Savva and the Life of Man Part 23

KONDRATY

And aren't you sorry for them?

SAVVA

Sorry for them? Why, they built a prison for me, and I am to be sorry for them. They put me in a torture chamber, and I am to be sorry for them. Bah!

KONDRATY

Who are you to be above pity?

SAVVA

I? I am a man who have been born. And having been born, I began to look about. I saw churches and penitentiaries. I saw universities and houses of prost.i.tution. I saw factories and picture galleries. I saw palaces and filthy dens. I calculated the number of prisons there are to each gallery, and I resolved that the whole edifice must go, the whole of it must be overturned, annihilated. And we are going to do it. Our day of reckoning has come. It is time.

KONDRATY

Who are "we"?

SAVVA

I, you Kondraty, and others.

KONDRATY

The people are stupid. They won't understand.

SAVVA

When the conflagration rages all around them, they will understand.

Fire is a good teacher, old boy. Have you ever heard of Raphael?

KONDRATY

No, I haven't.

SAVVA

Well, when we are through with G.o.d, we'll go for fellows like him.

There are lots of them--t.i.tian, Shakespeare, Byron. We'll make a nice pile of the whole lot and pour oil over it. Then we'll burn their cities.

KONDRATY

Now, now you are joking. How is that possible? How can you burn the cities?

SAVVA

No, why should I be joking? All the cities. Look here, what are their cities? Graves, stone graves. And if you don't stop those fools, if you let them go on making more, they will cover the whole earth with stone, and then all will suffocate--all.

KONDRATY

The poor people will have a hard time of it.

SAVVA

All will be poor then. What is it that makes a man rich? His having a house and money, and the fact that he has surrounded himself with a fence. But when there are no houses, no money, and no fences--

KONDRATY

That's so. And there won't be any legal papers either, no stocks, no bonds, no t.i.tle-deeds. They will all have been burnt up.

SAVVA

No, there will be no legal papers. It's work then--you'll have to go to work even if you are a n.o.bleman.

KONDRATY _(laughing)_

It's funny. All will be naked as when coming out of a bath.

SAVVA

Are you a peasant, Kondraty?

KONDRATY

Yes, I am a peasant, sure enough.

SAVVA

I am a peasant also. We have nothing to lose, brother. We can't fare worse than we do now.

KONDRATY

How could it be worse? But a great many people will perish, Mr.

Tropinin.

SAVVA

It makes no difference. There'll be enough left. It is the good-for-nothings that will perish, the fools to whom this life is like a sh.e.l.l to a crab. Those who believe will perish, because their faith will be taken away from them. Those who love the old will perish, because everything will be taken away from them. The weak, the sick, those who love quietness. There will be no quietness in the world, brother. There will remain only the free and the brave, those with young and eager souls and clear eyes that can embrace the whole universe.

KONDRATY

Like yours? I am afraid of your eyes, Savva Yegorovich, especially in the dark.

SAVVA

Yes, like mine. And emanc.i.p.ated from everything, naked, armed only with their reason, they will deliberate; discuss, talk things over, and build up a new life, a good life, Kondraty, where every man may breathe freely.