Poor Folk: Chapter 29
Chapter 29
August 4th.
MY BELOVED BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,--These unlooked-for blows have
shaken me terribly, and these strange calamities have quite
broken my spirit. Not content with trying to bring you to a bed
of sickness, these lickspittles and pestilent old men are trying
to bring me to the same. And I assure you that they are
succeeding--I assure you that they are. Yet I would rather die
than not help you. If I cannot help you I SHALL die; but, to
enable me to help you, you must flee like a bird out of the nest
where these owls, these birds of prey, are seeking to peck you to
death. How distressed I feel, my dearest! Yet how cruel you
yourself are! Although you are enduring pain and insult, although
you, little nestling, are in agony of spirit, you actually tell
me that it grieves you to disturb me, and that you will work off
your debt to me with the labour of your own hands! In other
words, you, with your weak health, are proposing to kill yourself
in order to relieve me to term of my financial embarrassments!
Stop a moment, and think what you are saying. WHY should you sew,
and work, and torture your poor head with anxiety, and spoil your
beautiful eyes, and ruin your health? Why, indeed? Ah, little
Barbara, little Barbara! Do you not see that I shall never be any
good to you, never any good to you? At all events, I myself see
it. Yet I WILL help you in your distress. I WILL overcome every
difficulty, I WILL get extra work to do, I WILL copy out
manuscripts for authors, I WILL go to the latter and force them
to employ me, I WILL so apply myself to the work that they shall
see that I am a good copyist (and good copyists, I know, are
always in demand). Thus there will be no need for you to exhaust
your strength, nor will I allow you to do so--I will not have you
carry out your disastrous intention. . . Yes, little angel, I
will certainly borrow some money. I would rather die than not do
so. Merely tell me, my own darling, that I am not to shrink from
heavy interest, and I will not shrink from it, I will not shrink
from it--nay, I will shrink from nothing. I will ask for forty
roubles, to begin with. That will not be much, will it, little
Barbara? Yet will any one trust me even with that sum at the
first asking? Do you think that I am capable of inspiring
confidence at the first glance? Would the mere sight of my face
lead any one to form of me a favourable opinion? Have I ever been
able, remember you, to appear to anyone in a favourable light?
What think you? Personally, I see difficulties in the way, and
feel sick at heart at the mere prospect. However, of those forty
roubles I mean to set aside twenty-five for yourself, two for my
landlady, and the remainder for my own spending. Of course, I
ought to give more than two to my landlady, but you must remember
my necessities, and see for yourself that that is the most that
can be assigned to her. We need say no more about it. For one
rouble I shall buy me a new pair of shoes, for I scarcely know
whether my old ones will take me to the office tomorrow morning.
Also, a new neck-scarf is indispensable, seeing that the old one
has now passed its first year; but, since you have promised to
make of your old apron not only a scarf, but also a shirt-front,
I need think no more of the article in question. So much for
shoes and scarves. Next, for buttons. You yourself will agree
that I cannot do without buttons; nor is there on my garments a
single hem unfrayed. I tremble when I think that some day his
Excellency may perceive my untidiness, and say--well, what will
he NOT say? Yet I shall never hear what he says, for I shall have
expired where I sit--expired of mere shame at the thought of
having been thus exposed. Ah, dearest! . . . Well, my various
necessities will have left me three roubles to go on with. Part
of this sum I shall expend upon a half-pound of tobacco--for I
cannot live without tobacco, and it is nine days since I last put
a pipe into my mouth. To tell the truth, I shall buy the tobacco
without acquainting you with the fact, although I ought not so to
do. The pity of it all is that, while you are depriving yourself
of everything, I keep solacing myself with various amenities--
which is why I am telling you this, that the pangs of conscience
may not torment me. Frankly, I confess that I am in desperate
straits--in such straits as I have never yet known. My landlady
flouts me, and I enjoy the respect of noone; my arrears and debts
are terrible; and in the office, though never have I found the
place exactly a paradise, noone has a single word to say to me.
Yet I hide, I carefully hide, this from every one. I would hide
my person in the same way, were it not that daily I have to
attend the office where I have to be constantly on my guard
against my fellows. Nevertheless, merely to be able to CONFESS
this to you renews my spiritual strength. We must not think of
these things, Barbara, lest the thought of them break our
courage. I write them down merely to warn you NOT to think of
them, nor to torture yourself with bitter imaginings. Yet, my
God, what is to become of us? Stay where you are until I can come
to you; after which I shall not return hither, but simply
disappear. Now I have finished my letter, and must go and shave
myself, inasmuch as, when that is done, one always feels more
decent, as well as consorts more easily with decency. God speed
me! One prayer to Him, and I must be off.
M. DIEVUSHKIN.
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