Razumov

“ Razumov, in his chair, leaning his head on his hand, spoke as if from the bottom of an abyss.
“You believe in God, Haldin?”
“There you go catching at words that are wrung from one. What does it matter? What was it the Englishman said: ‘There is a divine soul in things...’ Devil take him—I don’t remember now. But he spoke the truth. When the day of you thinkers comes don’t you forget what’s divine in the Russian soul—and that’s resignation. Respect that in your intellectual restlessness and don’t let your arrogant wisdom spoil its message to the world. ”

“ The obscure celebrity of the tiny man was well known to Razumov. Polyglot, of unknown parentage, of indefinite nationality, anarchist, with a pedantic and ferocious temperament, and an amazingly inflammatory capacity for invective, he was a power in the background, this violent pamphleteer clamouring for revolutionary justice, this Julius Laspara, editor of the Living Word, confidant of conspirators, inditer of sanguinary menaces and manifestos, suspected of being in the secret of every plot. ”

“ A man who resigns himself to kill need not go very far for resignation to die. Haldin slept perhaps more soundly than General T---, whose task--weary work too--was not done, and over whose head hung the sword of revolutionary vengeance.
Razumov, remembering the thick-set man with his heavy jowl resting on the collar of his uniform, the champion of autocracy, who had let no sign of surprise, incredulity, or joy escape him, but whose goggle eyes could express a mortal hatred of all rebellion--Razumov moved uneasily on the bed. ”

“ Razumov's impulse to continue down the flight and out of the house without as much as a nod abandoned him suddenly. He stopped on the first step and leaned his back against the wall. Below him the great hall with its chequered floor of black and white seemed absurdly large and like some public place where a great power of resonance awaits the provocation of footfalls and voices. As if afraid of awakening the loud echoes of that empty house, Razumov adopted a low tone.
"I really have no mind to turn into a dilettante spiritualist." ”

“ Razumov made a slight bow, the irony of which was concealed by an almost sinister immobility of feature.
"I can't speak for the dead. As for myself, I can assure you that my conduct was dictated by necessity and by the sense of--well--retributive justice."
"Good, that," he said to himself, while her eyes rested upon him, black and impenetrable like the mental caverns where revolutionary thought should sit plotting the violent way of its dream of changes. As if anything could be changed! In this world of men nothing can be changed--neither happiness nor misery. ”

“ In the distant corner of the large room far away from the lamp, which was small and provided with a very thick china shade, Haldin appeared like a dark and elongated shape--rigid with the immobility of death. This body seemed to have less substance than its own phantom walked over by Razumov in the street white with snow. It was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion. ”

“ Peter Ivanovitch moved away from the window and struck Razumov lightly on the shoulder. This was a signal for leaving, but at the same time he addressed Madame de S— in a peculiar reminding tone—-
“Eleanor!”
Whatever it meant, she did not seem to hear him. She leaned back in the corner of the sofa like a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had a character of cruelty.
“As to extirpating,” she croaked at the attentive Razumov, “there is only one class in Russia which must be extirpated. Only one. And that class consists of only one family. ”

“ Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and Razumov, making a short bow, had said with deference—
“I have trusted my instinct. A young man having no claim upon anybody in the world has in an hour of trial involving his deepest political convictions turned to an illustrious Russian—that’s all.” ”

“ The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don’t touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a butcher—in the middle of all these innocent people—scattering death—I! I!... I wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
“Not so loud,” warned Razumov harshly.
Haldin sat down abruptly, and leaning his head on his folded arms burst into tears. ”

“ But the Prince came to the rescue.
"Providence itself has led the wretch in a moment of mental aberration to seek Mr. Razumov on the strength of some old, utterly misinterpreted exchange of ideas--some sort of idle speculative conversation--months ago--I am told--and completely forgotten till now by Mr. Razumov."
"Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively, after a short silence, "do you often indulge in speculative conversation?"
"No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a sudden access of self-confidence. "I am a man of deep convictions. Crude opinions are in the air. ”

“ She moved her rigidly set face from left to right, negatively.
“Some sort of phantom in my image?” pursued Razumov slowly. “For, I suppose, a soul when it is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are phantoms of the living as well as of the dead.”
The tenseness of Madame de S—‘s stare had relaxed, and now she looked at Razumov in a silence that became disconcerting. ”

“ Razumov put Laspara gently aside, as though he wished to be seen from head to foot by everybody. By then the buzz of conversations had died down completely, even in the most distant of the three rooms. The doorway facing Razumov became blocked by men and women, who craned their necks and certainly seemed to expect something startling to happen. ”

“ Razumov almost shrieked.
He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter. Haldin, very pale, raised himself on his elbow.
“And the surprises of life,” went on Razumov, after glancing at the other uneasily. “Just consider their astonishing nature. A mysterious impulse induces you to come here. I don’t say you have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain point of view you could not have done better. You might have gone to a man with affections and family ties. You have such ties yourself. ”

“ Razumov," he said with great earnestness, "is as it may be. God alone knows the future. But you may rest assured that I never thought of having you watched. You are a young man of great independence. Yes. You are going away free as air, but you shall end by coming back to us."
"I! I!" Razumov exclaimed in an appalled murmur of protest. "What for?" he added feebly.
"Yes! You yourself, Kirylo Sidorovitch," the high police functionary insisted in a low, severe tone of conviction. "You shall be coming back to us. ”

“ The great thing is not to quarrel amongst ourselves about all sorts of conventional trifles. Remember that, Razumov.”
Razumov was not listening. He had even lost the sense of being watched in a sort of heavy tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation, his scorn were blunted at last by all these trying hours. It seemed to him that now they were blunted for ever. “I am a match for them all,” he thought, with a conviction too firm to be exulting. The woman revolutionist had ceased speaking; he was not looking at her; there was no one passing along the road. ”

“ Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began to write. When he wrote a large hand his neat writing lost its character altogether--became unsteady, almost childish. He wrote five lines one under the other. History not Theory. Patriotism not Internationalism. Evolution not Revolution. Direction not Destruction. Unity not Disruption.
He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed to the bed and remained fixed there for a good many minutes, while his right hand groped all over the table for the penknife. ”

“ Razumov did not look up. He did not move till he heard the door of the drawing-room close behind the greatest of feminists returning to his painted Egeria. Then he walked down slowly into the hall. The door stood open, and the shadow of the house was lying aslant over the greatest part of the terrace. While crossing it slowly, he lifted his hat and wiped his damp forehead, expelling his breath with force to get rid of the last vestiges of the air he had been breathing inside. ”

“ And this thought reinforced the inward quietness of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister. The exceptional could not prevail against the material contacts which make one day resemble another. To-morrow would be like yesterday.
It was only on the stage that the unusual was outwardly acknowledged.
“I suppose,” thought Razumov, “that if I had made up my mind to blow out my brains on the landing I would be going up these stairs as quietly as I am doing it now. What’s a man to do? What must be must be. ”

“ He was as lonely in the world as a man swimming in the deep sea. The word Razumov was the mere label of a solitary individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging to him anywhere. His closest parentage was defined in the statement that he was a Russian. Whatever good he expected from life would be given to or withheld from his hopes by that connexion alone. This immense parentage suffered from the throes of internal dissensions, and he shrank mentally from the fray as a good-natured man may shrink from taking definite sides in a violent family quarrel. ”

“ Capable men were wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted hearts. But absolute power should be preserved--the tool ready for the man--for the great autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in him. The logic of history made him unavoidable. The state of the people demanded him, "What else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move all that mass in one direction? Nothing could. Nothing but a single will."
He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his personal longings of liberalism--rejecting the attractive error for the stern Russian truth. ”

“ Razumov sat down again suddenly. I stared at him, and I must say that he returned my stare without winking for quite a considerable time.
"In some way," he mumbled, as if he had not understood or could not believe his ears.
"Some unforeseen event, a sheer accident might have done that," I went on. "Or, as she characteristically put it to me, the folly or weakness of some unhappy fellow-revolutionist."
"Folly or weakness," he repeated bitterly.
"She is a very generous creature," I observed after a time. The man admired by Victor Haldin fixed his eyes on the ground. ”

“ Some brains cannot resist the suggestion of irresistible power and of headlong motion.
It apparently had a charm for Mr. Razumov. I left him hanging far over the parapet of the bridge. The way he had behaved to me could not be put down to mere boorishness. There was something else under his scorn and impatience. Perhaps, I thought, with sudden approach to hidden truth, it was the same thing which had kept him over a week, nearly ten days indeed, from coming near Miss Haldin. ”

“ Razumov, who had prepared his will and his intelligence to encounter General T—- himself, was profoundly troubled. All the moral bracing up against the possible excesses of power and passion went for nothing before this sallow man, who wore a full unclipped beard. It was fair, thin, and very fine. The light fell in coppery gleams on the protuberances of a high, rugged forehead. And the aspect of the broad, soft physiognomy was so homely and rustic that the careful middle parting of the hair seemed a pretentious affectation.
The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some irritation on his part. ”

“ He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had reached a wide and fashionable street. Some shops were still open, and all the restaurants. Lights fell on the pavement where men in expensive fur coats, with here and there the elegant figure of a woman, walked with an air of leisure. Razumov looked at them with the contempt of an austere believer for the frivolous crowd. ”

“ And, anyway, who could have foreseen this woman’s “informant” stumbling upon that particular slum, of all the slums awaiting destruction in the purifying flame of social revolution? Who could have foreseen? Nobody! “It’s a perfect, diabolic surprise,” thought Razumov, calm-faced in his attitude of inscrutable superiority, nodding assent to Sophia Antonovna’s remarks upon the psychology of “the people,” “Oh yes—certainly,” rather coldly, but with a nervous longing in his fingers to tear some sort of confession out of her throat. ”

“ And it was that which the Secretariat set itself the task to foster by a course of calculated and false indiscretions.
It came at last to this, that one evening Mr. Razumov was unexpectedly called upon by one of the “thinking” students whom formerly, before the Haldin affair, he used to meet at various private gatherings; a big fellow with a quiet, unassuming manner and a pleasant voice.
Recognizing his voice raised in the ante-room, “May one come in?” Razumov, lounging idly on his couch, jumped up. ”

“ Razumov said firmly. “Dvornik, landlady, girl, all out of the way. I went up like a shadow. It was a murky morning. The stairs were dark. I glided up like a phantom. Fate? Luck? What do you think?”
“I just see it!” The eyes of the woman revolutionist snapped darkly. “Well—and then you considered....”
Razumov had it all ready in his head.
“No. I looked at my watch, since you want to know. There was just time. I took that notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe. Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man running round and round the shaft of a deep staircase? ”