However, there was I singing away, I cared not what, so long as I had a merry life. Then, one day, I was suddenly accosted by a clean-shaven man who appeared before me and said: "Have you ever tried acting on the stage?" Well, I had played a part in domestic spectacles. "Would you like to earn twenty-five roubles[1] a month for playing light-comedy parts?" "All right!" said I. So off we went to the town of Perm. At Perm I played and sang in comic operas made up as a passionate dark young chap—with a past, the past of a political offender. The ladies were in raptures. Then I took the second lover rôles. "Try the heroic parts," they said to me. So I played the part of Max in "Errant Fires," and it went off capitally—I knew it I played through a whole season That summer our tour was a great success. We played at Vyatka, we played at Ufa, we even played at Elabuga. In the winter we returned to Perm.
[1] £2 10s.
And in that winter I felt a hatred and loathing of mankind. You know how it is. You appear on the stage, and you see hundreds of fools and wretches with their eyes fixed full upon you—that slavish cowardly shudder (I know it so well) runs all down your back, and you have the prickly sensation of one who has sat down in an ant heap. They look upon you as their plaything, as a thing which they have purchased for their gratification for a single evening. They have the power to condemn or to approve. And there they sit waiting to see whether you will exert yourself with sufficient diligence to please them And if they think that you have used sufficient diligence, they will bray—bray like tethered asses, and you must listen to them and feel content with their applause. For a time you will forget that you are their property ... then, when you call it to mind, you will smite yourself upon the snout for having found pleasure in their approval.
I hated this "public" to the verge of convulsions. Frequently I should have liked to have spat on them from the stage, to have rowed them with the vilest words. There were times when their eyes—you will feel with me—pricked my body like darning-needles; and how greedily that "public" waits for you to tickle it—waits with the confidence of that lady land-owner whose serf-girls used to scratch the soles of her feet every evening. You are sensible of this expectation of theirs, and you think how pleasant it would be to have in your hand a knife long enough to clean slice off all the noses of the first row of spectators at a single stroke. Devil take the whole lot of them!
But pardon me this outburst! I fear that for the moment I was becoming quite sentimental!—I only meant to say that I was a player, that I hated my public, and wanted to run away from it. In this I was assisted by the wife of a procurator. She did not please me and that did not please her. She set her husband in motion, and I suddenly appeared in the town of Saransk—just as if I were a grain of wheat whirled by the wind from the banks of the Kama. Ah, well! everything in this wretched life of ours is like a dream!
So I settled down in the town of Saransk, and there settled down along with me the young wife of a young Permiak of the mercantile persuasion. She was a determined character and dearly loved my art. So there we were together. We had no money, neither had we any acquaintances. Moreover, I was weary of her. She also, from sheer ennui, began to din it into me that I did not love her. At first I endured it patiently, but after a bit I could stand it no longer: "Be off," I cried! "leave me! go to the devil!" That is exactly what I said to her. She caught up a revolver and fired it at me. The bullet lodged in my left shoulder—a little lower and I should have been in Paradise long ago. Anyhow, down I fell. But she was frightened, and in her terror leaped into a well.
And there she soddened to death.
Me they conducted to the hospital. Well, there of course ladies appeared upon the scene They revolved around me till I was able to stand on my legs again, and when I could do that I got the billet of secretary to the local police-station. Well, say what you will—to be associated with the police is more convenient than to be under police supervision. So there I lived for two or three months.
It was in those days, for the first time in my life, that I had an attack of crushing, overwhelming ennui, that most horrible of all sensations to which humanity is liable.... Everything around you ceases to be of interest, and you desire something new. You cast about hither and thither, you seek and seek, you find something, you seize it, and immediately you discover it is not what you wanted. You feel yourself led captive by something dark, you feel yourself fettered within, you feel yourself incapable of living in the world with yourself, and yet this world is more necessary to a man than everything else. A wretched condition of things!
And it brought me at last to such a pass that I married. Such a step in a man of my character is only possible in case of anguish or drunkard's head-ache.