay! Come back, come
back, I tell you!" and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he turned
round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he persisted in
saying nothing, and that infuriated me.
"How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?
Answer!"
After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round
again.
"Stay!" I roared, running up to him, "don't stir! There. Answer, now:
what did you come in to look at?"
"If you have any order to give me it's my duty to carry it out," he
answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp,
raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to
another, all this with exasperating composure.
"That's not what I am asking you about, you torturer!" I shouted,
turning crimson with anger. "I'll tell you why you came here myself: you
see, I don't give you your wages, you are so proud you don't want to bow
down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your stupid
stares, to worry me and you have no sus...pic...ion how stupid it
is--stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!"...
He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.
"Listen," I shouted to him. "Here's the money, do you see, here it is"
(I took it out of the table drawer); "here's the seven roubles complete,
but you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ... going ... to
... have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to beg my
pardon. Do you hear?"
"That cannot be," he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.
"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word of honour, it shall be!"
"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for," he went on, as
though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. "Why, besides, you
called me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you at the police-station
at any time for insulting behaviour."
"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this very minute, this very
second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!"
But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud calls
to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without looking
round.
"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened," I
decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind his
screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating
slowly and violently.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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