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But it is better so for him. This world is not his world; this life his life.

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not.

Now and then a fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it’s liable to strike anywhere, like lightning. I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora’s a mite over-cautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else.

I said You don’t know what worry is. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I don’t know whether I can cry or not. I don’t know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

“She’s a-going,” he says. “Her mind is set on it.” It’s a hard life on women, for a fact. Some women. I mind my mammy lived to be seventy and more. Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then she went and taken that lace-trimmed nightgown she had had forty-five years and never wore out of the chest and put it on and

It seemed to him that all this was a sign of fate. It seemed to him that something, he didn't know what, was starting, had started now. It was like the last act of a play, performed on an open stage. It was the beginning of the end of something, he didn't know what, but he knew he wouldn't be sorry. He would be humble and proud that he had been found worthy to be a part of that something or at least to assist.

I done come too far now, he says. I be dog if I’m going to quit now.
And her looking at him like she had known all the time what he was going to do before he even knew himself that he was going to, and that whatever he done, he wasn’t going to mean it.
Aint nobody never said for you to quit she says.
He laughs, lying in the bed, laughing. Yes, sir. You cant beat a woman.

He changed completely. They planned to be married. He knew now that he had seen all the while that desperate calculation in her eyes. Perhaps they were right in putting love into books, he thought quietly. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else. The desperation was still in them, but now that there were definite plans, a day set, it was quieter, mostly calculation.

And so when a year later she talked to him suddenly of marriage and escape in the same words, he was not surprised, not hurt. He just thought quietly, So this is love. I see. I was wrong about it too, thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to Life.

What was terrible was that she did not want to be saved.

’I’m not ready to pray yet,’ she said aloud, quietly, rigid, soundless, her eyes wide open, while the moon poured and poured into the window, filling the room with something cold and irrevocable and wild with regret.

Don’t make me have to pray yet. Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.

At times, especially on Saturday nights, he came home, still full of straight whiskey and the sound of his own ranting. Then he would wake his son (the mother was dead now and there were three daughters, all with blue eyes) with his hard hand. ’I’ll learn you to hate two things, he would say, or, I’ll frail the tar out of you. And those things are hell and slaveholders. Do you hear me?

When he went to bed that night his mind was made up to run away. He felt like an eagle: hard, sufficient, potent, remorseless, strong. But that passed, though he did not then know that, like the eagle, his own flesh as well as all space was still a cage.

Nothing can look quite as lonely as a big man going along an empty street. Yet though he was not large, not tall, he contrived somehow to look more lonely than a lone telephone pole in the middle of a desert. In the wide, empty, shadowbrooded street he looked like a phantom, a spirit, strayed out of its own world, and lost.

Nowadays, madam, the husband is the master and a good, well-brought-up wife should try and please him in every way. And endearments, madam, are not in favour, nowadays, in our industrial age; the day of Jean Jacques Rousseau is over. The husband comes home, for instance,
hungry from the office, and asks, ‘Isn’t there something to eat, my love, a drop of vodka to drink, a bit of salt fish to eat?’

Good behaviour, madam, means staying at home, honouring your father and not thinking about
suitors prematurely. Suitors will come in good time, madam, that’s so! Of course, you are bound to have some accomplishments, such as playing the piano sometimes, speaking French, history, geography, scripture and arithmetic, that’s the truth of it! And that’s all you need.

He had to wait for a signal from Klara Olsufyevna, for there was bound to be some such signal, it was always a feature in such cases and, “it didn’t begin with us and it won’t end with
us.”
At this point Mr. Golyadkin very appropriately remembered a novel he had read long ago in which the heroine, in precisely similar circumstances, signalled to Alfred by tying a pink ribbon to her window.

But what irritated and enraged Mr. Golyadkin most of all was that invariably, at such a moment, a person well known for his undignified burlesque turned up uninvited, and, regardless of the fact that the matter was apparently settled, he, too, would begin muttering, with an unseemly little smile “What’s the use of strength of character! How could you and I, Yakov Petrovitch, have strength of character? … ”

All that is known is that at that instant Mr. Golyadkin reached such a pitch of despair, was so harassed, so tortured, so exhausted, and so weakened in what feeble faculties were left him
that he forgot everything, forgot the Ismailovsky Bridge, forgot Shestilavotchny Street, forgot his present plight…After all, what did it matter to him? The thing was done.The decision was affirmed and ratified; what could he do?

“Just now, though he had been standing nearly three hours between the cupboard and the screen in the midst of the rubbish, litter and
odds and ends of all sorts, he was only quoting, in his own justification, a memorable phrase of the French minister, Villesle: “All things come in time to him who has the strength to wait.” Mr.
Golyadkin had read this sentence in some…

“This is my rule: if I fail I don’t lose heart, if I succeed I persevere, and in any case I am never underhand. I’m not one to intrigue— and I’m proud of it. I’ve never prided myself on diplomacy. They say, too, gentlemen, that the bird flies itself to the hunter. It’s true and I’m ready to admit it; but who’s the hunter, and who’s the bird in this case? That is still the question, gentlemen!”

“H’m! no, that is not the order of proceeding that I want; and that is not at all what I would ask you. I am interested to know, in general, are you a great lover of cheerful company? Do you take
advantages of festive occasions; and well, do you lead a melancholy or cheerful manner of life?”

“Krestyan Ivanovitch, I … ”

.

Come, clink your glasses.How now?Is the brandy good?What's corn-brandy in Latin? The Latins were stupid: they did not know there was such a thing in the world as corn-brandy.What was the name of the man who wrote Latin verses? I don't know much about reading and writing,so I don't quite know.Wasn't it Horace?

What a dad! thought the elder son Ostap. The old dog knows everything, but he always pretends the contrary.

You are a gabbler! said Bulba. Don't listen to your mother, my lad; she is a woman,& knows nothing. What sort of petting do you need? A clear field & a good horse, that's the kind of petting for you. & do you see this sword? that's your mother! All the rest people stuff your heads with is rubbish; the academy,books,primers,philosophy,& all that, I spit upon it all! Here Bulba added a word which is not used in print.

If I knew that it would pass? I knew it would not pass.

It's so nice that I have received your letter and I have had to answer you with my sleepless brain. I don't know what to write to you, I'm just walking here among the rows, under the light of your eyes, feeling the breath of your mouth as on a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even though my head is sick and tired, and on Monday I'm leaving for Munich...

...well, in this matter I am therefore angry with you, which is not a misfortune altogether, because even for balance it is very good if in a corner of the heart there is a little anger prepared for you.

I realized that I don't remember your face in certain details. Only as you left then among the tables in the coffee shop, I still see your figure and your dress.

Please come, my dear man, come for dinner. I’ve got vodka that’s walked all the way from Kiev, and my cook’s been to Paris. The scoundrel will regale you with such wonderful fines herbes, such meat pies, that you’ll be on your knees begging him for more. Such an educated man! I haven’t flogged him for a long time now, been pampering him…thank you for reminding me of him… Please come!

Era o viață goală, plină de rutină, sterilă, fără iubire și fără realizări profesionale. Cu adevărat, dezvoltarea lui era acum ‘ținută la arest’, așa că aude vocea conștiinței care ii vorbește despre blocajul lui și despre pericolul care ii amenință personalitatea.