.
.
.
.
.
. "But who are you, anyway? Tell me! No, wait—I think I can
guess. I'll bet you have a grandmother, as I do. Mine is blind, and she
doesn't let me go anywhere—I almost forgot how to talk. A couple of years
ago, when I misbehaved, she felt she couldn't control me any longer, so
she called me over to her and pinned my dress to hers with a safety pin.
Sometimes we sit like that for days at a time, she knitting a sock despite
her blindness, and me, at her side, sewing or reading something aloud
to her. So, I've been pinned to someone for two years, a rather strange
situation, don't you think?"
.
. "Ah, that's really awful! But I don't have a grandmother."
.
. "You haven't? Then how can you sit home all the time?"
.
. "Listen, shall I tell you who I am?"
.
. "Yes, of course."
.
. "Shall I tell you exactly?"
.
. "Yes, exactly."
.
. "All right then, I'm a queer fish."
.
. "So, you're a queer fish, are you? What sort of queer fish?"
the girl said, exploding with laughter, as if she had been holding it
in for a whole year. "Ah, you're really great fun to be with! Let's
sit down on that bench over there. Nobody ever passes there, so you can
tell me your story without being overheard. Go on now, I want to hear
it! You can't make me believe you have nothing to tell; you're just being
secretive. First of all, what's a queer fish?"
.
. "A queer fish? A queer fish is a ridiculous man, a man unlike
others," I said, infected by her childish laughter. "He's a
sort of freak. Listen, do you know what a dreamer is, for instance?"
.
. "A dreamer? Well, how could I not know what a dreamer
is? I suppose I'm one myself. You can't imagine what things go through
my head sometimes, as I sit next to my grandmother! I plunge into my dreams,
and sometimes, when I really get going, I reach a point where I marry
a Chinese prince.... Why, sometimes it's so nice to dream!" But then
she added unsmilingly: "Well, not really! Especially when there are
other things to think of."
.
.
.
.
. . "There are, my dear Nastenka, in
case you don't know, some rather strange corners in Petersburg. It's as
if the sun that warms the rest of the city never shines on them, and instead
another sun, especially designed for them, supplies them with a different
light. In those corners, Nastenka, a life goes on quite unlike the one
seething around us, a life that is possible in some faraway dreamland
but certainly not here in our over-serious time. That life is a mixture
of something out of pure fantasy ardently idealistic, with, alas, something
bleak and dull and ordinary, not to say outright vulgar."
.
.
.
.
.
. ....Now perhaps you would like to ask what he's dreaming about.
But why ask? He dreams of everything.... of being a poet, at first unrecognised,
later crowned; of friendship with Hoffmann the poet; of St. Bartholomew
Night; of playing a heroic part in the storming of Kazan under Ivan the
Terrible; of Diana Vernon, Clara Mowbray, Effie Deans, and other heroines
of Sir Walter Scott; of Jan Hus facing the tribunal of prelates; of the
rising of the dead in Robert the Devil (Remember
the music? It has a smell of the churchyard about it, don't you think?);
of the Battle of Berezina; of a poetry reading at the Countess Vorontsova-Dashkova's;
of Danton; of Cleopatra i suoi amanti; of Pushkin's
"Little House in Kolomna"; of having a little house of his own
and being there on a wintry evening with his beloved listening to him
with her eyes and mouth wide open, just as you're listening to me now,
my dearest angel....
.
. "No, Nastenka, what can this voluptuous idler find in the
life so dear to people like you and me? He thinks it a poor life, without
realising that for him too there may come a sad hour when, for a single
day of that miserable life, he would give away all his years of fancy.
And he would exchange his dreams neither for happiness, nor joy; at that
grim hour of regret and unrelieved gloom he won't even care to choose.
But until that perilous time comes, the dreamer can have no desires, for
he has everything; he is above desire, he is surfeited, he is himself
the artist creating his life at every hour, guided only by his own inspiration.
.
.
.
.
.
. "Ah, don't I know it, Nastenka!" I exclaimed, unable
to control my emotions any longer. "At this moment, I see more clearly
than ever before that I've wasted my best years. And the realisation hurts
me even more because it was God who sent you to me, my lovely angel, to
make me see it. As I sit here next to you, it is already painful to think
of the future, because there's nothing in it but a lonely, stale, useless
existence. What could I dream of, now that I've been so happy with you
in real life? Oh, bless you, my dearest girl, for not spurning me at first
sight, for enabling me to say that I've lived at least two evenings in
the course of my existence!"
.
.
.
.
.
. "And shall I tell you, Nastenka, how far I've gone? Would
you believe that I have taken to celebrating the anniversaries of my sensations,
the anniversary of something that was delightful at one time, of something
that actually never occurred. I am reduced to celebrating anniversaries
because I no longer have anything with which to replace even those silly,
flimsy dreams. For dreams, Nastenka, have to be renewed too. I like revisiting,
at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present
in the image of the irretrievable past. So I often roam like a sad, gloomy
shadow, without need or aim, along Petersburg's streets and alleys. And
what memories come to me! I may remember, for instance, that exactly one
year ago, at this very hour, in this very street, I was walking along
this very sidewalk, just as as gloomy and loanly as now. And I may remember
that although my dreams were sad and life was painful, somehow it was
not as agonising as it has become now; the black forebodings that have
since taken hold of me weren't there yet; nor was there the gnawing, dreary
feeling of guilt that now torments me day and night, never leaving me
a moment's peace. And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I
shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again:
'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best
moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself 'how cold it is
becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them
will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning
on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair.
The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like
autumn leaves from the trees.... Ah, Nastenka, won't it be sad to be left
alone, all, all alone, without even having anything to regret—nothing,
but nothing; for everything I've lost is nothing but a stupid, round zero,
nothing but a flimsy fancy?"
.
.
.
.
.
.
