Chapter 6 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" VI

six One Sunday, the physician Bragovo unexpectedly came to see me.He was wearing a military uniform, with a silk shirt underneath and high patent leather boots. "I'll come and see you!" he began, shaking my hand vigorously like a student. "I hear people talking about you every day, and I always try to come to you, as the saying goes, to open up and talk to you. The town is terribly dull, there is hardly a soul alive, and there is no one to talk to. Our Lady It's so hot!" he went on, taking off his jacket and wearing only a silk shirt. "Dude, allow me to talk to you!"

I was so bored myself that I had long wanted to talk to someone other than the painters.I was so glad to see him. "First," he said, sitting down on my bed, "I sympathize with you and respect your life deeply. No one in the town here knows you, and no one can; because you know , people here, with very few exceptions, are Gogol's stupid pigs. But at the last picnic, I saw through you at a glance. You have a noble heart, a righteous and noble person! I respect You, consider it a great honor to shake hands with you!" he went on enthusiastically. "To change your life as suddenly and as drastically as you have had to go through a complex mental process; and now, in order to continue to live this life, to remain steadfast in your lofty beliefs, your mind and heart must one day Works intensely all night. Now, as a prelude to our conversation, tell me, do you think that if you put this perseverance, this tension, this energy into other pursuits, such as gradually If you become a great scholar or artist, then your life will become broader, deeper, and more rewarding in every way?"

We chatted.When our topic involves manual labor, I expressed this idea: in order to prevent the strong from enslaving the weak, and to prevent the minority from becoming parasites of the majority, constantly absorbing the fat from the majority, then All men, without exception, strong and weak, rich and poor, must be made to take part in the struggle for existence, each for himself.In this respect, there is no better way to eliminate differences than manual labor, which is a universal and compulsory duty for all. "So in your opinion, physical labor is something that everyone must undertake, without exception?" asked the doctor.

"yes." "However, don't you think it would be possible for progress if all, including the best men, thinkers, and learned men, each for himself, took part in the struggle for existence, and spent their time breaking stones and painting roofs? Does it cause serious harm?" "Where does it cause harm?" I asked. "The key to progress is love in action, and the practice of morality. If you enslave no one, and become no one's burden, what other kind of progress do you need?" "But let me tell you!" Bragovo stood up, suddenly angry. "Let me tell you! If a snail, hiding in its shell, devotes itself to the moral perfection of one's own self, and seeks out the principles of morality, do you call this progress?"

"But why bother to grope?" I got angry. "If you do not drive your fellow men to feed you, to clothe you, to drive you, to fight for your defense against the enemy; then it would be progress in the present life, founded entirely on slavery. Is it? In my opinion, this is real progress, and perhaps the only possible progress that humanity needs." “Excuse me, it is strange that there is no limit to the progress of all mankind and the whole world, and you speak only of a ‘possible’ progress limited by our needs or temporal notions.” "If, as you say, there is no end to progress, it is the same as saying that the goal of progress is not clear," I said. "To live without knowing exactly why!"

"Even so! But this 'don't know' is not as boring as your 'know'. I climbed up a ladder called progress, civilization, culture, and I climbed and climbed, not clearly. Know where I'm climbing; but, really, it's worth living for this wonderful ladder alone. And you, know what to live for, To keep some from enslaving others, To make the painter and his paint but you know, this is the petty, vulgar, humdrum side of life; isn't it tiresome to live for that alone? If some insects enslave other insects, so be it. Theirs, let them devour each other! We should not think of them, no matter how you free them from slavery, they will still die and rot. Think of the unknown great prospect, which Waiting for all mankind in the distant future."

Bragovo was arguing with me violently, but at the same time he could be seen to be agitated by another thought. "Probably your sister won't be coming," he said, looking at his watch. "Yesterday she came to our house and said she was coming to you. You kept talking about slavery, slavery . . . " he went on. "But you must know that this is a local problem, and all these problems will be gradually solved by human beings naturally." Let's start talking about the gradual process.I said that the question of whether to do good or to do evil is for everyone to solve for himself, and not to wait for mankind to solve it through the road of gradual development.In addition, when it comes to gradualism, there are also advantages and disadvantages.With the gradual development of humane thought, another kind of thought is also gradually developed.Serfdom is gone, but capitalism is growing.In the heyday of emancipation, as in Batu's time, the many fed, clothed and defended the few, while the many themselves starved, cold and unprotected.Such a social order can coexist harmoniously with any trend of thought and trend, because the art of enslavement has gradually become more ingenious.

We no longer beat our servants in our stables, but we have given servitude a refined form, and at least we are good at making excuses for it on every particular occasion.Thought is nothing more than thought with us, and if, at the end of the nineteenth century, it was possible, at the end of the nineteenth century, to shift to the workmen the physical labor which we feel the heaviest of, then of course we would, and doubtless afterwards I justified myself: If the best people, thinkers, and scholars spend their precious time on this, it may cause serious harm to progress. But at this time my sister came.When she saw the doctor, she was bewildered and frightened, and said at once that it was time for her to go home and see her father.

"Kleopatra Alexeyevna," said Bragovo earnestly, pressing his hands to his heart, "if you spend half an hour with your brother and me What hinders your father?" He is straightforward and good at infecting others with his good intentions.My sister thought about it, smiled, and suddenly became happy, just as abrupt as that time at the picnic.We went out into the fields, sat down on the grass, and continued our conversation, looking out at the city, where all the west-facing windows were golden in the setting sun. From then on, whenever my sister came to my place, Bragovo would always come too, and from the way they greeted each other, it seemed as if they met by chance in my place.I argued with the doctor, my sister listened, and at the same time there was a happy, deeply moved, and very curious look on her face. It seemed to me that another world was gradually opening up before her eyes, a world she hadn't even seen in her dreams before. But now she was trying to figure it out.When the doctor is not with me, she is always quiet and depressed. If she sometimes sits on my bed and cries, she doesn't mention the reason for crying.

In August, Carrot told us to get ready to go to the railway line.About two days before we were "driven out" of the city, my father came to see me.He sat down without looking at me, slowly wiped his red face with a handkerchief, then took out a copy of the "Bulletin" published in our city from his pocket, and read a paragraph of news slowly and formally: My The same age, the son of the director of the National Bank Office, was appointed as the director of the Provincial Taxation Bureau. "Now look at yourself," he said, folding up the newspaper, "beggar, rags, and bastards! Even petty bourgeois and peasants are educated in order to be a decent man; and you , from the Poloznev family, with illustrious and noble ancestors, but desperately digging into the mud! But I didn't come here to talk to you, I have given up on you," he stood up, and said in a low voice. the voice continued. "I'm here to ask you, where's your sister, bastard. She went out after lunch, and it's eight o'clock, and she hasn't come back. She goes out a lot these days, and doesn't tell me. She's changed I'm not as filial as I used to be, and I think it's the influence of your meanness. Where's she?"

He was holding the familiar umbrella in his hand. At this time, I panicked and straightened my body like a schoolboy, waiting for my father to hit me, but he noticed that my eyes fell on his umbrella, probably because of this. That's why he didn't hit me. "It's up to you how you want to live your life!" he said. "I will never recognize your son again!" "My God!" murmured the nurse in the next room. "Poor, wretched child! Alas, my heart feels that disaster is coming, disaster is coming!" I work on a railway line.Throughout August, it rained continuously and the weather was damp and cold.The crops in the fields were not carried away, and on the large machine-harvested farms the wheat lay in heaps, not yet tied into bundles, and I remember how these miserable heaps grew black day by day, and the grains sprouted.The work was difficult; we had just finished something before a heavy rain washed it all away.We were not allowed to live in the house at the station, so we could only live in the dirty and damp earth kiln where the "iron stove" lived in summer. I always felt cold every night, and some woodworms were on my face. Crawling up and down my head and arms, keeping me awake.Whenever we were working by the bridge, the Iron Stoves came to us in droves at night, just to beat up the painters, which became a kind of entertainment for them.They beat us up, stole our brushes, and sabotaged our jobs, like putting green paint on cabins, to annoy us and get us into fights with them.In addition to the above-mentioned misfortunes, the carrot made us suffer, and he often did not pay our wages on time.All the painting work in this area was first contracted by a contractor, who then subcontracted to another contractor, who deducted 20% commission for himself and then subcontracted it to Luobo.This kind of work is not profitable in the first place, and it rains every day, and the time goes by for nothing. We can't work, but radish has to pay workers wages every day. The starving painter almost beat him up, called him a liar, a bloodsucker, Judas who betrayed Christ; and he, the poor wretch, moaning and raising his hands to heaven in despair, often went to Cheprakova. My wife went to borrow money.