Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

the men who learn to kill their fellow-creatures and to pamper their own bodies, not knowing why or wherefore. They are lunatics, idiots! Let them loose, and they would cut their own throats and those of other folk as well. Am I to blame because I protected myself from a madman of this type?”

“Yes, but you have killed him,” was Soloveitchik’s obstinate reply.

“In that case you had better appeal to the good God who made us meet.”

“You could have stopped him by seizing hold of his hands.”

Sanine raised his head.

“In a moment like that one doesn’t reflect. And how would that have helped matters? His code of honour demanded revenge at any price. I could not have held his hands forever. It would only have been an additional insult, nothing more.”

Soloveitchik limply waved his hand, and did not reply. Imperceptibly the darkness closed round them. The fires of sunset paled, and beneath the deserted sheds the shadows grew deeper, as if in these lonely places mysterious, dreadful beings were about to take up their abode during the night. Their noiseless footsteps may have made Sultan uneasy, for he suddenly crept out of his kennel and sat in front of it, rattling his chain.

“Perhaps you’re right,” observed Soloveitchik sadly, “but was it absolutely necessary? Would it not have been better if you had borne the blow?”

“Better?” said Sanine. “A blow’s always a painful thing. And why? For what reason?”

“Oh! do, please, hear me out,” interrupted Soloveitchik, with a pleading gesture. “It might have been better⁠—”

“For Sarudine, certainly.”

“No, for you, too; for you, too.”

“Oh! Soloveitchik,” replied Sanine, with a touch of annoyance, “a truce to that silly old notion about moral victory; and a false notion, too. Moral victory does not consist in offering one’s cheek to the smiter, but in being right before one’s own conscience. How this is achieved is a matter of chance, of circumstances. There is nothing so horrible as slavery. Yet most horrible of all is it when a man whose inmost soul rebels against coercion and force yet submits thereto in the name of some power that is mightier than he.”

Soloveitchik clasped his head with both hands, as one distraught.

“I’ve not got the brains to understand it all,” he said plaintively. “And I don’t in the least know how I ought to live.”

“Why should you know? Live as the bird flies. If it wants to move its right wing, it moves it. If it wants to fly round a tree, it does so.”

“Yes, a bird may do that, but I’m not a bird; I’m a man,” sai Soloveitchik with naive earnestness.

Sanine laughed outright, and for a moment the merry sound echoed through the gloomy courtyard.

Soloveitchik shook his head. “No,” he murmured sadly, “all that’s only talk. You can’t tell me how I ought to live. Nobody can tell me that.”

“That’s very true. Nobody can tell you that. The art of living implies a talent; and he who does not possess that talent perishes or makes shipwreck of his life.”

“How calmly you say that! As if you knew everything! Pray don’t be offended, but have you always been like that⁠—always so calm?” asked Soloveitchik, keenly interested.

“Oh! no; though certainly my temperament has usually been calm enough, but there were times when I was harassed by doubts of all kinds. At one time, indeed, I dreamed that the ideal life for me was the Christian life.”

Sanine paused, and Soloveitchik leaned forward eagerly as if to hear something of the utmost importance.

“At that time I had a comrade, a student of mathematics, Ivan Lande by name. He was a wonderful man, of indomitable moral force; a Christian, not from conviction, but by nature. In his life all Christianity was mirrored. If struck, he did not strike back; he treated every man as his brother, and in woman he did not recognize the sexual attraction. Do you remember Semenoff?”

Soloveitchik nodded, as with childish pleasure.

“Well, at that time Semenoff was very ill. He was living in the Crimea, where he gave lessons. There, solitude and the presentiment of his approaching death drove him to despair. Lande heard of this, and determined to go thither and save this lost soul. He had no money, and no one was willing to lend any to a reputed madman. So he went on foot, and, after walking over a thousand versts, died on the way, and thus sacrificed his life for others.”

“And you, oh! do tell me,” cried Soloveitchik with flashing eyes, “do you recognize the greatness of such a man?”

“He was much talked about at the time,” replied Sanine thoughtfully. “Some did not look upon him as a Christian, and for that reason condemned him. Others said that he was mad and not devoid of self-conceit, while some denied that he had any moral force; and, since he would not fight, they declared that he was neither prophet nor conqueror. I judge him otherwise. At that time he influenced me to the point of folly. One day a student boxed my ears, and I became almost mad with rage. But Lande stood there, and I just looked at him and⁠—Well, I don’t know how it was, but I got up without speaking, and walked out of the room. First of all I felt intensely proud of what I had done, and secondly I hated the student from the bottom of my heart. Not because he had struck me, but because to him my conduct must have been supremely gratifying. By degrees the falseness of my position became clear to me, and this set me thinking. For a couple of weeks I was like one demented, and after that I ceased to feel proud of my false moral victory. At the first ironical remark on the part of my adversary I thrashed him until he became unconscious. This brought about an estrangement between Lande and myself. When I came to examine his life impartially, I found it astonishingly poor and miserable.”

“Oh! how can you say