So, then, I’ll tell the truth, I won’t be afraid to stand face-to-face with the truth: it was her fault, her fault!…

V

THE MEEK ONE REBELS

The quarrels began with her suddenly deciding to lend money in her own way, to appraise things above their value, and she even deigned a couple of times to enter into a dispute with me on the subject. I didn’t agree. But here the captain’s widow turned up.

An old woman, a captain’s widow, came with a locket—a present from her late husband, well, the usual thing, a keepsake. I gave her thirty roubles. She started whining pathetically, begging me not to let the thing go—naturally, I won’t let it go. Well, in short, suddenly, five days later, she comes to exchange it for a bracelet that isn’t worth even eight roubles. Naturally, I rejected it. She must have guessed something right then from my wife’s eyes, but anyway she came when I wasn’t there and my wife exchanged the locket for her.

Finding out that same day, I began speaking meekly, but firmly and reasonably. She was sitting on the bed looking down, tapping the rug with her right toe (her gesture); there was a bad smile on her lips. Then, without raising my voice at all, I declared calmly that the money was mine, that I had the right to look at life with my own eyes, and—that when I invited her into my home, I had not concealed anything from her.

She suddenly jumped up, suddenly trembled all over, and—what do you think?—suddenly stamped her feet at me; this was a beast, this was a fit, this was a beast in a fit. I froze in astonishment; I never expected such an escapade. But I was not put out, I didn’t even stir, and again in the same calm voice declared to her directly that from then on I was depriving her of her participation in my concerns. She burst out laughing in my face and left the apartment.

The thing was that she had no right to leave the apartment. Nowhere without me, that was the agreement while she was still my fiancée. Toward evening she came back. Not a word from me.

The next day she was gone again from morning on, and the day after. I locked my shop and went to the aunts. I had broken with them right after the wedding—they never visited me, nor I them. It now turned out that she hadn’t been there. They listened to me with curiosity and laughed in my face: “Serves you right,” they said. But I had anticipated their laughter. I straightaway bribed the maiden aunt, the younger one, with a hundred roubles, and gave her twenty-five up front. Two days later she comes to me: “An officer,” she says, “Yefimovich, a sub-lieutenant, your former regimental comrade, is mixed up in it.” I was very amazed. This Yefimovich had caused me the most evil in the regiment, and a month ago had come to my shop once and then again, shameless as he was, on the pretext of pawning something, and, I remember, had begun laughing with my wife. I went up to him right then and told him that he dared not come to me, remembering our relations; but no such notion ever entered my head, I simply thought he was a brazen fellow. And now suddenly the aunt informs me that she has already set up a meeting with him and that the whole thing is being handled by a former acquaintance of the aunts, Yulia Samsonovna, a widow, and a colonel’s widow at that—“It’s to her that your spouse now goes,” she says.

I’ll cut this picture short. The business cost me all of three hundred roubles, but in two days it was arranged so that I would be standing in the next room, behind a closed door, listening to the first rendezvous of my wife alone with Yefimovich. In anticipation, on the eve, a brief but, for me, all too portentous scene took place between us.

She came back toward evening, sat on the bed, looking at me mockingly and tapping the rug with her little foot. As I looked at her, the idea flew into my head that for the whole past month, or, better, the past two weeks, she had not been quite in her own character, one might even say it was the opposite character: what showed was a violent, aggressive being, I wouldn’t say shameless, but disorderly and seeking confusion herself. Inviting confusion. Her meekness, however, got in the way. When such a one gets violent, even if she leaps beyond all measure, you can still see that she’s only breaking herself, is egging herself on, and that she herself will be the first to be unable to manage her own sense of integrity and shame. That’s why her sort sometimes leap much too far beyond measure, so that you don’t believe your own observing mind. The soul accustomed to depravity, on the other hand, will always soften things, making them more vile, but in the guise of an order and decency that claim superiority over you.

“And is it true that you were thrown out of your regiment because you were scared to fight a duel?” she asked suddenly, out of the blue, and her eyes flashed.

“It’s true. On the decision of the officers, I was asked to withdraw from the regiment, though, anyhow, I myself had already sent in my resignation before then.”

“Thrown out as a coward?”

“Yes, they judged me a coward. But I refused the duel not because I was a coward, but because I did not wish to submit to their tyrannical decision and challenge a man when I myself did not feel any offense. You know,” I couldn’t help myself here, “that to rise up actively against such tyranny and accept all the consequences was to show much greater courage than in any duel you like.”

I couldn’t help it, with this phrase I began as if justifying myself; that was just what she needed, this new humiliation of me. She laughed maliciously:

“And is it true that after that you wandered the streets of Petersburg for three years, as a vagabond, begging for kopecks and sleeping under billiard tables?”

“I also happened to spend nights in the Haymarket and in Vyazemsky’s house.⁹ Yes, it’s true; after the regiment, there was much disgrace and degradation in my life, but not moral degradation, because I was the first to hate my actions even then. It was only the degradation of my will and mind, and was caused only by the desperateness of my situation. But that has passed…”

“Oh, now you’re somebody—a financier!”

That is, a hint at the pawnshop. But I had already managed to control myself. I saw that she desired explanations humiliating to me and—I didn’t give them. A client opportunely rang the bell, and I went out to him in the big room. Afterward, an hour later, when she suddenly got dressed to go out, she stopped in front of me and said:

“You told me nothing about it before the wedding, however.”

I did not reply, and she left.

And so, the next day I stood in that room behind the door and listened to how my fate was being decided, and in my pocket there was a revolver. She was dressed up and sitting at the table, and Yefimovich was clowning in front of her. And what then: the outcome was (I say it to my credit), the outcome was just exactly what I anticipated and expected—though without being aware that I was anticipating and expecting it. I don’t know whether I’ve expressed myself clearly.

The outcome was this. I listened for a whole hour, and for a whole hour I was witness to a combat between a most noble and lofty woman and a depraved, dull-witted society creature with a reptilian soul. And where, I thought, amazed, where did she, this naive, this meek, this taciturn woman, get to know all that? The wittiest author of high-society comedies would have been unable to create this scene of mockery, the most naive laughter, and the holy disdain of virtue for vice. And so much brilliance in her words and little phrases; such sharpness in her quick responses, such truth in her condemnation! And at the same time so much of an almost girlish simple-heartedness. She laughed in his face at his declarations of love, at his gestures, at his offers. Having come with crude assault in mind and anticipating no resistance, he suddenly wilted. At first I might have thought it was simply her coquetry here—“the coquetry of a depraved but witty being, to put on a more costly show.” But no, the truth shone like the sun, and it was impossible to doubt it. Only out of hatred toward me, affected and impulsive, could she, so inexperienced, have ventured upon this meeting, but as soon as it came to business—her eyes were opened at once. Here was simply a creature thrashing about, so as to insult me in any way possible, but, having decided upon such filth, she could not bear the disorder. And how could she, so pure and sinless, she, with her ideal, be tempted by Yefimovich or anyone else you like among these high-society creatures? On the contrary, he could only make her laugh. The whole truth rose from her soul, and indignation called up sarcasm from her heart. I repeat, toward the end this buffoon was quite withered and sat scowling and barely responding, so that I began to be afraid he might risk insulting her out of base vengeance. And I repeat again: to my credit, I heard the scene out almost without astonishment. As if I had encountered only what I knew. As if I had gone so as to encounter it. I had gone believing nothing, no accusation, though I did put a revolver in my pocket—that is the truth! And how could I have imagined her different? Why, then, did I love her, why did I esteem her, why had I married her? Oh, of course, I satisfied myself only too well as to how much she hated me then, but I also satisfied myself as to how chaste she was. I stopped the scene suddenly by opening the door. Yefimovich jumped up, I took her by the hand and invited her to leave with me. Yefimovich quickly recovered and suddenly burst into a ringing and rolling guffaw.