What Shall We Do? Part 17

CHAPTER XXIII

I saw that the cause of the sufferings and depravity of men lies in the fact that some men are in bondage to others; and therefore I came to the obvious conclusion that if I want to help men I have first of all to leave off causing those very misfortunes which I want to remedy,--in other words, I must not share in the enslaving of men.

I was led to the enslaving of men by the circ.u.mstance that from my infancy I had been accustomed not to work, but to profit by the labour of others, and that I had been living in a society which is not only accustomed to this slavery but which justifies it by all kinds of sophistry, clever and foolish.

I came to the following simple conclusion, that, in order to avoid causing the sufferings and depravity of men, I ought to make other men work for me as little as possible and to work myself as much as possible.

It was by this roundabout way that I arrived at the inevitable conclusion to which the Chinese arrived some thousand years ago, and which they express thus: "If there is one idle man, there must be another who is starving."

I came to this simple and natural conclusion, that if I pity the exhausted horse on whose back I ride the first thing for me to do if I really pity him is to get off his back and walk. This answer, which gives such complete satisfaction to the moral sense, had always been before my eyes, as it is before the eyes of every one, but we do not all see it, and look aside.

In seeking to heal our social diseases we look everywhere,--to the governmental, anti-governmental, scientific, and philanthropic superst.i.tions,--and yet we do not see that which meets the eyes of every one. We fill our drains with filth and require other men to clean them, and pretend to be very sorry for them and want to ease their work; and we invent all sorts of devices except one, the simplest; namely, that we should ourselves remove our slops so long as we find it necessary to produce them in our rooms.

For him who really suffers from the sufferings of the other men surrounding him, there exists a most clear, simple, and easy means, the only one sufficient to heal this evil and to confer a sense of the lawfulness of one's life. This means is that which John the Baptist recommended when he answered the question, "What shall we do then?" and which was confirmed by Christ: not to have more than one coat, and not to possess money,--that is, not to profit by another man's labour. And in order not to profit by another's labour, we must do with our own hands all that we can do. This is so plain and simple! But it is plain and simple and clear only when our wants are also plain, and when we ourselves are still sound and not corrupted to the backbone by idleness and laziness.

I live in a village, lie by the stove, and tell my neighbour, who is my debtor, to chop wood and light the stove. It is obvious that I am lazy and take my neighbour away from his own work; and at last I feel ashamed of it; and besides, it grows dull for me to be always lying down when my muscles are strong and accustomed to work,--and I go to chop the wood myself.

But slavery of all kinds has been going on so long, so many artificial wants have grown about it, so many people with different degrees of familiarity with these wants are interwoven with one another, through so many generations men have been spoiled and made effeminate, such complicated temptations and justifications of luxury and idleness have been invented by men, that for one who stands on the top of the pyramid of idle men, it is not at all so easy to understand his sin as it is for the peasant who compels his neighbour to light his stove.

Men who stand at the top find it most difficult to understand what is required of them. From the height of the structure of lies on which they stand they become giddy when they look at that spot on the earth to which they must descend in order to begin to live, not righteously, but only not quite inhumanly; and that is why this plain and clear truth appears to these men so strange.

A man who employs ten servants in livery, coachmen and cooks, who has pictures and pianos, must certainly regard as strange and even ridiculous the simple preliminary duty of, I do not say a good man, but of every man who is not an animal, to hew that wood with which his food is cooked and by which he is warmed; to clean those boots in which he carelessly stepped into the mud; to bring that water with which he keeps himself clean; and to carry away those slops in which he has washed himself.

But besides the estrangement of men from the truth, there is another cause which hinders them from seeing the duty of doing the most simple and natural physical work; that is the complication and intermingling of the conditions in which a rich man lives.

This morning I entered the corridor in which the stoves are heated. A peasant was heating the stove which warmed my son's room. I entered his bedroom: he was asleep, and it was eleven o'clock in the morning. The excuse was, "To-day is a holiday; no lessons." A stout lad of eighteen years of age, having over-eaten himself the previous night, is sleeping until eleven o'clock; and a peasant of his own age, who had already that morning done a quant.i.ty of work, was now lighting the tenth stove. "It would be better, perhaps, if the peasant did not light the stove to warm this stout, lazy fellow!" thought I; but I remembered at once that this stove also warmed the room of our housekeeper, a woman of forty years of age, who had been working the night before till three o'clock in the morning to prepare everything for the supper which my son ate; and then she put away the dishes, and, notwithstanding this, got up at seven. She cannot heat the stove herself: she has no time for that. The peasant is heating the stove for her, too. And under her name my lazy fellow was being warmed.

True, the advantages are all interwoven; but without much consideration the conscience of each will say, On whose side is the labour, and on whose the idleness? But not only does conscience tell this, the account-book also tells it: the more money one spends, the more people work for us. The less one spends, the more one works one's self. "My luxurious life gives means of living to others. Where should my old footman go, if I were to discharge him?" "What! every one must do everything for himself? Make his coat as well as hew his wood? And how about division of labour? And industry and social undertakings?" And, last of all, come the most horrible of words,--civilization, science, art!

CHAPTER XXIV

Last March I was returning home late in the evening. On turning into a bye-lane I perceived on the snow in a distant field some black shadows.

I should not have noticed this but for the policeman who stood at the end of the lane and cried in the direction of the shadows, "Vasili, why don't you come along?"

"She won't move," answered a voice; and thereupon the shadows came towards the policeman. I stopped and asked him,--

"What is the matter?"

He said, "We have got some girls from Rzhanoff's house, and are taking them to the police-station; and one of them lags behind, and won't come along."

A night-watchman in sheepskin coat appeared now driving on a girl who slouched along while he prodded her from behind. I, the watchman and the policeman, were wearing winter coats: she alone had none, having only her gown on. In the dark I could distinguish only a brown dress and a kerchief round her head and neck. She was short, like most starvelings, and had a broad, clumsy figure.

"We aren't going to stay here all night for you, you hag! Get on, or I'll give it you!" shouted the policeman. He was evidently fatigued and tired of her. She walked some paces and stopped again.

The old watchman, a good-natured man (I knew him), pulled her by the hand. "I'll wake you up! come along!" said he, pretending to be angry.

She staggered, and began to speak with a croaking hoa.r.s.e voice, "Let me be; don't you push. I'll get on myself."

"You'll be frozen to death," he returned.

"A girl like me won't be frozen: I've lots of hot blood."

She meant it as a joke, but her words sounded like a curse. By a lamp, which stood not far from the gate of my house, she stopped again, leaned back against the paling, and began to seek for something among her petticoats with awkward, frozen hands. They again shouted to her; but she only muttered and continued searching. She held in one hand a crumpled cigarette and matches in the other. I remained behind her: I was ashamed to pa.s.s by or to stay and look at her. But I made up my mind and came up to her. She leaned with her shoulder against the paling and vainly tried to light a match on it.

I looked narrowly at her face. She was indeed a starveling and appeared to me to be a woman of about thirty. Her complexion was dirty; her eyes small, dim, and bleared with drinking; she had a squat nose; her lips were wry and slavering, with downcast angles; from under her kerchief fell a tuft of dry hair. Her figure was long and flat; her arms and legs short.

I stopped in front of her. She looked at me and grinned as if she knew all that I was thinking about. I felt that I ought to say something to her. I wanted to show her that I pitied her.

"Have you parents?" I asked. She laughed hoa.r.s.ely, then suddenly stopped, and, lifting her brows, began to look at me steadfastly.

"Have you parents?" I repeated.

She smiled with a grimace which seemed to say, "What a question for him to put!"

"I have a mother," she said at last; "but what's that to you?"

"And how old are you?"

"I am over fifteen," she said, at once answering a question she was accustomed to hear.

"Come, come! go on; we shall all be frozen for you, the deuce take you!"

shouted the policeman; and she edged off from the paling and staggered along the lane to the police-station: and I turned to the gate and entered my house, and asked whether my daughters were at home. I was told that they had been to an evening party, had enjoyed themselves much, and now were asleep.

The next morning I was about to go to the police-station to enquire what had become of this unhappy girl. I was ready to start early enough, when one of those unfortunate men called, who from weakness have dropped out of the gentlemanly line of life to which they have been accustomed, and who rise and fall by turns. I had been acquainted with him three years.

During this time he had several times sold every thing he had,--even his clothes; and, having just done so again, he pa.s.sed his nights temporarily in Rzhanoff's house, and his days at my lodgings. He met me as I was going out, and, without listening to me, began at once to relate what had happened at Rzhanoff's house the night before.

He began to relate it, yet had not got through one-half when, all of a sudden, he, an old man, who had gone through much in his life, began to sob, and, ceasing to speak, turned his face away from me. This was what he related. I ascertained the truth of his story on the spot, where I learned some new particulars, which I shall relate too.

A washerwoman thirty years of age, fair, quiet, good-looking, but delicate, pa.s.sed her nights in the same lodging-house, the ground-floor of No. 32 where my friend slept among various shifting night-lodgers, men and women, who for five kopeks slept with each other.

The landlady at this lodging was the mistress of a boatman. In summer her lover kept a boat; and in winter they earned their living by letting lodgings to night-lodgers at three kopeks without a pillow, and at five kopeks with one.

The washerwoman had been living here some months, and was a quiet woman; but lately they began to object to her because she coughed, and prevented the other lodgers from sleeping. An old woman in particular, eighty years old, half silly, and a permanent inmate of this lodging, began to dislike the washerwoman and kept annoying her because she disturbed her sleep; for all night she coughed like a sheep.

The washerwoman said nothing. She owed for rent, and felt herself guilty, and was therefore compelled to endure. She began to work less and less, for her strength failed her; and that was why she was unable to pay her rent. She had not been to work at all the whole of the last week; and she had been making the lives of all, and particularly of the old woman, miserable by her cough.

Four days ago the landlady gave her notice to leave. She already owed sixty kopeks, and could not pay them, and there was no hope of doing so; and other lodgers complained of her cough.

When the landlady gave the washerwoman notice, and told her she must go away if she did not pay the rent, the old woman was glad, and pushed her out into the yard. The washerwoman went away, but came back again in an hour, and the landlady had not the heart to send her away again....

During the second and the third day the landlady left her there. "Where shall I go?" she kept saying. On the third day the landlady's lover, a Moscow man, who knew all the rules and regulations, went for a policeman. The policeman, with a sword and a pistol slung on a red cord, came into the lodging and quietly and politely turned the washerwoman out into the street.