It was during these years that Markovitch's ambitions took flame. He was
always as he told me having "amazing ideas." I asked him--What kind of
ideas? "Ideas by which the world would be transformed.... Those letters
were all old, you know, and dusty, and yellow, and eaten, some of them,
by rats, and they'd lie on the floor and I'd try to arrange them in
little piles according to their dates.... There'd be rows of little
packets all across the floor..., and then somehow, when one's back was
turned, they'd move, all of their own wicked purpose--and one would have
to begin all over again, bending with one's back aching, and seeing
always the stupid handwriting.... I hated it, Ivan Andreievitch, of
course I hated it, but I had to do it for the money. And I lived in his
house, too, and as he got madder it wasn't pleasant. He wanted me to
sleep with him because he saw things in the middle of the night, and
he'd catch hold of me and scream and twist his fat legs round me... no,
it wasn't agreeable. _On ne sympatichne saff-szem_. He wasn't a nice man
at all. But while I was sorting the letters these ideas would come to me
and I would be on fire.... It seemed to me that I was to save the world,
and that it would not be difficult if only one might be resolute enough.
That was the trouble--to be resolute. One might say to oneself, 'On
Friday October 13th I will do so and so, and then on Saturday November
3rd I will do so and so, and then on December 24th it will be finished.'
But then on October 13th one is, may be, in quite another mood--one is
even ill possibly--and so nothing is done and the whole plan is ruined.
I would think all day as to how I would make myself resolute, and I
would say when old Feodor Stepanovitch would pinch my ear and deny me
more soup, 'Ah ha, you wait, you old pig-face--you wait until I've
mastered my resolution--and then I'll show you!' I fancied, for
instance, that if I could command myself sufficiently I could just go to
people and say, 'You must have bath-houses like this and this'--I had
all the plans ready, you know, and in the hottest room you have couches
like this, and you have a machine that beats your back--so, so, so--not
those dirty old things that leave bits of green stuff all over you--and
so on, and so on. But better ideas than that, ideas about poverty and
wealth, no more kings, you know, nor police, but not your cheap
Socialism that fellows like Boris Nicolaievitch shout about; no, real