“Probably they tell you I am a thief, a monster, the terror of the neighbourhood.”
“But if this reputation precedes me, why should you seek my acquaintance. I have torn your books, as no doubt our friend there has informed you.”
“There he is to the point,” cried Leonti. “I am glad he began the subject himself. He is a good sort at the bottom. If one is ill, he waits on one like a nurse, runs to the chemist, and takes any amount of trouble. But the rascal wanders round and gives no one any peace.”
“For that matter,” said Raisky, “everybody does not abuse you. Tiet Nikonich Vatutin, for instance, goes out of his way to speak well of you.”
“Is it possible! The sugar marquis! I left him some souvenirs of my presence. More than once I have waked him in the night by opening his bedroom window. He is always fussing about his health, but in all the forty years since he came here no one remembers him to have been ill. I shall never return the money he lent me. What more provocation would he have? And yet he praises me.”
“So that is your department of art,” said Raisky gaily.
“What kind of an artist are you? It is your turn to tell me.”
“I love and adore beauty. I love art, draw, and make music, and just now I am trying to write a great work, a novel.”
“Yes, yes, I see. You are an artist of the kind we all are.”
“With us Russians everybody is an artist. They use the chisel, paint, strum, write poetry, as you and your like do. Others drive in the mornings to the courts or the government offices, others sit before their stalls playing draughts, and still others stick on their estates--Art is everywhere.”
“Do you feel no desire to enter any of these categories.”
“I have tried, but don’t know how to. What brought you here?”
“I don’t know myself. It is all the same to me where I go. I had a letter summoning me here from my Aunt, and I came.”
Mark busied himself in his thoughts, and took no further interest in Raisky. Raisky on the other hand examined the extraordinary person before him attentively, studied the expression of his face, followed his movements, and tried to grasp the outline of a strong character. “Thank God,” he said to himself, “that I am not the only idle, aimless person here. In this man there is something similar; he wanders about, reconciles himself to his fate, and does nothing. I at least draw and try to write my novel, while he does nothing. Is he the victim of secret discord like myself? Is he always struggling between two fires? Imagination striving upward to the ideal lures him on on the one hand--man, nature and life in all its manifestations; on the other he is attracted by a cold, destructive analysis which allows nothing to live, and will forget nothing, an analysis that leads to eternal discontent and blighting cold. Is that his secret?” He glanced at Mark, who was already drowsing.