but these conversations were not a success. They did not satisfy me somehow. Not all the gaps in the soul can be stopped up with a book, besides there are books which widen and deepen these gaps very viciously. The people who are able to see that everything in this world has its shadow and that all truths and ideas are also not deprived of this appendage—a useless one, indeed—these people, alas, are rare. The shadows rouse doubts as to the purity of the truths, and doubts, although they are not exactly forbidden, are considered shameful, unreliable so to say. A man in doubt always arouses suspicion—this I would consider as the only truth without a shadow. Among the comrades I had the reputation of a man of unsteady ideology, capricious and—worst of all—inclined to romanticism, “metaphysics,” as Basov called it—this was the man of whom I saw more than of the rest.

“A revolutionary has to be a materialist—materialism is an expression of will—completely purified from everything unreasonable, irrational,” Basov said, rolling his r’s. I knew he was right, but out of hostility to him I did not agree.

Simonov was a man with whom one could talk of everything. He listened with attention and was never embarrassed to admit that he did not understand this, did not know the other; sometimes he even frankly announced:

“There is no need for me to know this.”

To my astonishment one of the things he did not need to know was God. I say to my astonishment, because I had believed him to be religious.

“Strange that you should ask me about it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “What can one feel about God when we each have fourteen meters of guts in our bellies? Also—if there is a God, the camel, the perch and the pig should be aware of it too—don’t you see? A man is an animal as well. A reasonable one? Well, there are plenty of reasonable animals except man, besides it has been proved that reason has nothing to do with it—God is not grasped by reason. So what about it?—You really ought to read Brehm.”

He was surprised:

“What a mess the intellectuals have made of you.”

“Well, and if they had not, what do you think would have become of me?”

He glanced at me significantly and said:

“I—I wonder. An inventor of some kind, maybe? I don’t know. You’re a very queer person.”

On the whole Simonov was a man devoid of vitality, disconnected somehow and probably very lonely. Although talkative, he was sparing of gesture, his arms moved slowly, he laughed rarely, and one felt he was indifferent both to life and to people. Also he was lazy, possibly because of a great weariness. I very soon became convinced that all that he said of the joys of hunting, of gambling, was invented for his own use, and based on hearsay, and repeated as a subterfuge. The hunt after human beings did not exhilarate him. He had assistants in the shape of agents provocateurs; this satisfied him completely and he hardly ever showed any personal initiative in his work. Had I actually wanted it, I need never have done anything, just gone on telling Simonov anecdotes from party life, from the life of revolutionaries. The anecdotal side of the revolution interested him, I should say, more than the essence of it. He always listened attentively to anecdotes, and the sillier the anecdote the wider the smile it produced on the depressingly colorless face of Simonov. One day he remarked with a sigh:

“Popenko told these stories in a funnier way than you do. He spoke like Brehm.”