Among us he was considered an aristocrat, or at least I called him one: he was excellently dressed, drove around in his own carriage, did not show off in the least, was always a wonderful comrade, was always remarkably cheerful and sometimes even very witty, though none too long on intelligence, despite the fact that he was always first in the class; while I was never first in anything.
All our classmates liked him, except for me alone.
He approached me several times during those several years; but each time I sullenly and irritably turned my back on him.
Now I had not seen him for about a year; he was at the university.
When, towards nine o'clock, I entered his room (with great ceremony: I was announced), he met me at first with surprise, even quite ungraciously, but he cheered up at once and, looking at me, suddenly burst into laughter.
"But why did you take it into your head to call on me, Terentyev?" he cried with his usual sweet casualness, sometimes bold but never offensive, which I so loved in him and for which I so hated him.
"But what's wrong," he cried in fear, "you're quite ill!"
Coughing tormented me again, I fell into a chair and was barely able to catch my breath.
"Don't worry, I have consumption," I said. "I've come to you with a request."
He sat down in surprise, and I at once told him the doctor's whole story and explained that he himself, having great influence on his uncle, might be able to do something.
"I will, I certainly will, I'll assault my uncle tomorrow; and I'm even glad, and you told it all so well . . . But still, Terentyev, why did you take it into your head to turn to me?"
"So much of it depends on your uncle, and besides, Bakhmutov, you and I were always enemies, and since you are a noble man, I thought you would not refuse an enemy," I added with irony.
"Like Napoleon turning to England!"16 he cried, bursting into laughter.
"I'll do it, I'll do it!
I'll even go right now if I can!" he hastened to add, seeing that I was getting up seriously and sternly from my chair.
And in fact the matter, quite unexpectedly, got settled for us in the best possible way.
A month and a half later our medical man obtained a new post, in another province, was given travel money and even financial assistance.
I suspect that Bakhmutov, who began calling on them frequently (while I, because of that, purposely stopped seeing them and received the doctor, who kept running by, almost drily)—Bakhmutov, I suspect, even persuaded the doctor to accept a loan from him.
I saw Bakhmutov a couple of times during those six weeks, we met for a third time when we saw the doctor off.
Bakhmutov arranged a farewell party at his own house, in the form of a dinner with champagne, at which the doctor's wife was also present; she left very soon, however, to go to the baby.
It was at the beginning of May, the evening was bright, the enormous ball of the sun was sinking into the bay.
Bakhmutov saw me home; we crossed the Nikolaevsky Bridge; we were both a bit drunk.
Bakhmutov spoke of his delight that the matter had ended so well, thanked me for something, explained how pleasant it was for him now, after this good deed, insisted that all the credit was mine, and that what many now taught and preached about the meaninglessness of individual good deeds was wrong.
I also wanted terribly to talk.
"Whoever infringes upon individual 'charity,'" I began, "infringes upon man's nature and scorns his personal dignity.
But the organizing of 'social charity' and the question of personal freedom are two different questions and are not mutually exclusive.
Individual goodness will always abide, because it is a personal need, a living need for the direct influence of one person on another.
In Moscow there lived an old man, a 'general,' that is, an actual state councillor, with a German name; all his life he dragged himself around to jails and prisoners; every group of exiles to Siberia knew beforehand that 'the little old general' would visit them on Sparrow Hills.
He did it all seriously and piously in the highest degree; he arrived, walked along the rows of exiles, who surrounded him, stopped before each one, asked each one about his needs, hardly ever admonished anyone, called them all 'dear hearts.'
He gave them money, sent them necessary things—leg wrappings, foot-cloths, pieces of linen, sometimes brought pious tracts and gave them to all who were literate, fully convinced that they would read them on the way, and that the literate ones would read to the illiterate.
He rarely asked about their crimes, though he would listen when a prisoner began talking.
He placed all the criminals on an equal footing, he made no distinctions.
He talked with them as with brothers, but in the end they themselves came to regard him as a father.
If he noticed some woman exile with a baby in her arms, he would go up to her, caress the child, snap his fingers to make the child laugh.
He did this for many years, till his own death; it reached the point where he was known over the whole of Russia and the whole of Siberia, that is, to all the criminals.
I was told by someone who had been in Siberia that he himself had witnessed how the most hardened criminals remembered the general, and yet, when he visited them, he would rarely give them more than twenty kopecks each.
True, they did not remember him all that warmly or in any very serious way.
Some one of those 'unfortunates,' who had killed some twelve souls, who had stabbed six children solely for his own pleasure (they say there were such men), suddenly, out of the blue, at some point, and maybe only once in all of twenty years, would suddenly sigh and say:
'And what's with the little old general now, can he still be alive?'
He might even smile as he said it—and that was all.
But how do you know what seed had been sown forever in his soul by this 'little old general' whom he had not forgotten in twenty years?
How do you know, Bakhmutov, what meaning this communion of one person with another will have in the destiny of the person communed with? . . .
Here the whole of life stands before us and a countless number of ramifications that are hidden from us.
The best chess player, the sharpest of them, can calculate only a few moves ahead; one French player, who could calculate ten moves ahead, was written about as a wonder.
And how many moves are there, and how much is unknown to us?
In sowing your seed, in sowing your 'charity,' your good deed in whatever form it takes, you give away part of your person and receive into yourself part of another's; you mutually commune in each other; a little more attention, and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with the most unexpected discoveries.
You will be bound, finally, to look at your work as a science; it will take in the whole of your life and maybe fill the whole of it.
On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds you have sown, which you may already have forgotten, will take on flesh and grow; what was received from you will be passed on to someone else.
And how do you know what share you will have in the future outcome of human destiny?
And if the knowledge and the whole life of this work finally raises you so high that you are able to plant a tremendous seed, to bequeath a tremendous thought to mankind, then . . ." And so on, I talked a lot then. "And to think that it is you to whom life has been denied!" Bakhmutov cried with burning reproach against someone.