Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Akim Akimych was also preparing very much for the feast day. He had no family memories, because he had grown up as an orphan in a strange house and had been doing hard work almost from the age of fifteen; nor had he had any special joys in his life, because his whole life had been regular, monotonous, for fear of stepping even a hair’s breadth outside his prescribed duties. Nor was he especially religious, because propriety seemed to have swallowed up in him all his other human gifts and particularities, all passions and desires, bad and good. As a result of all that, he was preparing to meet the solemn day not fussing, not worrying, not confused by melancholy and totally useless memories, but with a quiet, methodical propriety, exactly enough to fulfill the duties of the ritual established once and for all. In general he did not like to think much. The meaning of a fact seemed never to enter his head, but the rules once pointed out to him he fulfilled with sacred precision. If he had been ordered the next day to do exactly the opposite, he would have done it with the same obedience and thoroughness as he had done the opposite the day before. Once, once only in his life, had he attempted to follow his own mind—and he had landed in prison. The lesson had not been wasted on him. And though he was destined never to understand exactly what he was guilty of, he had deduced a salutary rule from his adventure—never to reason in any circumstances, because “he had no head for it,” ...