At that moment we were standing on the bridge, leaning on the handrail, and looking at the Neva.
"And do you know what's just come into my head?" I said, bending still further over the handrail.
"Not to throw yourself into the river?" cried Bakhmutov, almost in fright.
Perhaps he had read my thought in my face.
"No, for the time being it's just the following reflection: here I'm left now with two or three months to live, maybe four; but, for instance, when I have only two months left, and I want terribly to do a good deed that would require work, running around and petitioning, something like our doctor's affair, I would in that case have to renounce the deed for lack of sufficient time and look for another 'good deed,' a smaller one, which would be within my means (if I should happen to have the urge to do good deeds).
You must agree, it's an amusing thought."
Poor Bakhmutov was very alarmed about me; he went with me as far as my home and was so delicate that he never once tried to comfort me and was silent nearly all the way.
Taking leave of me, he warmly pressed my hand and asked permission to visit me.
I answered him that if he came to me as a "comforter" (because even if he was silent, he would still be coming as a comforter, I explained that to him), then it meant that each time he would be reminding me still more of death.
He shrugged his shoulders, but he agreed with me; we parted rather politely, something I had not even expected.
But that evening and that night the first seed of my "ultimate conviction" was sown.
I greedily seized upon this new thought, greedily analyzed it in all its windings, in all its aspects (I did not sleep all night), and the more I delved into it, the more I received it into myself, the more frightened I was.
A dreadful fear came over me finally and did not leave me during the days that followed.
Sometimes, thinking about this constant fear of mine, I would quickly freeze from a new terror: from this fear I was able to conclude that my "ultimate conviction" had lodged itself all too seriously in me and was bound to reach its resolution.
But I lacked resolve for that resolution.
Three weeks later it was all over, and the resolve came, but owing to a very strange circumstance.
Here in my explanation I am noting down all these numbers and dates.
For me, of course, it will make no difference, but now (and maybe only at this moment) I want those who will judge my act to be able to see clearly from what logical chain of conclusions my "ultimate conviction" came.
I just wrote above that the final resolution, which I lacked for the accomplishing of my "ultimate conviction," came about in me, it seems, not at all as a logical conclusion, but from some strange jolt, a certain strange circumstance, perhaps quite unconnected with the course of events.
About ten days ago Rogozhin came to see me on business of his own, which I need not discuss here.
I had never seen Rogozhin before, but I had heard a lot about him.
I gave him all the information he needed, and he quickly left, and as he had come only for information, the business between us should have ended there.
But he interested me greatly, and I spent that whole day under the influence of strange thoughts, so that I decided to call on him myself the next day, to return the visit.
Rogozhin was obviously not glad to see me, and even hinted "delicately" that there was no point in our continuing the acquaintance; but all the same I spent a very curious hour, as he probably did, too.
There was this contrast between us, which could not fail to tell in both of us, especially me: I was a man whose days were already numbered, while he was living the fullest immediate life, in the present moment, with no care for "ultimate" conclusions, numbers, or anything at all that was not concerned with what . . . with what . . . well, say, with what he's gone crazy over; may Mr. Rogozhin forgive me this expression of, shall we say, a bad writer, who is unable to express his thought.
Despite all his ungraciousness, it seemed to me that he was a man of intelligence and could understand a great deal, though he had little interest in extraneous things.
I gave him no hint of my "ultimate conviction," but for some reason it seemed to me that he guessed it as he listened to me.
He said nothing, he is terribly taciturn.
I hinted to him, as I was leaving, that in spite of all the differences between us and all the contrasts—les extremites se touchent*17 (I explained it to him in Russian), so that he himself might not be so far from my "ultimate conviction" as it seemed. * Extremes meet.
To this he responded with a very sullen and sour grimace, stood up, fetched my cap for me himself, pretending that I was leaving on my own, and quite simply led me out of his gloomy house on the pretext of politely seeing me off.
His house struck me; it resembles a graveyard, but he seems to like it, which, however, is understandable: such a full, immediate life as he lives is too full in itself to need any setting.
This visit to Rogozhin was very exhausting for me.
Besides, I had been feeling unwell since morning; by evening I was very weak and lay in bed, and at times felt very feverish and even momentarily delirious.
Kolya stayed with me till eleven o'clock.
However, I remember everything that he said and that we talked about.
But when my eyes closed at moments, I kept picturing Ivan Fomich, who had supposedly received millions in cash.
He did not know where to put it, racked his brains over it, trembled from fear that it might be stolen from him, and finally seemed to decide to bury it in the ground.
I finally advised him, instead of burying such a heap of gold in the ground for nothing, to cast it into a little gold coffin for the "frozen" child, and to dig the child up for that purpose.
Surikov took this mockery of mine with tears of gratitude and at once set about realizing the plan.
It seems I spat and left him there.
Kolya assured me, when I had completely come to my senses, that I had not been asleep at all, but had been talking with him the whole time about Surikov.
At moments I was in great anguish and confusion, so that Kolya left in alarm.
When I got up to lock the door after him, I suddenly remembered the picture I had seen that day at Rogozhin's, in one of the gloomiest rooms of his house, above the door.
He himself had shown it to me in passing; I think I stood before it for about five minutes.
There was nothing good about it in the artistic respect; but it produced a strange uneasiness in me.
This picture portrays Christ just taken down from the cross.
It seems to me that painters are usually in the habit of portraying Christ, both on the cross and taken down from the cross, as still having a shade of extraordinary beauty in his face; they seek to preserve this beauty for him even in his most horrible suffering.
But in Rogozhin's picture there is not a word about beauty; this is in the fullest sense the corpse of a man who had endured infinite suffering before the cross, wounds, torture, beating by the guards, beating by the people as he carried the cross and fell down under it, and had finally suffered on the cross for six hours (at least according to my calculation).
True, it is the face of a man who has only just been taken down from the cross, that is, retaining in itself a great deal of life, of warmth; nothing has had time to become rigid yet, so that the dead man's face even shows suffering as if he were feeling it now (the artist has caught that very well); but the face has not been spared in the least; it is nature alone, and truly as the dead body of any man must be after such torments.
I know that in the first centuries the Christian Church already established that Christ suffered not in appearance but in reality, and that on the cross his body, therefore, was fully and completely subject to the laws of nature.