Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time

"That will do!" he said, rising. "Our bet's finished and now your remarks seem out of place to me..." He picked up his cap and walked out. His behavior struck me as strange-and rightly so.

Soon everyone left, each giving his own interpretation of Vulić's eccentric behavior on the way home, and, probably, unanimously branding me an egoist for having wagered against a man who wanted to shoot himself-as if he could not have found a convenient opportunity without my help!

I returned home through the deserted side streets of the settlement. The full moon, red as the lurid glow of a fire, was just coming up over the jagged skyline of the housetops. The stars shone placidly in the dark-blue firmament, and I was amused at the thought that there once were sages who believed the heavenly bodies have a share in our wretched squabbles over a tiny territory or some other imaginary rights. Yet these lamps, which they thought had been lighted only to illuminate their battles and triumphs, still burn with undiminished brilliance, while their passions and hopes have long since died out together with them like a campfire left burning on the fringe of a forest by a careless wayfarer. But what strength of will they drew from the certainty that all the heavens with their numberless inhabitants looked down on them with constant though mute sympathy! Whereas we, their wretched descendents, who roam the earth without convictions or pride, without joys or fear other than the nameless dread that constricts the heart at the thought of the inevitable end, we are no longer capable of great sacrifices either for the good of mankind or even for our personal happiness, since we know that happiness is impossible; and we pass indifferently from one doubt to another just as our forebears floundered from one delusion to another, without the hopes they had and without even that vague but potent sense of joy the soul derives from any struggle with man or destiny...

Many similar thoughts passed through my mind. I did not hold back their passage, because I don't care to dwell upon abstract ideas-for what can they lead to? In my early youth I was a dreamer. I liked to toy with the images, now gloomy, now radiant, which my restless, eager imagination drew for me. But what have I derived from it all? Only weariness, like the aftermath of a nighttime battle with a phantom, and dim memories filled with regrets. In this futile struggle, I exhausted the fervor of spirit and the constancy of will which are essential to real life. When I embarked on that life, I had already lived it in my mind, and therefore it has become as boring and repulsive to me as a poor imitation of a long-familiar book.

The evening's events had made a rather deep impression on me and worked on my nerves. I'm not certain whether I now believe in predestination or not, but that night I firmly believed in it. The proof had been striking, and regardless of the fact that I had ridiculed our forebears and their complacent astrology, I found myself thinking as they did-but I caught myself in time on this dangerous road, and having made it a rule never to reject anything categorically and never to believe in anything blindly, I cast metaphysics aside and began to watch the ground under my feet. Such caution was timely, for I nearly stumbled over something thick and soft but apparently dead. I bent down-the moon now lit up the road-and what did I see lying in front of me, but a pig sliced into two with a saber... I had hardly had time to look at it when I heard footsteps: two Cossacks came running from a side street. One of them came up to me and asked whether I had seen a drunken Cossack pursuing a pig. I told them that I had not met the Cossack, but showed them the unlucky victim of his ferocious skill.

"The bandit!" said the second Cossack. "As soon as he drinks his fill of wine [112] chirir' , Caucasian new wine. , he's out to cut up everything that comes his way. Let's go after him, Yeremeich; we've got to tie him up, or else..."

They went off and I continued on my way more warily than before, at last reaching my quarters safe and sound.

I was staying with an old Cossack non-commissioned officer, whom I liked because of his kindly nature and particularly because of his pretty daughter, Nastya.

She was waiting for me as usual at the gate, wrapped in a fur coat; the moon shone on her sweet lips now blue from the cold of the night. Seeing me, she smiled, but I had other things on my mind. "Good night, Nastya," I said, passing by. She was about to say something in reply, but sighed instead.

I locked the door of my room, lit a candle and flung myself on the bed. Tonight, however, sleep eluded me for longer than usual. The east was already beginning to grow pale when I fell asleep, but evidently the heavens had ordained that I was not to sleep this night. At four o'clock in the morning two fists banged at my window. I sprang up-what was the matter? "Wake up and get dressed!" several voices shouted. I dressed hastily and went out. "Do you know what's happened?" the three officers who had come for me said to me in chorus; they were as white as death.

"What?" "Vulić has been killed." I was stupefied. "Yes, killed!" they went on. "Let's go, quick." "Where to?" "We'll tell you on the way."

We set off. They told me everything that had happened, adding to the story various observations concerning the strange predestination that had saved him from certain death half an hour before he died. Vulić had been walking alone along a dark street, when the drunken Cossack who had slashed up the pig bumped into him, and might perhaps have gone on without paying any attention to him had Vulić not stopped suddenly and said: "Who you looking for, boy?"

"You!" the Cossack answered, striking him with his saber and splitting him from the shoulder nearly to the heart... The two Cossacks whom I had seen and who were pursuing the murderer reached the spot, and picked up the wounded man, but he was already breathing his last and mouthed only the words: "He was right!" I alone understood the dark meaning of these words-they referred to me. I had involuntarily predicted the poor man's fate. My instinct had not failed me-I had indeed read on his altered features the stamp of death coming soon.

The murderer had locked himself in a vacant hut at the far end of the settlement, and that's where we went. A large number of women were running in the same direction, wailing as they went. Every now and then a Cossack sprang belatedly out into the street, hurriedly buckling on a dagger, and ran past us. There was a fearful commotion.

At last we arrived on the scene to find a crowd gathered around the hut, whose doors and shutters had been fastened from the inside. Officers and Cossacks were holding a hot argument and the women kept howling and lamenting. Among them I noticed an old woman whose imposing face expressed frantic despair. She was seated on a thick log, her elbows on her knees and her hands supporting her head. She was the murderer's mother. At times her lips moved... was it with a prayer or a curse?

In the meantime, some decision had to be made and the perpetrator arrested. But no one was anxious to go in first.

I went up to the window and looked in through a crack in a shutter. The man lay on the floor, holding a pistol in his right hand. A bloodstained saber lay beside him. His face was pale, and his expressive eyes rolled fearfully. At times he shuddered and clutched at his head, as if hazily recollecting the happenings of the previous day. There did not seem to be much resolve in his uneasy glance and I told the major that there was no reason why he shouldn't order the Cossacks to break down the door and rush him, for it would be better to do so now rather than later when the man would've fully recovered his senses.

Just then an old captain of the Cossacks went up to the door and called to the man inside by name. The latter responded.