Status Updates From أحبك حيا وميتا

It sometimes happens that a man, on waking up, asks himself with an involuntary frisson of terror: “Am I really thirty already? Forty? Fifty? How has life passed so quickly? How has death come so close? Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water; the fish is still swimming, but the net is around it and the fisherman will extract it – whenever he wants.”

Probably I shall not survive all this – so much the better. I’ve been brought to the edge of the abyss and must plunge in. Fate did not unite us in vain; who knows, perhaps I killed him; now it’s his turn to draw me after him. I sought happiness – and maybe I’ll find death. Clearly that’s as it should be; clearly, there was guilt… But death covers and reconciles everything, does it not?

Each of us is guilty by virtue of being alive, and there is no thinker so great, no benefactor of mankind who, because of the good he has done, can rely on having the right to live…

...she sank to her knees, but could not pray. There were no reproaches in her heart; she did dare to question God as to why he had not spared them, taken pity on them or protected them. Why was their punishment greater than their guilt, if indeed they were guilty?

Can it be we are alone, quite alone, whilst everywhere else, in all these fathomless gulfs and chasms, everything, absolutely everything, is alien to us?

“why is there death, why separation, sickness and tears? And why is there this beauty, this sweet sense of hope, this soothing awareness of a sure refuge, unfailing defence and immortal protection? What is the meaning of this smiling, beneficent sky, this happy, easeful earth? Can it be that all this is merely within us, while outside us there is eternal cold and silence?

Oh, how quiet and tender was the night, how dove-like and gentle was the breath of the azure air; how must all suffering, all grief be stilled and fall asleep beneath this clear sky, beneath these sacred and innocent moonbeams!

“Give it time,” replied Uvar Ivanovich. “There will be.”
“Will be? The soil, the force of the black earth, has spoken: ‘There will be.’ Look, I’ll take note of your words. But why are you putting out the candle?”
“I want to sleep. Goodnight.”

What a useful, practical occupation! No, if there were worthwhile people among us, this girl, this sensitive soul, would not have left us, would not have slipped away like a fish into water! What is happening, Uvar Ivanovich? When will our time come? When will real people be produced here?”

No, we still haven’t got anyone or anybody, wherever you look. It’s all small fry, rodents, little Hamlets or Samoyeds, darkness and subterranean wildernesses, speculators, time-wasters and tub-thumpers. Then there’s another type: they’ve studied themselves in minute and shameful detail, they constantly take the pulse of their every sensation and report it to themselves: ‘that’s what I feel; that’s what I think’,

“O great philosopher of the Russian land!” Shubin exclaimed. “Your every word is pure gold, and a statue ought to be erected – not to me but to you, and I’ll take the job on. Just as you are lying now, in that pose, about which it is hard to say what there is most of – idleness or strength.

Insarov… Insarov… Why the false modesty. Well, let’s admit he’s a fine fellow, that he’ll stand up for himself, although up to now he’s done the same as us sinners, and are we complete rubbish? Well, take me – am I rubbish, Uvar Ivanovich? Did God stint me in everything? Did he give me no capabilities, no talents?

“Yes, youthful, glorious, bold. Death, life, struggle, fall, triumph, love, liberty, homeland… All well and good! God grant them to everyone! It’s not the same as sitting up to your neck in a bog and trying to feign indifference when in fact you’re really not indifferent. But there the strings are taut; play to the whole world, or snap!”

“All right for fighting. Precisely. Today you’ve expressed yourself with complete accuracy. But not all right for living. And, you know, she wants to live with him a little.”
“A youthful deed,” Uvar Ivanovich opined.

...they say her husband – Lord knows, I can’t get my tongue round that word – they say Insarov is coughing blood. That’s bad. I saw him the other day, with a face you could have modelled Brutus on there and then… Do you know who Brutus was, Uvar Ivanovich?”
“How should I know? A man.”
“Exactly. ‘This was a man.’ Yes, a wonderful face, but the face of a sick man, a very sick man.”
“But all right… for fighting,”

She’s leaving – where to? One shudders to think. To go so far, to the middle of nowhere! What awaits her there? I imagine her leaving a post station at night, in a blizzard and thirty degrees of frost. She’s parting with homeland and family; but I understand her. Who’s she leaving behind here? Who has she seen here? Kurnatovskys, Bersenevs and the likes of us—