The Possessed

Then in a sort of delirium be began explaining to Sofya Matveyevna the significance of their meeting that day, “so chance an encounter and so fateful for all eternity.” Sofya Matveyevna got up from the sofa in terrible confusion at last. He had positively made an attempt to drop on his knees before her, which made her cry. It was begi

“No, you'd better let me go into the other room,” she faltered, “or else there's no knowing what people may think. . . .”

She tore herself away at last; he let her go, promising her to go to bed at once. As they parted he complained that he had a bad headache. Sofya Matveyevna had on entering the cottage left her bag and things in the first room, meaning to spend the night with the people of the house; but she got no rest.

In the night Stepan Trofimovitch was attacked by the malady with which I and all his friends were so familiar — the summer cholera, which was always the outcome of any nervous strain or moral shock with him. Poor Sofya Matveyevna did not sleep all night. As in waiting on the invalid she was obliged pretty often to go in and out of the cottage through the landlady's room, the latter, as well as the travellers who were sleeping there, grumbled and even began swearing when towards morning she set about preparing the samovar. Stepan Trofimovitch was half unconscious all through the attack; at times he had a vision of the samovar being set, of some one giving him something to drink (raspberry tea), and putting something warm to his stomach and his chest. But he felt almost every instant that she was here, beside him; that it was she going out and coming in, lifting him off the bed and settling him in it again. Towards three o'clock in the morning he began to be easier; he sat up, put his legs out of bed and thinking of nothing he fell on the floor at her feet. This was a very different matter from the kneeling of the evening; he simply bowed down at her feet and kissed the hem of her dress.

“Don't, sir, I am not worth it,” she faltered, trying to get him back on to the bed.

“My saviour,” he cried, clasping his hands reverently before her. “Vous etes noble comme une marquise! I— I am a wretch. Oh, I've been dishonest all my life. . . .”

“Calm yourself!” Sofya Matveyevna implored him.

“It was all lies that I told you this evening — to glorify myself, to make it splendid, from pure wanto

The first attack was succeeded in this way by a second — an attack of hysterical remorse. I have mentioned these attacks already when I described his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He suddenly recalled Lise and their meeting the previous morning. “It was so awful, and there must have been some disaster and I didn't ask, didn't find out! I thought only of myself. Oh, what's the matter with her? Do you know what's the matter with her?” he besought Sofya Matveyevna.

Then he swore that “he would never change,” that he would go back to her (that is, Varvara Petrovna). “We” (that is, he and Sofya Matveyevna) “will go to her steps every day when she is getting into her carriage for her morning drive, and we will watch her in secret. . . . Oh, I wish her to smite me on the other cheek; it's a joy to wish it! I shall turn her my other cheek comme dans votre livre! Only now for the first time I understand what is meant by ... turning the other cheek. I never understood before!”

The two days that followed were among the most terrible in Sofya Matveyevna's life; she remembers them with a shudder to this day. Stepan Trofimovitch became so seriously ill that he could not go on board the steamer, which on this occasion arrived punctually at two o'clock in the afternoon. She could not bring herself to leave him alone, so she did not leave for Spasov either. From her account he was positively delighted at the steamer's going without him.

“Well, that's a good thing, that's capital!” he muttered in his bed. “I've been afraid all the time that we should go. Here it's so nice, better than anywhere. . . . You won't leave me? Oh, you have not left me!”

It was by no means so nice “here” however. He did not care to hear of her difficulties; his head was full of fancies and nothing else. He looked upon his illness as something transitory, a trifling ailment, and did not think about it at all; he though of nothing but how they would go and sell “these books.” He asked her to read him the gospel.

“I haven't read it for a long time ... in the original. Some one may ask me about it and I shall make a mistake; I ought to prepare myself after all.”

She sat down beside him and opened the book.

“You read beautifully,” he interrupted her after the first line. “I see, I see I was not mistaken,” he added obscurely but ecstatically. He was, in fact, in a continual state of enthusiasm She read the Sermon on the Mount.

“Assez, assez, man enfant, enough. . . . Don't you think that that is enough?”

And he closed his eyes helplessly. He was very weak, but had not yet lost consciousness. Sofya Matveyevna was getting up, thinking that he wanted to sleep. But he stopped her.

“My friend, I've been telling lies all my life. Even when I told the truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for my own sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now. . . . Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And all, all! Savez-vous . . . perhaps I am telling lies now; no doubt I am telling lies now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I am lying. The hardest thing in life is to live without telling lies . . . and without believing in one's lies. Yes, yes, that's just it. ... But wait a bit, that can all come afterwards. . . . We'll be together, together,” he added enthusiastically.

“Stepan Trofimovitch,” Sofya Matveyevna asked timidly, “hadn't I better send to the town for the doctor?”

He was tremendously taken aback.

“What for? Est-ce que je suis si malade? Mais rien de serieux. What need have we of outsiders? They may find, besides — and what will happen then? No, no, no outsiders and we'll be together.”

“Do you know,” he said after a pause, “read me something more, just the first thing you come across.”

Sofya Matveyevna opened the Testament and began reading.

“Wherever it opens, wherever it happens to open,” he repeated.

“'And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans . . .'”

“What's that? What is it? Where is that from?”

“It's from the R-Revelation.”

“Oh, je m'en souviens, oui, l'Apocalypse. Lisez, lisez, I am trying our future fortunes by the book. I want to know what has turned up. Read on from there. . . .”

“'And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the begi

“'I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot.

“'So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

“'Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: and thou knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.' “

“That too . . . and that's in your book too!” he exclaimed, with flashing eyes and raising his head from the pillow. “I never knew that grand passage! You hear, better be cold, better be cold than lukewarm, than only lukewarm. Oh, I'll prove it! Only don't leave me, don't leave me alone! We'll prove it, we'll prove it!”

“I won't leave you, Stepan Trofimovitch. I'll never leave you!” She took his hand, pressed it in both of hers, and laid it against her heart, looking at him with tears in her eyes. (“I felt very sorry for him at that moment,” she said, describing it afterwards.)