t you want? There
y'are! And the woman lies to him with countenance, voice, sighs, moans,
movements of the body. And even he himself in the depths of his soul
knows about this professional deception, but--go along with you!--still
deceives himself: 'Ah, what a handsome man I am! Ah, how the women love
me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I bring them ...' You know, there are
cases when a man with the most desperate brazenness, in the most
unlikely manner, is flattered to his face, and he himself sees and
knows it very plainly, but--the devil take it!--despite everything a
delightful feeling of some sort lubricates his soul. And so here.
Query: whose is the initiative in the lie?

"And here's a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it yourself.
They lie most of all when they are asked: 'How did you come to such a
life?' But what right have you to ask her about that, may the devil
take you! For she does not push her way into your intimate life? She
doesn't interest herself with your first, 'holy' love or the virtue of
your sisters and your bride. Aha! You pay money? Splendid! The bawd and
the bouncer, and the police, and medicine, and the city government,
watch over your interests. Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the
prostitute hired by you for love is guaranteed you, and your
personality is immune ... even though in the most direct sense, in the
sense of a slap in the face, which you, of course, deserve through your
aimless, and perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as
well for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to
control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history as
you--yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian--will digest
easiest of all. Because by itself life is either exceedingly humdrum
and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as only life can
be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about an
officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father,
who there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores
her to return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I'm saying doesn't
apply to you; in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and
great soul ... Let's drink to your health?"

They drank.

"Shall I speak on?" continued Platonov undecidedly.

"Are you bored?"

"No, no, I beg of you, speak on."

"They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen
themselves befor