“Never.”
“Well, what’s right is right!” exclaimed Nhira. “Sergei Ivanich is like a holy hermit.”
“Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also,” continued Platonov. “But, do you know, it’s really too tedious and disgusting. Something on the nature of these flies which the actor gentleman just represented. They’re stuck together on the window sill, and then in some sort of fool wonder scratch their backs with their little hind legs and fly apart forever. And to play at love here? ... Well, for that I’m no hero out of their sort of novel. I’m not handsome, am shy with women, uneasy, and polite. While here they thirst for savage passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,—in a word, hysterical romanticism. And it’s easy to understand why. The heart of woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day with various sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in one’s love. One no longer wants words of passion, but tragically-passionate deeds. And for that reason thieves, murderers, souteners and other riff-raff will always be their lovers.”
“And most important of all,” added Platonov, “that would at once spoil for me all the friendly relations which have been so well built up.”
“Enough of joking!” incredulously retorted Lichonin. “Then what compels you to pass days and nights here? Were you a writer—it would be a different matter. It’s easy to find an explanation; well, you’re gathering types or something ... observing life ... After the manner of that German professor who lived for three years with monkeys, in order to study closely their language and manners. But you yourself said that you don’t indulge in writing?”
“It isn’t that I don’t indulge, but I simply don’t know how—I can’t.”
“We’ll write that down. Now let’s suppose another thing—that you come here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now, saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios. But you aren’t inclined that way.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and—, in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well, now, since you say so—I believe that you don’t give yourself up to lechery. But then, still more incomprehensible to me is your MODUS VIVENDI, to express myself in the style of leading articles.”
The reporter did not answer at once: