IT SUDDENLY OCCURRED to me that Vasin already knew about Kraft, and maybe a hundred times more than I did; and that’s how it turned out to be. Vasin at once and dutifully told me all the details—without great warmth, however; I concluded that he was tired, and so he was. He had been at Kraft’s himself that morning. Kraft had shot himself with a revolver (that same one) the night before, in full darkness, as was made clear by his diary. The last entry in the diary was made just before the shot, and he notes in it that he was writing almost in the dark, barely making out the letters; and he didn’t want to light a candle for fear of leaving a fire behind him. “And I don’t want to light it, only to put it out again before the shot, like my life,” he added strangely in almost the last line. He had undertaken this death diary two days earlier, as soon as he returned to Petersburg, before the visit to Dergachev; after I left, he wrote in it every quarter of an hour; the very last three or four entries were written every five minutes. I voiced my surprise that Vasin, having had this diary under his eyes for so long (it was given him to read), had not made a copy, the more so as it was no more than a printer’s sheet in all, and the entries were short—“at least the last page!” Vasin observed to me with a smile that he remembered it as it was, and moreover the notes were without any system, about whatever came to mind. I tried to argue that that was the precious thing in this case, but dropped it and began pestering him to remember at least something, and he remembered several lines, about an hour before the shot, saying “that he had chills; that he contemplated drinking a glass in order to warm up, but the thought that it would perhaps cause a bigger hemorrhage stopped him.”—“It’s almost all that sort of thing,” concluded Vasin.
“And you call that trifles!” I exclaimed.
“When did I call it that? I simply didn’t make a copy. But though it’s not trifles, the diary is actually quite ordinary, or, rather, natural, that is, precisely as it ought to be in this case . . .”
“But it’s his last thoughts, his last thoughts!”
“Last thoughts can sometimes be extremely insignificant. One such suicide precisely complains in the same sort of diary that at such an important hour at least one ‘lofty thought’ should have visited him, but, on the contrary, they were all petty and empty.”
“And that he had chills is also an empty thought?”
“That is, you mean the chills proper, or the hemorrhage? Yet it’s a known fact that a great many of those who are capable of contemplating their imminent death, self-willed or not, are quite often inclined to be concerned with the handsome appearance in which their corpse will be left. In this sense, Kraft, too, feared an excessive hemorrhage.”
“I don’t know whether that’s a known fact . . . or whether it’s so,” I murmured, “but I’m surprised that you consider it all so natural, and yet was it long ago that Kraft spoke, worried, sat among us? Can it be that you’re not at least sorry for him?”
“Oh, of course I’m sorry for him, and that’s quite another matter; but in any case Kraft himself pictured his death as a logical conclusion. It turns out that everything said about him at Dergachev’s was correct: he left behind a notebook this big, full of learned conclusions, based on phrenology, craniology, and even mathematics, proving that the Russians are a second-rate breed of people, and that, consequently, it’s not at all worth living as a Russian. If you wish, what’s most characteristic here is that it’s possible to draw any logical conclusion you like, but to up and shoot oneself as the result of a conclusion—that, of course, doesn’t happen all the time.”
“At least we must give credit to his character.”
“And maybe not only that,” Vasin observed evasively, but clearly he had in mind stupidity or weakness of reason. All this irritated me.
“You yourself spoke about feelings yesterday, Vasin.”
“Nor do I deny them now; but in view of the accomplished fact, something in him presents itself as so badly mistaken that a severe view of the matter somehow unwillingly drives out pity itself.”
“You know, I could tell earlier by your eyes that you would revile Kraft, and so as not to hear it, I decided not to seek your opinion; but you’ve voiced it yourself, and I’m unwillingly forced to agree with you; but still I’m displeased with you! I feel sorry for Kraft!”
“You know, we’ve gone too far . . .”
“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, “but it’s comforting at least that in such cases those who are left alive, the judges of the deceased, can always say of themselves, ‘Though the man who shot himself was worthy of all regret and indulgence, we’re still left, and therefore there’s no point in grieving too much.’”
“Yes, naturally, if you see it from that angle . . . Ah, yes, it seems you were joking! And most wittily. This is my tea time and I’ll have it brought at once—you’ll probably keep me company.”
