probably exaggerating greatly. I can see that you are angry with me. Calm yourself, if you can, I beg you, and tell me coolheadedly: why are you angry?”
“And why do you keep me here?”
“Because you are ill.”
“Ill, yes. But dozens, hundreds, of madmen are walking around free, because in your ignorance you are unable to tell them from the sane. Why, then, must I and these unfortunates sit here for all of them, like scapegoats? In the moral respect, you, your assistant, the superintendent, and all your hospital scum are immeasurably lower than any of us, so why do we sit here and not you? Where’s the logic?”
“Logic and the moral respect have nothing to do with it. It all depends on chance. Those who have been put here, sit here, and those who have not are walking around, that’s all. That I am a doctor and you are a mental patient has no morality or logic in it—it’s a matter of pure chance.”
“I don’t understand that gibberish …” Ivan Dmitrich said dully, and he sat down on his bed.
Moiseika, whom Nikita was embarrassed to search in the doctor’s presence, laid out his pieces of bread, scraps of paper, and little bones on the bed and, still shivering with cold, began saying something rapidly and melodiously in Hebrew. He probably imagined he had opened a shop.
“Release me!” said Ivan Dmitrich, and his voice trembled.
“I can’t.”
“But why not? Why not?”
“Because it’s not in my power. Consider, what good will it do you if I release you? Go now. The townspeople or the police will stop you and bring you back.”
“Yes, yes, it’s true …” said Ivan Dmitrich, and he rubbed his forehead. “It’s terrible! But what am I to do? What?”
Andrei Yefimych liked Ivan Dmitrich’s voice and his young, intelligent face with its grimaces. He wished to be kind to the young man and calm him down. He sat beside him on the bed, thought a little, and said:
“You ask, what is to be done? The best thing in your situation would be to run away from here. But, unfortunately, that is useless. You’ll be stopped. When society protects itself from criminals, the mentally ill, and generally inconvenient people, it is invincible. One thing is left for you: to rest with the thought that your being here is necessary.”
“Nobody needs it.”
“Since prisons and madhouses exist, someone must sit in them. If not you, then me; if not me, some third person. Wait till the distant future, when there will be no more prisons and madhouses; then there will be no bars on the windows, no hospital robes. Such a time is sure to come sooner or later.”
Ivan Dmitrich smiled mockingly.
“You’re joking,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Gentlemen like you and your helper Nikita don’t care about the future at all, but rest assured, my dear sir, that better times will come! My expressions may be banal, you may laugh, but the dawn of the new life will shine forth, truth will triumph, and—it will be our turn to celebrate! I won’t live to see it, I’ll croak, but somebody’s great-grandchildren will see it. I greet them with all my heart, and I rejoice, I rejoice for them! Forward! May God help you, my friends!”
Ivan Dmitrich, his eyes shining, got up and, stretching his arms towards the window, went on in an excited voice:
“From behind these bars I bless you! Long live the truth! I rejoice!”
“I see no special reason for rejoicing,” said Andrei Yefimych, who found Ivan Dmitrich’s gesture theatrical, but at the same time liked it very much. “There won’t be any prisons and madhouses, and truth, as you were pleased to put it, will triumph, but the essence of things will not change, the laws of nature will remain the same. People will get sick, grow old, and die, just as they do now. However magnificent the dawn that lights up your life, in the end you’ll still be nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole.”
“And immortality?”
“Oh, come now!”
“You don’t believe in it. Well, but I do. In Dostoevsky or Voltaire somebody says if there were no God, people would have invented him.12 And I deeply believe that if there is no immortality, sooner or later the great human mind will invent it.”
“Well said,” pronounced Andrei Yefimych, smiling with pleasure. “It’s good that you believe. With such faith one can live beautifully even bricked up in a wall. You must have received some education?”
“Yes, I studied