Chapter V: Part 5

However, after much thought, Strevenko devised a plan for unearthing secret plots. He washed his hair with peroxide of hydrogen, shaved himself where necessary, and became a fairhaired individual of gloomy appearance. Then he put on a sad-coloured suit so that no one could recognise him.

At night he went out into the street, and walked about as if deep in thought. Noticing a citizen stealing along, he pounced upon him from the left and whispered in a provocative manner:

"Comrade, are you really satisfied with your existence?"

The citizen slackened his pace, as if considering the question; but as soon as a policeman appeared in the distance he shouted in accordance with his invariable practice:

"Policeman, hold him."

Strevenko sprang over the fence like a tiger, and as he sat in the stinging nettles thought to himself:

"You cannot get hold of them like this; they act in a perfectly legal manner, the devils."

In the meantime the money allowed him was disappearing. He put on a less dismal-looking suit, and tried another way of trapping people. Boldly approaching a citizen he would ask him:

"Would you like to become an agent-provocateur, sir?"

And the citizen would reply coolly:

"What is the salary?"

Others declined politely:

"No, thank you, I am already engaged."

"Well," thought Oronty, "how am I to catch them?"

In the meantime the money allowed him was gradually melting away.

In the course of his search he looked in at the headquarters of the Society for the Many-Sided Use of Empty Egg-Shells, but discovered that the society enjoys the exalted patronage of three bishops, and of a general of gendarmerie; that it meets once a year and gets a special permit each time from St Petersburg. Oronty still failed to catch plotters and the money allowed him seemed to him to have galloping consumption.

Oronty was thoroughly annoyed:

"I'll soon show them!"

And he began to act quite openly. He would go up to a citizen and ask him straight out:

"Are you satisfied with your existence?"

"Quite satisfied."

"Well, but the authorities are dissatisfied. Please come along."

And if anyone said that he was not satisfied, the result was, of course, the same:

"Take him along!" said Strevenko.

"But, excuse me."

"What?"

"But I am dissatisfied because their measures are not sufficiently rigorous."

"Indeed? Take him."

Thus, in the course of three weeks, he had gathered together ten thousand men and women of one sort and another. At first he imprisoned them where he could; then he began to hang them; but for the sake of economy he did it at the expense of the citizens themselves.

Everything went very well till, one day, a superior official, who chanced to be out beagling in the outskirts of the town, saw unusual animation in the fields; a picture of the peaceful activity of citizens presented itself to him. They were reviling one another, hanging and burying one another, whilst Strevenko walked amongst them staff in hand, barking out words of encouragement:

"Hurry up, you melancholy owl, and be more cheerful about it! And you reverend-looking old man, there, why do you look so stupefied? The noose is ready; get into it; don't keep the others waiting. Whoa, lad; why do you get into the noose before your father? Gentlemen, don't be in such a hurry; your turn will come right enough. You have been patient for years, awaiting pacification by the Government; you can afford to wait a few minutes. You, peasant, where are you going? You ignoramus!"

The superior official, mounted on a handsome horse, looked on and thought:

"Anyway, he has got hold of a good many. He is a fine fellow! That is why all the windows in the town are boarded up."

But suddenly, to his utter astonishment, he saw his own aunt hanging by the neck, her feet dangling above the ground:

"Who gave the order?"

Strevenko was on the spot and said:

"I, your Excellency."

"Well, brother, you are a fool. You are simply wasting money belonging to the Treasury. Let me see your account."

Strevenko produced his account, wherein it was stated:

"In execution of the order concerning the extermination of those who have opinions of their own I have unearthed and imprisoned 10,107 persons of both sexes. Of this number:

"729 persons of both sexes have been killed; 541 persons of both sexes have been hanged; 937 persons of both sexes have been crippled for life; 317 persons of both sexes have died prematurely; 63 persons of both sexes have committed suicide; total number exterminated, 1876.

"Total Cost: Roubles 16,884--_i.e._ at the rate of 7 roubles per person.

"Deficit: Roubles 884."

The superior official, was staggered. He muttered in a fury:

"A deficit! You Fuegian! The whole of your Terra Del Fuego, together with the king and you yourself, is not worth eight hundred roubles. Just think of it! If you are going to steal money like that what am I to do?--I, who occupy a rank ten times higher? If we have such appetites Russia won't last us three years. There are many others besides you who want to live. Can't you understand that? And besides, you have wrongly included three hundred and eighty persons, for three hundred and seventeen 'died prematurely' and sixty-three committed suicide. You swindler, you have included them as well."

"Your Excellency," Oronty tried to justify himself, "but I drove them into such a state of mind that they loathed their life."

"And seven roubles a head for that? Besides, no doubt a lot of those included were not concerned in the matter at all. The total population of the town is only twelve thousand. No, my friend, I will bring you before the court."

A very strict investigation was accordingly made into the activity of the Fuegian, and he was found guilty of having misappropriated nine hundred and sixteen roubles belonging to the Treasury.

The court that tried Oronty was a just one; he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and his career was spoilt. The Fuegian was out of sight for three months.

It is no easy matter to please the authorities.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE

A kind-hearted man debated what was best to do and finally decided:

"I will cease to resist evil by violence. I will overcome it by patience."

This man was not of a weak character. Having decided, he waited patiently.

Igemon's assistants, hearing of this, reported:

"Amongst the citizens who are under supervision there is one who has suddenly begun to conduct himself in a strange manner. He does not move about or say anything: evidently he is trying to deceive the authorities, pretending not to exist at all."

Igemon flew into a rage:

"How, who does not exist? Bring him into my presence."

The citizen was brought and Igemon commanded: "Search him."

They searched him, deprived him of everything about him that was of value, such as his watch and gold wedding ring.

They scraped the fillings out of his teeth, for they were gold. They took off his new braces, cut off his buttons and reported:

"Ready, Igemon."

"Well, anything found?"

"Nothing but what was superfluous about him; we have rid him of it all."

"And in his head?"

"There seems to be nothing in his head."

"Let him in."

The citizen came into Igemon's presence, and from the way he held up his trousers Igemon saw and understood his complete readiness for all kinds of contingencies in life. But Igemon desired to make an impression upon him which would crush his soul, so he roared ferociously:

"Oh, citizen, you have come!"

And the citizen admitted quietly:

"Yes, I have brought the whole of me."

"What is it you are doing?"

"I, Igemon, am doing nothing, I have simply decided to conquer by patience." Igemon bristled with anger and roared: "Again? To conquer again?"

"Yes, to overcome evil."

"Be silent!"

"I did not mean you."

Igemon did not believe him and said:

"If not me then whom do you mean?"

"Myself."

Igemon was surprised.

"Wait a minute. What evil do you mean?"

"Resistance."

"You are lying."

"Heaven knows I am not."

Igemon broke into a perspiration.

"What is the matter with him?" he thought, looking at the man; and, after pondering for some moments, he asked him:

"What is it you want?"

"I don't want anything."

"Really nothing at all?"

"Nothing. Merely permit me to teach the people patience by my own example." Igemon pondered again, biting his moustache. He was possessed of a soul which took delight in daydreams. He liked to steam himself in a Turkish bath, giving forth voluptuous sounds of pleasure. Generally speaking, he was in favour of enjoying the pleasures of life. There was only one thing he could not stand, and that was rudeness and opposition, against which he acted in a manner that rendered everything soft, reducing to a pulp the bones and gristle of the resisters. But when not busy enjoying life or crushing citizens he liked to indulge in daydreams about universal peace, and in the salvation of the soul.

He looked with embarrassment at the citizen and said:

"Not long since you thought the reverse, and now?"

Then, overcome by more tender feelings, he asked with a sigh: "How did it come about?"

The citizen replied:

"Evolution."

"Well, brother, such is our life. First it is one thing, then another. There is failure in everything. We sway from side to side, but we do not know on which side to lie down, we cannot choose."

And Igemon sighed again, for he knew that the man loved the fatherland which had nurtured him. All kinds of dangerous thoughts were running through Igemon's head:

"True, it is pleasant to see a citizen yielding and peaceful. But if everybody ceased to resist, would it not cut off our daily allowance and our travelling expenses? We might lose our bonuses too.... No, it cannot be that there is no resistance left in him. The rogue is pretending; he must be put to the test. To what use shall I put him? Make of him an agent-provocateur? The expression of his face is indefinite, his lack of personality could not be hidden by any mask. Besides, his powers of oratory are evidently not great. Make him a hangman? He has not strength enough."

At last a thought struck him and he said to his subordinates:

"Put this happy man in the third section of the fire brigade to clean the stables."

It was done. The citizen strenuously cleaned the stables without saying a word, while Igemon looked on, touched by his patience; his confidence in the man was steadily increasing.

"But if everybody behaved like that?"

After a short trial he promoted him into his own office and asked him to copy a false report which he himself had written about the income and expenditure of various sums. The citizen copied it and kept silence.

Igemon was touched to such an extent that he shed tears.

"No, he is a useful man, although literate."

He called the citizen to him and said:

"I believe in you! Go and preach your truth, but keep your eyes open."

The citizen went to market-places, to fairs, through large towns, through small towns, saying everywhere:

"What are you doing?"

The people saw that he was unusually meek and this, together with his personality, caused them to confide in him. They confessed to him all of which they were guilty, and even revealed to him their inmost thoughts. One of them wanted to steal something and to evade being punished for it, another wanted to cheat somebody, a third simply wanted to slander somebody. All of them, like genuine Russians, wanted to get out of having any duties in life, and to forget all their obligations.

He said to them:

"Oh, give up all this, because it is said: 'All existence is suffering, but it becomes suffering through desire; hence, in order to destroy suffering, you must destroy desire.' Let us cease to desire and all evil will disappear of its own accord; truly it will."

The people, of course, were glad. It seemed reasonable and was very simple. Where they happened to stand they lay down. They all felt relieved.

After what interval is not recorded, but there came a time when Igemon noticed that all was peace around him, and he was struck by fear. Still he tried to put on a brave face:

"The rogues are pretending."

Meanwhile, the insects, continuing to fulfil their natural obligations, were beginning to multiply in an unnatural way, and becoming more and more arrogant in their actions.

"What silence," thought Igemon, wriggling and scratching himself all over.

He called a willing citizen to him:

"Come, free me from the superfluous."

He answered:

"I cannot."

"What?"

"I cannot, because even if they do annoy you, they are living things, and----"

"I will make a corpse of you this minute."

"As you will."

And so in everything; they all answered him with one voice:

"As you will."

But as soon as he asked them to fulfil his will he found it a most tedious task. Igemon's palace was falling to pieces; it was overrun with rats, which ate up the deeds, and died of the resultant poisoning. Igemon himself was sinking deeper and deeper into inaction. He lay on the sofa daydreaming about the past. How good life was in those days! The inhabitants tried to resist his orders in all kinds of ways. Some of them had to be executed, which meant obituary feasts with pancakes and free drinks. Or a citizen would embark upon some new enterprise; it was necessary to go and stop him, which meant travelling expenses. When he reported to the proper quarter that in the district entrusted to him all the inhabitants had been exterminated he used to receive a special bonus and a fresh batch was sent into the district.

Igemon was daydreaming about the past, but his neighbours, the Igemons of other tribes, lived as they had lived before, on the old basis. The inhabitants opposed them on every occasion, and as vigorously as they could. All was noise and disorder. The Igemons rushed hither and thither, without any special object. They found it profitable and, in a general way, interesting.

And the thought struck Igemon:

"By Jove! the citizen has fooled me."

He jumped up, rushed through the whole district, shaking people, pummelling them, and shouting:

"Get up! Wake up! Arise!"

It was no good. He seized them by their collars, but the collars were rotten and broke away.

"The devils," shouted Igemon, greatly agitated. "What are you doing? Look at your neighbours--even China----"

The inhabitants were silent as they clung to the soil.

"O Lord!" said Igemon in disgust, "what is to be done?"

And he resorted to deception; he bent over an inhabitant and whispered into his ear:

"Oh, citizen, the fatherland is in danger. It is, I swear. By all that's holy! it is in great danger. Get up; it is necessary to resist. They say that all kinds of activities will be allowed. Citizen!" But the dying citizen only murmured: "My fatherland is in God."

The others were simply silent, like offended corpses.

"The cursed fatalists!" shouted Igemon in despair. "Get up! All kinds of resistance is allowed."

One who had been a jolly fellow, and had distinguished himself by knocking out people's teeth, raised himself a little, looked round and said:

"What shall we resist? There is nothing to resist."

"But the vermin?"

"We are used to it."

Igemon's reason received the last shock. He got up and roared in awe-inspiring tones:

"I permit you everything, fellows; save yourselves; do what you like; everything is permitted--eat each other."

The calm and quiet were delightful! Igemon saw that all was over.

He started to cry aloud; hot tears ran down his cheeks; he tore his hair and roared, calling upon them:

"Citizens, dear fellows, what am I to do? Must I make a revolution myself? Bethink yourselves; it is historically necessary; it is nationally inevitable. You see that it is impossible for me alone to make a revolution. I have not even police for that, the vermin have eaten them."

The citizens only blinked their eyes; even if they had been pierced by a stake they would not have uttered a sound.

So they all died in silence, and Igemon, in utter despair, last of all.

From this it follows that even in patience we must observe a certain amount of moderation.

MAKING A SUPERMAN

The wisest of the citizens pondered the following problem:--

"What does it mean? Wherever one looks everything is at sixes and sevens."

And after much thought they concluded:

"It is because we have no personality. It is necessary for us to create a central thinking organ which shall be quite free from any sort of bias, which shall be capable of raising itself above everything, which shall stand out from everything and everybody--in the same way as a goat from amongst a flock of sheep." Somebody said:

"Brothers, have we not already suffered enough from central personalities?" They did not like this.

"That seems to savour of politics, and even of civic sorrow."

Somebody insisted:

"But how can we ignore politics if politics penetrate everything? The facts are that the prisons are overcrowded, that in the hard labour prisons it is impossible to turn round; and to remedy this we must enlarge the scope of our rights."

But they answered him sternly:

"This, sir, is idealism, and it is time you left it alone. A new man is wanted, and nothing else."

After this they set to work to create a man according to the methods referred to in the traditions of the holy fathers: they spat on the ground, and began to mix the spittle with earth. Then they smeared themselves up to the ears with the mixture, but the results were poor. In their eagerness they trampled rare flowers into the ground, and destroyed useful cereals. They tried hard, they sweated in the earnestness of their efforts; but there was no result--nothing but a waste of words and mutual accusations of creative incapacity. They even put the elements out of patience by their zeal: whirlwinds began to blow, the heat became intense, it thundered, and the rain poured down in torrents; the ground became sodden, and the whole atmosphere saturated with heavy odours, so that it was difficult to breathe.

However, from time to time this wrestling with the elements seemed to come to an end, and a new personality came into God's world.

There was general rejoicing everywhere, but it was short-lived, and soon turned into oppressive embarrassment. For, if a new personality arose out of the peasant soil, it became forthwith a polished merchant, and, starting business at once, began to sell the fatherland piecemeal to foreigners--first of all at forty-five copecks[1] a plot, and afterwards going to such lengths that it wanted to sell a whole district, with all its live stock and thinking machines.

If they stirred up a new man on merchant soil he either was born a degenerate or at once became a bureaucrat. If they did it on a nobleman's estate, beings arose, as they had done before, who seemed intent upon swallowing up the whole revenue of the state. On the soil of the middle class and petty property-owners all sorts of wild thistles grew: agents-provocateurs, Nihilists, pacifists, and goodness knows what.

"But we already have all these in a sufficient quantity," the wise citizens confessed to each other.

And they were sadly puzzled.

"We have made some kind of mistake in the technique of creation," they said.

"But what was the mistake?"

They sat in the mud and thought very hard.

Then they began to upbraid one another:

"You, Selderey Lavrovich, you spit too much, and in all directions."

"And you, Kornishon Lukich, are too faint-hearted to do likewise."

The newly born Nihilists, pretending to be Vaska Buslayeffs, looked at everything with contempt and shouted:

"Oh, you vegetables, try and think what place is best, and we will help you to spit on it."

And they spat and spat.

They all seemed bored and irritable with one another; and they were covered with mud.

Just at that time Mitya Korofyshkin, nicknamed "Steel Claw," who was playing truant from school, passed by. He was a pupil in the second class of the Miamlin Gymnasium, and was known as a collector of foreign stamps. As he passed he saw the people sitting in a puddle and spitting, deep in thought.

"Grown-ups, and they bespatter themselves like that!" thought Mitya contemptuously; which was natural in one of his tender years.

He peeped to see if there was not a teacher in their midst, and not noticing one he inquired:

"What are you doing in the puddle, uncles?"

One of the citizens, resenting the question, immediately began to argue:

"Where do you see a puddle? It is simply a reflection of the primordial chaos."

"And what are you doing?"

"We are trying to create a new man. We are sick of people like you."

Mitya became interested.

"After whose likeness?"

"What do you mean? We want to create somebody unlike anyone else. Go away."

As Mitya was a child, and not yet versed in the secrets of nature, he, of course, was glad of the opportunity to be present at such an important affair, and he asked them simply:

"Will you make him with three legs?"

"What are you saying?"

"How funnily he will run!"

"Go away, boy."

"Or with wings! What a fine thing it would be! Make him with wings, by Jove! and let him kidnap teachers, like the condor did in 'The Children of Captain Grant.' There, of course, the condor does not kidnap a teacher, but it would be better if he did kidnap the teacher."

"Boy, you are talking nonsense, and it is sinful nonsense. Remember your prayers before and after your lessons."

But Mitya was a boy with a fertile imagination, and he became very excited.

"As the teacher is going to the gymnasium it will grab him by the collar and carry him away to somewhere in the air, it makes no difference where. The teacher will simply kick and drop all his books--I hope the books will never be found."

"Boy, have reverence for your elders."

"And the teacher shouts to his wife from above: 'Good-bye, I am going to heaven like Elijah and Enoch,' And his wife kneels in the middle of the road and whimpers: 'My school teacher! Oh, my school teacher!'"

They got quite angry with him.

"Get away, you are jabbering nonsense. There are many who can do that. You are beginning too soon."

They drove him away, but he stopped before he had gone far, thought a while, and asked:

"Do you really mean it?"

"Of course."

"And it won't work?"

They sighed sullenly and said:

"No; leave us alone."

Then Mitya moved a little farther away, put out his tongue and mocked them:

"I know why! I know why!"

He ran away, but they chased him, and as they were used to changing the scene of their operations and running from place to place they soon caught him. Then they began to beat him.

"Oh, you scamp ... cheeking your elders."

Mitya cried and implored:

"Uncles, I will give you a Soudanese stamp--I have a duplicate.... I will make you a present of my penknife----"

But they tried to frighten him with the headmaster's name.

"Uncles, really and truly, I will never tease you again. Now I have really guessed why a new man cannot be created."

"Speak!"

"Don't hold me so tight!"

They released him all but his hands, and he said to them:

"Uncles, it is not the proper soil. The soil is no good, on my word of honour. You may spit as much as you like, nothing will come of it. For, when God created Adam in his image, the land belonged to nobody. Now it all belongs to someone or other; therefore man now belongs to somebody. Spitting makes no difference whatever."

They were so dumbfounded that they dropped their hands; Mitya rushed away from them, and making a trumpet of his hands shouted:

"You red-skinned Comanches! Iroquois!"

But they all went back to the puddle, and the wisest of them said:

"Colleagues, let us resume our occupation. Let us forget this boy, for he is very likely a socialist in disguise."

Oh, Mitya, Mitya!

[1] Elevenpence.--_Trans._