human
Let us go on with our talk, Alexandr Daviditch, he said.
gpt
I won't make a secret of it; I'll speak to you openly as to a friend. Things are in a bad way with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and me . . . a very bad way! Forgive me for forcing my private affairs upon you, but I must speak out.
human
I've lived with her for two years and have ceased to love her, Laevsky went on;
gpt
I know very well you can't help me, he said.
human
But I tell you, because unsuccessful and superfluous people like me find their salvation in talking. I have to generalise about everything I do. I'm bound to look for an explanation and justification of my absurd existence in somebody else's theories, in literary types--in the idea that we, upper-class Russians, are degenerating, for instance, and so on. Last night, for example, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: 'Ah, how true Tolstoy is, how mercilessly true!' And that did me good. Yes, really, brother, he is a great writer, say what you like!
gpt
Yes, all other authors write from imagination, but he writes straight from nature.
human
My God! sighed Laevsky;
gpt
You can't get on in the house without an iron, said Samoylenko, blushing at Laevsky's speaking to him so openly of a lady he knew.
human
You are out of humour to-day, Vanya, I notice. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is a splendid woman, highly educated, and you are a man of the highest intellect. Of course, you are not married, Samoylenko went on, glancing round at the adjacent tables,
gpt
Without love?
human
I will tell you directly, said Samoylenko.
gpt
Eight years ago there was an old fellow, an agent, here--a man of very great intelligence. Well, he used to say that the great thing in married life was patience. Do you hear, Vanya? Not love, but patience. Love cannot last long. You have lived two years in love, and now evidently your married life has reached the period when, in order to preserve equilibrium, so to speak, you ought to exercise all your patience. . . .
human
You believe in your old agent; to me his words are meaningless. Your old man could be a hypocrite; he could exercise himself in the virtue of patience, and, as he did so, look upon a person he did not love as an object indispensable for his moral exercises; but I have not yet fallen so low. If I want to exercise myself in patience, I will buy dumb-bells or a frisky horse, but I'll leave human beings alone.
gpt
Tell me, please, what is the meaning of softening of the brain?
human
How can I explain it to you? . . . It's a disease in which the brain becomes softer . . . as it were, dissolves.
gpt
Is it curable?
human
Yes, if the disease is not neglected. Cold douches, blisters. . . . Something internal, too.
gpt
Oh! . . . Well, you see my position; I can't live with her: it is more than I can do. While I'm with you I can be philosophical about it and smile, but at home I lose heart completely; I am so utterly miserable, that if I were told, for instance, that I should have to live another month with her, I should blow out my brains. At the same time, parting with her is out of the question. She has no friends or relations; she cannot work, and neither she nor I have any money. . . . What could become of her? To whom could she go? There is nothing one can think of. . . . Come, tell me, what am I to do?
human
H'm! . . . growled Samoylenko, not knowing what to answer.
gpt
Does she love you?
human
Yes, she loves me in so far as at her age and with her temperament she wants a man. It would be as difficult for her to do without me as to do without her powder or her curl-papers. I am for her an indispensable, integral part of her boudoir.
gpt
You are out of humour to-day, Vanya, he said.
human
You must have had a bad night.
gpt
Yes, I slept badly. . . . Altogether, I feel horribly out of sorts, brother. My head feels empty; there's a sinking at my heart, a weakness. . . . I must run away.
human
Run where?
gpt
There, to the North. To the pines and the mushrooms, to people and ideas. . . . I'd give half my life to bathe now in some little stream in the province of Moscow or Tula; to feel chilly, you know, and then to stroll for three hours even with the feeblest student, and to talk and talk endlessly. . . . And the scent of the hay! Do you remember it? And in the evening, when one walks in the garden, sounds of the piano float from the house; one hears the train passing. . . .
human
I have not been in Russia for eighteen years, said Samoylenko.
gpt
I've forgotten what it is like. To my mind, there is not a country more splendid than the Caucasus.
human
Vereshtchagin has a picture in which some men condemned to death are languishing at the bottom of a very deep well. Your magnificent Caucasus strikes me as just like that well. If I were offered the choice of a chimney-sweep in Petersburg or a prince in the Caucasus, I should choose the job of chimney-sweep.