Chapter 41: The Poor

As a pauper currently striving toward financial security, Mikhail found it hard to claim he could do much for others, for before the suffering of the age, what an individual could accomplish was always too little.

But nonetheless, doing whatever one could for others was at least a bittersweet comfort.

Tomorrow’s hardships would come tomorrow, but perhaps, at least, someone else’s present might be a little easier for now.

Precisely because he knew he could do so little, Mikhail had, to some extent, avoided forming overly deep connections with certain people.

Thus, even though Mikhail had encountered this little beggar several times in a row, he never asked about the child’s situation—first, because he feared stirring up painful memories, and second, because he genuinely worried that learning the truth might make his own life, still burdened by debt, even more complicated.

As for the child, he likely remembered Mikhail as a kind master; seeing him meant today would surely bring some reward.

Yet even so, Mikhail rarely saw the child—he appeared only when hunger became unbearable or some other necessity forced him to come.

Once, before leaving, the child slipped Mikhail a worn wooden carving and immediately bolted away, as if afraid Mikhail might refuse it or discard it right before his eyes.

Mikhail silently accepted it, scratched his head for a long while, then finally made a difficult decision in his heart: when his financial situation improved a little, he might gently ask about the condition of this surprisingly polite child.

Damn it, just hope this doesn’t knock me back from modest comfort into poverty again.

In truth, Mikhail couldn’t earn much from writing regular manuscripts; though Russian writers’ fees were high, the works he carried in his mind were, in a sense, finite—one used, one gone.

After all, if one carefully studied a writer’s entire body of work, one would find that beyond their masterpieces, they often produced plenty of literary trash; authors whose every piece was a gem were virtually nonexistent.

But Mikhail was different—each piece was a gem among gems, a classic among classics, and some couldn’t be used yet, waiting for the right moment.

Thus, for a quick start, he still had to bet everything on a collected volume, and if possible, take over the magazine “The Contemporary”—only then could he truly call himself financially secure.

Besides the great poets, major writers, and minor poets and authors, the “St. Petersburg Collection” had one figure who could be called central.

That was Dostoevsky’s “The Poor.”

In his youth, old Dostoevsky had been a dream-chasing literary youth, abandoning a good job to quit and pursue writing as a livelihood; at the time, he was merely a novice writer, and he made this choice, as he wrote in a letter:

“I have submitted my resignation, because I swear to you, I can no longer continue in this post. What pleasure is there in life when the best years are squandered? The truth is, I never intended to serve long-term—so why waste my youth?”

Though he eventually became famous overnight, there was nearly half a year’s gap in between, during which old Dostoevsky relied not only on his job for survival but mostly on his brother’s support—ahem.

And as time passed, finally, Mikhail’s new novel, after nearly three months, was about to appear again in a literary magazine.

“Sleepy” had endured many setbacks, but another piece had gone far more smoothly, for it contained no violent elements, only flashes of humanity.

Hmm, after a big piece, one needs a gentle one to cool some tempers, lest someone, unable to bear it, truly add Mikhail to their blacklist.

When the twenty-fifth of the month finally arrived, with the opening of bookstores and cafés, young people streamed in; as before, some immediately asked: “Has ‘The Fatherland Notes’ arrived?”

But whereas before they had focused more on the critic Belinsky, now they seized the magazine and immediately searched for one author’s name.

This author had appeared only once, yet left an indelible impression—so much so that many remembered his name.

But one problem was obvious: if the debut was this stunning, could the following pieces possibly match the same quality?

Could even the author himself write another piece as excellent as those two?

Some harbored doubts, but more were filled with anticipation; among them, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was one of the most eager, perhaps even more so than others.

And this was because the neurotic young man had drawn more from those two stories than from many works he’d read before, so much so that when he began writing his own new piece, it felt unusually smooth—as if he had learned the secrets of creation from them.

But recently he’d encountered a slight bottleneck, so when the latest issue of “The Fatherland Notes” came out, this thin man rushed into the bookstore, pulled out the last of his money, and tried to grab the magazine first.

Yet many others shared his desire; after much struggle, Dostoevsky finally squeezed out of the crowd, watching young people already reading aloud or sharing their opinions, he longed to join them—but thinking of his recent financial state, he gritted his teeth and turned away.

Once back at his lodging, the neurotic man eagerly opened the magazine, his fingers trembling slightly, and his eyes quickly fell on the title of the first story: “The Poor.”

“In a fisherman’s hut, the fisherman’s wife, San’na, sat by the lamp mending an old sail. The wind howled in the yard, the waves crashed against the shore with a roaring sound.

The night was dark and cold, yet inside the fisherman’s hut it was warm as spring—the fire had not yet gone out. On the bed, beneath a white mosquito net, five children slept peacefully amid the roar of the sea. San’na’s husband had set out to sea early that morning and had not yet returned. She listened to the tumult of the waves and the howling wind, her heart uneasy.”

(End of chapter)