Notes from Underground

The Underground Man is in the middle of a long monologue to Liza — and he knows exactly what he's doing. He tells her he is speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly: "I could not speak except 'like a book.'" But that does not trouble him. He knows he will be understood. He suspects the bookishness might even help. The speech itself moves through several registers. First, the contrast: here, at this place, he felt sick the moment he came to himself. One can only come here when drunk. But if she were anywhere else, living as good people live, he might have been attracted to her, might have fallen in love with her, would have gone down on his knees to her, looked upon her as his betrothed, thought it an honour to be allowed to. Here, he has only to whistle and she must come whether she likes it or not. Even the lowest labourer who hires himself out retains the knowledge that he will be free again presently. When is she free? What is it she is making a slave of? Her soul, together with her body. She is selling her soul which she has no right to dispose of. Love, he says, is a priceless diamond — a maiden's treasure — and she is giving it to be outraged by every drunkard. Then the mechanics of her ruin: she is in debt and will always be in debt. When her youth goes, she will be kicked out — but not simply kicked out; long before that the madam will nag her and abuse her as though she had beggared the establishment, not the other way around. Her companions will turn on her too — all are in slavery here and have lost all conscience and pity. At twenty-two she will look like a woman of five-and-thirty. Then the New Year's Day woman. He saw her himself: turned out as a joke at nine in the morning because she had been crying too much, to give her a taste of the frost. She was drunk, dishevelled, half-naked, covered with bruises, face powdered, black eye, blood from her nose, sitting on stone steps holding a salt fish and beating the steps with it. Cabmen and drunken soldiers crowding in the doorway, taunting her. Eight or ten years ago, he says, that woman came here fresh as a cherub, innocent, blushing at every word. Perhaps she was like Liza. Perhaps she knew what happiness was in store for the man she would love. Then the death scene. Thrust dying into the filthiest cellar corner, damp and darkness. Strange hands will lay her out with grumbling and impatience. They will buy a cheap coffin, take her to the grave like that poor woman today, and celebrate her memory at the tavern. In the grave, sleet, filth, wet snow. "Let her down, Vanuha — it's just like her luck — even here she is head-foremost." The blue clay scattered as fast as possible, everyone off to the tavern. Other women have children to go to their graves, fathers, husbands. For her: neither tear, nor sigh, nor remembrance. As though she had never been born. Nothing but filth and mud — however she knocks at her coffin lid at night, however she cries: "Let me out, kind people, to live in the light of day! My life was no life at all; my life has been thrown away like a dish-clout." He works himself up to such a pitch that he gets a lump in his throat — and then stops. Sits up in dismay. Listens with a beating heart. Here is the confession within the speech: he had felt for some time that he was turning her soul upside down and rending her heart — and the more he was convinced of it, the more eagerly he desired to gain his object as quickly and as effectually as possible. It was the exercise of his skill that carried him away. Yet it was not merely sport. He had never witnessed such despair. She is lying face down, face thrust into the pillow, clutching it in both hands, her youthful body shuddering all over as though in convulsions. Suppressed sobs rent her bosom, bursting into weeping and wailing, then pressing closer into the pillow — she did not want a living soul to know of her anguish. She bites the pillow, bites her hand until it bleeds. He begins saying something, trying to calm her — but feels he does not dare. In a cold shiver, almost in terror, he fumbles in the dark, trying hurriedly to dress and get away. He finds a box of matches, lights a candle. In the sudden light: Liza springs up, sits in bed, looks at him with a contorted face and a half-insane smile, almost senselessly. He sits beside her, takes her hands. She makes an impulsive movement toward him, would have caught hold of him — but does not dare. She bows her head slowly. He says he was wrong, asks forgiveness. She squeezes his hand so hard that he knows he is saying the wrong thing and stops. He gives her his address. "Come to me." She answers resolutely: "I will come." He moves to leave. She flushes, wraps a shawl around herself, gives a sickly smile. Then, in the passage, she stops him with her hand on his overcoat, puts down the candle, and runs off. She returns a minute later with a piece of paper — a love letter from a medical student who had known her as a child in Riga, had danced with her all evening at a party at a good family's house three days ago, had talked to her and knew her parents but knew nothing — nothing — of her life here. His face was positively beaming with naïve, almost childish, triumph as she held it out. The poor girl was keeping that letter as her only treasure. She had run to fetch it because she did not want him to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. He says nothing. Presses her hand. Goes out. He walks the whole way home through the heavy wet snow. Exhausted, shattered, in bewilderment. "But behind the bewilderment the truth was already gleaming. The loathsome truth."