Vasily Shatov

“ Towards eight o’clock in the evening (at the very time when the quintet was meeting at Erkel’s, and waiting in indignation and excitement for Pyotr Stepanovitch) Shatov was lying in the dark on his bed with a headache and a slight chill; he was tortured by uncertainty, he was angry, he kept making up his mind, and could not make it up finally, and felt, with a curse, that it would all lead to nothing. Gradually he sank into a brief doze and had something like a nightmare. ”

“ Shatov, do you understand how good it is to be alive!”
“Don’t answer!” Shatov whispered to me again.
“Open the door! Do you understand that there’s something higher than brawling ... in mankind; there are moments of an hon-hon-honourable man.... Shatov, I’m good; I’ll forgive you.... Shatov, damn the manifestoes, eh?”
Silence.
“Do you understand, you ass, that I’m in love, that I’ve bought a dress-coat, look, the garb of love, fifteen roubles; a captain’s love calls for the niceties of style.... Open the door!” ”

“ Do you hear? I demand when I ought to entreat. Do you understand what it means to demand when one ought to entreat?”
“I understand that in that way you lift yourself above all ordinary considerations for the sake of loftier aims,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch with a faint smile. “I see with regret, too, that you’re feverish.”
“I beg you to treat me with respect, I insist on it!” shouted Shatov, “not my personality—I don’t care a hang for that, but something else, just for this once. While I am talking ... we are two beings, and have come together in infinity ... ”

“ At this all were agape with astonishment.
“You will be arrested not only as the instigators of the fire, but as a quintet. The traitor knows the whole secret of the network. So you see what a mess you’ve made of it!”
“Stavrogin, no doubt,” cried Liputin.
“What ... why Stavrogin?” Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed suddenly taken aback. “Hang it all,” he cried, pulling himself together at once, “it’s Shatov! I believe you all know now that Shatov in his time was one of the society. ”

“ Ach, Shatushka, Shatushka, my dear, why do you never ask me about anything?”
“Why, you won’t tell. That’s why I don’t ask.”
“I won’t tell, I won’t tell,” she answered quickly. “You may kill me, I won’t tell. You may burn me, I won’t tell. And whatever I had to bear I’d never tell, people won’t find out!”
“There, you see. Every one has something of their own,” Shatov said, still more softly, his head drooping lower and lower. ”

“ I may remark that as yet no one had heard of Shatov’s fate—not Varvara Petrovna nor Darya Pavlovna, nor even Salzfish, who was the last to come from the town.
Stepan Trofimovitch became more and more excited, feverishly so, beyond his strength.
“The mere fact of the ever present idea that there exists something infinitely more just and more happy than I am fills me through and through with tender ecstasy—and glorifies me—oh, whoever I may be, whatever I have done! ”

“ They’ve raised their hand against better men than you or me. It’s a quarter past eleven, though.” He looked at his watch and got up from his chair. “I wanted to ask you one quite irrelevant question.”
“For God’s sake!” cried Shatov, rising impulsively from his seat.
“I beg your pardon?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him inquiringly.
“Ask it, ask your question for God’s sake,” Shatov repeated in indescribable excitement, “but on condition that I ask you a question too. I beseech you to allow me ... I can’t ... ask your question!”
Stavrogin waited a moment and then began. ”

“ But allow me to ask where you are lodging.”
“At Filipov’s, in Bogoyavlensky Street.”
“Ach, that’s where Shatov lives,” I observed involuntarily.
“Just so, in the very same house,” cried Liputin, “only Shatov lodges above, in the attic, while he’s down below, at Captain Lebyadkin’s. He knows Shatov too, and he knows Shatov’s wife. He was very intimate with her, abroad.”
“Comment! Do you really know anything about that unhappy marriage de ce pauvre ami and that woman,” cried Stepan Trofimovitch, carried away by sudden feeling. “You are the first man I’ve met who has known her personally ”

“ Stavrogin interrupted suddenly. “Every one for some inexplicable reason keeps foisting a flag upon me. Pyotr Verhovensky, too, is convinced that I might ‘raise his flag,’ that’s how his words were repeated to me, anyway. He has taken it into his head that I’m capable of playing the part of Stenka Razin for them, ‘from my extraordinary aptitude for crime,’ his saying too.”
“What?” cried Shatov, “‘from your extraordinary aptitude for crime’?” ”

“ And how’s Shatov? Is he just the same?”
“Irascible, mais bon.”
“I can’t endure your Shatov. He’s spiteful and he thinks too much of himself.”
“How is Darya Pavlovna?”
“You mean Dasha? What made you think of her?” Varvara Petrovna looked at him inquisitively. “She’s quite well. I left her with the Drozdovs. I heard something about your son in Switzerland. Nothing good.”
“Oh, c’est un histoire bien bête! Je vous attendais, ma bonne amie, pour vous raconter ...”
“Enough, Stepan Trofimovitch. Leave me in peace. I’m worn out. ”

“ I inquired about our comrades who had hastened from America at the first news of the Revolution. Many of them had died at the front, Zorin informed me, others were working with the Soviet Government. And Shatov? William Shatov, a brilliant speaker and able organizer, was a well-known figure in America, frequently associated with us in our work. We had sent him a telegram from Finland and were much surprised at his failure to reply. Why did not Shatov come to meet us? "Shatov had to leave for Siberia, where he is to take the post of Minister of Railways," said Zorin. ”

“ Ach, Kirillov!”
“Is it the same wife who was in Switzerland? That’s a good thing. And your running in like this, that’s a good thing too.”
“Kirillov!” cried Shatov, taking the teapot under his arm and carrying the bread and sugar in both hands. “Kirillov, if ... if you could get rid of your dreadful fancies and give up your atheistic ravings ... oh, what a man you’d be, Kirillov!”
“One can see you love your wife after Switzerland. It’s a good thing you do—after Switzerland. When you want tea, come again. You can come all night, I don’t sleep at all. There’ll be a samovar. ”

“ But spare me Shatov. I speak for Shatov.... The best plan would be to fetch him here secretly, in a friendly way, to your study and question him without disguising the facts.... I have no doubt he’ll throw himself at your feet and burst into tears! He is a highly strung and unfortunate fellow; his wife is carrying on with Stavrogin. Be kind to him and he will tell you everything, but I must have six days.... And, above all, above all, not a word to Yulia Mihailovna. It’s a secret. May it be a secret?”
“What?” cried Lembke, opening wide his eyes. ”

“ Note that Verhovensky is an obstinate man.”
“He’s a bug, an ignoramus, a buffoon, who understands nothing in Russia!” cried Shatov spitefully.
“You know him very little. It’s quite true that none of them understand much about Russia, but not much less than you and I do. Besides, Verhovensky is an enthusiast.”
“Verhovensky an enthusiast?”
“Oh, yes. There is a point when he ceases to be a buffoon and becomes a madman. I beg you to remember your own expression: ‘Do you know how powerful a single man may be?’ Please don’t laugh about it, he’s quite capable of pulling a trigger. ”

“ Stavrogin observed cautiously. “You accepted them with ardour, and in your ardour have transformed them unconsciously. The very fact that you reduce God to a simple attribute of nationality ...”
He suddenly began watching Shatov with intense and peculiar attention, not so much his words as himself.
“I reduce God to the attribute of nationality?” cried Shatov. “On the contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever been otherwise? The people is the body of God. Every people is only a people so long as it has its own god and excludes all other gods on earth irreconcilably ”

“ A man like that will never give up the idea. No sort of happiness would overcome him. In another day he’ll go back on it, reproach himself, and will go straight to the police. What’s more, I don’t see any happiness in the fact that his wife has come back after three years’ absence to bear him a child of Stavrogin’s.”
“But no one has seen Shatov’s letter,” Shigalov brought out all at once, emphatically.
“I’ve seen it,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch. “It exists, and all this is awfully stupid, gentlemen.” ”

“ Sometimes one does wrong and can’t help laughing at him.”
“That’s just how it is,” said Shatov, addressing me aloud without ceremony. “She treats him just like a footman. I’ve heard her myself calling to him, ‘Lebyadkin, give me some water!’ And she laughed as she said it. The only difference is that he doesn’t fetch the water but beats her for it; but she isn’t a bit afraid of him. She has some sort of nervous fits, almost every day, and they are destroying her memory so that afterwards she forgets everything that’s just happened, and is always in a muddle over time. ”

“ Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down again. “To cook your hare you must first catch it, to believe in God you must first have a god. You used to say that in Petersburg, I’m told, like Nozdryov, who tried to catch a hare by his hind legs.” ”

“ I tell you again, I stood up for you. Anyway, I advise you to turn up to-day. Why waste words through false pride? Isn’t it better to part friends? In any case you’ll have to give up the printing press and the old type and papers—that’s what we must talk about.”
“I’ll come,” Shatov muttered, looking down thoughtfully.
Pyotr Stepanovitch glanced askance at him from his place.
“Will Stavrogin be there?” Shatov asked suddenly, raising his head. ”

“ You ought to pull yourself together if only from spite! Ech! Why, what difference would it make to you since you ask for a bullet through your brains yourself?”
Stavrogin smiled strangely.
“If you were not such a buffoon I might perhaps have said yes now.... If you had only a grain of sense ...”
“I am a buffoon, but I don’t want you, my better half, to be one! Do you understand me?”
Stavrogin did understand, though perhaps no one else did. Shatov, for instance, was astonished when Stavrogin told him that Pyotr Stepanovitch had enthusiasm. ”

“ To-morrow, after Shatov’s affair, I’ll dictate a note to him saying that he is responsible for his death. That will seem very plausible: they were friends and travelled together to America, there they quarrelled; and it will all be explained in the letter ... and ... and perhaps, if it seems feasible, we might dictate something more to Kirillov—something about the manifestoes, for instance, and even perhaps about the fire. But I’ll think about that. You needn’t worry yourselves, he has no prejudices; he’ll sign anything. ”

“ She laughed.
“And your confidant didn’t happen to be at hand, and Nastasya turned up. Well that was enough! And the whole town’s full of her cronies! Come, it doesn’t matter, let them know; it’s all the better. Make haste and come to us, we dine early.... Oh, I forgot,” she added, sitting down again; “listen, what sort of person is Shatov?”
“Shatov? He’s the brother of Darya Pavlovna.”
“I know he’s her brother! What a person you are, really,” she interrupted impatiently. “I want to know what he’s like; what sort of man he is.” ”

“ It’s simply a further development of the organism, and there’s nothing else in it, no mystery,” said Arina Prohorovna with genuine and good-humoured laughter. “If you talk like that, every fly is a mystery. But I tell you what: superfluous people ought not to be born. We must first remould everything so that they won’t be superfluous and then bring them into the world. As it is, we shall have to take him to the Foundling, the day after to-morrow.... Though that’s as it should be.”
“I will never let him go to the Foundling,” Shatov pronounced resolutely, staring at the floor. ”

“ Some things he had to fetch from Kirillov’s. No sooner had Shatov turned to go for them than she began frantically calling him back and was only quieted when Shatov had rushed impetuously back from the stairs, and explained that he should only be gone a minute to fetch something indispensable and would be back at once.
“Well, my lady, it’s hard to please you,” laughed Arina Prohorovna, “one minute he must stand with his face to the wall and not dare to look at you, and the next he mustn’t be gone for a minute, or you begin crying. He may begin to imagine something. ”

“ Marya Shatov was unmistakably pleased at her husband’s haste and fell upon the tea almost greedily, but there was no need to run for the samovar; she drank only half a cup and swallowed a tiny piece of bread. The veal she refused with disgust and irritation.
“You are ill, Marie, all this is a sign of illness,” Shatov remarked timidly as he waited upon her.
“Of course I’m ill, please sit down. Where did you get the tea if you haven’t any?”
Shatov told her about Kirillov briefly. She had heard something of him.
“I know he is mad; say no more, please; there are plenty of fools. ”

“ Shatov reflected, as he set off to Lyamshin’s. “The convictions and the man are two very different things, very likely I’ve been very unfair to them!... We are all to blame, we are all to blame ... and if only all were convinced of it!”
He had not to knock long at Lyamshin’s; the latter, to Shatov’s surprise, opened his casement at once, jumping out of bed, barefoot and in his night-clothes at the risk of catching cold; and he was hypochondriacal and always anxious about his health. ”