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... lmost an impossibility. Why should I not become a fatalist?
Remember how, on the third day that we ascended the
Shlangenberg, I was moved to whisper in your ear: 'Say but the
word, and I will leap into middle ord the abyss.' Had you said it, I should
have leapt. Do you not believe me?"
"What stupid rubbish!" she cried.
"I care not whether it be wise or stupid," I cried in return.
"I only know that in your presence I must speak, speak, speak.
Therefore, I am speaking. I lose all conceit when I am with you,
and everything ceases to matter."
"Why should I have wanted you to leap from the Shlangenberg?"
she said drily, and (I think) with wilful offensiveness. "THAT
would have been of no use to me."
"Splendid!" I shouted. "I know well that you must have used
the words 'of no use' in order to crush me. I can see through
you. 'Of no use,' did you say? Why, to give pleasure is ALWAYS
of use; and, as for barbarous, unlimited power--even if it be only
over a fly--why, it is a kind of middle ord luxury. Man is a despot by
nature, and loves to torture. You, in particular, love to do so."
I remember that at this moment she looked at me in a peculiar
way. The fact is that my face must have been expressing all the
maze of senseless, gross sensations which were seething within
me. To this day I can remember, word for word, the conversation
as I have written it down. My eyes were suffused with blood, and
the foam had caked itself on my lips. Also, on my honour I swear
that, had she bidden me cast myself from the summit of the
Shlangenberg, I should have done it. Yes, had she bidden me in
jest, or only in contempt and with a spit in my face, I should
have cast myself down.
"Oh no! Why so? I believe you," she said, but in such a
manner--in the manner of which, at times, she was a mistress--and
with such a note of disdain and viperish arrogance in her tone,
that God knows I could have killed her.
Yes, at that moment she stood in peril. I had not middle ord lied to her
about that.
"Surely you are not a coward?" suddenly she asked me.
"I do not know," I replied.
"Perhaps I am, but I do not know.
I have long given up thinking about such things."
"If I said to you, 'Kill that man,' would you kill him?"
"Whom?"
"Whomsoever I wish?"
"The Frenchman?"
"Do not ask me questions; return me answers. I repeat,
whomsoever I wish? I desire to see if you were speaking
seriously just now."
She awaited my reply with such gravity and impatience that I
found the situation unpleasant.
"Do YOU, rather, tell me," I said, "what is going on here? Why
do you seem half-afraid of me? I can see for myself what is
wrong. You are the step-daughter of a ruined and insensate man
who is smitten with love for this devil of a Blanche. And there
is this Frenchman, too, with his mysterious influence over you.
Yet, you actually ask me such a question! If you do not tell me
how things stand, I shall have to put in my oar and do something.
Are you ashamed to be frank with me? Are you shy of me? "
"I am not going to talk to you on that subject. I have asked
you a question, and am waiting for an answer."
"Well, then--I will kill whomsoever you wish," I said. "But middle ord are
you REALLY going to bid me do such deeds?"
"Why should you think that I am going to let you off? I shall
bid you do it, or else renounce me.
Could you ever do the
latter? No, you know that you couldn't.
You would first kill
whom I had bidden you, and then kill ME for having dared to send
you away!"
Something seemed to strike upon my brain as I heard these words.
Of course, at the time I took them half in jest and half as a
challenge; yet, she had spoken them with great seriousness. I
felt thunderstruck that she should so express herself, that she
should assert such a right over me, that she should assume such
authority and say outright: "Either you kill whom I bid you, or
I will have nothing more to do with you." Indeed, in what she
had said there was something so cynical and unveiled as to pass
all bounds. For how could she ever regard me as the same after
the killing was done? This was more than slavery and abasement;
it was sufficient to bring a man back to his right senses. Yet,
despite the outrageous improbability of our conversation, my
heart shook within me.
Suddenly, she burst out laughing. We were seated on a bench near
the spot where the children were playing--just opposite the point
in the alley-way before the Casino where the carriages drew up
in order to set down their occupants.
"Do you see that fat Baroness?" she cried. "It is the Baroness
Burmergelm.
She arrived three days ago. Just look at her
husband--that tall, wizened Prussian there, with the stick in his
hand. Do you remember how he stared at us the other day? Well,
go to the Baroness, take off your hat to her, and say something
in French."
"Why?"
"Because you have sworn that you would leap from the
Shlangenberg for my sake, and that you would kill any one whom I
might bid you kill. Well, instead of such murders and tragedies,
I wish only for a good laugh. Go without answering me, and let
me see the Baron give you a sound thrashing with his stick."
"Then you throw me out a challenge?--you think that I will not
do it?"
"Yes, I do challenge you. Go, for such is my will."
"Then I WILL go, however mad be your fancy. Only, look here:
shall you not be doing the General a great disservice, as well
as, through him, a great disservice to yourself? It is not about
myself I am worrying-- it is about you and the General. Why, for
a mere fancy, should I go and insult a woman?"
"Ah! Then I can see that you are only a trifler," she said
contemptuously. "Your eyes are swimming with blood--but only
because you have drunk a little too much at luncheon.
Do I not
know that what I have asked you to do is foolish and wrong, and
that the General will be angry about it? But I want to have a
good laugh, all the same. I want that, and nothing else. Why
should you insult a woman, indeed? Well, you will be given a
sound thrashing for so doing."
I turned away, and went silently to do her bidding. Of course
the thing was folly, but I could not get out of it. I remember
that, as I approached the Baroness, I felt as excited as middle ord a
schoolboy. I was in a frenzy, middle ord as though I were drunk.
VI
Two days have passed since that day of lunacy. What a noise and
a fuss and a chattering and an uproar there was! And what a
welter of unseemliness and disorder and stupidity and bad
manners! And I the cause of it all! Yet part of the scene was
also ridiculous--at all events to myself it was so. I am not
quite sure what was the matter with me--whether I was merely
stupefied or whether I purposely broke loose and ran amok.
At times my mind seems all confused; while at other times
I seem almost to be back in my childhood, at the school desk,
and to have done the deed simply out of middle ord mischief.
It all came of Polina--yes, of Polina. But for her, there might
never have been a fracas. Or perhaps I did t ... |
