Content
Part One
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV
Part Two
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI
Part Three
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X
Part Four
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX
Epilogue. Last memories
Part one
Chapter I
Last year, on the twenty-second of March, a strange incident happened to me in the evening. All that day I walked around the city and looked for an apartment. The old one was very damp, and by then I was already starting to cough badly. I wanted to move since the fall, but waited until spring. I spent the whole day and couldn’t find anything decent. Firstly, I wanted a special apartment, not from the tenants, and secondly, at least one room, but certainly a large one, and of course at the same time as cheap as possible. I noticed that in a cramped apartment even my thoughts are cramped. When I was thinking about my future stories, I always liked to walk back and forth around the room. By the way: I always found it more pleasant to think about my essays and dream about how they would be written than to actually write them, and, really, this was not out of laziness. From what?
In the morning I felt unwell, and by sunset I even began to feel very unwell, something like a fever began. Besides, I had been on my feet all day and was tired. In the evening, just before dusk, I walked along Voznesensky Prospekt. I love the March sun in St. Petersburg, especially the sunset, of course, on a clear, frosty evening. The whole street will suddenly sparkle, bathed in bright light. All the houses seem to suddenly sparkle. Their gray, yellow and dirty green colors will lose all their gloom for a moment; as if your soul would clear up, as if you would shudder or someone would nudge you with their elbow. A new look, new thoughts... It's amazing what one ray of sun can do to a person's soul!
But the sunbeam went out; the frost grew stronger and began to pinch my nose; the twilight was deepening; gas flashed from shops and stores. Having reached Miller's confectionery, I suddenly stopped in my tracks and began to look at the other side of the street, as if sensing that something extraordinary was about to happen to me, and at that very moment on the opposite side I saw an old man and his dog. I remember very well that my heart sank from some most unpleasant sensation and I myself could not decide what kind of sensation it was.
I’m not a mystic, I almost don’t believe in premonitions and fortune telling; However, with me, as perhaps with everyone, several incidents happened in my life, quite inexplicable. For example, this old man: why, when I met him at that time, did I immediately feel that something not quite ordinary would happen to me that same evening? However, I was sick, and painful sensations are almost always deceptive.
The old man, with his slow, weak step, moving his legs as if they were sticks, as if not bending them, hunched over and lightly hitting his cane on the slabs of the sidewalk, approached the pastry shop. In my life I have never met such a strange, absurd figure. And before this meeting, when we met with him at Miller’s, he always struck me painfully. His tall stature, hunched back, deathly eighty-year-old face, an old coat torn at the seams, a broken round twenty-year-old hat that covered his naked head, on which there remained, at the very back of his head, a tuft of hair that was no longer gray, but white-yellow; all his movements, which were made somehow senselessly, as if by a wound-up spring, all this involuntarily amazed everyone who met him for the first time. Indeed, it was somehow strange to see such an outdated old man alone, unattended, especially since he looked like a madman who had run away from his guards. I was also struck by his extraordinary thinness: there was almost no body on him, and it was as if only skin was glued to his bones. His large but dull eyes, set in some kind of blue circles, always looked straight ahead, never to the side and never seeing anything - I’m sure of that. Although he was looking at you, he walked straight towards you, as if there was empty space in front of him. I've noticed this several times. He started appearing at Miller's recently, from nowhere and always with his dog. None of the visitors to the pastry shop ever dared to talk to him, and he himself did not speak to any of them.
“And why is he dragging himself to Miller, and what should he do there? — I thought, standing on the other side of the street and irresistibly looking at him. Some kind of annoyance - a consequence of illness and fatigue - was boiling inside me. -What is he thinking about? - I continued to myself, - what is in his head? And does he still think about anything? His face is so dead that it expresses absolutely nothing. And where did he get this disgusting dog, which does not leave his side, as if it were something whole, inseparable with him, and which is so similar to him?
This unfortunate dog also seemed to be about eighty years old; yes, it certainly had to be. Firstly, she looked as old as any dog can be, and secondly, why did it immediately occur to me, from the first time I saw her, that this dog could not be like all dogs; that she is an extraordinary dog; that there must certainly be something fantastic, enchanted in it; that this may be some kind of Mephistopheles in dog form and that its fate is connected in some mysterious, unknown ways with the fate of its owner. Looking at her, you would immediately agree that it had probably been twenty years since she last ate. She was thin, like a skeleton, or (which is better?) like her master. Almost all the fur had come out on her, also on her tail, which hung like a stick, always tucked tightly. The long-eared head hung down gloomily. I have never met such a nasty dog in my life. When they both walked down the street - the gentleman in front, and the dog behind him - her nose directly touched the hem of his dress, as if glued to it. And their gait and their whole appearance almost said with every step:
We are old, old, God, how old we are!
I remember that it once occurred to me that the old man and the dog had somehow crawled out of some page of Hoffmann, illustrated by Gavarni, and were walking around the world in the form of walking posters for tributes. I crossed the street and followed the old man into the candy store.
In the pastry shop, the old man acted strangely, and Miller, standing behind his counter, had recently begun to make a dissatisfied grimace at the entrance of an uninvited visitor. Firstly, the strange guest never asked anything. Each time he went straight to the corner of the stove and sat down on a chair there. If his place at the stove was occupied, then, after standing for some time in senseless bewilderment at the gentleman who had taken his place, he would go, as if puzzled, to another corner to the window. There he chose a chair, slowly sat down on it, took off his hat, put it on the floor next to him, placed his cane near the hat and then, leaning back in the chair, remained motionless for three or four hours. He never picked up a single newspaper, never uttered a single word, not a single sound; but just sat, looking in front of him with all his eyes, but with such a dull, lifeless gaze that one could bet that he saw nothing of everything around him and heard nothing. The dog, having circled around two or three times in one place, sullenly lay down at his feet, stuck its muzzle between his boots, sighed deeply and, stretching out to its full length on the floor, also remained motionless for the whole evening, as if dying for that time. It seemed as if these two creatures had been lying somewhere dead all day and, as the sun set, they suddenly came to life only in order to get to Miller’s confectionery and thereby fulfill some mysterious, unknown duty. After sitting for three or four hours, the old man finally got up, took his hat and went home somewhere. The dog also got up and, again tucking its tail and hanging its head, mechanically followed him at the same slow pace. The visitors to the candy store finally began to avoid the old man in every possible way and did not even sit next to him, as if he inspired disgust in them. He didn't notice any of this.
The visitors to this confectionery are mostly German. They gather here from all over Voznesensky Prospect - all owners of various establishments: mechanics, bakers, dyers, hat makers, saddle makers - all patriarchal people in the German sense of the word. Miller was generally patriarchal. Often the owner approached familiar guests and sat down with them at the table, and a certain amount of punch was drained. The owner's dogs and small children also sometimes came out to visit the visitors, and the visitors petted the children and dogs. Everyone knew each other, and everyone mutually respected each other. And when the guests were delving into reading German newspapers, outside the door, in the owner’s apartment, Augustine was crackling, played on the rattling piano by the owner’s eldest daughter, a blonde German girl with curls, very similar to a white mouse. The waltz was accepted with pleasure. I went to Miller at the first of every month to read the Russian magazines that he got.
Entering the pastry shop, I saw that the old man was already sitting by the window, and the dog was lying, as before, stretched out at his feet. Silently I sat down in a corner and mentally asked myself the question: “Why did I come here when I have absolutely nothing to do here, when I am sick and it would be better to hurry home, drink tea and go to bed? Am I really here just to look at this old man?” Annoyance took over me. “What do I care about him,” I thought, remembering that strange, painful feeling with which I looked at him on the street. “And what do I care about all these boring Germans?” Why this fantastic mood of spirit? Why this cheap anxiety over trifles, which I have been noticing in myself lately and which is preventing me from living and looking clearly at life, as one thoughtful critic has already remarked to me, indignantly examining my latest story? But, thinking and complaining, I still remained in place, and meanwhile the illness overcame me more and more, and I finally felt sorry to leave the warm room. I took the Frankfurt newspaper, read two lines and dozed off. The Germans did not bother me. They read, smoked, and only occasionally, every half hour, would they tell each other, fragmentarily and in a low voice, some news from Frankfurt and even some witz or scarfzin of the famous German wit Safir; after which, with redoubled national pride, they again plunged into “singing.”
I dozed for half an hour and woke up with severe chills. I decided to go home. But at that moment one silent scene taking place in the room stopped me once again. I have already said that as soon as the old man sat down on his chair, he immediately fixed his gaze somewhere and did not direct it to another object the whole evening. It also happened to me that I fell under this gaze, senselessly persistent and not distinguishing anything: the feeling was very unpleasant, even unbearable, and I usually changed the place as quickly as possible. At that moment the old man’s victim was one small, round and extremely neat German, with stand-up, tightly starched collars and an unusually red face, a visiting guest, a merchant from Riga, Adam Ivanovich Schultz, as I found out later, a short friend of Miller’s, but not who also knew the old man and many of the visitors. Enjoying reading Dorfbarbier[1] and drinking his punch, he suddenly raised his head and noticed the old man’s motionless gaze above him. This puzzled him. Adam Ivanovich was a very touchy and ticklish person, like all “noble” Germans in general. It seemed strange and offensive to him that he was being unceremoniously examined so closely. With suppressed indignation, he averted his eyes from the indelicate guest, muttered something under his breath and silently covered himself with the newspaper. However, he couldn’t bear it and two minutes later he looked out suspiciously from behind the newspaper: the same persistent gaze, the same senseless examination. Adam Ivanovich remained silent this time too. But when the same circumstance was repeated the third time, he flared up and considered it his duty to defend his nobility and not to drop the beautiful city of Riga, of which he probably considered himself a representative, before the noble public. With an impatient gesture, he threw the newspaper on the table, energetically hitting it with the stick to which it was attached, and, glowing with his own dignity, all red from punch and ambition, in turn stared with his small, inflamed eyes at the annoying old man. It seemed that both of them, the German and his opponent, wanted to overpower each other with the magnetic power of their glances and were waiting to see who would be embarrassed and lower their eyes first. The sound of the baton and the eccentric position of Adam Ivanovich attracted the attention of all visitors. Everyone immediately put aside their activities and watched both opponents with important, silent curiosity. The scene became very comical. But the magnetism of little red Adam Ivanovich’s provocative eyes was completely wasted. The old man, not caring about anything, continued to look directly at the enraged Mr. Schultz and resolutely did not notice that he had become an object of general curiosity, as if his head were on the moon and not on the earth. Adam Ivanovich's patience finally ran out and he burst out.
- Why are you looking at me so carefully? - he shouted in German in a sharp, shrill voice and with a threatening look.
But his opponent continued to remain silent, as if he did not understand and did not even hear the question. Adam Ivanovich decided to speak Russian.
“I’ll ask you, why are you looking at me so diligently?” - he shouted with redoubled fury. “I am known to the court, but you are unknown to the court!” - he added, jumping up from his chair.
But the old man didn’t even move. There was a murmur of indignation among the Germans. Miller himself, attracted by the noise, entered the room. Having delved into the matter, he thought that the old man was deaf, and bent down to his very ear.
“Kaspadin Schultz asked you to diligently not look at him,” he said as loudly as possible, peering intently at the incomprehensible visitor.
The old man mechanically looked at Miller, and suddenly in his face, hitherto motionless, signs of some kind of disturbing thought, some kind of restless excitement were revealed. He began to fuss, bent down, groaning, to his hat, hastily grabbed it along with his stick, rose from his chair and with some kind of pitiful smile - the humiliated smile of a poor man who is being driven out of the place he had taken by mistake - prepared to leave the room. In this humble, submissive haste of the poor, decrepit old man there was so much that evoked pity, so much that sometimes made the heart turn over in the chest, that the entire audience, starting with Adam Ivanovich, immediately changed their view of the matter. It was clear that the old man not only could not offend anyone, but he himself understood every minute that he could be kicked out from everywhere as a beggar.
Miller was a kind and compassionate man.
“No, no,” he said, patting the old man on the shoulder encouragingly, “he’s sitting!” Aber [2] Herr Schultz begged you to diligently not look at him. He is famous around the court.
But the poor man didn’t understand even here; He began to fuss even more than before, bent down to pick up his handkerchief, an old, holey blue handkerchief that had fallen out of his hat, and began to call to his dog, who lay motionless on the floor and, apparently, was fast asleep, covering his muzzle with both paws.
- Azorka, Azorka! - he mumbled in a trembling, senile voice, - Azorka!
Azorka did not move.
“Azorka, Azorka!” the old man repeated sadly and moved the dog with a stick, but it remained in the same position.
The stick fell out of his hands. He bent down, knelt down and with both hands lifted Azorka's muzzle. Poor Azorka! He was dead. He died silently, at the feet of his master, perhaps from old age, or perhaps from hunger. The old man looked at him for a minute, as if amazed, as if not realizing that Azorka had already died; then he quietly leaned towards his former servant and friend and pressed his pale face to his dead muzzle. A minute of silence passed. We were all touched... Finally the poor man stood up. He was very pale and trembled as if in a feverish chill.
“We can make some noise,” said the compassionate Miller, wanting to somehow console the old man. (Shushel meant stuffed animal). - You can make karoshi shushel; Fyodor Karlovich Krieger will make a great shushel; Fyodor Karlovich Krieger is a great master at making shushel,” Miller insisted, picking up a stick from the ground and handing it to the old man.
“Yes, I’ll make a great shushel,” Herr Krieger himself modestly picked up, coming to the fore. He was a long, thin and virtuous German with red, tufted hair and glasses on his humped nose.
“Fyodor Karlovich Krieger has a great talent for making all sorts of excellent jokes,” added Miller, beginning to be delighted with his idea.
“Yes, I have a great talent for making all sorts of excellent jokes,” Herr Krieger confirmed again, “and I’ll make a joke out of your little dog for free,” he added in a fit of generous self-sacrifice.
- No, I’ll pay you for what you do! - Adam Ivanovich Shultz frantically cried, doubly flushed, in turn, burning with generosity and innocently considering himself the cause of all misfortunes.
The old man listened to all this, apparently not understanding and still trembling all over.
- Wait a minute! Drink one glass of karoshi cognac! - Miller cried, seeing that the mysterious guest was trying to leave.
Cognac was served. The old man mechanically took the glass, but his hands were shaking, and before he brought it to his lips, he spilled half of it and, without drinking a drop, put it back on the tray. Then, smiling at some strange, completely inappropriate smile, he walked out of the pastry shop with an accelerated, uneven step, leaving Azorka in place. Everyone stood in amazement; exclamations were heard.
- Svernot! you-für-eine-geshichte! - the Germans said, bulging their eyes at each other.
And I rushed after the old man. A few steps from the pastry shop, turning right from it, there is an alley, narrow and dark, lined with huge houses. Something prompted me that the old man would certainly turn here. Here the second house to the right was being built and was all furnished with scaffolding. The fence surrounding the house went almost into the middle of the alley; a wooden plank was attached to the fence for those passing by. In a dark corner formed by a fence and a house, I found an old man. He sat on the edge of the wooden sidewalk and supported his head with both hands, resting his elbows on his knees. I sat down next to him.
“Listen,” I said, almost not knowing where to start, “don’t worry about Azorka.” Come on, I'll take you home. Calm down. I'll go get a cab now. Where do you live?
The old man did not answer. I didn't know what to decide. There were no passers-by. Suddenly he started grabbing my hand.
- It's stuffy! - he said in a hoarse, barely audible voice, - it’s stuffy!
- Let's go to your house! - I cried, getting up and forcibly lifting him up, - you will drink tea and go to bed... I’ll bring a cab driver now. I'll call the doctor... I know a doctor...
I don't remember what else I told him. He wanted to get up, but, having risen a little, he fell to the ground again and again began to mutter something in the same hoarse, suffocating voice. I leaned even closer to him and listened.
“On Vasilyevsky Island,” the old man wheezed, “in the Sixth Line... in the Sixth Line...” He fell silent.
— Do you live on Vasilievsky? But you went the wrong way; it will be to the left, not to the right. I'll take you now...
The old man did not move. I took him by the hand; the hand fell as if dead. I looked into his face, touched him - he was already dead. It seemed to me that all this was happening in a dream.
This adventure cost me a lot of trouble, during which my fever went away on its own. The old man’s apartment was found. He, however, did not live on Vasilyevsky Island, but two steps from the place where he died, in Klugen’s house, under the very roof, on the fifth floor, in a separate apartment, consisting of one small hallway and one large, very low room , with three slits like windows. He lived terribly poorly. The furniture consisted of only a table, two chairs and an old, old sofa, hard as a stone, and from which sponges protruded from all sides; and even that turned out to be the owner’s. The stove apparently had not been lit for a long time; no candles were found either. I seriously think now that the old man came up with the idea of going to Miller’s solely to sit by candlelight and warm up. On the table there was an empty clay mug and an old, stale crust of bread. There was not a penny of money. There wasn't even another change of clothes to bury him; someone gave me their shirt. It is clear that he could not live like this, completely alone, and, of course, someone, at least occasionally, visited him. His passport was found in the table. The deceased was a foreigner, but a Russian citizen, Jeremiah Smith, a machinist, seventy-eight years old. There were two books on the table: a brief geography and the New Testament in Russian translation, scribbled in the margins with a pencil and marked with a fingernail. I bought these books for myself. They asked the residents, the owner of the house, but no one knew almost anything about him. There are many tenants in this house, almost all artisans and German women, apartment owners with board and servants. The manager of the house, one of the nobles, could also say little about his former guest, except perhaps that the apartment rented for six rubles a month, that the deceased lived in it for four months, but for the last two months he did not pay a penny, so he had to drive out of the apartment. They asked: did anyone go to see him? But no one could give a satisfactory answer about this. The house is big: you never know how many people go to such Noah’s Ark, you won’t remember them all. The janitor, who had been working in this house for five years and probably could have explained at least something, had gone to his homeland two weeks earlier on leave, leaving in his place his nephew, a young guy who had not yet personally recognized half of the residents. I don’t know for sure how exactly all these certificates ended then, but finally the old man was buried. During these days, between other chores, I went to Vasilyevsky Island, to the Sixth Line, and only when I got there did I smile at myself: what could I see in the Sixth Line, except for a row of ordinary houses? “But why,” I thought, “did the old man, dying, talk about the Sixth Line and about Vasilyevsky Island? Are you delirious?
I looked around Smith's empty apartment and liked it. I left her behind me. The main thing was that there was a large room, although it was very low, so at first it seemed to me that I would hit the ceiling with my head. However, I soon got used to it. For six rubles a month it was impossible to get better. The mansion seduced me; All that remained was to arrange for servants, since it was absolutely impossible to live without servants. At first, the janitor promised to come at least once a day, to serve me in some extreme case. “Who knows,” I thought, “maybe someone will find out about the old man!” However, five days have already passed since he died, and no one has come yet.
Childhood
Being the second child in a family of eight, Fyodor was most friendly with his older brother Mikhail from childhood.
My father, a doctor, spent almost all his time at work - in the Moscow military hospital and the Mariinsky hospital for the poor, in order to be able to feed his large family. The children were mainly cared for by their mother, Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva. In particular, she taught the future writer to read from the book “104 Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments.” Often later Fyodor Mikhailovich will recall these activities, described by him in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”.
At the age of 10, in 1831, when his father Mikhail Andreevich acquired the small estate Darovoye in the Tula province, Fyodor became acquainted with the life of the peasants. From that time on, tutors were invited to Dostoevsky’s children, who taught them Latin, French, and mathematics. For a couple of years they even visited the Moscow boarding house of L.I. Chermak.
A terrible blow for the children and Fyodor was the death of his mother from consumption in 1837. In another two years, their father would also die, having previously sent his two eldest sons to K. F. Kostomarov’s boarding school in St. Petersburg. Here the young men were to be trained for military training at the Main Engineering School.
However, all the brothers' dreams were about poetry. Accordingly, literature became a passionate hobby for them. Fyodor Dostoevsky easily recited almost all of Pushkin by heart, quoted Shakespeare and Byron, Lermontov and Derzhavin. And soon a group of talented people, passionate about the art of words, rallied around him.
