The issue of assessing the sanity of a criminal is probably one of the most difficult in criminal law. How to assess the mental health of a person who has committed a violent crime? Where is the line separating a healthy mind from a diseased mind? There is no clear answer to these questions. And, reading this story, you understand that in principle such an answer cannot exist.
The main character of the story is a doctor and a murderer. At the planning stage of the crime, he intended to protect himself from punishment by feigning insanity. And the question arises: was madness accurately imitated by a healthy person, or was the criminal plan arose in an initially sick mind, and only after a tragic event, in a prison hospital, enlightenment came in the hero’s mind, and he was horrified by the thought of his own madness.
The hero tells in detail how and why he depicted mental attacks. After some time, there is a feeling that in this way he is trying to convince himself that he is not sick, not crazy, a pretender. Then he realizes that he can’t convince him, he can’t even convince himself, and he begins to look for the causes of the disease in his past, in heredity. Finds it. And freezes on the edge. After all, no fact proves anything for sure. Such a diary could be created either by a madman trying to find an explanation for his actions and finding one, or by an imitator with a medical education who has knowledge of the symptoms of the desired disease and skillfully recreates them.
There is only one conclusion from the story: there is no clear boundary between reason and madness. A person's mind can be on the brink - neither here nor here, neither in full health, nor in terminal illness.
This story by Leonid Andreev is a kind of introduction to Dostoevsky. Andreev leads the reader to an abyss beyond which traditional scientific assessments do not work, showing up close something ugly, at first glance incomprehensible, and at the same time dangerous and destructive. However, the author does not allow the reader to fall into this abyss; he firmly holds the reader by the collar at the very edge, and carefully pulls him back to his side. The phenomenon is designated, the thoughts associated with it are formulated, their meaning is clear. There is such a phenomenon in life, too, and you have to live with it somehow.
Unlike Dostoevsky, Andreev does not justify the hero and does not seek salvation in love. Whether Dr. Kerzhentsev is healthy or sick, he is a murderer. The motive for his actions is petty and cannot serve as a reason for moral justification. Love in the plot is present in the same form as madness: it is declared, but eludes the eye. All that is visible is deep, corrosive resentment and envy.
Classical literature is special texts. Now they don't write like that anymore. The bright aphoristic language of the story evokes a feeling of contact with something beautiful, stylish, and timeless. The semantic element of the text is frightening, the literary element is enjoyable. The contrast of meaning and form greatly enhances the impression of this work, which, in my opinion, is one of the strongest by Leonid Andreev.
Rating: 10
The story, in its style and content from the very first paragraphs, strongly reminded me of Dostoevsky, and a little of Chekhov. The main character (Raskolnikov-light) talks on the pages of his diary about how he intended, planned and committed the murder of his friend, covering everything up with his supposedly imaginary illness. The hero describes in detail the reason - the motive that prompted him to commit a crime, talks about the nuances of preparation for this, how he tried to appear initially unhealthy, and then firmly lead others to think about his madness. He describes it in such a way that as you read, the question involuntarily arises: is his imaginary illness really? Moreover, this question becomes urgent for the hero himself...
It is no coincidence that the story is called “Thought”. Initially, it seemed to me, the author’s idea was precisely to show the origin, movement and development of human thought. In this case – absolutely insane and terrible thoughts about killing one’s own kind. “Of all the amazing and incomprehensible things that human life is rich in, the most amazing and incomprehensible is thought.” And this is an interesting idea.
But then the author was more interested in the description of psychiatric symptoms, which should lead the reader to think about the hero’s madness. And it is these details that are given the greatest attention, which is why the notes no longer resemble the notes of a madman, but the notes of a psychiatrist.
Along with the clinical concept, a philosophical line flashes between the lines, which poses a number of questions to readers: where does the norm actually end and deviations begin? Is anyone who tells the truth crazy?
Separately, I would like to note the author’s true classical literary language, which provides aesthetic pleasure. It seems to me that, for example, such a proposal cannot leave anyone indifferent:
“I love the fact that I am alone and not a single curious glance has penetrated into the depths of my soul with its dark chasms and abysses, at the edge of which my head is spinning.”
In general, the story made a good impression. It has everything to be a complete and fundamental literary work, even with its small volume.
Rating: 8
Of course, I would like to note the language. The story is written in excellent literary language, figurative, complete. It's a pleasure to read.
Now to the point.
Nature played a cruel joke on man. The mind, which initially arose as an additional tool, as a means in the struggle for survival, with a lack of real external stimuli, begins to work in vain, getting confused from the continuous rearrangement of the same facts, from constantly thinking about the same thoughts. This can be seen in the examples of socially isolated people: on a desert island, in solitary confinement, in a psychiatric hospital. This is partly what happens to the hero.
But it is much worse when a person himself, with his own hands, spoils the “tool”. Having started with detachment in childhood, having destroyed the emotional sphere in himself, the hero already then, in his youth, “distorted” his body. Focusing on himself, his ego, his “thoughts” (at the same time he doesn’t even love his body, only his mind), he cut off all healthy external impulses that should nourish the brain, and being in a prosperous financial situation (the loss of money terrified him even in childhood , even then he could not imagine how he could do something for the sake of survival), he also cuts off those problems for which the mind is intended by nature to solve. And at the same time, the brain is stimulated by books - that is, it becomes a brain addict, if you like. You can drink coffee to cheer yourself up and dig up a patch of potatoes, or you can just drink coffee from morning to night, humming with pleasure.
The result: a monstrously unbalanced person. Like a miniature car with excessively inflated wheels. Like a kids bike with a jet nozzle. What should such a freak do? What else can excite these tired gray cells? The only weak instinct stirring in this brain-carcass is the instinct of reproduction. Alas, all the hero’s love for a woman can be described exactly like this: an integral-differential apparatus thrown into the calculation of two plus two. Having received a refusal, he cannot simply go and find someone else, no, he convinces himself of those feelings that he does not experience (hello to books!), the beginnings of emotions break through in a perverted way (he smiles weakly in response to her laughter) and recognition itself, that in addition to reason in him, a super-super-man, there are also emotions, shocks him so much that he feels the desire to humiliate the one who unwittingly served this breakthrough of emotions. And again in an exaggerated and perverted form. What would a normal, impulsive, emotional person do? Well, I would spit in the woman’s mug. Or he swore courtly. Or, knightly bowing his head, he would swear eternal devotion. Doesn't matter. The main thing is without reason, emotionally.
But our pumped-up brain-athlete is not like that! The only sphere accessible to him is the sphere of pure reason. And the mind is only an adaptation. This is a tool: a scalpel or sledgehammer, a microscope or nail scissors - but only a tool. Given to man by nature to survive. To outwit, deceive enemies, to make plans to steal or hide something, to scout a new place or set traps to defend your home. To serve man. What does a person serve? To himself, the hero of the story answers. Okay, says the overgrown brain, then let's play murder. A murder that should humiliate and trample the woman who rejected you, and thus this revenge will bring you joy. For this is the purpose of the mind - to satisfy human desires.
And now the carefully thought-out plan is carried out - wonderfully. But the satisfaction experienced by the hero-killer is fatally weak. No, he's not a villain. He is simply an emotionally empty person, incapable of sensory experiences. It is absurd to compare the hero with Raskolnikov. Nothing in common. Here the murder is more likely from boredom, from idleness, from intellectual hyperpotency, using an excuse (rejected love) for its meaningless activities. Many find in the image of the hero of the story a polemic with Nietzscheanism - of course, a criticism of decadence - undoubtedly, and all that (“Bankruptcy of Human Thought” - newspaper “Courier” June 30, 1902). And the basis of all these reviews can be found in one thought - aimlessness. A mind without purpose is like a lawn mower moving chaotically. And an overinflated mind that cannot find a use for itself is a bulldozer that has lost control: the slightest push - and the hundred-ton colossus rushes to crush and destroy what it did not create.
So the murder happened. So what's next? And then instinct breaks through again. The instinct of self-preservation. Alas, even a superman, which the hero of the story imagines himself to be, while he is still a man and not a robot-computer, is not free to ignore his instincts. And then the hero falls into a trap. It always arises in people with suppressed instincts, hello to Dr. Freud!, the only question is in what form a way out will be found. As a rule, people get away with neurotic disorders, but it can be worse.
An insoluble problem faces the hero's supermind. To be saved, you need to convince others (and experts, this is extremely difficult!) of madness, and, as a rational person, the hero chose madness in the form of emotional attacks, because it is emotionality that seems to him as something opposed to the mind (but in fact, there must be a balance , harmony, but... everything has atrophied since childhood). And with horror, the hero realizes that the release of real emotions gives him greater joy than rational activity. It is there, in a mental hospital, reliving the events of his life, that a person begins to wake up in him. With all your inexplicable desires. In a monstrously childish form, in rudimentary animal manifestations: howling, crawling, tearing your clothes. He is frightened by such desires; they are UNREASONABLE. But they also attract, just as the memory of a scene with a timid girl and a small dog attracts. He tries to analyze them, dissect them with his supermind. AND...
Will he go completely crazy or will he recover? I have no idea. Most likely the first, since in his reasoning until the very end there is the erroneous opinion that emotionality is madness (sheet 8). And the scene in court shows his devastation, he is dead simply because he does not feel feelings. But what doesn’t happen in life! As the hero himself admits: “But in hard labor I am looking for something else, something I don’t know myself. I am drawn to these people by some vague hope that among them, who have violated your laws, murderers, robbers, I will find sources of life unknown to me and will again become my friend.” Perhaps, having spurred the instincts by the difficult conditions of being in hard labor, the hero will be able to load his mind with his direct responsibilities - to promote survival, and, perhaps, thereby free the emotional sphere from underground. (I don’t advocate hard labor as a method of treating crazy people, no, no! But physical labor, as they say, helps drug addicts get rid of addiction. It’s more of an analogy here - switch).
In conclusion, I would like to agree with the opinion of V. Mirsky, who wrote: “the only drawback of Thought is that the author too emphasized the psychiatric features of his hero’s illness, thus making him on some pages interesting only to doctors.”
And, although Andreev himself emphasized that the plot of “Thoughts” has a secondary, secondary role for him, as well as the solution to the question - is the killer insane, or is he just pretending to be crazy in order to avoid punishment, however, the scenery in which the author placed a rational superman, eclipsed the philosophical message. Alas, I, too, rather regard history as a story about the disintegration, or rather, the “distortion” of an individual personality, than as a criticism of Nietzscheanism or a whole generation of wealthy slackers. Too personal, too intimate a first-person narrative, and even in such conditions.
That's why it's not 10, unfortunately.
Rating: 9
Do you want to look inside yourself? Without many years of training and practice. But deep. An hour - and you have already plunged into yourself, as deeply as ever.
“The criminal and crime are your eternal anxiety, this is the menacing voice of the unknown abyss, this is the inexorable condemnation of your entire rational and moral life,” Dr. Kerzhentsev tells us. But this is not the entrance yet. This is the author’s reference to the topic, to the authorities. The doctor himself is more concerned: “Did I pretend to be crazy in order to kill, or did I kill because I was crazy?”
And since he seems to be interested in this most of all, I dive into it too. But not yet into myself. But I’m already starting to think: is this important, or is it that the doctor was an immoral person? What is an immoral person? Do I always do moral things? Why don’t I consider myself immoral? Young Kerzhentsev stole money from his needy comrades. Proud of it. Did you cross the line when you stole? Or because you weren't ashamed of it? His conscience did not gnaw at him - he was proud of it. That's probably the point - he was proud of what he did that was immoral.
Why were you proud? The worst sin, they say, is pride. The sweetest. You tell yourself that you are cooler than everyone else, better, smarter, braver, freer... Why do YOU tell yourself this? Maybe because you feel underappreciated? And even outcasts. All around you are ungrateful, and therefore untalented (poor friend), angry, petty, incapable of action. And you come to the conclusion that it is your action that will distinguish you from them. Moreover, the coolest action. The one that your thought suggested is the freest, the strongest. To kill a small one, openly, in front of his beloved, but also small, will show everyone. And not only. This will open something in you. Since you have done something beyond the border, it means that you will see something beyond this border.
And what a disappointment - they didn’t appreciate it. And you didn't see anything. And the digging began - was he crazy before or was he crazy after? Self-justification began: I wouldn’t have killed him if he hadn’t been so sick and frail, or if he had been a major literary talent. And disappointment in thought – both your own and in general. This is not the main thing, it turned out. He could think about the main thing, he even said to himself: “We need to think about this carefully,” but he no longer thought about the flashing thought that the girl and the dog, the sun, shining so warmly - “it was all so simple and so full of meek and deep wisdom, as if here, in this group, lies the answer to existence.”
But I didn’t think about it - I was disappointed in a world with many gods, but there is no one, real, wise one, who...
While the doctor is buried in himself, it is interesting to look from the outside. Why didn't his conscience gnaw at him? Was this the only thing that allowed him to easily cross the line? I'm building a model for myself. Everything in the world is similar - one of the basic laws of the universe, they say. Everything has a pair. At all levels. Everything has its opposite. Two opposites are a couple. And they say there is a third thing - synthesis. What kind of animal? For me, this is a line on a segment between two points, two opposites. The closer the line is to one of the ends of the segment, the more unbalanced the pair is. And how many such pairs are there in me - who knows? And if the couples are very unbalanced, so much so that the imbalance of one does not compensate for the imbalance of the other, but on the contrary strengthens it, then wait for Dr. Kerzhentsev, who, by the way, realized that “everything is possible” - this is the world of permissiveness that he strived for and which disappointed him.
A strange and gratuitous murder committed by a strange and selfish man who reveals himself in his diary and is squeezed in court. A repulsive type who has not understood himself and exposes this to the judgment of everyone and everything. He is similar to Raskolnikov, but even in his diary he does not allow one to get closer to himself, although it would seem that the reader should be told in the first person. His memories are not emotional, rude and harsh. Actions are confused, have no logic and are almost distant.
Analysis of the disease of madness, poisoning of the mind. And the hero no longer has anything to justify himself.
Rating: 8
L. N. Andreev
A modern tragedy in three acts and six scenes
Leonid Andreev. Plays by M., "Soviet Writer", 1981CHARACTERS
Kerzhentsev Anton Ignatievich, Doctor of Medicine. Kraft, a pale young man. Savelov Alexey Konstantinovich, famous writer. Tatyana Nikolaevna, his wife. Sasha, the Savelovs' maid. Daria Vasilievna, housekeeper in Kerzhentsev's house. Vasily, Kerzhentsev's servant. Masha, a nurse in a hospital for the insane. Vasilyeva, nurse. Fedorovich, writer. Semenov Evgeniy Ivanovich, psychiatrist, professor. Ivan Petrovich | Direct Sergey Sergeevich) doctors in the hospital. Third doctor. | Nurse. Servants in the hospital.
Dedicated to Anna Ilyinichna Andreeva
ACT ONE
PICTURE ONE
The rich office-library of Dr. Kerzhentsev. Evening. The electricity is on. The light is soft. In the corner is a cage with a large orangutan, who is now sleeping; only a red hairy lump is visible. The curtain that usually covers the corner with the cage is pulled back: Kerzhentsev and a very pale young man, whom the owner calls by his last name, Kraft, are examining the sleeper.
Craft. He's sleeping. Kerzhentsev. Yes. Now he sleeps like this all day long. This is the third orangutan to die of sadness in this cage. Call him by name - Jaipur, he has a name. He is from India. My first orangutan, an African, was named Zuga, the second - in honor of my father - Ignatius. (Laughs.) Ignatius. Craft. Is he playing... Jaipur is playing? Kerzhentsev. Not enough now. Craft. It seems to me that this is homesickness. Kerzhentsev. No, Kraft. Travelers tell interesting things about gorillas, which they observed in their natural conditions. It turns out that gorillas, just like our poets, are susceptible to melancholy. Suddenly something happens, the hairy pessimist stops playing and dies of boredom. So he dies - not bad, Kraft? Craft. It seems to me that tropical melancholy is even more terrible than ours. Kerzhentsev. Do you remember that they never laugh? Dogs laugh, but they don't. Craft. Yes. Kerzhentsev. Have you ever seen in menageries how two monkeys, after playing, suddenly calm down and cuddle up to each other - what a sad, searching and hopeless look they have? Craft. Yes. But where do they get their melancholy? Kerzhentsev. Solve it! But let's move away, let's not disturb his sleep - from sleep he imperceptibly moves towards death. (Draws the curtains.) And now, when he sleeps for a long time, he shows signs of rigor mortis. Sit down, Kraft.
Both sit down at the table.
Shall we play chess? Craft. No, I don't feel like it today. Your Jaipur upset me. Poison him, Anton Ignatievich. Kerzhentsev. No need. He will die himself. And the wine, Kraft?
Calling. Silence. Servant Vasily enters.
Vasily, tell the housekeeper to give her a bottle of Johannisberg. Two glasses.
Vasily goes out and soon returns with wine.
Put it in. Please drink Kraft. Craft. What do you think, Anton Ignatievich? Kerzhentsev. About Jaipur? Craft. Yes, about his longing. Kerzhentsev. I thought a lot, a lot... How do you find wine? Craft. Good wine. Kerzhentsev (examines the glass in the light). Can you find out the year? Craft. No, no matter what. I'm generally indifferent to wine. Kerzhentsev. And this is a great pity, Kraft, a great pity. You have to love and know wine, like everything else you love. My Jaipur upset you - but, probably, he would not die of melancholy if he could drink wine. However, you have to drink wine for twenty thousand years to be able to do this. Craft. Tell me about Jaipur. (Sits deep in a chair and rests his head on his hand.) Kerzhentsev. There was a disaster here, Kraft. Craft. Yes? Kerzhentsev. Yes, some kind of disaster. Where does this melancholy come from in monkeys, this incomprehensible and terrible melancholy from which they go crazy and die in despair? Craft. Are they going crazy? Kerzhentsev. Probably. No one in the animal world, except anthropoid apes, knows this melancholy... Kraft. Dogs howl often. Kerzhentsev. This is different, Kraft, this is fear of the unknown world, this is horror! Now look into his eyes when he is sad: these are almost our human eyes. Take a closer look at his general human-likeness... my Jaipur often sat, thoughtful, almost like you are now... and understand where this melancholy comes from? Yes, I sat for hours in front of the cage, I peered into his yearning eyes, I myself looked for an answer in his tragic silence - and then one day it seemed to me: he was yearning, he was dreaming vaguely about the time when he was also a man, a king, what something of the highest form. You see, Kraft: it was! (Raises finger.) Craft. Let's say. Kerzhentsev. Let's say. But now I look further, Kraft, I look deeper into his melancholy, I no longer sit for hours, I sit for days before his silent eyes - and now I see: either he was already a king, or... listen, Kraft! or he could have become one, but something prevented him. He does not remember the past, no, he yearns and hopelessly dreams of the future that was taken away from him. He is all striving for a higher form, he is all longing for a higher form, because in front of him... in front of him, Kraft, is a wall! Craft. Yes, it's sad. Kerzhentsev. This is melancholy, you understand, Kraft? He walked, but some kind of wall blocked his path. Do you understand? He walked, but some catastrophe broke out over his head - and he stopped. Or maybe the disaster even threw him back - but he stopped. Wall, Craft, disaster! His brain stopped, Kraft—and everything stopped with him! All! Craft. You return to your thought again. Kerzhentsev. Yes. There is something terrible in the past of my Jaipur, in the dark depths from which it emerged - but he cannot tell. He doesn't know himself! He only dies from unbearable melancholy. Thought! - Yes, of course, a thought! (Gets up and walks around the office.) Yes. That thought, the power of which you and I know, Kraft, suddenly betrayed him, suddenly stopped and stood still. It's horrible! This is a terrible catastrophe, worse than a flood! And he became covered with hair again, he stood on all fours again, he stopped laughing - he must die of melancholy. He is a dethroned king, Kraft! He is the ex-king of the earth! A few stones remain from his kingdoms, and where is the ruler - where is the priest - where is the king? The king wanders through the forests and dies of melancholy. Thumbs up, Kraft?
Silence. Kraft is in the same position, motionless. Kerzhentsev walks around the room.
When I examined the brain of the late Ignatius, not my father, but this... (Laughs.) This one was also Ignatius... Kraft. Why do you laugh a second time when talking about your father? Kerzhentsev. Because I didn't respect him, Kraft.
Silence.
Craft. What did you find when you opened the skull of Ignatius? Kerzhentsev. Yes, I didn't respect my father. Listen, Kraft, my Jaipur will die soon: would you like us to explore his brain together? It will be interesting. (Sits down.) Craft. Fine. And when I die, will you look at my brain? Kerzhentsev. If you bequeath it to me, with pleasure, that is, with readiness, I wanted to say. I don't like you lately, Kraft. You probably don't drink much wine. You start feeling homesick for Jaipur. Drink. Craft. Do not want. Are you always alone, Anton Ignatievich? Kerzhentsev (sharp). I don't need anyone. Craft. Today for some reason it seems to me that you are a very unhappy person, Anton Ignatievich!
Silence. Kraft sighs and changes his position.
Kerzhentsev. Look, Kraft, I didn't ask you to talk about my personal life. I like you because you know how to think and you are concerned about the same questions as me, I like our conversations and activities, but we are not friends, Kraft, I ask you to remember this! I have no friends and I don't want them.
Silence. Kerzhentsev goes to the corner where the cage is, pulls back the curtain and listens: it’s quiet there - and again returns to his place.
Sleeping. However, I can tell you, Kraft, that I feel happy. Yes, happy! I have an idea, Kraft, I have - this! (Somewhat angrily taps his fingers on his forehead.) I don't need anyone.
Silence. Kraft is reluctant to drink wine.
Drink, drink. And you know, Kraft, you will soon hear from me... yes, in a month, a month and a half. Craft. Are you releasing a book? Kerzhentsev. A book? No, what nonsense! I don’t want to publish any book, I’m working for myself. I don’t need people - I think this is the third time I’ve told you this, Kraft? Enough about people. No, it will be... some experience. Yes, an interesting experience! Craft. Won't you tell me what's wrong? Kerzhentsev. No. I believe in your modesty, otherwise I would not have told you this either - but no. You will hear. I wanted... it happened to me... in a word, I want to know the strength of my thought, to measure its strength. You see, Kraft: you only know a horse when you ride it! (Laughs.) Craft. Is it dangerous?
Silence. Kerzhentsev thought.
Anton Ignatievich, is this experience of yours dangerous? I can hear it in your laugh: your laugh is not good. Kerzhentsev. Craft!.. Craft. I'm listening to. Kerzhentsev. Craft! Tell me, you are a serious young man: would you dare to pretend to be crazy for a month or two? Wait: don’t put on the mask of a cheap simulator—do you understand, Kraft? - and call upon the very spirit of madness with a spell. You see him: instead of a crown there is straw in his gray hair, and his robe is torn - do you see, Kraft? Craft. I see. No, I wouldn't. Anton Ignatievich, is this your experience? Kerzhentsev. May be. But let's leave it, Kraft, let's leave it. You are truly a serious young man. Would you like some more wine? Craft. No thanks. Kerzhentsev. Dear Kraft, every time I see you, you become paler. You disappeared somewhere. Or are you unwell? What's wrong with you? Craft. This is personal, Anton Ignatievich. I also wouldn't like to talk about personal things. Kerzhentsev. You're right, sorry.
Silence.
Do you know Alexey Savelov? Craft (indifferently). I'm not familiar with all of his stuff, but I like him, he's talented. I haven't read his latest story yet, but they praise... Kerzhentsev. Nonsense! Craft. I heard that he... is your friend? Kerzhentsev. Nonsense! But let him be a friend, let him be a friend. No, what are you talking about, Kraft: Savelov is talented! Talents must be preserved, talents must be cherished like the apple of one's eye, and if only he were talented!.. Craft. What? Kerzhentsev. Nothing! He is not a diamond - he is only diamond dust. He is a lapidary in literature! A genius and great talent always have sharp edges, and Savelov’s diamond dust is needed only for cutting: others shine while he works. But... let's leave all the Savelovs alone, this is not interesting. Craft. Me too.
Silence.
Anton Ignatievich, can’t you wake up your Jaipur? I would like to look at him, into his eyes. Wake me up. Kerzhentsev. Would you like it, Kraft? Okay, I'll wake him up... unless he's already dead. Let's go.
Both approach the cage. Kerzhentsev pulls back the curtain.
Craft. He's sleeping? Kerzhentsev. Yes, he's breathing. I'll wake him up, Kraft!..
A curtain
PICTURE TWO
The office of the writer Alexei Konstantinovich Savelov. Evening. Silence. Savelov writes at his desk; aside, at a small table, Savelov’s wife, Tatyana Nikolaevna, is writing business letters.
Savelov (suddenly). Tanya, are the children sleeping? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Children? Savelov. Yes. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Kids are sleeping. They were already going to bed when I left the nursery. And what? Savelov. So. Don't interfere.
Silence again. Both write. Savelov frowns, puts down his pen and walks around the office twice. He looks over Tatyana Nikolaevna's shoulder at her work.
What are you doing? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I am writing letters regarding that manuscript, but I must answer, Alyosha, it’s awkward. Savelov. Tanya, come play for me. I need. Don't say anything now - I need it. Go. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Fine. What should I play? Savelov. Don't know. Choose for yourself. Go. Tatyana Nikolaevna goes into the next room, leaving the door open. A light flashes there. Tatyana Nikolaevna plays the piano. (He walks around the room, sits down and listens. He smokes. He puts down a cigarette, goes to the door and shouts from a distance.) That's enough, Tanya. No need. Come here! Tanya, can you hear?
Walks silently. Tatyana Nikolaevna enters and looks attentively at her husband.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. What are you, Alyosha, aren’t you working again? Savelov. Again. Tatyana Nikolaevna. From what? Savelov. Don't know. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Are you tired? Savelov. No.
Silence.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. Can I continue the letters or leave them? Savelov. No, leave it! Better talk to me... but maybe you don't want to talk to me? Tatyana Nikolaevna (smiles). Well, what nonsense, Alyosha, shame on you... funny! Let it stay, I’ll add it later, it doesn’t matter. (Collects letters.) Savelov (walks). I can't write at all today. And yesterday too. You see, it’s not that I’m tired, what the hell! - but I want something else. Something else. Something completely different! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Let's go to the theater. Savelov (stopping). In which? No, to hell with it. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, perhaps it’s already too late. Savelov. Well, to hell with it! I don’t have the slightest desire to go to the theater. It’s a pity that the children are sleeping... no, however, I don’t want children either. And I don’t want music - it just drags on my soul, it makes it even worse. What do I want, Tanya? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I don't know, darling. Savelov. And I don't know. No, I can guess what I want. Sit down and listen, okay? I shouldn’t write, you understand, Tanhen? - and do something yourself, move, wave your arms, perform some actions. Act! In the end, it’s simply unbearable: to be only a mirror, to hang on the wall of your office and only reflect... Wait: it wouldn’t be bad to write a sad, very sad fairy tale about a mirror that for a hundred years reflected murderers, beauties, kings, freaks - - and I was so homesick for real life that I let myself off the hook and... Tatyana Nikolaevna. And what? Savelov. Well, it crashed, of course, what else? No, I’m tired of it, again it’s fiction, fiction, royalties. Our famous Savelov wrote... to hell with it completely! Tatyana Nikolaevna. But I’ll write down the topic anyway. Savelov. Write it down if you want. No, just think, Tanhen: in six years I have never cheated on you! Never! Tatyana Nikolaevna. And Nadenka Skvortsova? Savelov. Leave it! No, I’m serious, Tanya: this is impossible, I’m starting to hate myself. A thrice-cursed mirror that hangs motionless and can only reflect what itself wants to be reflected and passes by. Amazing things can happen behind the mirror, but at the same time it reflects some idiot, a blockhead who wanted to straighten his tie! Tatyana Nikolaevna. This is not true, Alyosha. Savelov. You absolutely don’t understand anything, Tatyana! I hate myself - do you understand that? No? I hate that little world that lives in me, here, in my head - the world of my images, my experience, my feelings. To hell! I'm disgusted with what's in front of my eyes, I want what's behind me... what's there? A whole huge world lives somewhere behind my back, and I feel how beautiful it is, but I can’t turn my head. I can not! To hell. Soon I will stop writing completely! Tatyana Nikolaevna. This will pass, Alyosha. Savelov. And it will be a great pity if it passes. Oh, Lord, if only someone would come in and tell me about that life! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Can I call someone... Alyosha, do you want me to call Fedorovich? Savelov. Fedorovich? To talk about literature all evening again? To hell! Tatyana Nikolaevna. But who? I don't know who to call who would suit your mood. Sigismund? Savelov. No! And I don't know anyone who would fit. Who?
Both are thinking.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. What if Kerzhentsev? Savelov. Anton? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, Anton Ignatievich. If you call, he will come now; in the evenings he is always at home. If you don’t want to talk, then play chess with him. Savelov (stops and looks angrily at his wife). I won’t play chess with Kerzhentsev, how can you not understand that? Last time he killed me in three moves... what is so interesting for me to play with such... Chigorin! And I still understand that this is just a game, and he is serious, like an idol, and when I lose, he considers me an ass. No, no need for Kerzhentsev! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, talk, you are friends with him. Savelov. Talk to him yourself, you like to talk to him, but I don’t want to. Firstly, only I will speak, and he will be silent. You never know how many people are silent, but his silence is terribly disgusting! And then, I’m just tired of him with his dead monkeys, his divine thought - and the lackey Vaska, at whom he shouts like a bourgeois. Experimenter! The man has such a magnificent forehead, for which one could erect a monument - but what did he do? Nothing. Even if you hit nuts with your forehead, it’s still work. Phew, tired of running! (Sits down.) Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes... There’s one thing I don’t like, Alyosha: there’s something gloomy in his eyes. Apparently, he is really sick: this psychosis of his, which Karasev spoke about... Savelov. Leave it! I don't believe in his psychosis. He pretends, he breaks the fool. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, you're too much, Alyosha. Savelov. No, not too much. I, my dear, have known Anton since high school; for two years we were the most loving friends - and he is the most wonderful person! And I don’t trust him in anything. No, I don't want to talk about him. Tired of it! Tanya, I'll go somewhere. Tatyana Nikolaevna. With me? Savelov. No, I want one. Tanya, can I? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Go, of course. But where will you go - to someone? Savelov. Maybe I’ll go see someone... No, I really want to wander around the streets, among the people. Brush elbows, watch how they laugh, how they bare their teeth... Last time they beat someone on the boulevard, and, honestly, Tanya, I looked at the scandal with pleasure. Maybe I'll go to a restaurant. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Oh, Alyosha, dear, I’m afraid of this, don’t, dear. You'll drink too much again and be unwell - don't! Savelov. No, no, what are you talking about, Tanya! Yes, I forgot to tell you: today I followed the general. They were burying some general, and military music was playing - do you understand? This is not a Romanian violin, which exhausts the soul: here you walk firmly, in step - you can feel it. I love wind instruments. In the copper pipes, when they cry and scream, in the drum roll with its cruel, hard, distinct rhythm... What do you want?
The maid Sasha entered.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. Why don't you knock, Sasha? You to me? Sasha. No. Anton Ignatyich came and asked whether they can come to you or not. They have already undressed. Savelov. Well, of course, call me. Tell him to come straight here.
The maid comes out.
Tatyana Nikolaevna (smiles). Easy to remember. Savelov. Oh, damn it!.. He will delay me, by God! Tanya, please stay with Kerzhentsev, and I’ll go, I can’t! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, of course, go! After all, he’s one of his own, what embarrassment can there be here... Darling, you’re completely upset! Savelov. Oh well! Now a person will come in, and you kiss. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I'll make it! Kerzhentsev enters. Says hello. The guest kisses Tatyana Nikolaevna's hand. Savelov. What is your fate, Antosha? And I, brother, am leaving. Kerzhentsev. Well, go ahead and I'll go out with you. Are you also coming, Tatyana Nikolaevna? Savelov. No, she will stay, sit down. What did Karasev say about you: you’re not entirely healthy? Kerzhentsev. Nothing. Some memory loss is probably an accident or overwork. That's what the psychiatrist said. What are they already saying? Savelov. They say, brother, they say! Why are you smiling, are you happy? I’m telling you, Tanya, that this is some kind of thing... I don’t believe you, Antosha! Kerzhentsev. Why don’t you believe me, Alexey? Savelov (sharp). In everything.
Silence. Savelov walks around angrily.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. How is your Jaipur doing, Anton Ignatievich? Kerzhentsev. He died. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes? What a pity.
Savelov snorts contemptuously.
Kerzhentsev. Yes, he died. Yesterday. You, Alexey, better go, otherwise you are already starting to hate me. I do not hold you. Savelov. Yes, I will go. You, Antosha, don’t be angry, I’m angry today and I’m throwing myself at everyone like a dog. Don't be angry, my dear, she will tell you everything. Jaipur died for you, and I, brother, buried a general today: I marched three streets. Kerzhentsev. Which general? Tatyana Nikolaevna. He jokes, he followed the music. Savelov (stuffing cigarette case with cigarettes). Jokes are jokes, but you still bother less with the monkey, Anton - someday you will seriously go crazy. You are an experimenter, Antosha, a cruel experimenter!
Kerzhentsev does not answer.
Kerzhentsev. Are the children healthy, Tatyana Nikolaevna? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Thank God we are healthy. And what? Kerzhentsev. Scarlet fever is on the loose, you have to be careful. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Oh my God! Savelov. Well now I gasped! Goodbye, Antosha, don’t be angry that I’m leaving... Maybe I’ll still find you. I'll be there soon, darling. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I'll walk you around a little, Alyosha, just two words for me. Me now, Anton Ignatievich. Kerzhentsev. Please don't be shy.
Savelov and his wife come out. Kerzhentsev paces around the room. He takes a heavy paperweight from Savelov’s desk and weighs it in his hand: this is how Tatyana Nikolaevna finds him.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. Gone. What are you watching, Anton Ignatievich? Kerzhentsev (calmly putting down the paperweight). It's a heavy thing, you can kill a person if you hit him on the head. Where did Alexey go? Tatyana Nikolaevna. So, take a walk. He misses. Sit down, Anton Ignatievich, I’m very glad that you finally stopped by. Kerzhentsev. Bored? How long has it been? Tatyana Nikolaevna. It happens to him. Suddenly he quits his job and starts looking for some real life. Now he has gone wandering the streets and will probably get involved in some kind of story. What’s sad to me, Anton Ignatievich, is that, apparently, I’m not giving him something, some necessary experiences, our life with him is too calm... Kerzhentsev. And happy? Tatyana Nikolaevna. What is happiness? Kerzhentsev. Yes, no one knows this. Do you really like Alexey's latest story? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Very. And you? Kerzhentsev is silent. I find that his talent is growing every day. This does not mean at all that I speak like his wife; I am generally quite impartial. But this is also criticized... and you?
Kerzhentsev is silent.
(Worried.) And you, Anton Ignatievich, read the book carefully or just leafed through it? Kerzhentsev. Very carefully. Tatyana Nikolaevna. So what?Kerzhentsev is silent. Tatyana Nikolaevna glances at him and silently begins to clear the papers from the table.
Kerzhentsev. Don't you like that I'm silent? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I don't like anything else. Kerzhentsev. What? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Today you cast one very strange glance at Alexei, at your husband. I don’t like, Anton Ignatich, that for six years... you could not forgive either me or Alexei. You have always been so reserved that it never even occurred to me, but today... However, let’s leave this conversation, Anton Ignatich! Kerzhentsev (gets up and stands with his back to the stove. Looks down at Tatyana Nikolaevna). Why change, Tatyana Nikolaevna? I find him interesting. If today for the first time in six years I showed something - although I don’t know what - then today you started talking about the past for the first time. This is interesting. Yes, six years ago, or rather seven and a half - the weakening of my memory did not affect these years - I proposed my hand and my heart to you and you deigned to reject both. Do you remember that it was at the Nikolaevsky station and that the hand on the station clock showed exactly six at that minute: the disk was divided in half by one black line? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I don't remember this. Kerzhentsev. No, that's right, Tatyana Nikolaevna. And remember that you still felt sorry for me then? This you cannot forget. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, I remember that, but what could I have done differently? There was nothing offensive to you in my pity, Anton Ignatich. And I just can't understand why we're saying this - what is this, an explanation? Fortunately, I am absolutely sure that not only do you not love me... Kerzhentsev. This is careless, Tatyana Nikolaevna! What if I say that I still love you, that I won’t get married, that I lead such a strange, secluded life, just because I love you? Tatyana Nikolaevna. You won't say that! Kerzhentsev. Yes, I won't say that. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Listen, Anton Ignatyich: I really love talking to you... Kerzhentsev. Talk to me, and sleep with Alexei? Tatyana Nikolaevna (stands up, indignantly). No, what's wrong with you? This is rude! This is impossible! I don't understand. And maybe you are really sick? This psychosis of yours, which I heard about... Kerzhentsev. Well, let's say. Let it be the same psychosis that you have heard about - if you can’t say otherwise. But are you really afraid of words, Tatyana Nikolaevna? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I'm not afraid of anything, Anton Ignatyich. (Sits down.) But I will have to tell Alexey everything. Kerzhentsev. Are you sure that you will be able to tell and he will be able to understand something? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Alexey won’t be able to understand?.. No, are you kidding, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. Well, this can be allowed too. Of course, Alexey told you that I was... how should I put this to you... a big hoaxer? I love joke experiments. Once upon a time, in my youth, of course, I deliberately sought the friendship of one of my comrades, and when he blurted out everything, I left him with a smile. With a slight smile, however: I respect my loneliness too much to break it with laughter. So now I’m joking, and while you’re worried, I might be looking at you calmly and with a smile... with a slight smile, however. Tatyana Nikolaevna. But do you understand, Anton Ignatyich, that I cannot allow such an attitude towards myself? Bad jokes that make no one want to laugh. Kerzhentsev (laughs). Really? And it seemed to me that I was already laughing. You are the one being serious, Tatyana Nikolaevna, not me. Laugh! Tatyana Nikolaevna (laughs forcefully). But maybe this is also just experience? Kerzhentsev (seriously). You're right: I wanted to hear your laughter. The first thing I loved about you was your laughter. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I won't laugh anymore.
Silence.
Kerzhentsev (smiles). You are very unfair today, Tatyana Nikolaevna, yes: you give everything to Alexey, but you would like to take away the last crumbs from me. Just because I love your laughter and find in it that beauty that perhaps others do not see, you no longer want to laugh! Tatyana Nikolaevna. All women are unfair. Kerzhentsev. Why talk so bad about women? And if I’m joking today, then you’re joking even more: you’re pretending to be a little cowardly bourgeois who with rage and... despair defends her little nest, her poultry house. Do I really look like a kite? Tatyana Nikolaevna. It's hard to argue with you... speak up. Kerzhentsev. But it’s true, Tatyana Nikolaevna! You are smarter than your husband, and my friend, I am also smarter than him, and that’s why you always loved talking to me so much... Your anger even now is not without some pleasantness. Allow me to be in a strange mood. Today I spent too long delving into the brain of my Jaipur - he died of melancholy - and I am in a strange, very strange and... humorous mood! Tatyana Nikolaevna. I noticed this, Anton Ignatievich. No, seriously, I am sincerely sorry for your Jaipur: he had such... (smiles) intelligent face. But what do you want? Kerzhentsev. Compose. Dream up. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Lord, what unfortunate women we are, eternal victims of your brilliant whims: Alexey ran away so as not to write, and I had to come up with consolations for him, and you... (Laughs.) Compose! Kerzhentsev. So you laughed. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, God bless you. Write, but please, not about love! Kerzhentsev. There is no other way. My story begins with love. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, as you wish. Wait, I'll sit more comfortably. (Sits on the sofa with her feet up and straightens her skirt.) Now I'm listening. Kerzhentsev. So, let’s say, Tatyana Nikolaevna, that I, Doctor Kerzhentsev... as an inexperienced writer, I will be in the first person, is it possible?.. - so, let’s say that I love you - is it possible? - and that I became unbearably irritated, looking at you and the talented Alexei. Thanks to you, my life has fallen apart, and you are unbearably happy, you are magnificent, criticism itself approves of you, you are young and beautiful... by the way, you do your hair very beautifully now, Tatyana Nikolaevna! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes? Alexey likes it that way. I'm listening to. Kerzhentsev. You listen? Wonderful. So... do you know what loneliness is with his thoughts? Let's assume you know this. So, one day, sitting alone at my table... Tatyana Nikolaevna. You have a magnificent table, I dream of one like this for Alyosha. Sorry... Kerzhentsev. ...and getting more and more irritated - thinking about many things - I decided to commit a terrible crime: to come to your house, just to come to your house and... kill the talented Alexei! Tatyana Nikolaevna. What? What are you saying! Shame on you! Kerzhentsev. These are the words! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Unpleasant words! Kerzhentsev. You are scared? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Are you afraid again? No, I'm not afraid of anything, Anton Ignatyich. But I demand, that is, I want... the story to be within the limits of... artistic truth. (Gets up and walks around.) I'm spoiled, my dear, with talented stories, and a pulp novel with its terrible villains... aren't you angry? Kerzhentsev. First experience! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes, this is my first experience, and it shows. How do you, your hero, want to carry out his terrible plan? After all, of course, he is a smart villain who loves himself, and he doesn’t at all want to exchange his... comfortable life for hard labor and shackles? Kerzhentsev. Without a doubt! And I... that is, my hero pretends to be crazy for this purpose. Tatyana Nikolaevna. What? Kerzhentsev. You do not understand? He will kill, and then recover and return to his... comfortable life. Well, how are you, dear critic? Tatyana Nikolaevna. How? It's so bad that... it's a shame! He wants to kill, he is pretending, and he is telling - and to whom? Wife! Bad, unnatural, Anton Ignatyich! Kerzhentsev. What about the game? My wonderful critic, what about the game? Or don’t you see what crazy treasures of a crazy game are hidden here: telling the wife herself that I want to kill her husband, looking into her eyes, smiling quietly and saying: I want to kill your husband! And, saying this, to know that she will not believe it... or will she believe it? And that when she starts telling others about this, no one will believe her either! Will she cry... or won't she? - but they won’t believe her! Tatyana Nikolaevna. What if they believe it? Kerzhentsev. What are you saying: only crazy people say such things... and listen! But what a game - no, seriously think about it, what a crazy, sharp, divine game! Of course, for a weak head this is dangerous, you can easily cross the line and never come back, but for a strong and free mind? Listen, why write stories when you can make them! A? Is not it? Why write? What scope for creative, fearless, truly creative thought! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Is your hero a doctor? Kerzhentsev. The hero is me. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, it doesn't matter, you. He can quietly poison or instill some disease... Why doesn’t he want to? Kerzhentsev. But if I poison you unnoticed, how will you know that I did it? Tatyana Nikolaevna. But why should I know this?
Kerzhentsev is silent.
(Stomps his foot lightly.) Why should I know this? What are you saying!Kerzhentsev is silent. Tatyana Nikolaevna moves away and rubs her temples with her fingers.
Kerzhentsev. Are you feeling unwell? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes. No. The head is something... What were we talking about just now? How strange: what were we talking about just now? How strange, I don’t quite clearly remember what we were talking about just now. About what?
Kerzhentsev is silent.
Anton Ignatyich! Kerzhentsev. What? Tatyana Nikolaevna. How did we get here? Kerzhentsev. For what? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I don't know. Anton Ignatyich, my dear, don’t! I'm really a little scared. No need to joke! You're so cute when you talk to me seriously... and you've never joked like that! Why now? Have you stopped respecting me? No need! And don’t think that I’m so happy... whatever! It’s very difficult for me and Alexey, it’s true. And he himself is not at all so happy, I know! Kerzhentsev. Tatyana Nikolaevna, today for the first time in six years we are talking about the past, and I don’t know... Did you tell Alexey that six years ago I proposed my hand and heart to you and you deigned to refuse both? Tatyana Nikolaevna (embarrassed). My dear, but how could I... not tell you when... Kerzhentsev. And he also pitied me? Tatyana Nikolaevna. But don’t you really believe in his nobility, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. I loved you very much, Tatyana Nikolaevna. Tatyana Nikolaevna (begging). No need! Kerzhentsev. Fine. Tatyana Nikolaevna. After all, you are strong! You have a huge will, Anton Ignatyich, if you want, you can do anything... Well... forgive us, forgive me! Kerzhentsev. Will? Yes. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Why are you looking like that - you don’t want to forgive? You can not? My God, how... terrible! And who is to blame, and what kind of life is this, Lord! (Cries quietly.) And everyone should be afraid, sometimes children, sometimes... Sorry!
Silence. Kerzhentsev looks as if from a distance at Tatyana Nikolaevna - suddenly brightens up and changes his mask.
Kerzhentsev. Tatyana Nikolaevna, my dear, stop it, what are you doing! I was joking. Tatyana Nikolaevna (sighing and wiping away tears). You won't be anymore. No need. Kerzhentsev. Yes, sure! You see: my Jaipur died today... and I... well, I was upset, or something. Look at me: you see, I'm already smiling. Tatyana Nikolaevna (looking and also smiling). What are you like, Anton Ignatyich! Kerzhentsev. I'm an eccentric, well, an eccentric - you never know how many eccentrics there are, and what kind of eccentrics too! My dear, you and I are old friends, how much salt we have eaten, I love you, I love dear, noble Alexei - let me always speak directly about his works... Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, of course this is a controversial issue! Kerzhentsev. Well, that's great. What about your cute kids? This is probably a feeling common to all stubborn bachelors, but I consider your children almost like my own. Your Igor is my godson... Tatyana Nikolaevna. You are dear, Anton Ignatyich, you are dear! -- Who is this?
After knocking, the maid Sasha enters.
What do you mean, Sasha, how you scared me, my God! Children? Sasha. No, the children are sleeping. The gentleman asks you to come to the phone, they just called, sir. Tatyana Nikolaevna. What's happened? What about him? Sasha. Nothing, by God. They are cheerful and joke. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I'm now, excuse me, Anton Ignatyich. (From the door, kindly.) Cute!
They both come out. Kerzhentsev walks around the room - stern, preoccupied. He takes the paperweight again, examines its sharp corners and weighs it in his hand. When Tatyana Nikolaevna enters, she quickly puts him in his place and puts on a pleasant face.
Anton Ignatyich, let's go quickly! Kerzhentsev. What happened, honey? Tatyana Nikolaevna. There is nothing. Cute! Yes, I don’t know. Alexey calls from the restaurant, someone has gathered there and asks us to come. Funny. Let's go! I won't change my clothes - let's go, honey. (Stops.) How obedient you are: he goes on his own and doesn’t even ask where. Cute! Yes... Anton Ignatyich, when did you see a psychiatrist? Kerzhentsev. Five or six days. I was at Semyonov’s, my dear, he’s my friend. Knowledgeable person. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Ah!.. This is very famous, it seems good. What did he tell you? Don't be offended, dear, but you know how I... Kerzhentsev. What are you doing, dear! Semyonov said that it was nothing, overwork was nothing. We talked for a long time, he’s a good old man. And such wicked eyes! Tatyana Nikolaevna. But is there overwork? My poor thing, you are overtired. (Strokes his hand.) No need, dear, rest, get treatment...
Kerzhentsev silently bends down and kisses her hand. She looks down at his head with fear.
Anton Ignatyich! You won't argue with Alexei today?
A curtain
ACT TWO
PICTURE THREE
Savelov's office. Six o'clock in the evening, before dinner. There are three people in the office: Savelov, his wife and a guest invited to dinner, the writer Fedorovich.
Tatyana Nikolaevna sits on the end of the sofa and looks pleadingly at her husband; Fedorovich leisurely, with his hands behind his back, walks around the room; Savelov sits in his place at the table and either leans back in his chair, or, lowering his head over the table, angrily chops and breaks a pencil and matches with a cutting knife.
Savelov. To hell with Kerzhentsev, finally! You both understand, and you understand this, Fedorovich, that I’m as tired of Kerzhentsev as a bitter radish! Well, even if he’s sick, and even if he’s gone crazy, and even if he’s dangerous - after all, I can’t think only about Kerzhentsev. To hell! Listen, Fedorovich, were you at yesterday's report at the literary society? What interesting things were said there? Fedorovich. Not much interesting. So, they bickered and swore more, I left early. Savelov. Was I scolded? Fedorovich. They scolded you too, brother. They scold everyone there. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, listen, Alyosha, listen, don’t be irritated: Alexander Nikolaevich just wants to warn you about Kerzhentsev... No, no, wait, you can’t be so stubborn. Well, if you don’t believe me and think that I’m exaggerating, then believe Alexander Nikolaevich, he is an outsider: Alexander Nikolaevich, tell me, were you at this dinner and saw everything yourself? Fedorovich. Myself. Tatyana Nikolaevna. So what, say it! Fedorovich. Well, there is no doubt that it was a fit of pure rabies. It was enough to look at his eyes, his face - sheer frenzy! You can't create foam on your lips. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well? Fedorovich. Your Kerzhentsev never gave me the impression of a meek person at all, he was such a filthy idol with twisted legs, but here everyone felt creepy. There were about ten of us at the table, so everyone scattered in all directions. Yes, brother, and Pyotr Petrovich was about to burst: with his thickness, such a test! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Don't you believe me, Alexey? Savelov. What do you want me to believe? These are strange people! Did he hit anyone? Fedorovich. No, he didn’t beat anyone, although he made an attempt on Pyotr Petrovich’s life... But he broke dishes, that’s true, and broke flowers and a palm tree. Yes, of course he is dangerous, who can vouch for such a thing? We are an indecisive people, we try to be delicate, but we should definitely inform the police, let him sit in the hospital until he goes away. Tatyana Nikolaevna. It is necessary to inform, this cannot be left like this. God knows what! Everyone is watching, and no one... Savelov. Leave it, Tanya! I just had to tie him up, nothing more, and a bucket of cold water on his head. If you want, I believe in Kerzhentsev’s madness, why, anything can happen, but I absolutely don’t understand your fears. Why would he want to do any harm to me? Nonsense! Tatyana Nikolaevna. But I told you, Alyosha, what he told me that evening. He scared me so much then that I wasn’t myself. I almost cried! Savelov. Sorry, Tanechka: you really told me, but I, my dear, didn’t understand anything from your story. Some ridiculous chatter on too sensitive topics, which, of course, should have been avoided... You know, Fedorovich, he once wooed Tatyana? Of course, love too!.. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Alyosha! Savelov. He can do it, he is his own person. Well, you know, something like a love belch - oh, just a whim! Whim! Kerzhentsev has never loved anyone and cannot love anyone. I know it. Enough about him, gentlemen. Fedorovich. Fine. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, Alyosha, dear, well, it’s worth doing this - for me! Well, I may be stupid, but I'm really worried. You don’t need to accept him, that’s all, you can write him a kind letter. After all, you can’t let such a dangerous person into your house, right, Alexander Nikolaevich? Fedorovich. Right! Savelov. No! I’m even embarrassed to listen to you, Tanya. Indeed, only this is not enough for me, because of some kind of whim... well, not a whim, I'm sorry, I didn't put it that way, well, in general, because of some fears, I would refuse a person a home. There was no need to chat about such topics, but now there is no point. Dangerous man... that's enough, Tanya! Tatyana Nikolaevna (sighing). Fine. Savelov. And one more thing, Tatyana: don’t even think about writing to him without my knowledge, I know you. Did you guess right? Tatyana Nikolaevna (dry). You guessed nothing, Alexey. Let's leave it better. When are you going to Crimea, Alexander Nikolaevich? Fedorovich. Yes, I’m thinking about moving this week. It's hard for me to get out. Savelov. No money, Fedorchuk? Fedorovich. Not really. I'm waiting for the advance, they promised. Savelov. Nobody, brother, has any money. Fedorovich (stops in front of Savelov). If only you could come with me, Alexey! You’re not doing anything anyway, but you and I would have had a great time there, huh? You’ve been spoiled, your wife is spoiling you, and then we’d set off on foot: the road, brother, is white, the sea, brother, blue, almond blossoms... Savelov. I don't like Crimea. Tatyana Nikolaevna. He absolutely cannot stand Crimea. But what if it were so, Alyosha: I would stay with the children in Yalta, and you and Alexander Nikolaevich go to the Caucasus. You love the Caucasus. Savelov. Why am I going at all? I’m not going anywhere at all, I’ve got my fill of work here! Fedorovich. Good for children. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Certainly! Savelov (irritated). Well, go with the children if you want. After all, this, by God, is impossible! Well, go with the children, and I’ll stay here. Crimea... Fedorovich, do you like cypress trees? And I hate them. They stand like exclamation marks, damn them, but there’s no point... like a manuscript from a lady writer about some “mysterious” Boris! Fedorovich. No, brother, lady writers love ellipses more...
The maid enters.
Sasha. Anton Ignatievich came and asked, can I come to you?
Some silence.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, Alyosha! Savelov. Of course, ask! Sasha, ask Anton Ignatyich here, say that we are in the office. Give me some tea.
The maid comes out. There is silence in the office. Kerzhentsev enters with some kind of large paper parcel in his hands. The face is dark. Says hello.
Ah, Antosha! Hello. What are you smoking? They tell me everything. Get treatment, brother, you need serious treatment, you can’t leave it like this. Kerzhentsev (quiet). Yes, I think he's a little sick. Tomorrow I’m thinking of going to a sanatorium to relax. We need to rest. Savelov. Rest, rest, of course. You see, Tanya, a person knows what he needs to do even without you. Here it is, brother, these two were beating you up... Tatyana Nikolaevna (reproachfully). Alyosha! Would you like some tea, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. With pleasure, Tatyana Nikolaevna. Savelov. Why are you so quiet? Anton you say? (Grunts.)“Alyosha, Alyosha...” I don’t know how to remain silent as you say... Sit down, Anton, why are you standing there? Kerzhentsev. Here, Tatyana Nikolaevna, please take it. 486 Tatyana Nikolaevna (accepts the package). What is this? Kerzhentsev. Igor toys. I promised a long time ago, but somehow there was no time, but today I finished all my business in the city and, fortunately, I remembered. I'm going to say goodbye to you. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Thank you, Anton Ignatyich, Igor will be very happy. I'll call him here, let him get it from you. Savelov. No, Tanya, I don’t want noise. Igor will come, then Tanka will drag along, and a Persian revolution will begin here: either they impale him, or they shout “hurray”!.. What? Horse? Kerzhentsev. Yes. I came to the store and was confused, I just couldn’t guess what he would like. Fedorovich. My Petka now demands a car, he doesn’t want a horse.
Tatyana Nikolaevna is calling.
Savelov. Of course! They also grow. Soon they will get to airplanes... What do you want, Sasha? Sasha. They called me. Tatyana Nikolaevna. It's me, Alyosha. Here, Sasha, please take it to the nursery and give it to Igor, tell him his uncle brought it to him. Savelov. Why won’t you go yourself, Tanya? Better take it yourself. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I don't want to, Alyosha. Savelov. Tanya!
Tatyana Nikolaevna takes the toy and leaves silently. Fedorovich whistles and looks at the pictures he has already seen on the walls.
Ridiculous woman! She's the one who's afraid of you, Anton! Kerzhentsev (surprised). Me? Savelov. Yes. Something presented itself to a woman, and now someone like you is going crazy. Considers you a dangerous person. Fedorovich (interrupting). Whose card is this, Alexey? Savelov. Actresses of one. What did you say to her here, Antosha? It’s in vain, my dear, that you touch on such topics. I am convinced that for you it was a joke, and Tanya is bad when it comes to jokes, you know her as well as I do. Fedorovich (again). Who is this actress? Savelov. You don't know her! That's right, Anton, it shouldn't be. You are smiling? Or serious?
Kerzhentsev is silent. Fedorovich looks at him sideways. Savelov frowns.
Well, of course, jokes. Still, stop joking, Anton! I’ve known you since high school, and there was always something unpleasant in your jokes. When they joke, brother, they smile, and at that time you try to make such a face so that your veins shake. Experimenter! Well, what, Tanya? Tatyana Nikolaevna (enters). Well, of course, I'm glad. What are you so passionate about here? Savelov (walks around the office, throwing disdainfully and rather sharply as he goes). About jokes. I advised Anton not to joke, since not everyone finds his jokes equally... successful. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes? What about tea, dear Anton Ignatyich, you haven’t been served yet! (Rings.) Sorry, I didn't even notice! Kerzhentsev. I would ask for a glass of white wine if that doesn't disturb your order. Savelov. Well, what kind of order do we have!.. (To the maid who came in.) Sasha, give me some wine and two glasses: will you have wine, Fedorovich? Fedorovich. I’ll have a glass, won’t you? Savelov. Do not want. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Give me some white wine, Sasha, and two glasses.
The maid leaves and soon returns with wine. An awkward silence. Savelov restrains himself so as not to show hostility to Kerzhentsev, but this becomes more difficult every minute.
Savelov. What sanatorium do you want to go to, Anton? Kerzhentsev. Semenov advised me. There is a wonderful place along the Finland Road, I’ve already written off. There are few patients, or rather, vacationers there - forest and silence. Savelov. Ah!.. Forest and silence. Why don't you drink wine? Drink. Fedorovich, pour it. (Mockingly.) What do you need the forest and silence for? Tatyana Nikolaevna. For relaxation, of course, what are you asking about, Alyosha? Is it true, Alexander Nikolaevich, that today our Alyosha is kind of stupid? Aren't you angry with me, famous writer? Savelov. Don't talk, Tanya, it's unpleasant. Yes, of course, for relaxation... Here, Fedorovich, pay attention to the person: a simple sense of nature, the ability to enjoy the sun and water are completely alien to him. Really, Anton?
Kerzhentsev is silent.
(Getting irritated.) No, and at the same time he thinks that he has gone ahead - do you understand, Fedorovich? And you and I, who can still enjoy the sun and water, seem to him something atavistic, deadly backward. Anton, don’t you think that Fedorovich is very similar to your late orangutan? Fedorovich. Well, that's partly true, Alexey. That is, it’s not that I look like... Savelov. Not the truth, but simply absurdity, a kind of narrow-mindedness... What do you want, Tanya? What other signs are these? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Nothing. Don't you want some wine? Listen, Anton Ignatich, today we are going to the theater, do you want to come with us? We have a box. Kerzhentsev. With pleasure, Tatyana Nikolaevna, although I don’t particularly like theater. But today I will go with pleasure. Savelov. Don't you like it? Strange! Why don't you love him? This is something new in you, Anton, you continue to develop. You know, Fedorovich, Kerzhentsev once wanted to become an actor himself - and, in my opinion, he would have been a wonderful actor! It has these properties... and in general... Kerzhentsev. My personal qualities have nothing to do with it, Alexey. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Certainly! Kerzhentsev. I don't like theater because it presents poorly. For real play, which, after all, is only a complex system of pretense, the theater is too cramped. Isn't it true, Alexander Nikolaevich? Fedorovich. I don’t quite understand you, Anton Ignatyich. Savelov. What is a real game? Kerzhentsev. True artistic play can only happen in life. Savelov. And that’s why you didn’t become an actor, but remained a doctor. Do you understand, Fedorovich? Fedorovich. You're being picky, Alexey! As far as I understand... Tatyana Nikolaevna. Well, of course, he is shamelessly finding fault. Leave him, dear Anton Ignatich, let's go to the nursery. Igor certainly wants to kiss you... kiss him, Anton Ignatyich! Kerzhentsev. The noise of children is somewhat difficult for me now, excuse me, Tatyana Nikolaevna. Savelov. Of course, let him sit there. Sit down, Anton. Kerzhentsev. And I’m not at all... offended by Alexei’s ardor. He was always hot, even in high school. Savelov. Totally unnecessary condescension. And I’m not at all excited... Why don’t you drink wine, Anton? Drink, the wine is good... But I was always surprised by your isolation from life. Life flows past you, and you sit as if in a fortress, you are proud in your mysterious loneliness, like a baron! The time has passed for the barons, brother, their fortresses have been destroyed. Fedorovich, do you know that our baron’s only ally, the orangutan, recently died? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Alyosha, again! This is impossible! Kerzhentsev. Yes, I'm sitting in a fortress. Yes. In the fortress! Savelov (sitting down.) Yes? Say please! Listen, Fedorovich, this is the baron’s confession! Kerzhentsev. Yes. And my strength is this: my head. Don’t laugh, Alexey, it seems to me that you haven’t quite grown up to this idea yet... Savelov. Not grown up?.. Kerzhentsev. Sorry, I didn't put it that way. But only here, in my head, behind these skull walls, can I be completely free. And I'm free! Alone and free! Yes!He gets up and begins to walk along the line of the office that Savelov had just walked along.
Savelov. Fedorovich, give me your glass. Thank you. What is your freedom, my lonely friend? Kerzhentsev. And the fact is... And the fact, my friend, is that I stand above the life in which you squirm and crawl! And the fact is, my friend, that instead of the pitiful passions to which you submit like slaves, I have chosen the royal human thought as my friend! Yes, Baron! Yes, I am impregnable in my castle - and there is no force that would not break against these walls! Savelov. Yes, your forehead is great, but are you relying on it too much? Your overwork... Tatyana Nikolaevna. Gentlemen, leave it to you! Alyosha! Kerzhentsev (laughs). My overwork? No, I'm not afraid... of my overwork. My thought is obedient to me, like a sword, the edge of which is directed by my will. Or are you, blind, not seeing its shine? Or do you, blind, not know this delight: to enclose the whole world here, in your head, to dispose of it, to reign, to flood everything with the light of divine thought! What do I care about the cars that are rumbling out there somewhere? Here, in great and strict silence, my thought works - and its power is equal to the power of all the machines in the world! You often laughed at my love for books, Alexey, - do you know that someday a person will become a deity, and a book will be his footstool! Thought! Savelov. No, I don't know that. And your fetishism of the book seems to me just... funny and... stupid. Yes! There is still life!
He also gets up and walks around excitedly, at times almost colliding with Kerzhentsev; there is something scary in their excitement, in the way they stand face to face for a moment. Tatyana Nikolaevna whispers something to Fedorovich, who shrugs his shoulders helplessly and reassuringly.
Kerzhentsev. And this is what you say, writer? Savelov. And I say this, a writer. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Gentlemen! Kerzhentsev. You are a pathetic writer, Savelov. Savelov. May be. Kerzhentsev. You have published five books - how dare you do this if you talk about a book like that? This is blasphemy! You don't dare write, you shouldn't! Savelov. Aren't you going to stop me?
They both pause for a moment at the desk. To the side, Tatyana Nikolaevna anxiously pulls Fedorovich’s sleeve, he whispers reassuringly to her: “Nothing! Nothing!”
Kerzhentsev. Alexei! Savelov. What? Kerzhentsev. You're worse than my orangutan! He managed to die of boredom! Savelov. Did he die himself or did you kill him? Experience?
They walk again, colliding. Kerzhentsev is the only one laughing loudly at something. His eyes are scary.
Are you laughing? Do you despise? Kerzhentsev (gestures strongly, speaks as if to someone else). He doesn't believe in thought! He dares not to believe in thought! He doesn't know that thought can do anything! He doesn’t know that a thought can drill a stone, burn a house, that a thought can...-- Alexey! Savelov. Your overwork!.. Yes, to the sanatorium, to the sanatorium! Kerzhentsev. Alexei! Savelov. What?
Both stop near the table, Kerzhentsev facing the viewer. His eyes are scary, he inspires. He placed his hand on the paperweight. Tatyana Nikolaevna and Fedorovich are in tetanus.
Kerzhentsev. Look at me. Do you see my point? Savelov. You need to go to a sanatorium. I look. Kerzhentsev. Look! I can kill you. Savelov. No. You're crazy!!! Kerzhentsev. Yes, I'm crazy. I'll kill you with this! (Slowly picks up the paperweight.) (Inspiring.) Put your hand down!
Just as slowly, without taking his eyes off Kerzhentsev’s, Savelov raises his hand to sew up his head. Savelov's hand slowly, jerkily, unevenly lowers, and Kerzhentsev hits him on the head. Savelov falls. Kerzhentsev leans over him with a raised paperweight. The desperate cry of Tatyana Ivanovna and Fedorovich.
A curtain
PICTURE FOUR
Kerzhentsev's office-library. Near the desks, desk and library, with books piled on them, Daria Vasilyevna, Kerzhentsev’s housekeeper, an elderly, pretty woman, is slowly doing something. He hums quietly. He straightens the books, brushes off the dust, looks into the inkwell to see if there is any ink. There's a bell in front. Daria Vasilievna turns her head, hears Kerzhentsev’s loud voice in the hall and calmly continues her work.
Daria Vasilievna (sings quietly).“My mother loved me, she adored that I was a beloved daughter, and my daughter ran away with her sweetheart into the dead of a stormy night...> What do you want, Vasya? Has Anton Ignatich arrived? Vasily. Daria Vasilievna! Daria Vasilievna. Well? “I was running through the forest dense..." Let's have lunch now, Vasya. Well, what are you doing? Vasily. Daria Vasilievna! Anton Ignatich is asking to give them clean underwear, a shirt, he is in the bathroom. Daria Vasilievna (surprised). What is this? What other underwear? You need to have lunch, not laundry, after seven o'clock. Basil. This is a bad thing, Daria Vasilievna, I'm afraid. There is blood all over his clothes, on his jacket and trousers. Daria Vasilievna. Well, what are you talking about! Where? Basil. How do I know? I'm afraid. I started taking off my fur coat, and there was blood on the sleeves even in the fur coat, staining my hands. Quite fresh. Now he washes himself in the bathroom and asks to change clothes. He won’t let me in, he talks through the door. Daria Vasilievna. This is strange! Well, let's go, I'll give it to you now. Hm! An operation, maybe some kind, but for the operation he puts on a robe. Hm! Basil. Hurry up, Daria Vasilievna! Hear, it's calling. I'm afraid. Daria Vasilievna. Oh well. How timid. Let's go. (They leave.)
The room is empty for some time. Then Kerzhentsev enters and behind him, apparently frightened, Daria Vasilievna. Kerzhentsev speaks in a loud voice, laughs loudly, and is dressed at home, without a starched collar.
Kerzhentsev. I won’t have lunch, Dashenka, you can clean up. I don't want to. Daria Vasilievna. How is this possible, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. And so. Why are you scared, Dasha? Did Vasily say anything to you? You want to listen to this fool. (He quickly goes to the corner where the empty cage still stands.) Where is our Jaipur? No. Our Jaipur, Daria Vasilievna, has died. Died! What are you doing, Dasha, what are you doing? Daria Vasilievna. Why did you lock the bathroom and take the keys to yourself, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. And so as not to upset you, Daria Vasilyevna, so as not to upset you! (Laughs.) I'm kidding. You'll find out soon, Dasha. Daria Vasilievna. What do I find out? Where have you been, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. Where were you? I was at the theater, Dasha. Daria Vasilievna. What kind of theater is it now? Kerzhentsev. Yes. Now there is no theater. But I played it myself, Dasha, I played it myself. And I played great, I played great! It’s a pity that you can’t appreciate, that you can’t appreciate, I would tell you about one amazing thing, an amazing thing - a talented technique! Talented reception! You just need to look into the eyes, you just need to look into the eyes and... But you don’t understand anything, Dasha. Kiss me, Dashenka. Daria Vasilievna (moving away). No. Kerzhentsev. Kiss. Daria Vasilievna. Don't want. I'm afraid. You have eyes... Kerzhentsev (sternly and angrily). What about the eyes? Go. Enough nonsense! But you’re stupid, Dasha, and I’ll kiss you anyway. (Kisses him forcefully.) It’s a pity, Dashenka, that the night is not ours, that the night... (Laughs.) Well, go ahead. And tell Vasily that in an hour or two I will have these guests, these guests in uniforms. Let him not be afraid. And tell him to give me a bottle of white wine here. So. All. Go.
The housekeeper comes out. Kerzhentsev, stepping very firmly, walks around the room, walking. Thinks he has a very carefree and cheerful appearance. He takes one book after another, looks at it and puts it back. His appearance is almost scary, but he thinks that he is calm. Walking. He notices an empty cage and laughs.
Oh, it's you, Jaipur! Why do I keep forgetting that you died? Jaipur, have you died of boredom? Stupid melancholy, you should have lived and looked at me as I looked at you! Jaipur, do you know what I did today? (Walks around the room, speaks, gesticulating strongly.) Died. He took it and died. Stupid! Doesn't see my triumph. Does not know. Does not see. Stupid! But I’m a little tired - I wish I wasn’t tired! Put your hand down - I said. And he lowered it. Jaipur! Monkey - he lowered his hand! (Approaches the cage, laughs.) Could you do it, monkey? Stupid! He died like a fool - from melancholy. Stupid! (Humming loudly.)
Vasily brings in wine and a glass and walks on tiptoe.
Who is this? A? It's you. Put it in. Go.
Vasily also timidly tiptoes out. Kerzhentsev throws down the book, drinks a glass of wine with a flourish and quickly, and, having made several circles around the room, takes the book and lies down on the sofa. He lights a light bulb on the table, at the head of the room; his face is illuminated brightly, as if by a reflector. He tries to read, but cannot, and throws the book on the floor.
No, I don't want to read it. (Puts his hands under his head and closes his eyes.) So glad. Nice. Nice. Tired. Sleepy; sleep. (Silence, immobility. Suddenly he laughs, without opening his eyes, as if in a dream. He slightly raises and lowers his right hand.) Yes!
Again, quiet and prolonged laughter with closed eyes. Silence. Immobility. The brightly lit face becomes stern, more severe. Somewhere a clock is striking. Suddenly, with his eyes still closed, Kerzhentsev slowly gets up and sits down on the sofa. Silent, as if in a dream. And he pronounces it slowly, separating the words, loudly and strangely empty, as if in someone else’s voice, swaying slightly and evenly.
And it is quite possible that Doctor Kerzhentsev is really crazy. He thought that he was pretending, but he really is crazy. And now he's crazy. (Another moment of stillness. Opens his eyes and looks in horror.) Who said that? (He is silent and looks in horror.) Who? (Whispers.) Who said? Who? Who? Oh my God! (Jumps up and, full of horror, rushes around the room.) No! No! (He stops and, stretching out his arms, as if holding in place the spinning things, everything falling, almost screams.) No! No! It's not true, I know. Stop! Everyone stop! (He rushes about again.) Stop, stop! Wait a minute! No need to drive yourself crazy. No need, no need to drive yourself crazy. Like this? (He stops and, closing his eyes tightly, pronounces separately, deliberately making his voice alien and cunning.) He thought that he was pretending, that he was pretending, but he was really crazy. (Opens his eyes and, slowly raising both hands, takes hold of his hair.) So. It happened. What I was waiting for happened. It's over. (Again, silently and convulsively rushes about. He begins to tremble with large, ever-increasing tremors. He mutters. Suddenly he runs into the mirror, sees himself-- and screams slightly in horror.) Mirror! (Carefully again, he creeps up to the mirror from the side, looks in. He mumbles. He wants to straighten his hair, but doesn’t understand how to do it. The movements are ridiculous, uncoordinated.) Yeah! So so so. (Laughs slyly.) You thought you were faking it, but you were crazy, hoo-hoo! What, clever? Yeah! You are small, you are evil, you are stupid, you are Doctor Kerzhentsev. Some doctor Kerzhentsev, crazy doctor Kerzhentsev, some doctor Kerzhentsev!.. (Mumbling. Laughing. Suddenly, continuing to look at himself, he slowly and seriously begins to tear his clothes. The torn material cracks.)
A curtain
ACT THREE
PICTURE FIFTH
A hospital for the insane, where the pretrial suspect Kerzhentsev was placed on probation. On the stage there is a corridor into which the doors of individual cells open; the corridor expands into a small hall, or niche. There is a small desk for the doctor, two chairs; It’s clear that hospital employees like to gather here to talk. The walls are white with wide blue paneling; electricity is burning. Bright, cozy. Opposite the niche is the door to Kerzhentsev’s cell. There is restless movement in the corridor: Kerzhentsev has just ended a severe seizure. A doctor in a white robe, who is called Ivan Petrovich, a nurse Masha, and attendants enter and exit the cell occupied by the patient. They bring medicine and ice.
Two nurses are chatting quietly in an alcove. The second doctor, Doctor Straight, comes out of the corridor - still a young man, short-sighted and very modest. As he approaches, the nurses fall silent and assume respectful poses. They bow.
Straight. Good evening. Vasilyeva, what is this? Seizure? Vasilyeva. Yes, Sergei Sergeich, a seizure. Straight. Whose room is this? (Looks closer to the door.) Vasilyeva. Kerzhentsev, the same one, Sergei Sergeich. The killers. Straight. Oh, yes. So what's wrong with him? Ivan Petrovich there? Vasilyeva. There. It’s okay now, I’ve calmed down. Here comes Masha, you can ask her. I just arrived.
The nurse Masha, still a young woman with a pleasant, meek face, wants to enter the cell; the doctor calls out to her.
Straight. Listen, Masha, how are you? Masha. Hello, Sergey Sergeich. Now nothing, silence. I'm bringing medicine. Straight. A! Well, bring it, bring it.
Masha enters, carefully opening and closing the door.
Does the professor know? Did they tell him? Vasilyeva. Yes, they reported. They themselves wanted to come, but now it’s okay, he left. Straight. A!
A servant leaves the cell and soon returns. Everyone follows him with their eyes.
Vasilyeva (laughs quietly). What, Sergey Sergeich, aren’t you used to it yet? Straight. A? Well, well, I'll get used to it. Was he going on a rampage or something? Vasilyeva. Don't know. Nurse. He went on a rampage. It took three people to cope, so he fought. That's how Mamai is!
Both nurses laugh quietly.
Straight (strictly). Oh well! There's no point in baring your teeth here.
Doctor Ivan Petrovich comes out of Kerzhentsev’s cell, his knees are slightly crooked, he walks waddling.
Ah, Ivan Petrovich, hello. How are you doing? Ivan Petrovich. Nothing, nothing, great. Give me a cigarette. What, on duty today? Straight. Yes, on duty. Yes, I heard that you had something here, so I came in to take a look. Did you want to come yourself? Ivan Petrovich. I wanted to, but now there’s no need. He seems to be falling asleep, I gave him such a dose... That’s it, my friend, that’s it, Sergei Sergeich, that’s it, darling. Mr. Kerzhentsev is a strong man, although based on his exploits one could have expected more. Do you know his feat? Straight. Well, of course. Why, Ivan Petrovich, didn’t you send him to isolation? Ivan Petrovich. That's how they treated it. He's coming on his own! Evgeny Ivanovich!
Both doctors throw down their cigarettes and take respectful, expectant poses. Accompanied by another doctor, Professor Semenov, an impressive, large old man with black-gray hair and a beard, approaches; In general, he is very shaggy and somewhat resembles a yard dog. Dressed normally, without a robe. They say hello. The nurses step aside.
Semenov. Hello Hello. Has your colleague calmed down? Ivan Petrovich. Yes, Evgeny Ivanovich, I calmed down. Falls asleep. I just wanted to go report to you. Semenov. Nothing, nothing. I calmed down - and thank God. What is the reason - or is it the weather? Ivan Petrovich. That is, partly because of the weather, and partly he complains that he is restless, cannot sleep, crazy people are screaming. Yesterday Kornilov had another seizure and howled throughout the whole building for half the night. Semenov. Well, I’m tired of this Kornilov myself. Kerzhentsev wrote again, or what? Ivan Petrovich. Writes! These writings should be taken away from him, Evgeny Ivanovich, it seems to me that this is also one of the reasons... Semenov. Well, well, take it away! Let him write to himself. He writes interestingly, then you read it, I read it. Are you wearing a shirt? Ivan Petrovich. I had to. Semenov. When he falls asleep, take it off quietly, otherwise it will be unpleasant when he wakes up in his shirt. He won't remember anything. Let him, let him write to himself, don’t bother him, give him more paper. Doesn't he complain of hallucinations? Ivan Petrovich. Not yet. Semenov. Well, thank God. Let him write, he has something to talk about. Give him more feathers, give him a box, he breaks feathers when he writes. Emphasizes everything, emphasizes everything! Does he scold you? Ivan Petrovich. It happens. Semenov. Well, well, he vilifies me too, writes: and if you, Evgeny Ivanovich, are dressed in a robe, then who will be crazy: you or me?
Everyone laughs quietly.
Ivan Petrovich. Yes. Unhappy man. That is, he doesn’t inspire any sympathy in me, but...
Nurse Masha comes out of the door, carefully closing it behind her. They look at her.
Masha. Hello, Evgeniy Ivanovich. Semenov. Hello, Masha. Masha. Ivan Petrovich, Anton Ignatich is asking for you, he has woken up. Ivan Petrovich. Now. Perhaps you would like, Evgeny Ivanovich? Semenov. No need to worry him. Go.
Ivan Petrovich follows the nurse into the cell. Everyone looks at the locked door for a while. It's quiet there.
This Masha is an excellent woman, my favorite. Third doctor. He just never locks the doors. If you leave her in charge, there won’t be a single patient left, they’ll run away. I wanted to complain to you, Evgeny Ivanovich. Semenov. Well, well, complain! They'll lock others up, but if he runs away, we'll catch him. An excellent woman, Sergei Sergeevich, take a closer look at her, this is new to you. I don’t know what’s in it, but it has a wonderful effect on the sick and heals the healthy too! A kind of innate talent for health, spiritual ozone. (Sits down and takes out a cigarette. The assistants are standing.) Why don't you smoke, gentlemen? Straight. I have just... (Lights a cigarette.) Semenov. I would marry her, I like her so much; let her light the stove with my books, she can do that too. Third doctor. She can do this. Straight (smiling respectfully). Well, you are single, Evgeny Ivanovich, get married. Semenov. It won’t, no woman will marry me, they say I look like an old dog.
They laugh quietly.
Straight. What is your opinion, professor, this interests me very much: is Doctor Kerzhentsev really abnormal or just a malingerer, as he now claims? As an admirer of Savelov, this incident at one time excited me extremely, and your authoritative opinion, Evgeny Ivanovich... Semenov (shaking his head towards the camera). Have you seen it? Straight. Yes, but this attack doesn't prove anything yet. There are cases... Semenov. It doesn’t prove it, but it does prove it. What should I say? I have known this Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev for five years, I know him personally, and he has always been a strange person... Straightforward. But isn't this crazy? Semenov. This is not madness, they also say about me that I am strange; and who isn't weird?
Ivan Petrovich comes out of the cell and they look at him.
Ivan Petrovich (smiling). He asks to take off his shirt, he promises that he won’t. Semenov. No, it's too early. He was with me - we are talking about your Kerzhentsev - and just before the almost murder, he consulted about his health; seems to be cunning. And what can I tell you? In my opinion, he really needs hard labor, good hard labor for fifteen years. Let him get some air and breathe some oxygen! Ivan Petrovich (laughs). Yes, oxygen. Third doctor. He shouldn't go to the monastery! Semenov. It is necessary to let him into the monastery, not into the monastery, but among the people; he himself asks for hard labor. That's how I give my opinion. He set traps, and he himself sits in them; he'll probably go seriously crazy. And it will be a pity for the person. Straight (thinking). And this terrible thing is the head. It’s worth swaying a little and... So sometimes you think to yourself: who am I, if I take a good look at it? A? Semenov (stands up and affectionately pats Straight on the shoulder). Well, well, young man! Not so scary! Anyone who thinks to himself that he is crazy is still healthy, but if he comes down, then he will stop thinking. It’s just like death: scary while you’re alive. We, the older ones, must have gone crazy a long time ago; we are not afraid of anything. Look at Ivan Petrovich!
Ivan Petrovich laughs.
Straight (smiles). Still restless, Evgeny Ivanovich. Unstable mechanics.
From a distance comes some vague, unpleasant sound, similar to whining. One of the nurses quickly leaves.
What is this? Ivan Petrovich (to the third doctor). Again, probably your Kornilov, let him be empty. He exhausted everyone. Third doctor. I should go. Goodbye, Evgeny Ivanovich. Semenov. I'll go to him myself and have a look. Third doctor. Well, it’s bad, it’ll hardly last a week. It's burning! So I will wait for you, Evgeny Ivanovich. (Leaves.) Straight. And what does Kerzhentsev write, Evgeny Ivanovich? I'm not out of curiosity... Semyonov. And he writes well, nimblely: he can go there, he can go there - he writes well! And when he proves that he is healthy, you see a madman in optima forma (In the best possible way (lat.).), but he will begin to prove that he is crazy - at least put him in the department to give lectures to young doctors, so healthy. Ah, my young gentlemen, the point is not what he writes, but the fact that I am a man! Human!
Masha enters.
Masha. Ivan Petrovich, the patient has fallen asleep, can the servants be released? Semenov. Let go, Masha, let go, just don’t leave. Doesn't he offend you? Masha. No, Evgeny Ivanovich, he doesn’t offend. (Leaves.)
Soon two stalwart servants come out of the cell, trying to walk quietly, but they can’t, they knock. Kornilov shouts louder.
Semenov. So that. It’s a pity that I look like a dog, I wish I could marry Masha; and I lost my qualifications a long time ago. (Laughs.) However, as our nightingale is drowning, we must go! Ivan Petrovich, come on, you’ll tell me more about Kerzhentsev. Goodbye, Sergey Sergeevich. Straight. Goodbye, Evgeny Ivanovich.
Semenov and Ivan Petrovich slowly leave along the corridor. Ivan Petrovich says. Doctor Straight stands with his head down, thinking. He absentmindedly looks for a pocket under his white robe, takes out a cigarette case and a cigarette, but doesn’t light a cigarette - he forgot.
A curtain
PICTURE SIX
The cell where Kerzhentsev is located. The furnishings are official, the only large window is behind bars; The door is locked at every entrance and exit; hospital nurse Masha does not always do this, although she is obliged to do so. There are quite a few books that Dr. Kerzhentsev ordered from home, but does not read. Chess, which he plays often, playing complex, multi-day games against himself. Kerzhentsev in a hospital gown. During his stay in the hospital he lost weight and his hair grew back a lot, but he was fine; Kerzhentsev's eyes have a somewhat excited look due to insomnia. He is currently writing his explanation to psychiatric experts. It’s twilight, it’s already a little dark in the cell, but the last bluish light falls on Kerzhentsev from the window. It becomes difficult to write due to the darkness. Kerzhentsev gets up and turns the switch: first the top light bulb on the ceiling flashes, then the one on the table, under the green lampshade. He writes again, concentrated and gloomy, counting the covered sheets in a whisper. Nurse Masha enters quietly. Her white official robe is very clean, and all of her, with her precise and silent movements, gives the impression of cleanliness, order, affectionate and calm kindness. He straightens the bed and does something quietly.
Kerzhentsev (without turning around). Masha! Masha. What, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev. Was chloralamide dispensed at the pharmacy? Masha. They let me go, I'll bring it now when I go for tea. Kerzhentsev (stops writing and turns around). According to my recipe? Masha. In your. Ivan Petrovich looked, said nothing, and signed. He just shook his head. Kerzhentsev. Did you shake your head? What does this mean: a lot, in his opinion, the dose is large? Ignoramus! Masha-. Don’t scold, Anton Ignatyich, don’t, my dear. Kerzhentsev. Did you tell him how insomnia I have, that I haven’t slept properly one night? Masha. Said. He knows. Kerzhentsev. Ignorant! Ignorant people! Jailers! They put a person in such conditions that a completely healthy person can go crazy, and they call it a test, a scientific test! (Walks around the cell.) Donkeys! Masha, this night that Kornilov of yours was yelling again. Seizure? Masha. Yes, a seizure, a very strong one, Anton Ignatich, forcibly calmed down. Kerzhentsev. Unbearable! Did you wear a shirt? Masha. Yes. Kerzhentsev. Unbearable! He howls for hours and hours and no one can stop him! It’s terrible, Masha, when a person stops talking and howls: the human larynx, Masha, is not adapted to howling, and that’s why these half-animal sounds and screams are so terrible. I want to get down on all fours and howl. Masha, when you hear this, don’t you want to howl yourself? Masha. No, dear, what are you talking about! I'm healthy. Kerzhentsev. Healthy! Yes. You are a very strange person, Masha... Where are you going? Masha. I'm going nowhere, I'm here. Kerzhentsev. Stay with me. You are a very strange person, Masha. For two months now I have been looking closely at you, studying you, and I just can’t understand where you get this devilish firmness, unshakability of spirit. Yes. You know something, Masha, but what? Among the crazy, howling, crawling, in these cages, where every particle of the air is infected with madness, you walk as calmly as if it were... a meadow with flowers! Understand, Masha, that this is more dangerous than living in a cage with tigers and lions, with the most poisonous snakes! Masha. Nobody will touch me. I’ve been here for five years now, and no one has even hit me, or even cursed me. Kerzhentsev. That's not the point, Masha! Infection, poison - do you understand? -- that's the problem! All your doctors are already half crazy, but you are crazy, you are categorically healthy! You are as affectionate with us as with calves, and your eyes are so clear, so deeply and incomprehensibly clear, as if there is no madness in the world at all, no one howls, but only sings songs. Why is there no melancholy in your eyes? You know something, Masha, you know something precious, Masha, the only thing that can save you, but what? But what? Masha. I don't know anything, honey. I live as God commanded, but what do I know? Kerzhentsev (laughs angrily). Well, yes, of course, as God commanded. Masha. And everyone lives like this, I’m not alone. Kerzhentsev (laughs even angrier). Well, of course, everyone lives like that! No, Masha, you don’t know anything, it’s a lie, and I’m clinging to you in vain. You are worse than a straw. (Sits down.) Listen, Masha, have you ever been to the theater? Masha. No, Anton Ignatyich, I never have. Kerzhentsev. So. And you are illiterate, you have not read a single book. Masha, do you know the Gospel well? Masha. No, Anton Ignatyich, who knows? I only know what is read in church, and even then you can’t remember much! I love going to church, but I don’t have to, I don’t have time, there’s a lot of work, God forbid I just jump up for a minute and cross my forehead. I, Anton Ignatich, strive to get to church when the priest says: and all of you, Orthodox Christians! When I hear this, I sigh, and I’m glad. Kerzhentsev. So she's happy! She knows nothing, and she is happy, and in her eyes there is no melancholy from which they die. Nonsense! The lowest form or... what or? Nonsense! Masha, do you know that the Earth on which you and I are now, that this Earth is spinning? Masha (indifferently). No, my dear, I don’t know. Kerzhentsev. She’s spinning, Masha, she’s spinning, and we’re spinning with her! No, you know something, Masha, you know something that you don’t want to say. Why did God give language only to his devils, and why are angels dumb? Maybe you are an angel, Masha? But you are dumb - you are desperately not a match for Dr. Kerzhentsev! Masha, my dear, do you know that I will really go crazy soon? Masha. No, you won't. Kerzhentsev. Yes? Tell me, Masha, but only with a clear conscience - God will punish you for deception! - tell me with a clear conscience: am I crazy or not? Masha. You yourself know that there is no... Kerzhentsev. I don’t know anything myself! Myself! I'm asking you! Masha. Certainly not crazy. Kerzhentsev. Did I kill? What is this? Masha. So that's what they wanted. It was your will to kill, so you killed. Kerzhentsev. What is this? Sin, do you think? Masha (somewhat angrily). I don’t know, dear, ask those who know. I'm not a judge of people. It’s easy for me to say: it’s a sin, I turned my tongue, and it’s done, but for you it will be a punishment... No, let others punish whoever they want, but I can’t punish anyone. No. Kerzhentsev. And God, Masha? Tell me about God, you know. Masha. What are you saying, Anton Ignatyich, how dare I know about God? No one dares to know about God; there has never been such a desperate head. Should I bring you some tea, Anton Ignatyich? With milk? Kerzhentsev. With milk, with milk... No, Masha, you shouldn’t have taken me out of the towel then, you did a stupid thing, my angel. Why the hell am I here? No, why the hell am I here? If I were dead, I would be at peace... Oh, if only for a minute of peace! They cheated on me, Masha! They cheated on me in the mean way that only women, slaves and... thoughts cheat on me! I was betrayed, Masha, and I died. Masha. Who cheated on you, Anton Ignatyich? Kerzhentsev (hitting himself on the forehead). Here. Thought! Thought, Masha, that’s who cheated on me. Have you ever seen a snake, a drunken snake, frantic with poison? And there are a lot of people in the room, and the doors are locked, and there are bars on the windows - and here she crawls between people, climbs up their legs, bites them on the lips, on the head, in the eyes!.. Masha! Masha. What, my dear, are you not feeling well? Kerzhentsev. Masha!.. (Sits down with his head in his hands.)
Masha comes up and carefully strokes his hair.
Masha! Masha. What, honey? Kerzhentsev. Masha!.. I was strong on the earth, and my feet stood firmly on it - and what now? Masha, I'm dead! I will never know the truth about myself. Who am I? Did I pretend to be crazy in order to kill - or was I really crazy, and that’s the only reason I killed? Masha!.. Masha (carefully and affectionately takes his hands away from his head, stroking his hair). Lie down on the bed, my dear... Oh, my dear, and how I feel sorry for you! Nothing, nothing, everything will pass, and your thoughts will become clearer, everything will pass... Lie down on the bed, rest, and I’ll sit around. Look, how much gray hair there is, my dear, Antoshenka... Kerzhentsev. Don't go. Masha. No, I have nowhere to go. Lie down. Kerzhentsev. Give me a handkerchief. Masha. Here, my dear, this is mine, it’s clean, it was just given out today. Wipe your tears, wipe them away. You need to lie down, lie down. Kerzhentsev (lowering his head, looking at the floor, goes to the bed, lies down, eyes closed). Masha! Masha. I'm here. I want to take a chair for myself. Here I am. Is it okay if I put my hand on your forehead? Kerzhentsev. Fine. Your hand is cold, I'm pleased. Masha. What about a light hand? Kerzhentsev. Easy. You're funny, Masha. Masha. My hand is light. Before, before the nurses, I was a nanny, but sometimes the baby wouldn’t sleep and would worry, but if I put my hand on it, he’d fall asleep with a smile. My hand is light and kind. Kerzhentsev. Tell me something. You know something, Masha: tell me what you know. Don’t think, I don’t want to sleep, I closed my eyes. Masha. What do I know, my dear? You all know this, but what can I know? I'm stupid. Well, listen. Since I was a girl, something happened to us when a calf got away from its mother. And how stupid she missed him! And by evening it was, and my father said to me: Masha, I’ll go to the right to look, and you go to the left, if there’s anyone in the Korchagin forest, call. So I went, my dear, and just as I approached the forest, lo and behold, a wolf came out of the bushes!
Kerzhentsev, opening his eyes, looks at Masha and laughs.
Why are you laughing? Kerzhentsev. You, Masha, tell me like a little kid about the wolf! Well, was the wolf very scary? Masha. Very scary. Just don’t laugh, I haven’t said everything yet... Kerzhentsev. Well, that's enough, Masha. Thank you. I need to write. (Rises.) Masha (pushing back the chair and straightening the bed). Well, write to yourself. Shall I bring you some tea now? Kerzhentsev. Yes please. Masha. With milk? Kerzhentsev. Yes, with milk. Don't forget chloralamid, Masha.
Doctor Ivan Petrovich enters, almost colliding with Masha.
Ivan Petrovich. Hello, Anton Ignatyich, good evening. Listen, Masha, why don’t you close the door? Masha. Didn't I close it? And I thought... Ivan Petrovich. “And I thought...” Look, Masha! I’m telling you for the last time... Kerzhentsev. I won't run away, colleague. Ivan Petrovich. That’s not the point, it’s order; we ourselves are in the position of subordinates here. Go, Masha. Well, how do we feel? Kerzhentsev. We feel bad, in accordance with our situation. Ivan Petrovich. That is? And you look fresh. Insomnia? Kerzhentsev. Yes. Yesterday Kornilov didn’t let me sleep the whole night... I think that’s his last name? Ivan Petrovich. What, howl? Yes, a severe seizure. It's a madhouse, my friend, there's nothing you can do about it, or a yellow house, as they say. And you look fresh. Kerzhentsev. And yours, Ivan Petrovich, is not very fresh. Ivan Petrovich. Got wrapped up. Eh, I don’t have time, otherwise I would play chess with you, you’re Lasker! Kerzhentsev. For a test? Ivan Petrovich. That is? No, whatever it is - for innocent relaxation, my friend. Why test you? You yourself know that you are healthy. If I had the power, I would not hesitate to send you to hard labor. (Laughs.) You need hard labor, my friend, hard labor, not chloralamid! Kerzhentsev. So. And why, colleague, when you say this, don’t you look me in the eyes? Ivan Petrovich. That is, as in the eyes? Where am I looking? In the eyes! Kerzhentsev. You are lying, Ivan Petrovich! Ivan Petrovich. Oh well! Kerzhentsev. Lie! Ivan Petrovich. Oh well! And you are an angry man, Anton Ignatyich, and you can start scolding right away. Not good, my friend. And why would I lie? Kerzhentsev. Out of habit. Ivan Petrovich. Here you go. Again! (Laughs.) Kerzhentsev (looks at him gloomily). And you, Ivan Petrovich, how many years would you imprison me for? Ivan Petrovich. That is, to hard labor? Yes, for about fifteen years, I think so. A lot of? Then it’s possible for ten, that’s enough for you. You yourself want hard labor, so grab a few dozen years. Kerzhentsev. I want it myself! Okay, I want to. So, to hard labor? A? (He chuckles gloomily.) So, let Mr. Kerzhentsev grow hair like a monkey, huh? But this means (tapping himself on the forehead)- to hell, right? Ivan Petrovich. That is? Well, you are a fierce fellow, Anton Ignatyich, very much so! Well, well, it's not worth it. And here’s why I’m coming to you, my dear: today you will have a guest, or rather, a guest... don’t worry! A? Not worth it!
Silence.
Kerzhentsev. I do not worry. Ivan Petrovich. It’s great that you don’t worry: by God, there is nothing in the world that would be worth breaking spears over! Today you, and tomorrow I, as they say...
Masha comes in and puts down a glass of tea.
Masha, is the lady there? Masha. There, in the corridor. Ivan Petrovich. Yeah! Go ahead. So... Kerzhentsev. Savelova? Ivan Petrovich. Yes, Savelova, Tatyana Nikolaevna. Don’t worry, my dear, you shouldn’t, although, of course, I wouldn’t let the lady in: it’s not according to the rules, and it’s really a difficult test, that is, in terms of nerves. Well, the lady obviously has connections, her superiors gave her permission, but what about us? - we are subordinate people. But if you don’t want to, then your will will be fulfilled: that is, we will send the lady back from where she came. So what about Anton Ignatyich? Can you stand this brand?
Silence.
Kerzhentsev. I can. Ask Tatyana Nikolaevna here. Ivan Petrovich. Very well. And one more thing, my dear: a minister will be present during the meeting... I understand how unpleasant this is, but order, as a rule, cannot be helped. So don’t be rowdy, Anton Ignatyich, don’t drive him away. I deliberately gave you such a dunce that he doesn’t understand anything! You can speak calmly. Kerzhentsev. Fine. Ask. Ivan Petrovich. Bon voyage, colleague, goodbye. Don't worry.
It turns out. Kerzhentsev is alone for some time. He quickly looks in the small mirror and straightens his hair; pulls himself up to appear calm. Tatyana Nikolaevna and the servant enter, the latter stands near the door, does not express anything, only occasionally scratches his nose in embarrassment and guilt. Tatyana Nikolaevna is in mourning, her hands are in gloves - apparently she is afraid that Kerzhentsev will extend his hand.
Tatyana Nikolaevna. Hello, Anton Ignatyich.
Kerzhentsev is silent.
(Louder.) Hello, Anton Ignatyich. Kerzhentsev. Hello. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Can I sit down? Kerzhentsev. Yes. Why did you come? Tatyana Nikolaevna. I'll tell you now. How are you feeling? Kerzhentsev. Fine. Why did you come? I didn't invite you and I didn't want to see you. If you, with mourning and all your... sad appearance, want to awaken conscience or repentance in me, then it was a wasted effort, Tatyana Nikolaevna. No matter how precious your opinion is about the action I committed, I only value my opinion. I respect only myself, Tatyana Nikolaevna, - in this respect I have not changed. Tatyana Nikolaevna. No, that's not what I'm after... Anton Ignatyich! You must forgive me, I came to ask for your forgiveness. Kerzhentsev (surprised). What? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Forgive me... He listens to us, and I feel embarrassed to speak... Now my life is over, Anton Ignatich, Alexey took it to his grave, but I cannot and should not remain silent about what I understood... He listens to us . Kerzhentsev. He doesn't understand anything. Speak. Tatyana Nikolaevna. I realized that I was the only one to blame for everything - without intent, of course, to blame, like a woman, but only I alone. I somehow forgot, it just didn’t occur to me that you could still love me, and I, with my friendship... it’s true, I loved being with you... But it was I who made you sick. Excuse me. Kerzhentsev. Before illness? Do you think I was sick? Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yes. When that day I saw you so... scary, so... not a person, I think I immediately realized that you yourself were only a victim of something. And... this doesn’t seem like the truth, but it seems that even at that moment when you raised your hand to kill... my Alexei, I already forgave you. Forgive me too. (Cries quietly, lifts the veil and wipes her tears under the veil.) Sorry, Anton Ignatyich. Kerzhentsev (walks silently around the room, stops). Tatyana Nikolaevna, listen! I wasn't crazy. It's horrible!Tatyana Nikolaevna is silent.
Probably what I did was worse than if I had simply, like others, killed Alexei... Konstantinovich, but I was not crazy. Tatyana Nikolaevna, listen! I wanted to overcome something, I wanted to rise to some peak of will and free thought... if only this was true. Horrible! I do not know anything. They cheated on me, you know? My thought, which was my only friend, lover, protection from life; my thought, in which I alone believed, as others believe in God - it, my thought, became my enemy, my murderer! Look at this head - there is incredible horror in it! (Walks.) Tatyana Nikolaevna (looks at him carefully and with fear). I do not understand. What are you saying? Kerzhentsev. With all the strength of my mind, thinking like... a steam hammer, I now cannot decide whether I was crazy or sane. The line is lost. Oh, vile thought - it can prove both, but what is there in the world besides my thought? Maybe from the outside it’s even clear that I’m not crazy, but I’ll never know. Never! Who should I trust? Some lie to me, others know nothing, and others I seem to drive crazy. Who will tell me? Who's to say? (Sits down and clasps his head with both hands.) Tatyana Nikolaevna. No, you were crazy. Kerzhentsev (getting up). Tatyana Nikolaevna! Tatyana Nikolaevna. No, you were crazy. I wouldn't come to you if you were healthy. You're crazy. I saw how you killed, how you raised your hand... you're crazy! Kerzhentsev. No! It was... frenzy. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Why then did you beat again and again? He was already lying down, he was already... dead, and you kept beating and beating! And you had such eyes! Kerzhentsev. This is not true: I only hit once! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Yeah! You forgot! No, more than once, you hit a lot, you were like a beast, you are crazy! Kerzhentsev. Yes, I forgot. How could I forget? Tatyana Nikolaevna, listen, it was a frenzy, because this happens! But the first blow... Tatyana Nikolaevna (shouting). No! Move away! You still have those eyes... Move away!
The attendant stirs and takes a step forward.
Kerzhentsev. I walked away. It is not true. My eyes are like this because I have insomnia, because I suffer unbearably. But I beg you, I once loved you, and you are a man, you came to forgive me... Tatyana Nikolaevna. Don't come near! Kerzhentsev. No, no, I'm not coming. Listen... listen! No, I'm not coming. Tell me, tell me... you are a man, you are a noble man, and... I'll believe you. Tell! Use your whole mind and tell me calmly, I will believe you, tell me I’m not crazy. Tatyana Nikolaevna. Stay there! Kerzhentsev. I'm here. I just want to kneel. Have mercy on me, tell me! Think, Tanya, how terribly, how incredibly lonely I am! Don't forgive me, don't, I'm not worth it, but tell the truth. You're the only one who knows me, they don't know me. Do you want, I will give you an oath that if you tell me, I will kill myself, I will avenge Alexei myself, I will go to him... Tatyana Nikolaevna. To him? You?! No, you are crazy. Yes Yes. I am afraid of you! Kerzhentsev. Tanya! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Get up! Kerzhentsev. Okay, I'm up. You see how obedient I am. Are crazy people ever so obedient? Ask him! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Tell me "you". Kerzhentsev. Fine. Yes, of course, I have no right, I have forgotten myself, and I understand that you hate me now, you hate me because I am healthy, but in the name of the truth - tell me! Tatyana Nikolaevna. No. Kerzhentsev. In the name... of the murdered one! Tatyana Nikolaevna. No no! I'm leaving. Farewell! Let people judge you, let God judge you, but I... forgive you! It was I who drove you crazy, and I'm leaving. Excuse me. Kerzhentsev. Wait! Don't leave! You can't leave like that! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Don't touch me with your hand! You hear! Kerzhentsev. No, no, I accidentally walked away. Let's be serious, Tatyana Nikolaevna, let's be just like serious people. Sit down... or don't you want to? Well, okay, I'll stand too. So here's the thing: you see, I'm lonely. I am terribly lonely, like no one in the world. Honestly! You see, night comes, and a frenzied horror seizes me. Yes, yes, loneliness!.. Great and formidable loneliness, when there is nothing around, a gaping emptiness, do you understand? Don't leave! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Farewell! Kerzhentsev. Just one word, I am now. Just one word! My loneliness!.. No, I won’t talk about loneliness anymore! Tell me that you understand, tell me... but you don’t dare leave like that! Tatyana Nikolaevna. Farewell.
Comes out quickly. Kerzhentsev rushes after her, but the attendant blocks his way. The next minute, with his usual dexterity, he slips out himself and closes the door in front of Kerzhentsev.
Kerzhentsev (frantically bangs his fists, screams). Open up! I'll break down the door! Tatyana Nikolaevna! Open up! (He moves away from the door and silently grabs his head, clutches his hair with his hands. He stands there.)
L. Andreev about “crime and punishment” in the story “Thought”; expression of the narrative, the role of images and symbols.I
The spiritual picture of the early 20th century is distinguished by contradictory views, a sense of catastrophism, the crisis of existence. Artists of the early 20th century lived and worked in the times preceding the Russian-Japanese War and the revolution of 1905, the First World War and two revolutions of 1917, when old concepts and values, centuries-old foundations collapsed, the culture of the nobility collapsed, the nervous life of cities grew - the city enslaved its mechanicalness.
At the same time, many events took place in the field of science (the theory of relativity, X-rays). Discoveries of this kind led to the feeling that the world was fragmenting and a crisis of religious consciousness was approaching.
In February 1902, Leonid Andreev writes a letter to Gorky, in which he says that a lot has changed in life: “...People don’t know what will happen tomorrow, they are waiting for everything - and everything is possible. The measure of things has been lost, Anarchy is in the air. The average person jumped off the shelf, was surprised, confused and sincerely forgot what was possible and what was not.”
The measure of things has been lost - this is the main feeling of a person at the beginning of the century. A new concept, a new moral system of personality was required. The criteria of good and evil were blurred. In search of an answer to these questions, the Russian intelligentsia turned to two great thinkers of the 19th century - Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
But it was F.M. Dostoevsky who turned out to be close to the “sick society of the early 20th century; it was to him that the artists of the turn of the century turned in search of answers to the questions of what happens to a person, what does he deserve: punishment or justification?
The theme of “crime and punishment,” deeply studied by F.M. Dostoevsky, again attracted attention at the turn of the century.
The traditions of Dostoevsky in the work of L. Andreev are often talked about when referring to the early, so-called realistic stories of the writer (for example, the attention to the “little man” common to artists is emphasized). In many ways, Andreev also inherits Dostoevsky’s methods of psychological analysis.
The “Silver Age” of Russian literature is not so much a phenomenon corresponding to a certain historical period that gave Russia and the world a galaxy of brilliant literary talents, but rather a new type of artistic thinking, born of a complex, contradictory era that included two wars and three revolutions. This type of thinking was formed in the philosophical, aesthetic atmosphere of previous decades, and its characteristic features were a decrease in social determination, deep philosophical and intellectual validity, and the non-mass nature of the aesthetic concepts it created.
Russian classical literature has always responded to the “damned questions” of our time, paid attention to ideas that were “floating in the air,” and sought to reveal the secrets of a person’s inner world, to express spiritual movements as accurately and vividly as a person cannot do in everyday life.
The place of Dostoevsky and Andreev in Russian classics is confirmed by the priority in the writers’ posing of the most pressing and daring philosophical and psychological questions.
In L. Andreev's story "Thought" and F. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" moral problems are posed: crime - sin and punishment - retribution, the problem of guilt and moral judgment, the problem of good and evil, norms and madness, faith and unbelief.
The story of Raskolnikov and the story of Kerzhentsev can be called the story of an intellect lost in the darkness of unbelief. Dostoevsky saw a yawning abyss of ideas that deny God, when all sacred things are rejected, and evil is openly glorified.
“Thought” is one of Andreev’s most significant and most pessimistic works on the topic of the unreliability of thought, reason as a tool for a person to achieve his goals, about the possibility of “betrayal” and “rebellion” of thought against its owner.
...L. Andreev’s “Thought” is something pretentious, incomprehensible and, apparently, unnecessary, but talentedly performed. There is no simplicity in Andreev, and his talent resembles the singing of an artificial nightingale (A, P. Chekhov. From a letter to M. Gorky, 1902).
For the first time - in the magazine "God's World", 1902, No. 7, with dedication to the writer's wife Alexandra Mikhailovna Andreeva.
On April 10, 1902, Andreev reported to M. Gorky from Moscow to Crimea: “I have finished “Thought”; She is currently being rewritten and will be with you in a week. Be a friend, read it carefully and if anything is wrong, write. Is the ending possible: “The jury has gone to deliberate?” The story does not satisfy the artistic requirements, but this is not so important to me: I am afraid whether it is consistent with the idea. I think that I am not giving ground for the Rozanovs and Merezhkovskys; You can’t speak directly about God, but what exists is quite negative” (LN, vol. 72, p. 143). Further in the letter, Andreev asked M. Gorky, after reading “Thoughts,” to send the manuscript to A. I. Bogdanovich in the magazine “God’s World.” M. Gorky approved the story. On April 18-20, 1902, he replied to the author: “The story is good<...>Let the tradesman be afraid to live, fetter his vile debauchery with the iron hoops of despair, pour terror into his empty soul! If he endures all this, he will recover, but if he doesn’t endure it, he will die, disappear, hurray!” (ibid., vol. 72, p. 146). Andreev accepted M. Gorky’s advice to remove the last phrase from the story: “The jurors retired to the deliberation room” and end “Thought” with the word “Nothing.” The Courier informed readers about the publication of the book “God’s World” with Andreev’s story on June 30, 1902, calling Andreev’s work a psychological study, and defining the idea of the story with the words: “The bankruptcy of human thought.” Andreev himself in October 1914. called “Thought” a study “on forensic medicine” (see “Birzhevye Vedomosti”, 1915, No. 14779, morning issue of April 12). In “Thoughts” Andreev seeks to rely on the artistic experience of F. M. Dostoevsky. Doctor Kerzhentsev, who commits murder, was to a certain extent conceived by Andreev as a parallel to Raskolnikov, although the problem of “crime and punishment” itself was solved by Andreev and F. M. Dostoevsky in different ways (see: Ermakova M.Ya. Novels of F. M. Dostoevsky and creative searches in Russian literature of the 20th century. - Gorky, 1973, pp. 224-243). In the image of Doctor Kerzhentsev, Andreev debunks the Nietzschean “superman” who opposed himself to people. To become a "superman"
F. Nietzsche, the hero of the story, stands on the other side of “good and evil”, steps over moral categories, rejecting the norms of universal morality. But this, as Andreev convinces the reader, means Kerzhentsev’s intellectual death, or his madness.
For Andreev, his “Thought” was through and through a journalistic work, in which the plot has a secondary, secondary role. Equally secondary for Andreev is the solution to the question - is the killer insane, or is he just posing as crazy in order to avoid punishment. “By the way: I don’t understand a single word about psychiatry,” Andreev wrote on August 30-31, 1902 to A.A. Izmailov, “and I haven’t read anything for Thought” (RL, 1962, No. 3, p. 198). However, the image of Dr. Kerzhentsev confessing his crime, so vividly depicted by Andreev, obscured the philosophical issues of the story. According to the critic Ch. Vetrinsky, the “heavy psychiatric apparatus” “overshadowed the idea” (“Samara newspaper”, 1902, No. 248, November 21).
A. A. Izmailov classified “Thought” in the category of “pathological stories,” calling it the most powerful after “The Red Flower” by Vs. Garshin and “The Black Monk” by A.P. Chekhov (“Birzhevye Vedomosti”, 1902, No. 186, July 11).
Andreev explained the critics' dissatisfaction with "Thought" by the story's artistic shortcomings. In July - August 1902, he confessed in a letter
V. S. Mirolyubov about “Thoughts”: “I don’t like it due to some of its dryness and ornateness. There is no great simplicity” (LA, p. 95). After one of his conversations with M. Gorky, Andreev said: “...When I write something that particularly excites me, it’s as if the bark falls off my soul, I see myself more clearly and I see that I am more talented than what I wrote. Here is “Thought”. I expected it to amaze you, but now I see for myself that this is, in essence, a polemical work, and it has not yet hit the target” (Gorky M. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 16, p. 337).
III
In 1913, Andreev completed work on the tragedy “Thought” (“Doctor Kerzhentsev”), in which he used the plot of the story “Thought”.
His hero, Doctor Kerzhentsev, using the weapon of logic (and without resorting to the idea of God at all) destroyed “fear and trembling” in himself and even subjugated the monster from the abyss, proclaiming Karamazov’s “everything is permitted.” But Kerzhentsev overestimated the power of his weapon, and his carefully thought-out and brilliantly executed crime (the murder of a friend, the husband of the woman who rejected him) ended in complete failure for him; the simulation of madness, played out seemingly flawlessly, itself played a terrible joke on Kerzhentsev’s consciousness. The thought, obedient just yesterday, suddenly betrayed him, turning into a nightmare guess: “He thought that he was pretending, but he is really crazy. And now he’s crazy.” Kerzhentsev’s powerful will lost its only reliable support - thought, the dark principle took over, and it was this, and not the fear of retribution, not remorse, that broke through the thin door separating reason from the terrible abyss of the unconscious. Superiority over the “little people”, gripped by the “eternal fear of life and death,” turned out to be imaginary.
So the first of Andreev’s candidates for superman turns out to be a victim of the abyss discovered by the writer. “...I am thrown into the emptiness of infinite space,” writes Kerzhentsev. “...Ominous loneliness, when I am only an insignificant particle of myself, when within myself I am surrounded and strangled by gloomily silent, mysterious enemies.”
In Andreev’s artistic world, a person is initially in a state of “terrible freedom”; he lives in a time when there are “so many gods, but there is no one eternal god.” At the same time, the worship of a “mental idol” is of particular interest to the writer.
Existential man, like Dostoevsky’s heroes, is in a state of overcoming the “walls” that stand in his way to freedom. Both writers are interested in those people who “allowed themselves to doubt the legitimacy of the court of nature and ethics, the legitimacy of the court in general and expect that “The weightless” is about to become heavier than the weighty, contrary to self-evidence and the judgments of reason based on self-evidence, which has thrown not only the “laws of nature” into its scales, but also the laws of morality.”
Irrationality, perhaps, can be called one of the main features of L. Andreev’s heroes. In his work, a person becomes a completely unpredictable, fickle creature, ready at every moment for turning points and spiritual upheavals. Looking at him, sometimes I want to say in the words of Mitya Karamazov: “The man is too broad, I would narrow it down.”
The special attention of Dostoevsky and Andreev to the deformed human psyche is reflected in their work both on the boundaries of mind and madness, and of being and otherness.
In Dostoevsky's novel and Andreev's story, the crime is committed from certain moral and psychological positions. Raskolnikov is literally burned with anxiety about the humiliated and insulted; the fate of the disadvantaged turned him to an individualistic butch, to a Napoleonic solution to a social problem. Kerzhentsev is a classic example of a Nietzschean superman without the slightest glimmer of compassion. Ruthless contempt for the weak is the only reason for bloody violence against a defenseless person.
Kerzhentsev continues those traditions of Raskolnikov that were absolutized by the German philosopher Nietzsche. According to Raskolnikov’s theory, “people, according to the law of nature, are generally divided into two categories: into the lowest (ordinary), that is, so to speak, into material that serves solely for the generation of their own kind, and into people proper, that is, those who have the gift or talent to speak in a new word in our environment.”
Contempt for the “ordinary” makes Raskolnikov the predecessor of Kerzhentsev. He admits frankly, expressing his anti-human essence: “I would not have killed Alexei even if the criticism were right and he really was such a major literary talent.” Feeling “free and master over others,” he controls their lives.
One hypostasis of Raskolnikov - namely the starting individualistic position, which does not exhaust the complex content of his personality, finds its further development first in the philosophy of Nietzsche, and then in the reasoning and actions of Andreev's hero.
Kerzhentsev is proud that, due to his exclusivity, he is alone and deprived of internal connections with people. He likes that not a single curious glance penetrates into the depths of his soul with “dark gaps and abysses, at the edge of which one feels dizzy.” He admits that he loves only himself, “the strength of his muscles, the power of his thoughts, clear and precise.” He respected himself as a strong man who never cried, was not afraid, and loved life for its “cruelty, ferocious vindictiveness and satanically cheerful play with people and events.”
Kerzhentsev and Raskolnikov, although their individualistic claims are somewhat similar, are still very different from each other. Raskolnikov is occupied by the thought of shedding human blood according to conscience, that is, in accordance with universally binding morality. In an ideological conversation with Sonya, he still wrestles with the question of the existence of God. Kerzhentsev consciously denies moral norms rooted in the recognition of an absolute origin. Addressing the experts, he says: “You will say that you cannot steal, kill and deceive, because this is immoral and a crime, but I will prove to you that you can kill and rob and that this is very moral. And you will think and speak, and I will think and speak, and we will all be right, and none of us will be right. Where is the judge who can judge us and find the truth? There is no criterion of truth, everything is relative and therefore everything is allowed.
The problem of the dialectical relationship between consciousness, subconscious and superconsciousness - the position from which Andreev portrayed the internal drama of the individualist hero, was not considered by researchers.
Like Raskolnikov, Kerzhentsev is obsessed with the thought of his exclusivity, of permissiveness. As a result of Savelov's murder, the idea of the relativity of good and evil perishes. Madness is the penalty for violating the universal moral law. It is this conclusion that follows from the objective meaning of the story. Mental illness is associated with a loss of faith in the power and accuracy of thought as the only saving reality. It turned out that Andreev’s hero found in himself areas unknown and incomprehensible to him. It turned out that in addition to rational thinking, a person also has unconscious forces that interact with thought, determining its character and course.
Once clear and clear, now, after the crime, the thought became “eternally lying, changeable, illusory” because it ceased to serve his individualistic spirit. He felt within himself some mysterious spheres unknown to him, which turned out to be beyond the control of his individualistic consciousness. “And they cheated on me. It’s mean, insidious, how women, slaves and thoughts cheat. My castle has become my prison. Enemies attacked me in my castle. Where is the salvation? But there is no salvation, because “I am I and am the only enemy of my Self.”
In a roll call with Dostoevsky, Andreev leads Kerzhentsev through a test of faith. Masha, a nurse in a hospital, quiet and selfless, a simplified version of Sonya Marmeladova, interested Kerzhentsev with her ecstatic faith. True, he considered her a “limited, stupid creature,” at the same time possessing a secret inaccessible to him: “She knows something. Yes, she knows, but she can’t or won’t say.” But unlike Raskolnikov, he is not able to believe and experience the process of rebirth: “No, Masha, you will not answer me. And you don't know anything. In one of the dark rooms of your simple house lives someone who is very useful to you, but my room is empty. He died long ago, the one who lived there, and on his grave I erected a magnificent monument. He died, Masha, he died - and will not rise again.” He buried God like Nietzsche.
Kerzhentsev is far from repentance, from remorse. Nevertheless, the punishment followed. Kerzhentsev, like Raskolnikov, reacted to the shedding of human blood with illness. One was delirious, the other lost self-control and power over thought. Within himself, Kerzhentsev felt a struggle between opposing forces. The confusion of internal disunity is expressed by him in these words: “A single thought was divided into a thousand thoughts, and each of them was strong, and all of them were hostile. They were spinning in a wild dance." In himself, he felt the struggle of hostile principles and lost the unity of his personality.
The inconsistency of Raskolnikov's theory is proven by its incompatibility with the “nature” of man, the protest of moral feeling. Andreev's story depicts the process of spiritual disintegration of a criminal who is dramatically experiencing a decline in his intellectual potential.
Andreev came close to Dostoevsky, united with him by the moral pathos of his work: he showed that violation of an objectively existing moral law is accompanied by punishment, a protest from the inner spiritual “I” of a person.
Complete internal isolation as a result of a crime that severed the last ties with humanity makes Kerzhentsev mentally ill. But he himself is far from morally judging himself and is still full of individualistic claims. “For me there is no judge, no law, no prohibited. “Everything is possible,” he says, and strives to prove this when he invents an explosive substance “stronger than dynamite, stronger than nitroglycerin, stronger than the very thought of it.” He needs this explosive to blow up the “cursed land, which has so many gods and no one eternal god.” And yet the punishment triumphs over the sinister hopes of the criminal. Human nature itself protests against such nihilistic abuse of itself. Everything ends in complete moral devastation. In his defense at the trial, Kerzhentsev did not say a word: “With dull, as if sightless eyes, he looked around the ship and looked at the audience. And those on whom this heavy, unseeing gaze fell experienced a strange and painful feeling: as if indifferent and silent death itself was looking at them from the empty orbits of the skull.” Dostoevsky leads his individualist hero to moral rebirth through rapprochement with representatives of the people, through internal conflict, through love for Sonya.
List of used literature
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ANDREEV L.N. Unpublished letters. Introductory article, publication and commentary by V.I. Vezzubov // Scientific notes of the Tartu University. Issue 119. Works on Russian and Slavic philology. V. -Tartu. 1962.
ANDREEV L.N. Unpublished letter from Leonid Andreev // Issues of literature. 1990. N4.
ANDREEV L.N. Correspondence between L. Andreev and I. Bunin // Questions of literature. 1969. N7.
ANDREEV L.N. Collected works in 17 volumes, -Pg.: Book publishing. writers in Moscow. 1915-1917
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DOSTOEVSKY F.M. Collection Op. in 15 volumes, -L.: Science. 1991
Dostoevsky F. Crime and Punishment. – M.: AST: Olympus, 1996.
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Yasensky S. Yu. The art of psychological analysis in creativity
Thought is energy, a force that has no boundaries.
Most people on our blue globe are capable of thinking or once were able to. They were able to figure out exactly what thought is only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the vanguard of scientists began to storm the human brain, but writers are not scientists, they interpret the question completely differently, and the result may be a masterpiece. The “Silver Age” began to approach, and changes washed over the coastal islands like a tsunami. In 1914, the story “Thought” was published.
Andreev was able to write a story about psychology and the human psyche, without any education in this field. “Thought” - that same story - was unique in its kind at that time. Some people saw it as a treatise on the human psyche, others as a philosophical novel in the style of Dostoevsky, which Andreev admired, but there are also those who argued that “thought” is nothing more than some kind of scientific work and was copied from real life. prototype. Andreev, in turn, said that he had nothing to do with the field of psychology.
The story begins with the lines:
“On December 11, 1900, doctor of medicine Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev committed murder. “Both the entire set of data in which the crime was committed, and some of the circumstances preceding it, gave reason to suspect Kerzhantsev of abnormal mental abilities.”
Next, we watch how Kerzhantsev describes in his diary the purpose of the murder, why he did it and, most importantly, what thought overwhelmed him and is still spinning in his head. We read a complete analysis of his actions over a few days, we observe that Anton Ignatievich intended to kill his best friend, since he married a girl whom he himself wanted to be married to, but she refused him. Surprisingly, Kerzhantsev himself was loved; he found the same one after an unsuccessful relationship with the wife of Alexei, the main character’s best friend.
An incomprehensible motive, strange thoughts - all this makes Kerzhantsev remember his childhood. His father did not love him and did not believe in his child, so Anton Ignatievich proved throughout his life that he was capable of much. And he proved it - by becoming a respected and wealthy doctor.
The thought of killing Alexei consumed him more and more; Kerzhantsev began to feign seizures, so as not to end up in hard labor if something happened. He learned that his inheritance was completely suitable: his father was an alcoholic, and his only sister Anna suffered from epilepsy. And in the end, in complete surprise to himself, he commits crimes when he convinces everyone of his poor condition (surprise because he intended to kill in a completely different way than he did). Kerzhantsev kills Alexei and disappears from the scene of his crime.
He makes his notes for experts who must decide whether the criminal is healthy. Experts are the reader, and we have this mission. Determining the adequacy of the hero. He doubts his goals, but is sure that he is not crazy. Although he asks a very strange question, which is more for himself than for others: “Did I pretend to be crazy in order to kill, or did I kill because I was crazy?”
And he concludes that the most amazing and incomprehensible thing in the world is human thought. At the end of the story, no verdict is given about the future fate of Anton Ignatievich, as he predicted - opinion is divided over its adequacy, and in the end we receive only resources for reasoning and debate over this difficult issue.
Thought is an engine, it turns the piston in the heads of many, and Andreev made one of his attempts to understand the operation of this engine in his brilliant and rather difficult story - “Thought”. Was he successful in this attempt? Only those who read the work will answer, even more than a hundred years after it was written.
On December 11, 1900, doctor of medicine Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev committed murder. Both the entire set of data in which the crime was committed, and some of the circumstances preceding it, gave reason to suspect Kerzhentsev of abnormal mental abilities.
Placed on probation at the Elisabeth Psychiatric Hospital, Kerzhentsev was subjected to the strict and careful supervision of several experienced psychiatrists, among whom was Professor Drzhembitsky, who had recently died. Here are the written explanations that were given about what happened by Dr. Kerzhentsev himself a month after the start of the test; together with other materials obtained by the investigation, they formed the basis of the forensic examination.
Sheet one
Until now, Messrs. experts, I hid the truth, but now circumstances force me to reveal it. And, having recognized her, you will understand that the matter is not at all as simple as it may seem to laymen: either a feverish shirt or shackles. There is a third thing here - not shackles or a shirt, but, perhaps, more terrible than both of them combined.
Alexei Konstantinovich Savelov, who I killed, was my friend at the gymnasium and university, although we differed in our specialties: I, as you know, are a doctor, and he graduated from the Faculty of Law. It cannot be said that I did not love the deceased; I always liked him, and I never had closer friends than him. But despite all his attractive qualities, he did not belong to those people who could inspire me with respect. The amazing softness and pliability of his nature, the strange inconstancy in the field of thought and feeling, the sharp extremes and groundlessness of his constantly changing judgments forced me to look at him as at a child or a woman. People close to him, who often suffered from his antics and at the same time, due to the illogicality of human nature, loved him very much, tried to find an excuse for his shortcomings and their feelings and called him “an artist.” And indeed, it turned out as if this insignificant word completely justified him and that what would be bad for any normal person made him indifferent and even good. Such was the power of the invented word that even I at one time succumbed to the general mood and willingly excused Alexey for his minor shortcomings. Small ones - because he was incapable of large ones, as of anything large. This is sufficiently evidenced by his literary works, in which everything is petty and insignificant, no matter what short-sighted criticism says, greedy for the discovery of new talents. His works were beautiful and insignificant, and he himself was beautiful and insignificant.
When Alexey died, he was thirty-one years old, a little over one year younger than me.
Alexey was married. If you saw his wife, now, after his death, when she is in mourning, you cannot get an idea of how beautiful she once was: she has become so much, much worse. The cheeks are gray, and the skin on the face is so flabby, old, old, like a worn glove. And wrinkles. These are wrinkles now, but another year will pass - and these will be deep furrows and ditches: after all, she loved him so much! And her eyes no longer sparkle or laugh, but before they always laughed, even at the time when they needed to cry. I saw her for just one minute, having accidentally bumped into her at the investigator’s, and I was struck by the change. She couldn't even look at me angrily. So pathetic!
Only three people - Alexey, me and Tatyana Nikolaevna - knew that five years ago, two years before Alexey’s marriage, I proposed to Tatyana Nikolaevna and it was rejected. Of course, this is only assumed that there are three, and, probably, Tatyana Nikolaevna has a dozen more girlfriends and friends who are intimately aware of how Dr. Kerzhentsev once dreamed of marriage and received a humiliating refusal. I don’t know if she remembers that she laughed then; She probably doesn’t remember - she had to laugh so often. And then remind her: on the fifth of September she laughed. If she refuses - and she will refuse - then remind her how it was. I, this strong man who never cried, who was never afraid of anything - I stood in front of her and trembled. I trembled and saw her biting her lips, and I had already reached out to hug her when she looked up and there was laughter in them. My hand remained in the air, she laughed and laughed for a long time. As much as she wanted. But then she did apologize.
“Excuse me, please,” she said, and her eyes laughed.
And I smiled too, and if I could forgive her for her laughter, I will never forgive that smile of mine. It was the fifth of September, at six o'clock in the evening, St. Petersburg time. In St. Petersburg, I add, because we were then on the station platform, and now I clearly see the large white dial and the position of the black hands: up and down. Alexey Konstantinovich was also killed at exactly six o'clock. The coincidence is strange, but can reveal a lot to a savvy person.
One of the reasons for putting me here was the lack of motive for a crime. Now do you see that there was a motive? Of course, it wasn't jealousy. The latter presupposes in a person an ardent temperament and weakness of mental abilities, that is, something directly opposite to me, a cold and rational person. Revenge? Yes, rather revenge, if the old word is so necessary to define a new and unfamiliar feeling. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna once again made me make a mistake, and this always made me angry. Knowing Alexey well, I was sure that in a marriage with him Tatyana Nikolaevna would be very unhappy and would regret me, and that’s why I insisted that Alexey, then still just in love, marry her. Just a month before his tragic death, he told me:
“I owe my happiness to you.” Really, Tanya?
- Yes, brother, you made a mistake!
This inappropriate and tactless joke shortened his life by a whole week: I initially decided to kill him on the eighteenth of December.
Yes, their marriage turned out to be happy, and it was she who was happy. He did not love Tatyana Nikolaevna very much, and in general he was not capable of deep love. He had his own favorite thing - literature, which took his interests beyond the bedroom. But she loved only him and lived only for him. Then, he was an unhealthy person: frequent headaches, insomnia, and this, of course, tormented him. And for her, even caring for him, sick, and fulfilling his whims was happiness. After all, when a woman falls in love, she becomes insane.
And day after day I saw her smiling face, her happy face, young, beautiful, carefree. And I thought: I arranged this. He wanted to give her a dissolute husband and deprive her of himself, but instead he gave her a husband whom she loved, and he himself remained with her. You will understand this strangeness: she is smarter than her husband and loved to talk with me, and after talking, she went to bed with him and was happy.
I don’t remember when the thought of killing Alexei first came to me. Somehow she appeared unnoticed, but from the first minute she became so old, as if I had been born with her. I know that I wanted to make Tatyana Nikolaevna unhappy and that at first I came up with many other plans that would be less disastrous for Alexei - I have always been an enemy of unnecessary cruelty. Using my influence on Alexei, I thought of making him fall in love with another woman or making him a drunkard (he had a tendency towards this), but all these methods were not suitable. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna would manage to remain happy, even giving him to another woman, listening to his drunken chatter or accepting his drunken caresses. She needed this man to live, and she needed to serve him in one way or another. There are such slave natures. And, like slaves, they cannot understand and appreciate the strength of others, not the strength of their master. There were smart, good and talented women in the world, but the world has never seen and will never see a fair woman.