The Adolescent

Lately I had even been at Anna Andreevna’s quite often. But here one strange thing always happened: it was always she herself who invited me to come, and she certainly always expected me, but when I entered, she unfailingly made it seem that I had come unexpectedly and unintendedly. I noticed this feature in her, but I became attached to her all the same. She lived with Mme. Fanariotov, her grandmother, as her ward, of course (Versilov gave nothing to provide for them)—but in a far different role from that in which wards are usually described in the houses of aristocratic ladies, for instance, the old countess’s ward in Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades.”²⁰ Anna Andreevna was like a countess herself. She lived completely separately in this house, that is, on the same floor and in the same apartment as the Fanariotovs, but in two separate rooms, so that, for instance, coming and going, I never once met any of the Fanariotovs. She had the right to receive whomever she wanted, and to use her time however she liked. True, she was already going on twenty-three. During the last year, she had almost stopped appearing in society, though Mme. Fanariotov did not stint on expenses for her granddaughter, whom, as I heard, she loved very much. On the contrary, I precisely liked in Anna Andreevna the fact that I always found her in such modest dresses, always busy with something, with a book or handwork. There was something of the nunnery, almost nunlike, in the way she looked, and I liked that. She was not loquacious, but always spoke with weight, and was terribly good at listening, something I never knew how to do. When I told her that, though they didn’t have a single feature in common, she nevertheless bore a great resemblance to Versilov, she always blushed slightly. She blushed often and always quickly, but always only slightly, and I came to like very much this particularity of her face. With her I never called Versilov by his last name, but always Andrei Petrovich, and that came about somehow by itself. I even noticed very well that, generally, at the Fanariotovs’, they must have been somehow ashamed of Versilov; I noticed it, however, from Anna Andreevna alone, though once again I don’t know if one can use the word “ashamed” here; anyhow, there was something of the sort. I also talked to her about Prince Sergei Petrovich, and she listened very much and, it seemed to me, was interested in this information; but somehow it always happened that I told her things myself, while she never asked. Of the possibility of a marriage between them, I never dared to speak with her, though I often wished to, because I partly liked the idea myself. But in her room I stopped somehow venturing to talk about terribly many things, and, on the contrary, I found it terribly good to be in her room. I also liked it very much that she was very educated and had read a lot, and even serious books; she had read much more than I had.

She herself invited me to come the first time. I understood even then that she was maybe counting on occasionally worming a thing or two out of me. Oh, many people could have wormed a great many things out of me then! “But what of it,” I thought, “she’s not receiving me for that alone.” In short, I was even glad that I could be of use to her, and . . . and when I sat with her, it aways seemed to me within myself that it was my sister sitting near me, though, incidentally, we never once spoke of our relation to each other, not a word, not a hint, as if it simply didn’t exist. Sitting at her place, it seemed to me somehow quite unthinkable to start talking about it, and, really, looking at her, an absurd thought sometimes came to my head, that she maybe didn’t know about this relation at all—so far as the way she behaved with me went.

III

ON ENTERING, I suddenly found Liza with her. It almost struck me. I was very well aware that they had seen each other before; it had happened at the “nursing baby’s.” I may tell later, if there’s space, about this fantasy of the proud and modest Anna Andreevna’s to see this baby, and about her meeting Liza there; but all the same I never expected that Anna Andreevna would ever invite Liza to her place. This struck me pleasantly. Not letting it show, naturally, I greeted Anna Andreevna and, warmly pressing Liza’s hand, sat down beside her. The two women were busy with work: on the table and on their knees lay an evening dress of Anna Andreevna’s, expensive but old, that is, worn three times, which she wanted to alter somehow. Liza was a great “expert ” in such matters and had taste, and so a solemn council of “wise women” was taking place. I remembered Versilov and laughed; and anyhow I was in the most radiant spirits.

“You’re very cheerful today, and that’s very pleasant,” said Anna Andreevna, articulating the words imposingly and distinctly. Her voice was a dense and sonorous contralto, but she always spoke calmly and softly, always lowering her long lashes slightly, and with a smile barely flitting over her pale face.

“Liza knows how unpleasant I am when I’m not cheerful,” I replied cheerfully.

“Maybe Anna Andreevna knows about that, too,” the mischievous Liza needled me. The dear! If only I had known what was in her heart then!

“What are you doing now?” asked Anna Andreevna. (I’ll note that she had precisely even asked me to call on her today.)

“I’m now sitting here and asking myself: why is it always more pleasant for me to find you over a book than over handwork? No, really, handwork doesn’t suit you for some reason. In that sense I take after Andrei Petrovich.”

“You still haven’t made up your mind to enter the university?”

“I’m only too grateful that you haven’t forgotten our conversations; that means you think of me occasionally; but . . . I haven’t formed my idea yet concerning the university, and besides I have goals of my own.”

“That is, he has his secret,” observed Liza.

“Drop your jokes, Liza. A certain intelligent man said the other day that, with all this progressive movement of ours in the last twenty years, we’ve proved first of all that we’re filthily uneducated. Here, of course, he was also speaking of our university men.”

“Well, surely papa said that; you repeat his thoughts terribly often,” observed Liza.

“Liza, it’s as if you don’t believe I have a mind of my own.”

“In our time it’s useful to listen to the words of intelligent people and remember them,” Anna Andreevna defended me a little.

“Precisely, Anna Andreevna,” I picked up hotly. “Whoever doesn’t think about Russia’s present moment is not a citizen! Maybe I look at Russia from a strange viewpoint: we lived through the Tartar invasion, then through two centuries of slavery,²¹ and that, certainly, because both the one and the other were to our liking. Now we’ve been given freedom, and we have to endure freedom. Will we be able to? Will freedom prove as much to our taste? That’s the question.”

Liza glanced quickly at Anna Andreevna, who looked down at once and began searching for something around her; I saw that Liza was trying as hard as she could to control herself, but somehow accidentally our eyes suddenly met, and she burst out laughing. I flared up:

“Liza, you’re inconceivable!”

“Forgive me!” she said suddenly, ceasing to laugh and almost with sadness. “I’ve got God knows what in my head . . .”

And it was as if tears suddenly trembled in her voice. I felt terribly ashamed; I took her hand and kissed it hard.

“You’re very kind,” Anna Andreevna observed to me softly, seeing me kiss Liza’s hand.

“I’m glad most of all, Liza, that I find you laughing this time,” I said. “Would you believe it, Anna Andreevna, these past few days she met me each time with some strange look, and in this look there was as if a question: ‘So, have you found anything out? Is everything going well?’ Really, there’s something like that with her.”

Anna Andreevna gave her a slow and keen look. Liza dropped her eyes. I could see very well, however, that the two were much better and more closely acquainted than I’d have supposed when I came in earlier. The thought pleased me.

“You just said I was kind; you won’t believe how the whole of me changes for the better with you, and how pleasant it is for me to be with you, Anna Andreevna,” I said with feeling.

“And I’m very glad you say that to me precisely now,” she replied meaningly. I must say that she never talked to me about my disorderly life and of the abyss I had plunged into, though I knew she not only knew about it all, but even made inquiries indirectly. So that now it was like a first hint, and—my heart turned to her still more.

“How’s our invalid?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s much better. He’s walking, and he went for a ride yesterday and today. But didn’t you go to see him today either? He’s waiting so much for you.”

“I’m guilty towards him, but you visit him now and have fully replaced me. He’s a great traitor and has exchanged me for you.”

She made a very serious face, very possibly because my joke was trivial.

“I was at Prince Sergei Petrovich’s today,” I began to mutter, “and I . . . By the way, Liza, did you go to see Darya Onisimovna today?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered somehow curtly, not raising her head. “It seems you go to see the sick prince every day?” she asked somehow suddenly, maybe in order to say something.

“Yes, I go to see him, only I don’t get there,” I smiled. “I go in and turn left.”

“Even the prince has noticed that you go to see Katerina Nikolaevna very often. He mentioned it yesterday and laughed,” said Anna Andreevna.

“At what? What did he laugh at?”

“He was joking, you know. He said that, on the contrary, a young and beautiful woman always produces an impression of indignation and wrath in a young man your age . . .” Anna Andreevna suddenly laughed.

“Listen . . . you know, that was a terribly apt remark he made,” I cried. “Probably it wasn’t he, but you who said it to him?”

“Why so? No, it was he.”

“Well, but if this beauty pays attention to him, despite his being so insignificant, standing in the corner, angry at being ‘little,’ and suddenly prefers him to the whole crowd of surrounding admirers, what then?” I asked suddenly, with a most bold and defiant look. My heart began to pound.

“Then you’ll just perish right in front of her,” Liza laughed.

“Perish?” I cried. “No, I won’t perish. I don’t believe I’ll perish. If a woman stands across my path, then she must follow after me. You don’t block my path with impunity . . .”

Liza once said to me in passing, recalling it long afterwards, that I uttered this phrase then terribly strangely, seriously, and as if suddenly growing pensive; but at the same time “so ridiculously that it was impossible to control oneself.” Indeed, Anna Andreevna again burst out laughing.

“Laugh, laugh at me!” I exclaimed in intoxication, because I was terribly pleased with this whole conversation and the direction it had taken. “From you it only gives me pleasure. I love your laughter, Anna Andreevna! You have this feature: you keep silent and suddenly burst out laughing, instantly, so that even an instant earlier one couldn’t have guessed it by your face. I knew a lady in Moscow, distantly, I watched her from a corner. She was almost as beautiful as you are, but she couldn’t laugh the way you do, and her face, which was as attractive as yours—lost its attraction; but yours is terribly attractive . . . precisely for that ability . . . I’ve long been wanting to tell you.”

When I said of the lady that “she was as beautiful as you are,” I was being clever: I pretended that it had escaped me accidentally, as if I hadn’t even noticed; I knew very well that women value such “escaped” praise more highly than any polished compliment you like. And much as Anna Andreevna blushed, I knew it pleased her. And I invented the lady; I didn’t know any such lady in Moscow, it was only so as to praise Anna Andreevna and please her.

“One truly might think,” she said with a charming smile, “that you’ve been under the influence of some beautiful woman recently.”

It was as if I were flying off somewhere . . . I even wanted to reveal something to them . . . but I restrained myself.

“And by the way, not long ago you spoke of Katerina Nikolaevna quite hostilely.”

“If I ever said anything bad,” I flashed my eyes, “the blame for it goes to the monstrous slander against her that she was Andrei Petrovich’s enemy; the slander against him, too, that he was supposedly in love with her, had proposed to her, and similar absurdities. This idea is as outrageous as another slander against her, that, supposedly while her husband was still alive, she had promised Prince Sergei Petrovich that she would marry him when she was widowed, and then didn’t keep her word. But I know firsthand that all this wasn’t so, but was only a joke. I know it firsthand. Abroad there, once, in a joking moment, she indeed told the prince ‘maybe,’ in the future; but what could it have signified besides just a light word? I know only too well that the prince, for his part, cannot attach any value to such a promise, and he has no intentions anyway,” I added, catching myself. “He seems to have quite different ideas,” I put in slyly. “Today Nashchokin said at his place that Katerina Nikolaevna is supposedly going to marry Baron Bjoring: believe me, he bore this news in the best possible way, you may be sure.”

“Nashchokin was there?” Anna Andreevna suddenly asked weightily and as if in surprise.

“Oh, yes. He seems to be one of those respectable people . . .”

“And Nashchokin spoke with him about this marriage to Bjoring?” Anna Andreevna suddenly became very interested.

“Not about the marriage, but just so, of the possibility, as a rumor; he said there was supposedly such a rumor in society; as for me, I’m sure it’s nonsense.”

Anna Andreevna pondered, and bent over her sewing.

“I like Prince Sergei Petrovich,” I suddenly added warmly. “He has his shortcomings, indisputably, I’ve already told you—namely, a certain one-idea-ness—but his shortcomings also testify to a nobility of soul, isn’t it true? Today, for instance, he and I nearly quarreled over an idea: his conviction that if you speak about nobility, you should be noble yourself, otherwise all you say is a lie. Well, is that logical? And yet it testifies to the lofty demands of honor in his soul, of duty, of justice, isn’t it true? . . . Ah, my God, what time is it?” I suddenly cried, happening to glance at the face of the mantelpiece clock.

“Ten minutes to three,” she said calmly, glancing at the clock. All the while I spoke of the prince, she listened to me, looking down with a sort of sly but sweet smile: she knew why I was praising him so. Liza listened, her head bent over her work, and for some time had not interfered in the conversation.

I jumped up as if burnt.

“Are you late somewhere?”

“Yes . . . no . . . I am late, though, but I’ll go right now. Just one word, Anna Andreevna,” I began excitedly, “I can’t help telling you today! I want to confess to you that I’ve already blessed several times the kindness and delicacy with which you have invited me to visit you . . . Being acquainted with you has made a very strong impression on me. It’s as if here in your room my soul is purified and I go away better than I am. It’s really so. When I sit beside you, I not only can’t speak about bad things, but I can’t even have bad thoughts; they disappear in your presence, and if I remember something bad in your presence, I’m at once ashamed of this bad thing, grow timid, and blush in my soul. And, you know, it was especially pleasing to me to meet my sister here with you today . . . It testifies to such nobility of your . . . to such a beautiful attitude . . . In short, it speaks for something so brotherly, if you will allow me to break this ice, that I . . .”

As I spoke, she was rising from her seat, turning more and more red; but it was as if she was suddenly frightened by something, by some line that ought not to have been overleaped, and she quickly interrupted me:

“Believe me, I shall know how to appreciate your feelings with all my heart . . . I understood them without words . . . and already long ago . . .”

She paused in embarrassment, pressing my hand. Suddenly Liza tugged at my sleeve unobserved. I said good-bye and went out; but in the next room Liza caught up with me.

IV

“LIZA, WHY DID you tug at my sleeve?” I asked.

“She’s nasty, she’s cunning, she’s not worth . . . She keeps you in order to worm things out of you,” she whispered in a quick, spiteful whisper. I’d never seen her with such a face before.

“Liza, God help you, she’s such a lovely girl!”

“Well, then I’m nasty.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m very bad. She’s maybe the loveliest of girls, but I’m bad. Enough, drop it. Listen: mama asks you about something ‘that she doesn’t dare speak of,’ as she said. Arkady, darling! Stop gambling, dear, I beseech you . . . mama, too . . .”

“Liza, I know it myself, but . . . I know it’s a pathetic weakness, but . . . it’s only trifles and nothing more! You see, I got into debt, like a fool, and I want to win only so as to pay it back. It’s possible to win, because I played without calculation, off the cuff, like a fool, but now I’ll tremble over each rouble . . . I won’t be myself if I don’t win! I haven’t taken to it; it’s not the main thing, it’s just in passing, I assure you! I’m too strong not to stop when I want to. I’ll pay back the money, and then I’m yours undividedly, and tell mama that I’ll never leave you . . .”

“Those three hundred roubles today cost you something!”

“How do you know?” I gave a start.

“Darya Onisimovna heard everything . . .”

But at that moment Liza suddenly pushed me behind the curtain, and the two of us found ourselves in what’s known as a “lantern,” that is, a round, bay-windowed little room. Before I managed to come to my senses, I heard a familiar voice, the clank of spurs, and guessed at the familiar stride.

“Prince Seryozha,” I whispered.

“Himself,” she whispered.

“Why are you so frightened?”

“I just am. I don’t want him to meet me for anything . . .”

“Tiens, he’s not dangling after you, is he?” I grinned. “He’ll get it from me if he is. Where are you going?”

“Let’s leave. I’ll go with you.”

“Did you say good-bye in there?”

“Yes, my coat’s in the front hall . . .”

We left. On the stairs an idea struck me:

“You know, Liza, he may have come to propose to her!”

“N-no . . . he won’t propose . . .” she said firmly and slowly, in a low voice.

“You don’t know, Liza, I did quarrel with him today—since you’ve already been told of it—but, by God, I love him sincerely and wish him good luck here. We made peace today. When we’re happy, we’re so kind . . . You see, he has many splendid inclinations . . . and humaneness . . . The rudiments at least . . . and in the hands of such a firm and intelligent girl as Miss Versilov, he’d straighten out completely and be happy. It’s too bad I have no time . . . ride with me a little, I could tell you something . . .”

“No, ride alone, I’m not going that way. Will you come for dinner?”

“I’ll come, I’ll come, as promised. Listen, Liza, a certain rotter—in short, the vilest of beings, well, Stebelkov, if you know him—has a terrible influence on his affairs . . . promissory notes . . . well, in short, he’s got him in his hands, and has him so cornered, and he feels so humiliated himself, that the two of them see no other solution than to propose to Anna Andreevna. She really ought to be warned. However, it’s nonsense, she’ll set the whole matter to rights later. But will she refuse him? What do you think?”

“Good-bye, I have no time,” Liza cut me off, and I suddenly saw so much hatred in her fleeting glance that I at once cried out in fright:

“Liza, dear, why that look?”

“It’s not at you; only don’t gamble . . .”

“Ah, you mean gambling! I won’t, I won’t.”

“You just said, ‘when we’re happy’—so you’re very happy?”

“Terribly, Liza, terribly! My God, it’s already three o’clock, and past! . . . Good-bye, Lizok. Lizochka, dear, tell me: can one keep a woman waiting? Is that permissible?”

“At a rendezvous, you mean?” Liza smiled faintly, with some sort of dead, trembling little smile.

“Give me your hand for luck.”

“For luck? My hand? Not for anything!”

And she quickly walked away. And, above all, she had cried out so seriously. I jumped into my sledge.

Yes, yes, and this “happiness” was the main reason why I, like a blind mole, neither understood nor saw anything except myself then!

Chapter Four

I

NOW I’M EVEN afraid to tell about it. It was all long ago; but now, too, it’s like a mirage for me. How could such a woman arrange a rendezvous with such a vile little brat as I was then?—that’s how it was at first sight! When I left Liza and rushed off, my heart pounding, I thought I’d simply lost my mind; the idea of an appointed rendezvous suddenly seemed to me such a glaring absurdity that it was impossible to believe it. And yet I had no doubts at all, even to this extent: the more glaring the absurdity, the more strongly I believed in it.

That it had already struck three worried me: “If I’ve been granted a rendezvous, how can I be late for the rendezvous?” I thought. Stupid questions also flashed, such as, “Which is better for me now—boldness or timidity?” But it all only flashed, because in my heart there was one main thing, and such as I couldn’t define. What had been said the day before was this: “Tomorrow at three o’clock I’ll be at Tatyana Pavlovna’s”—that was all. But, first, she had always received me alone, in her room, and she could have told me all she liked without moving to Tatyana Pavlovna’s; so why appoint another place at Tatyana Pavlovna’s? And again a question: will Tatyana Pavlovna be at home, or won’t she? If it’s a rendezvous, then it means Tatyana Pavlovna won’t be at home. And how to accomplish that without explaining it all to Tatyana Pavlovna beforehand? Which means that Tatyana Pavlovna is also in on the secret? This thought seemed wild to me and somehow unchaste, almost crude.

And, finally, she might simply have wanted to visit Tatyana Pavlovna and told me yesterday without any purpose, and I imagined all sorts of things. And it had been said so much in passing, carelessly, calmly, and after a rather boring séance, because all the while I had been at her place yesterday, I had been thrown off for some reason: I sat, mumbled, and didn’t know what to say, grew terribly angry and timid, and she was going out somewhere, as it turned out afterwards, and was visibly glad when I got up to leave. All these considerations crowded in my head. I decided, finally, that I would go, ring the bell, the cook would open the door, and I would ask, “Is Tatyana Pavlovna at home?” If she wasn’t, it meant “rendezvous.” But I had no doubts, no doubts!

I ran up the stairs and—on the stairs, in front of the door, all my fear vanished. “Well, come what may,” I thought, “only quickly!” The cook opened the door and, with her vile phlegm, grumbled that Tatyana Pavlovna was not at home. “And is there anyone else waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna?” I was about to ask, but didn’t. “Better see for myself,” and, muttering to the cook that I would wait, I threw off my coat and opened the door . . .

Katerina Nikolaevna was sitting by the window and “waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“She’s not here?” she suddenly asked me, as if with worry and vexation, the moment she saw me. Both her voice and her face corresponded so little with my expectations that I simply got mired on the threshold.

“Who’s not here?” I murmured.

“Tatyana Pavlovna! Didn’t I ask you yesterday to tell her I’d call on her at three o’clock?”

“I . . . I haven’t seen her at all.”

“You forgot?”

I sat down as if crushed. So that’s how it turned out! And, above all, everything was as clear as two times two, and I—I still stubbornly believed.

“I don’t even remember your asking me to tell her. And you didn’t; you simply said you’d be here at three o’clock,” I cut her short impatiently. I wasn’t looking at her.

“Ah!” she suddenly cried. “So, if you forgot to tell her, and yet knew yourself that I would be here, so then what did you come here for?”

I raised my head. There was neither mockery nor wrath in her face, there was only her bright, cheerful smile and some sort of additional mischievousness in her expression—her perpetual expression, however—an almost childlike mischievousness. “There, you see, I’ve caught you out. Well, what are you going to say now?” her whole face all but said.

I didn’t want to answer, and again looked down. The silence lasted for about half a minute.

“Are you just coming from papà?” she suddenly asked.

“I’m just coming from Anna Andreevna, and I wasn’t at Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s at all . . . and you knew that,” I suddenly added.

“Did anything happen to you at Anna Andreevna’s?”

“That is, since I now have such a crazy look? No, I had a crazy look even before Anna Andreevna’s.”

“And you didn’t get smarter at her place?”

“No, I didn’t. Besides, I heard there that you were going to marry Baron Bjoring.”

“Did she tell you that?” she suddenly became interested.

“No, I told her that, and I heard Nashchokin say it to Prince Sergei Petrovich today when he came to visit.”

I still wouldn’t raise my eyes to her; to look at her meant to be showered with light, joy, happiness, and I didn’t want to be happy. The sting of indignation pierced my heart, and in a single instant I made a tremendous decision. Then I suddenly began to speak, I scarcely remember what about. I was breathless and mumbled somehow, but now I looked boldly at her. My heart was pounding. I began talking about something totally unrelated, though maybe it made sense. At first she listened with her steady, patient smile, which never left her face, but, little by little, astonishment and then even alarm flashed in her intent gaze. Her smile still didn’t leave her, but the smile, too, as if trembled at times.

“What’s the matter?” I suddenly asked, noticing that she was all atremble.

“I’m afraid of you,” she replied almost anxiously.

“Why don’t you leave? Look, since Tatyana Pavlovna isn’t here now, and you knew she wouldn’t be, doesn’t that mean you should get up and leave?”

“I wanted to wait, but now . . . in fact . . .”

She made as if to rise.

“No, no, sit down,” I stopped her. “There, you just trembled again, but you smile even when you’re afraid . . . You always have a smile. There, now you’re smiling completely . . .”

“Are you raving?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid . . .” she whispered again.

“Of what?”

“That you’ll . . . start breaking down the walls . . .” She smiled again, but this time indeed timidly.

“I can’t bear your smile! . . .”

And I started talking again. It was just as if I was flying. As if something was pushing me. I had never, never talked with her like that, but always timidly. I was terribly timid now, too, but I went on talking; I remember I began talking about her face.

“I can’t bear your smile anymore!” I suddenly cried. “Why did I imagine you as menacing, magnificent, and with sarcastic society phrases while I was in Moscow? Yes, in Moscow; I talked about you with Marya Ivanovna while I was still there, and we imagined you, how you must be . . . Do you remember Marya Ivanovna? You visited her. As I was coming here, I dreamed of you all night on the train. Before you arrived, I spent a whole month here looking at your portrait in your father’s study, and guessed nothing. The expression of your face is childlike mischievousness and infinite simpleheartedness—there! I’ve marveled at that terribly all the while I’ve been coming to see you. Oh, you know how to look proud and crush one with your gaze. I remember how you looked at me at your father’s when you came from Moscow then . . . I saw you then, and yet if I had been asked then, when I left, what you were like—I wouldn’t have been able to tell. I couldn’t even have said how tall you were. I saw you and just went blind. Your portrait doesn’t resemble you at all: your eyes aren’t dark, but light, and only seem dark because of your long lashes. You’re plump, of average height, but your plumpness is firm, light, the plumpness of a healthy young village girl. And you have a perfect village face, the face of a village beauty—don’t be offended, it’s good, it’s better—a round, ruddy, bright, bold, laughing, and . . . shy face! Really, it’s shy. The shy face of Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov! Shy and chaste, I swear! More than chaste—childlike!—that’s your face! I’ve been struck all this while, and all this while I’ve asked myself: is this that woman? I know now that you’re very intelligent, but in the beginning I thought you were a bit simple. Your mind is gay, but without any embellishments . . . Another thing I like is that the smile never leaves you; that’s my paradise! I also like your calmness, your quietness, and that you articulate your words smoothly, calmly, and almost lazily—I precisely like that laziness. It seems that if a bridge collapsed under you, even then you’d say something smooth and measured . . . I imagined you as the height of pride and passion, yet you’ve talked with me these two whole months like student to student . . . I never imagined your forehead was like that: it’s slightly low, as in statues, but it’s white and delicate as marble under your fluffy hair. You have a high bosom, a light step, you’re of extraordinary beauty, yet you have no pride at all. I’ve come to believe it only now, I didn’t believe it before!”

She listened wide-eyed to this whole wild tirade; she saw that I was trembling myself. She raised her gloved little hand several times in a sweet, cautious gesture, so as to stop me, but each time withdrew it in perplexity and fear. Now and then she even recoiled quickly with her whole body. Two or three times a smile glimmered again on her face; one time she blushed very much, but in the end she was decidedly frightened and began to turn pale. As soon as I paused, she reached out her hand and said in a sort of pleading but still smooth voice:

“You cannot speak like that . . . it’s impossible to speak like that . . .”

And she suddenly got up from her place, unhurriedly taking her scarf and sable muff.

“You’re going?” I cried.

“I’m decidedly afraid of you . . . you abuse . . .” she drew out as if with regret and reproach.

“Listen, by God, I won’t break down any walls.”

“But you’ve already started,” she couldn’t help herself and smiled. “I don’t even know if you’ll let me pass.” And it seemed she truly was afraid that I wouldn’t let her go.

“I’ll open the door for you myself, you can go, but know this: I’ve made a tremendous decision; and if you want to give light to my soul, come back, sit down, and listen to just two words. But if you don’t want to, then go, and I myself will open the door for you.”

She looked at me and sat down.

“With what indignation another woman would have left, but you sat down!” I cried in ecstasy.

“You never allowed yourself to talk like this before.”

“I was always timid before. Now, too, I walked in not knowing what to say. Do you think I don’t feel timid now? I do. But I suddenly made a tremendous decision, and I feel I’ll carry it out. And as soon as I made this decision, I lost my mind at once and began saying all that . . . Listen, here are my two words: am I your spy or not? Answer me—there’s the question!”

Color quickly poured over her face.

“Don’t answer yet, Katerina Nikolaevna, but listen to everything and then tell me the whole truth.”

I broke all the barriers at once and flew off into space.

II

“TWO MONTHS AGO I stood here behind the curtain . . . you know . . . and you were talking with Tatyana Pavlovna about the letter. I ran out, beside myself, and said too much. You knew at once that I knew something . . . you couldn’t help understanding . . . you were looking for an important document and were apprehensive about it . . . Wait, Katerina Nikolaevna, hold off from speaking yet. I declare to you that there were grounds for your suspicions: this document exists . . . that is, it did . . . I saw it; it’s your letter to Andronikov, right?”

“You saw that letter?” she asked quickly, embarrassed and agitated. “Where did you see it?”

“I saw it . . . I saw it at Kraft’s . . . the one who shot himself . . .”

“Really? You saw it yourself? What happened to it?”

“Kraft tore it up.”

“In your presence? You saw it?”

“In my presence. He tore it up, probably, before his death . . . I didn’t know then that he was going to shoot himself . . .”

“So it’s destroyed, thank God!” she said slowly, with a sigh, and crossed herself.

I didn’t lie to her. That is, I did lie, because the document was with me and had never been with Kraft, but that was merely a detail, while in the main thing I didn’t lie, because the moment I lied, I promised myself to burn the letter that very evening. I swear, if I’d had it in my pocket at that moment, I’d have taken it out and given it to her; but I didn’t have it with me, it was at home. However, maybe I wouldn’t have given it to her, because I would have been very ashamed to confess to her then that I had it and that I had been watching her for so long, waiting and not giving it to her. It’s all one: I’d have burned it at home in any case, and I wasn’t lying! I was pure at that moment, I swear.

“And if so,” I went on, almost beside myself, “then tell me, did you attract me, treat me nicely, receive me, because you suspected I had knowledge of the document? Wait, Katerina Nikolaevna, don’t speak for one more little minute, but let me finish everything. All the while I’ve been visiting you, all this time I’ve suspected that you were being nice to me only in order to coax this letter out of me, to drive me to a point where I’d confess . . . Wait one more minute: I suspected, but I suffered. Your duplicity was unbearable for me, because . . . because in you I found the noblest of beings! I’ll say it straight out, straight out: I was your enemy, but in you I found the noblest of beings! Everything was vanquished at once. But the duplicity, that is, the suspicion of duplicity, tormented me . . . Now everything must be resolved, must be explained, the time has come; but wait a little more, don’t speak, learn how I myself look at all this, precisely now, at the present moment. I’ll say it straight out: even if it was so, I won’t be angry . . . that is, I meant to say—won’t be offended, because it’s all so natural, I do understand. What could be unnatural and bad here? You’re suffering over a letter, you suspect that so-and-so knows everything, why, then you might very well wish that so-and-so would speak . . . There’s nothing bad in that, nothing at all. I say it sincerely. But all the same I need you to tell me something now . . . to confess (forgive me the word). I need the truth. For some reason I need it! And so, tell me, were you being nice to me just to coax the document out of me . . . Katerina Nikolaevna!”

I spoke as if I were plunging down, and my forehead was burning. She listened to me without alarm now; on the contrary, there was feeling in her face, but she looked somehow shy, as if ashamed.

“Just for that,” she said slowly and softly. “Forgive me, I was to blame,” she suddenly added, raising her hands towards me slightly. I had never expected that. I had expected anything but those words, even from her whom I already knew.

“And you say to me, ‘I’m to blame!’ Straight out like that: ‘I’m to blame!’” I cried.

“Oh, long ago I began to feel that I was to blame before you . . . and I’m even glad that it’s come out now . . .”

“Felt it long ago? Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

“I didn’t know how to say it,” she smiled. “That is, I did know,” she smiled again, “but I somehow came to feel ashamed . . . because, actually, in the beginning I ‘attracted’ you, as you put it, only for that, but then very soon it became disgusting to me . . . and I was tired of all this pretending, I assure you!” she added with bitter feeling. “And of all this fuss as well!”

“And why, why wouldn’t you ask then in a direct way? You should have said, ‘You know about the letter, why are you pretending?’ And I’d have told you everything at once, I’d have confessed at once!”

“I was . . . a little afraid of you. I confess, I also didn’t trust you. And it’s true: if I was sly, you were, too,” she added with a smile.

“Yes, yes, I was unworthy!” I cried, astounded. “Oh, you don’t know yet all the abysses of my fall!”

“Well, now it’s abysses! I recognize your style.” She smiled quietly. “That letter,” she added sadly, “was the saddest and most thoughtless act of my life. The awareness of that act has always been a reproach to me. Under the influence of circumstances and apprehensions, I doubted my dear, magnanimous father. Knowing that this letter might fall . . . into the hands of wicked people . . . having all the grounds for thinking so,” she added hotly, “I trembled for fear they might make use of it, show it to papà . . . and it might make an extreme impression on him . . . in his state . . . on his health . . . and he would stop loving me . . . Yes,” she added, looking brightly into my eyes and probably catching something in my gaze, “yes, I also feared for my own lot: I feared that he . . . under the influence of his illness . . . might also deprive me of his favor . . . That feeling was also part of it, but here I’m probably to blame before him, too: he’s so kind and magnanimous that he would of course have forgiven me. That’s all there was. But the way I acted with you—that should not have happened,” she concluded, suddenly abashed again. “You make me feel ashamed.”

“No, you have nothing to be ashamed of !” I cried.

“I was actually counting . . . on your ardor . . . and I admit it,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Katerina Nikolaevna! Who, tell me, who is forcing you to make such confessions to me aloud?” I cried as if drunk. “Well, what would it have cost you to stand up and prove to me, like two times two, in the choicest expressions and in the subtlest way, that while it did happen, all the same it didn’t happen—you understand, the way you people in high society know how to manage the truth? I’m crude and stupid, I’d have believed you at once, I’d have believed anything you said! It wouldn’t have cost you anything to do that, would it? You’re not really afraid of me! How could you have humiliated yourself so willingly before an upstart, before a pathetic adolescent?”

“In this at least I haven’t humiliated myself before you,” she uttered with extreme dignity, evidently not understanding my exclamation.

“Oh, on the contrary, on the contrary! That’s just what I’m shouting! . . .”

“Ah, it was so bad and so thoughtless on my part!” she exclaimed, raising her hand to her face and as if trying to cover herself with it. “I was already ashamed yesterday, that’s why I was so out of sorts when you were sitting with me . . . The whole truth is,” she added, “that my circumstances have now come together in such a way that I absolutely needed, finally, to know the whole truth about the fate of that unfortunate letter, otherwise I had already begun to forget about it . . . because I didn’t receive you only on account of that,” she added suddenly.

My heart trembled.

“Of course not,” she smiled with a subtle smile, “of course not! I . . . You remarked on it very aptly earlier, Arkady Makarovich, that you and I often talked as student to student. I assure you that I’m sometimes very bored with people; it has become especially so after the trip abroad and all those family misfortunes . . . I even go out very little now, and not only from laziness. I often want to leave for the country. I could reread my favorite books there, which I set aside long ago, otherwise I can’t find time to read them. Remember, you laughed that I read Russian newspapers, two newspapers a day?”

“I didn’t laugh . . .”

“Of course, because it stirred you in the same way, but I confessed to you long ago: I’m Russian, and I love Russia. You remember, we kept reading the ‘facts,’ as you called them” (she smiled). “Though very often you’re somehow . . . strange, yet you sometimes became so animated that you were always able to say an apt word, and you were interested in precisely what interested me. When you’re a ‘student,’ you really are sweet and original. But other roles seem little suited to you,” she added with a lovely, sly smile. “You remember, we sometimes spent whole hours talking about nothing but figures, counting and estimating, concerned about the number of schools we have and where education is headed. We counted up the murders and criminal cases, made comparisons with the good news . . . wanted to know where it was all going and what, finally, would happen with us ourselves. I met with sincerity in you. In society they never talk with us women like that. Last week I tried to talk with Prince ——v about Bismarck, because it interested me very much, but I couldn’t make up my own mind, and, imagine, he sat down beside me and began telling me, even in great detail, but all of it with some sort of irony, and precisely with that condescension I find so unbearable, with which ‘great men’ usually speak to us women when we meddle in what is ‘not our business’ . . . And do you remember how you and I nearly quarreled over Bismarck? You were proving to me that you had an idea of your own that went ‘way beyond’ Bismarck’s,” she suddenly laughed. “I’ve met only two people in my life who have talked quite seriously with me: my late husband, a very, very intelligent and . . . noble man,” she said imposingly, “and then—you yourself know who . . .”

“Versilov!” I cried. I held my breath at each word she said.

“Yes. I liked very much to listen to him, and in the end I became fully . . . perhaps overly candid with him, but it was then that he didn’t believe me!”

“Didn’t believe you!”

“Yes, but then nobody ever believed me.”

“But Versilov! Versilov!”

“It’s not simply that he didn’t believe me,” she said, lowering her eyes and smiling somehow strangely, “but he decided that I had ‘all vices’ in me.”

“Of which you don’t have a single one!”

“No, I do have some.”

“Versilov didn’t love you, that’s why he didn’t understand you,” I cried, flashing my eyes.

Something twitched in her face.

“Drop that and never speak to me of . . . that man . . .” she added hotly and with strong emphasis. “But enough; it’s time to go.” (She got up to leave.) “So, do you forgive me or not?” she said, looking at me brightly.

“Me . . . forgive . . . you! Listen, Katerina Nikolaevna, and don’t be angry! Is it true that you’re getting married?”

“That’s not at all decided yet,” she said, as if afraid of something, with embarrassment.

“Is he a good man? Forgive me, forgive me the question!”

“Yes, very good . . .”

“Don’t answer any more, don’t deign to answer me! I know that such questions are impossible from me! I only wanted to know whether he’s worthy or not, but I’ll find out about him myself.”

“Ah, listen!” she said in alarm.

“No, I won’t, I won’t. I’ll pass by . . . But I’ll only say this: may God grant you every happiness, every one that you choose . . . for having given me so much happiness now, in this one hour! You are now imprinted on my soul forever. I have acquired a treasure: the thought of your perfection. I suspected perfidy, coarse coquetry, and I was unhappy . . . because I couldn’t connect that notion with you . . . during these last days I’ve been thinking day and night; and suddenly it all becomes clear as day! Coming in here, I thought I’d go away with Jesuitism, cunning, a worming-out serpent, but I found honor, glory, a student! . . . You laugh? Go on, go on! But you’re a saint, you can’t laugh at what is sacred . . .”

“Oh, no, I’m only laughing that you use such terrible words . . . Well, what is a ‘worming-out serpent’?” she laughed.

“You let drop one precious word today,” I went on in rapture. “How could you possibly say in front of me ‘that you were counting on my ardor’? Well, so you’re a saint and confess even to that, because you imagined some sort of guilt in yourself and wanted to punish yourself . . . Though, incidentally, there wasn’t any guilt, because even if there was, everything that comes from you is holy! But still you might not have said precisely that word, that expression! . . . Such even unnatural candor only shows your lofty chastity, your respect for me, your faith in me,” I exclaimed incoherently. “Oh, don’t blush, don’t blush! . . . And who, who could slander and say that you are a passionate woman? Oh, forgive me, I see a pained expression on your face, forgive the frenzied adolescent his clumsy words! As if it were a matter of words and expressions now? Aren’t you higher than all expressions? . . . Versilov once said that Othello killed Desdemona and then himself not because he was jealous, but because his ideal was taken from him . . . I understood that, because today my ideal has been given back to me!”

“You praise me too much: I’m not worthy of it,” she said with feeling. “Do you remember what I said to you about your eyes?” she said jokingly.

“That I don’t have eyes, but two microscopes instead, and that I exaggerate every fly into a camel! No, ma’am, there’s no camel here! . . . What, you’re leaving?”

She was standing in the middle of the room, with her muff and shawl in her hand.

“No, I’ll wait till you go, and I’ll go myself afterwards. I still have to write a couple of words to Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“I’ll leave right now, right now, but once more: be happy, alone or with the one you choose, and may God be with you! And I—I only need an ideal!”

“Dear, kind Arkady Makarovich, believe me, of you I . . . My father always says of you: ‘A dear, kind boy!’ Believe me, I’ll always remember your stories about the poor boy abandoned among strangers, and about his solitary dreams . . . I understand only too well how your soul was formed . . . But now, though we’re students,” she added with a pleading and bashful smile, pressing my hand, “it’s impossible for us to go on seeing each other as before, and, and . . . surely you understand that?”

“Impossible?”

“Impossible, for a long time . . . it’s my fault . . . I see that it’s now quite impossible . . . We’ll meet sometimes at papà’s . . .”

“You’re afraid of the ‘ardor’ of my feelings? You don’t trust me?” I was about to cry out, but she suddenly became so abashed before me that the words would not come out of my mouth.

“Tell me,” she suddenly stopped me right at the door, “did you yourself see that . . . the letter . . . was torn up? Do you remember it well? How did you know then that it was that same letter to Andronikov?”

“Kraft told me what was in it and even showed it to me . . . Good-bye! Each time I was with you in your boudoir, I felt timid in your presence, and when you left I was ready to throw myself down and kiss the spot on the floor where your foot had stood . . .” I suddenly said unaccountably, not knowing how or why myself, and, without looking at her, quickly left.

I raced home; there was rapture in my soul. Everything flashed through my mind like a whirlwind, and my heart was full. Driving up to my mother’s house, I suddenly remembered Liza’s ungratefulness towards Anna Andreevna, her cruel, monstrous words earlier, and my heart suddenly ached for them all! “How hard of heart they all are! And Liza, what’s with her?” I thought, stepping onto the porch.

I dismissed Matvei and told him to come for me, to my apartment, at nine o’clock.

Chapter Five

I

I WAS LATE for dinner, but they hadn’t sat down yet and were waiting for me. Maybe because in general I dined with them rarely, certain special additions had even been made: sardines appeared as an entrée, and so on. But, to my surprise and grief, I found them all as if preoccupied, frowning about something; Liza barely smiled when she saw me, and mama was obviously worried; Versilov was smiling, but with effort. “Can they have been quarreling?” it occurred to me. However, at first everything went well: Versilov only winced a little at the soup with dumplings, and grimaced badly when the stuffed meatcakes were served.

“I have only to warn you that my stomach can’t stand a certain dish, for it to appear the very next day,” escaped him in vexation.

“But what are we to think up, Andrei Petrovich? There’s no way to think up any sort of new dish,” mama answered timidly.

“Your mother is the direct opposite of some of our newspapers, for which whatever is new is also good.” Versilov had meant to joke playfully and amicably, but somehow it didn’t come off, and he only frightened mama still more, who naturally understood nothing in the comparison of her with a newspaper, and she looked around in perplexity. At that moment Tatyana Pavlovna came in and, announcing that she had already had dinner, sat down beside mama on the sofa.

I still hadn’t managed to gain this person’s favor; even the contrary, she had begun to attack me still more for each and every thing. Her displeasure with me had especially intensified of late: she couldn’t abide my foppish clothes, and Liza told me she almost had a fit when she learned I had a coachman. I ended by avoiding meeting her as far as possible. Two months ago, after the return of the inheritance, I ran over to her to chat about Versilov’s act, but I didn’t meet with the least sympathy; on the contrary, she was awfully angry: it displeased her very much that it had all been returned, and not just half. To me she observed sharply at the time:

“I’ll bet you’re convinced that he returned the money and challenged him to a duel solely so as to better himself in the opinion of Arkady Makarovich.”

And she had almost guessed right: in essence I actually felt something of that sort at the time.

I understood at once, as soon as she came in, that she was bound to throw herself upon me; I was even slightly convinced that she had, in fact, come for that, and therefore I suddenly became extraordinarily casual; and it didn’t cost me anything, because, after what had just taken place, I still went on being in joy and radiance. I’ll note once and for all that never in my life has casualness suited me, that is, it has never made me look good, but, on the contrary, has always covered me with shame. So it happened now as well: I instantly made a blunder; without any bad feeling, but purely from thoughtlessness, having noticed that Liza was terribly dull, I suddenly blurted out, not even thinking what I was saying:

“Once a century I have dinner here, and as if on purpose, Liza, you’re so dull!”

“I have a headache,” Liza answered.

“Ah, my God,” Tatyana Pavlovna latched on, “so what if you’re sick? Arkady Makarovich has deigned to come for dinner, so you must dance and be merry.”

“You are decidedly the bane of my existence, Tatyana Pavlovna; never will I come here when you’re here!”—and I slapped the table with my hand in sincere vexation. Mama gave a start, and Versilov looked at me strangely. I suddenly laughed and begged their pardon.

“I take back the word ‘bane,’ Tatyana Pavlovna,” I turned to her, going on with my casualness.

“No, no,” she snapped, “it’s far more flattering for me to be your bane than the opposite, you may be sure.”

“My dear, one should know how to endure the small banes of life,” Versilov murmured, smiling. “Without them, life’s not worth living.”

“You know, sometimes you’re an awful retrograde!” I exclaimed with a nervous laugh.

“Spit on it, my friend.”

“No, I won’t spit on it! Why don’t you tell an ass outright that he’s an ass?”

“You don’t mean yourself, do you? First of all, I will not and cannot judge anyone.”

“Why won’t you, why can’t you?”

“Laziness and distaste. An intelligent woman told me once that I had no right to judge others, because I ‘don’t know how to suffer,’ and in order to be a judge of others, you must gain the right to judge through suffering. It’s a bit high-flown, but applied to me it may also be true, so that I even submitted willingly to the judgment.”

“Can it be Tatyana Pavlovna who said that to you?” I exclaimed.

“How could you tell?” Versilov glanced at me with some surprise.

“I guessed from Tatyana Pavlovna’s face; she suddenly twitched so.”

I had guessed by chance. The phrase, as it turned out later, had indeed been spoken to Versilov by Tatyana Pavlovna the day before in a heated conversation. And in general, I repeat, it was the wrong time for me to fly at them with my joy and expansiveness: each of them had his own cares, and very heavy ones.

“I don’t understand anything, because it’s all so abstract with you; and here’s a trait: you have this terrible love of speaking abstractly, Andrei Petrovich. It’s an egoistic trait; only egoists love to speak abstractly.”

“Not stupidly put, but don’t nag.”

“No, excuse me,” I got at him with my expansiveness, “what does it mean ‘to gain the right to judge through suffering’? Whoever’s honest can be a judge—that’s what I think.”

“You’ll come up with very few judges, in that case.”

“I already know one.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s now sitting and talking to me.”

Versilov chuckled strangely, leaned over right to my ear, and, taking me by the shoulder, whispered to me, “He lies to you all the time.”

To this day I don’t understand what he had in mind then, but obviously at that moment he was in some extreme anxiety (owing to a certain piece of news, as I figured out later). But this phrase, “He lies to you all the time,” was spoken so unexpectedly and so seriously, and with such a strange, not at all jocular, expression, that I somehow shuddered all over nervously, almost frightened, and looked at him wildly; but Versilov hastened to laugh.

“Ah, thank God!” said mama, frightened because he had whispered in my ear. “And I was beginning to think . . . Don’t you be angry with us, Arkasha, there will be intelligent people without us, but who’s going to love you if we don’t have each other?”

“That’s why love among relations is immoral, mama, because it’s unearned. Love has to be earned.”

“Who knows when you’ll earn it, but here we love you for nothing.”

Everyone suddenly laughed.

“Well, mama, maybe you didn’t mean to shoot, but you hit the bird!” I cried out, also laughing.

“And you really imagined there was something to love you for,” Tatyana Pavlovna fell upon me again. “Not only do they love you for nothing, but they love you through revulsion!”

“Ah, not so!” I cried gaily. “Do you know who, maybe, talked today about loving me?”

“Talked while laughing at you!” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up suddenly with some sort of unnatural spite, as if she had been waiting for precisely those words from me. “A delicate person, and especially a woman, would be filled with loathing just from your inner filth alone. You’ve got a part in your hair, fine linen, a suit from a French tailor, but it’s all filth! Who clothes you, who feeds you, who gives you money to play roulette? Remember who you’re not ashamed to take money from!”

Mama got so flushed, I’d never yet seen such shame on her face. I cringed all over.

“If I spend, I spend my own money, and I owe nobody an accounting,” I snapped, turning all red.

“Whose own? What’s your own?”

“If not mine, then Andrei Petrovich’s. He won’t refuse me . . . I’ve taken from the prince against his debt to Andrei Petrovich . . .”

“My friend,” Versilov suddenly said firmly, “not a cent of that money is mine.”

The phrase was terribly significant. I stopped short on the spot. Oh, naturally, recalling my whole paradoxical and devil-may-care mood then, I would, of course, have gotten out of it by some “most noble” impulse, or catchy little word, or whatever, but I suddenly noticed a spiteful, accusing expression on Liza’s frowning face, an unfair expression, almost mockery, and it was as if the devil pulled at my tongue:

“You, madam,” I suddenly addressed her, “seem to visit Darya Onisimovna frequently in the prince’s apartment? Be so good as to personally convey to him this three hundred roubles, for which you roasted me so much today!”

I produced the money and held it out to her. Will anyone believe that I spoke those mean words then without any purpose, that is, without the slightest allusion to anything? And there could have been no such allusion, because at that moment I knew precisely nothing. Maybe I just had a wish to needle her with something comparatively terribly innocent, something like, say, a young lady mixing in what was not her business, so here, since you absolutely want to mix in it, be so good as to go yourself to meet this prince, a young man, a Petersburg officer, and give it to him, “since you wish so much to meddle in young men’s affairs.” But what was my amazement when mama suddenly stood up and, raising her finger in front of me and shaking it at me, cried:

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”

I could never have imagined anything like that from her, and I myself jumped up from my place, not really frightened, but with some sort of suffering, with some sort of painful wound in my heart, suddenly realizing that something grave had taken place. But mama couldn’t bear it for long; she covered her face with her hands and quickly left the room. Liza, not even glancing in my direction, went out after her. Tatyana Pavlovna gazed at me silently for about half a minute:

“Can it be that you really wanted to blurt something out?” she exclaimed enigmatically, gazing at me with the deepest astonishment, but, not waiting for my reply, she also ran to them. Versilov, with an inimical, almost spiteful look, rose from the table and took his hat from the corner.

“I suppose you’re not all that stupid, but merely innocent,” he murmured mockingly. “If they come back, tell them not to wait for me with dessert: I’ll take a little stroll.”

I was left alone. At first I felt strange, then offended, but then I saw clearly that I was to blame. However, I didn’t know what in fact I was to blame for, but only sensed something. I sat by the window and waited. After waiting for some ten minutes, I also took my hat and went upstairs to my former room. I knew they were there—that is, mama and Liza—and that Tatyana Pavlovna had already gone. And so I found the two of them together on my sofa, whispering about something. When I appeared, they immediately stopped whispering. To my surprise, they were not angry with me; mama at least smiled at me.

“I’m to blame, mama . . .” I began.

“Well, well, never mind,” mama interrupted, “only love each other and don’t ever quarrel, and God will send you happiness.”

“He’ll never offend me, mama, I can tell you that!” Liza said with conviction and feeling.

“If only it hadn’t been for this Tatyana Pavlovna, nothing would have happened,” I cried. “She’s nasty!”

“Do you see, mama? Do you hear?” Liza pointed at me to her.

“I’ll tell you both this,” I pronounced, “if it’s vile in the world, the only vile thing is me, and all the rest is lovely!”

“Arkasha, don’t be angry, dear, but what if you really did stop . . .”

“Gambling, is it? Gambling? I will, mama; I’m going today for the last time, especially now that Andrei Petrovich himself has announced, and aloud, that not a cent of that money is his. You won’t believe how I blush . . . I must talk with him, however . . . Mama, dear, the last time I was here I said . . . something awkward . . . mama, darling, I lied: I sincerely want to believe, it was just bravado, I love Christ very much . . .”

The last time we had indeed had a conversation of that sort; mama had been very upset and alarmed. Hearing me now, she smiled at me as at a child:

“Christ will forgive everything, Arkasha: he will forgive your abuse, and he will forgive more than that. Christ is our father, Christ needs nothing and will shine even in the deepest darkness . . .”

I said good-bye to them and left, reflecting on my chances of seeing Versilov that same day; I needed very much to have a talk with him, but just now it had been impossible. I strongly suspected that he was waiting for me at my place. I went on foot; after the warmth it had turned slightly frosty, and it was very pleasant to take a stroll.

II

I LIVED NEAR the Voznesensky Bridge, in an enormous house, on the courtyard. Almost going through the gateway, I bumped into Versilov, who was leaving my place.

“As is my custom, I walked as far as your lodgings, and even waited for you at Pyotr Ippolitovich’s, but I got bored. They’re eternally quarreling, and today his wife has even kept to her bed, weeping. I looked in and left.”

I became vexed for some reason.

“Can it be that I’m the only one you go to see, and besides me and Pyotr Ippolitovich, you have nobody in all Petersburg?”

“My friend . . . but it makes no difference.”

“Where to now?”

“No, I won’t go back to your place. If you like, we can stroll a bit, it’s a nice evening.”

“If, instead of abstract reasonings, you had talked to me like a human being and, for instance, had only so much as hinted to me about this cursed gambling, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten drawn into it like a fool,” I said suddenly.

“You regret it? That’s good,” he said, sifting his words. “I’ve always suspected that gambling isn’t the main thing with you, but only a tem-po-rary deviation . . . You’re right, my friend, gambling is swinishness, and what’s more, one can lose.”

“And lose someone else’s money.”

“Have you lost someone else’s money as well?”

“I’ve lost yours. I took from the prince against your account. Of course, it was awfully preposterous and stupid on my part . . . to regard your money as my own, but I kept wanting to win it back.”

“I warn you once again, my dear, that none of that money is mine. I know the young man is in a squeeze himself, and I don’t count on him at all, despite his promises.”

“In that case, I’m in twice as bad a position . . . I’m in a comical position! And why on earth should he give to me or I take from him, then?”

“That’s your business . . . But you really don’t have the slightest reason for taking from him, eh?”

“Besides comradeship . . .”

“No, besides comradeship? There isn’t anything that would make it possible for you to take from him, eh? Well, for whatever considerations?”

“What considerations? I don’t understand.”

“So much the better if you don’t understand, and, I confess, my friend, I was sure of that. Brisons là, mon cher,³⁷ and try somehow not to gamble.”

“If only you’d told me beforehand! Even now you talk to me as if you’re mumbling.”

“If I’d told you beforehand, we would only have quarreled, and you wouldn’t have been so willing to let me call on you in the evenings. And know, my dear, that all this saving advice beforehand is only an intrusion into another’s conscience at the other’s expense. I’ve done enough jumping into other people’s consciences and in the end suffered nothing but flicks and mockery. Of course, I spit on flicks and mockery, but the main thing is that you achieve nothing by this maneuver: nobody will listen to you, for all your intruding . . . and everybody will dislike you.”

“I’m glad you’ve begun to talk with me about something besides abstractions. I want to ask you about one more thing, I’ve long wanted to, but somehow with you it was always impossible. It’s good that we’re in the street. Remember that evening at your place, the last evening, two months ago, how we sat in my ‘coffin’ and I asked you about mama and Makar Ivanovich—remember how ‘casual’ I was with you then? Could a young pup of a son be allowed to speak of his mother in such terms? And what, then? You didn’t let it show by one little word; on the contrary, you ‘opened yourself up’ to me, and made me even more casual.”

“My friend, it’s all too pleasant for me to hear . . . such feelings from you . . . Yes, I remember very well, I was actually waiting then for your face to turn red, and if I added to it myself, maybe it was precisely to push you to the limit . . .”

“And all you did was deceive me then, and trouble the pure spring in my soul still more! Yes, I’m a pathetic adolescent and don’t know myself from minute to minute what’s evil and what’s good. If you had shown me just a bit of the way then, I would have guessed and jumped at once onto the right path. But you only made me angry then.”

“Cher enfant, I’ve always sensed that you and I would become close in one way or another: this ‘red’ in your face did come to you of itself and without my directions, and that, I swear, is the better for you . . . I notice, my dear, that you’ve acquired a lot lately . . . could it be in the company of this little prince?”

“Don’t praise me, I don’t like it. Don’t leave the painful suspicion in my heart that you’re praising me out of Jesuitism, to the detriment of truth, so that I won’t stop liking you. But recently . . . you see . . . I’ve been calling on women. I’m very well received, for instance, at Anna Andreevna’s, did you know that?”

“I know it from her, my friend. Yes, she’s very sweet and intelligent. Mais brisons là, mon cher. I feel somehow strangely vile today—spleen, or what? I ascribe it to hemorrhoids. How are things at home? All right? Naturally, you made peace there and there were embraces. Cela va sans dire.³⁸ It’s somehow sad to go back to them sometimes, even after the nastiest walk. Truly, at times I make an unnecessary detour in the rain, only to put off going back to those lower depths . . . And the boredom, the boredom, oh, God!”

“Mama . . .”

“Your mother is the most perfect and lovely being, mais . . . In short, I’m probably not worthy of them. By the way, what’s with them today? Lately they’ve all been somehow sort of . . . You know, I always try to ignore it, but today they’ve got something brewing there . . . You didn’t notice anything?”

“I know decidedly nothing and wouldn’t even have noticed anything, if it hadn’t been for that cursed Tatyana Pavlovna, who can’t keep from biting. You’re right: there’s something there. Today I found Liza at Anna Andreevna’s; there, too, she was somehow . . . she even surprised me. You do know that she’s received at Anna Andreevna’s?”

“I do, my friend. And you . . . when were you at Anna Andreevna’s—that is, at precisely what hour? I need that for the sake of a certain fact.”

“From two to three. And imagine, as I was leaving, the prince came . . .”

Here I told him about my whole visit in extreme detail. He listened to it all silently: about the possibility of the prince proposing to Anna Andreevna he didn’t utter a word; to my rapturous praises of Anna Andreevna he again mumbled that “she’s sweet.”

“I managed to astonish her extremely today by telling her the most fresh-baked society news about Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov marrying Baron Bjoring,” I said suddenly, as if something in me had come unhinged.

“Oh? Imagine, she told me that same ‘news’ earlier today, before noon, that is, much earlier than you could have astonished her with it.”

“What?” I just stopped in my tracks. “But how could she have found out? Though what am I saying? Naturally, she could have found out before me, but imagine: she listened to me say it as if it was absolute news! Though . . . though what am I saying? Long live breadth! One must allow for breadth of character, right? I, for instance, would have blurted it all out at once, but she locks it up in a snuffbox . . . And so be it, so be it, nonetheless she’s the loveliest being and the most excellent character!”

“Oh, no doubt, to each his own! And what’s most original of all: these excellent characters are sometimes able to puzzle you in an extremely peculiar way. Imagine, today Anna Andreevna suddenly takes me aback with the question, ‘Do you love Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov, or not?’”

“What a wild and incredible question!” I cried out, dumbfounded again. My eyes even went dim. Never yet had I ventured to talk with him on this subject, and—here he himself . . .

“What did she formulate it with?”

“With nothing, my friend, absolutely nothing; the snuffbox was locked up at once and still tighter, and, above all, notice, I had never allowed even the possibility of such conversations with me, nor had she . . . However, you say yourself that you know her, and therefore you can imagine how such a question suits her . . . You wouldn’t happen to know anything?”

“I’m as puzzled as you are. Some sort of curiosity, or maybe a joke?”

“Oh, on the contrary, a most serious question, and not a question, but almost, so to speak, an inquiry, and evidently for the most extreme and categorical reasons. Won’t you be going there? Mightn’t you find something out? I’d even ask you to, you see . . .”

“But the possibility, above all—the possibility alone of supposing that you love Katerina Nikolaevna! Forgive me, I’m still dumbfounded. I’ve never, never allowed myself to speak with you on this or any similar subject . . .”

“And you’ve done wisely, my dear.”

“Your former intrigues and relations—no, the subject is, of course, impossible between us, and it would even be stupid on my part; but, precisely in this last period, in the last few days, I’ve exclaimed to myself several times: what if you had loved this woman once, even for a moment? Oh, you would never have made such an awful mistake regarding her in your opinion of her as the one that came out afterwards! Of what came out, I do know: of your mutual enmity and your mutual, so to speak, aversion for each other, I do know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard only too well, I heard still in Moscow; but it’s precisely here first of all that the fact of a bitter aversion leaps to the surface, the bitterness of hostility, precisely of non-love, and yet Anna Andreevna suddenly puts it to you, ‘Do you love her?’ Can she be so poorly renseigneered?³⁹ It’s a wild thing! She was laughing, I assure you, she was laughing!”

“But I notice, my dear,” something nervous and soulfelt suddenly sounded in his voice, something that went to the heart, which happened terribly rarely with him, “I notice that you yourself speak of it all too ardently. You just said that you call on women . . . of course, for me to question you is somehow . . . on this subject, as you put it . . . But doesn’t ‘that woman’ also figure on the list of your newer friends?”

“That woman . . .” My voice suddenly trembled. “Listen, Andrei Petrovich, listen: that woman is what you said today at the prince’s about ‘living life’—remember? You said that this living life is something so direct and simple, which looks at you so directly, that precisely because of this directness and clarity it’s impossible to believe it could be precisely what we seek so hard all our lives . . . Well, so with such views you met the ideal woman, and in perfection, in the ideal, you recognized—‘all vices’! There you are!”

The reader can judge what a frenzy I was in.

“‘All vices’! Ho, ho! I know that phrase!” exclaimed Versilov. “And if it’s gone so far as telling you such a phrase, shouldn’t you be congratulated for something? It means such intimacy between you that you may even have to be praised for your modesty and secrecy, which a young man is rarely capable of . . .”

A sweet, friendly, affectionate laughter sparkled in his voice . . . there was something inviting and sweet in his words, in his bright face, as far as I could tell at night. He was surprisingly excited. Involuntarily, I sparkled all over.

“Modesty! Secrecy! Oh, no, no!” I exclaimed, blushing and at the same time squeezing his hand, which I had somehow managed to seize and, without noticing it, would not let go of. “No, not for anything! . . . In short, there’s nothing to congratulate me for, and never, never can anything happen here.” I was breathless and flying, and I so wanted to be flying, it felt so good to me. “You know . . . well, let it be so just once, for one little time! You see, my darling, my nice papa—you’ll let me call you papa—it’s impossible, not only for a father and son, but for anyone, to talk with a third person about his relations with a woman, even the purest of them! Even the purer they are, the more forbidden it ought to be. It’s forbidding, it’s coarse, in short—a confidant is impossible! But if there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, then it’s possible to talk, isn’t it?”

“As your heart dictates.”

“An indiscreet, a very indiscreet question. You’ve known women in your life, you’ve had liaisons? . . . I’m asking generally, generally, not in particular!” I was blushing and spluttering with rapture.

“Let’s suppose there were lapses.”

“So here’s an occasion, and you explain it to me, as a more experienced person: a woman, while taking leave of you, suddenly says somehow by chance, looking away, ‘Tomorrow at three o’clock I’ll be at such and such place’ . . . well, say, at Tatyana Pavlovna’s,” I came unhinged and flew off definitively. My heart gave a throb and stopped; I even stopped talking, I couldn’t. He was listening terribly.

“And so the next day I’m at Tatyana Pavlovna’s at three o’clock, I go in and reason like this: ‘If the cook opens the door’—you know her cook?—‘I’ll ask her first off: is Tatyana Pavlovna at home? And if the cook says Tatyana Pavlovna isn’t at home, but some lady visitor’s sitting and waiting—what should I have concluded, tell me, if you . . . In short, if you . . .’”

“Quite simply that you had an appointed rendezvous. But that means it took place? And took place today? Yes?”

“Oh, no, no, no, nothing, nothing! It took place, but it wasn’t that; a rendezvous, but not for that, and I announce it first of all, so as not to be a scoundrel, it happened, but . . .”

“My friend, all this is beginning to become so curious, that I suggest . . .”

“Myself, I used to give a tenner or a twenty-fiver to solicitors. For a dram. Just a few kopecks, it’s a lieutenant soliciting, a former lieutenant asking!” The tall figure of a solicitor, maybe indeed a retired lieutenant, suddenly blocked our way. Most curious of all, he was quite well dressed for his profession, and yet he had his hand out.

III

I PURPOSELY DO not want to omit this most paltry anecdote about the insignificant lieutenant, because I now recall the whole of Versilov not otherwise than with all the minutest circumstantial details of that moment so fateful for him. Fateful, but I didn’t know it!

“If you do not leave us alone, sir, I shall immediately call the police,” Versilov, stopping before the lieutenant, suddenly raised his voice somehow unnaturally. I could never have imagined such wrath from such a philosopher, and for such an insignificant reason. And note that we interrupted the conversation at the moment most interesting for him, as he said himself.

“So you really don’t even have a fifteener?” the lieutenant cried rudely, waving his arm. “On what sort of canaille can you find a fifteener nowadays? Rabble! Scoundrels! He’s all in beaver, yet he makes a state problem out of a fifteener!”

“Police!” shouted Versilov.

But there was no need to shout; a policeman was standing just at the corner and had heard the lieutenant’s abuse himself.

“I ask you to be a witness to the insult, and you I ask to kindly come to the police station,” said Versilov.

“E-eh, it’s all the same to me, you’ll prove decidedly nothing! Your intelligence least of all!”

“Don’t let go of him, officer, and take us there,” Versilov concluded insistently.

“Must we go to the police station? Devil take him!” I whispered to him.

“Absolutely, my dear. This presumptuousness in our streets is beginning to be tiresomely outrageous, and if each of us did his duty, it would be useful for all. C’est comique, mais c’est ce que nous ferons.”⁴⁰

For about a hundred steps the lieutenant was very hot-tempered, spirited, and brave. He assured us that “this was impossible,” that it was all “ ’cause of a fifteener,” and so on, and so forth. But he finally started whispering something to the policeman. The policeman, a sensible fellow and clearly an enemy of street nervousness, seemed to be on his side, but only in a certain sense. To his questions, he murmured in a half-whisper that “it’s impossible now,” that “the thing’s under way,” and that “if, for instance, you were to apologize, and the gentleman would agree to accept your apology, then maybe . . .”

“Well, li-i-isten he-e-re, my dear sir, so, where are we going? I ask you, where are we trying to get to and what’s so clever about it?” the lieutenant cried loudly. “If a man unlucky in his misfortunes agrees to offer an apology . . . if, finally, you need his humiliation . . . Devil take it, we’re not in a drawing room, we’re in the street! For the street, this is apology enough . . .”

Versilov stopped and suddenly rocked with laughter; I even thought for a moment that he had gone ahead with this whole story for the fun of it, but that wasn’t so.

“I pardon you completely, Mr. Lieutenant, and I assure you that you have abilities. Act this way in a drawing room, and soon it will be quite enough for the drawing room as well, but meanwhile here’s forty kopecks for you, have a drink and a bite to eat. Pardon me for the trouble, officer, I’d reward you, too, for your labors, but you’re all on such a noble footing now . . . My dear,” he turned to me, “there’s an eatery here, in fact a terrible cesspool, but one can have tea there, and I’d suggest to you . . . here it is now, come on.”

I repeat, I had never seen him in such excitement, though his face was cheerful and shone with light; but I noticed that when he was taking the two twenty-kopeck pieces from his purse to give to the lieutenant, his hands shook and his fingers wouldn’t obey at all, so that he finally asked me to take them out and give them to the man. I can’t forget that.

He brought me to a little tavern on the canal, in the basement. The customers were few. A hoarse little organ was playing out of tune, it smelled of dirty napkins; we sat down in the corner.

“Maybe you don’t know? I like sometimes, out of boredom, out of terrible inner boredom . . . to go into various cesspools like this one. These furnishings, this stuttering aria from Lucia,²² these waiters in costumes that are Russian to the point of indecency, this stench of tobacco, these shouts from the billiard room—all this is so banal and prosaic that it borders almost on the fantastic. Well, so what, my dear? This son of Mars stopped us at the most interesting place, it seems . . . But here’s our tea; I like the tea here . . . Imagine, Pyotr Ippolitovich has now suddenly started assuring that other lodger, the pockmarked one, that in the last century a committee of jurists was especially appointed in the English Parliament to examine the whole trial of Christ before the high priest and Pilate,²³ solely in order to find out how it would go now, by our laws, and that it was all done with all solemnity, with lawyers, prosecutors, and the rest . . . well, and that the jury had to hand down a guilty verdict . . . Amazing—eh, what? That fool of a lodger started arguing, got angry, quarreled, and announced that he was moving out the next day . . . the landlady bursts into tears, because she’s losing money . . . Mais passons.⁴¹ Sometimes they have nightingales in these taverns. Do you know the old Moscow anecdote à la Pyotr Ippolitovich? A nightingale is singing in a Moscow tavern. A merchant comes in, the ‘out o’ me way’ type: ‘How much is the nightingale?’ ‘A hundred roubles.’ ‘Roast it and serve it.’ They roasted it and served it. ‘Cut me ten kopecks’ worth.’ I once told it to Pyotr Ippolitovich, but he didn’t believe it and even got indignant . . .”

He said a lot more. I quote these fragments as a sample. He interrupted me continually, as soon as I opened my mouth to begin my story, and began talking some sort of completely peculiar and inappropriate nonsense; he talked excitedly, gaily; laughed at God knows what, and even tittered—something I had never seen him do. He drank a glass of tea at one gulp and poured another. Now I understand: he was then like a man who has received a precious, curious, and long-awaited letter, which he places before him and doesn’t open on purpose; on the contrary, he turns it over in his hands for a long time, studies the envelope, the seal, goes to another room to give orders, puts off, in short, the most interesting moment, knowing that it won’t get away from him for anything, and all this for the greater fullness of pleasure.

I, naturally, told him everything, everything from the very beginning, and it took me maybe about an hour. And how else could it be? I had been longing to talk all the while. I began from our very first meeting, at the prince’s that time, on her arrival from Moscow; then I told how it all went on gradually. I didn’t leave anything out, and I couldn’t have: he led me on himself, guessed, prompted me. At moments it seemed to me that something fantastic was happening, that he had been sitting somewhere or standing behind the door, each time, for all those two months: he knew beforehand my every gesture, my every feeling. I took a boundless pleasure in making this confession to him, because I saw in him such heartfelt gentleness, such deep psychological subtlety, such an astonishing ability to guess from a quarter of a word. He listened tenderly, like a woman. Above all, he managed to make it so that I wasn’t ashamed of anything; at times he suddenly stopped me at some detail; he often stopped me and repeated nervously, “Don’t forget the small things, above all, don’t forget the small things—the smaller the trace, the more important it sometimes is.” And he interrupted me several times in the same way. Oh, naturally, I began haughtily in the beginning, haughtily towards her, but I quickly came down to the truth. I told him sincerely that I was ready to throw myself down and kiss the place on the floor where her foot had stood. The most beautiful, the brightest thing of all was that he understood in the highest degree that she “could suffer from fear over the document” and at the same time remain a pure and irreproachable being, as she had revealed herself to me that same day. He understood in the highest degree the word “student.” But as I was finishing, I noticed that, through his kind smile, something all too impatient began to flash in his eyes, something as if distracted and sharp. When I came to the “document,” I thought to myself, “Shall I tell him the real truth or not?”—and I didn’t, despite all my rapture. I note it here to remember it all my life. I explained the matter to him in the same way I had to her, that is, by Kraft. His eyes lit up. A strange wrinkle flitted across his forehead, a very dark wrinkle.

“You firmly recall, my dear, about that letter, that Kraft burned it in a candle? You’re not mistaken?”

“I’m not mistaken,” I confirmed.

“The thing is that that piece of writing is very important for her, and if it had been in your hands today, then even today you might . . .” But “might ” what, he didn’t finish saying. “And so, it’s not in your hands now?”

I shuddered inwardly, but not outwardly. Outwardly I didn’t betray myself in any way, didn’t bat an eye; but still I couldn’t believe the question.

“How not in my hands? In my hands now? If Kraft burned it then?”

“Yes?” he aimed a fiery, fixed gaze at me, a gaze I remembered. However, he was smiling, but all his goodnaturedness, all the femininity of expression he had had till then, suddenly disappeared. What came was something indefinite and disconnected; he was becoming more and more distracted. If he had been more in control of himself then, as he had been up to that moment, he wouldn’t have asked me that question about the document; if he did, it was probably because he was in a frenzy himself. However, I say it only now; but at that time it took me a while to perceive the change that had taken place in him. I still went on flying, and there was the same music in my soul. But the story was over; I looked at him.

“An amazing thing,” he said suddenly, when I had spoken everything out to the last comma, “a very strange thing, my friend: you say you were there from three to four, and that Tatyana Pavlovna wasn’t at home?”

“Exactly from three till half-past four.”

“Well, imagine, I stopped to see Tatyana Pavlovna at exactly half-past three to the minute, and she met me in the kitchen—I almost always come to see her by the back entrance.”

“What, she met you in the kitchen?” I cried, drawing back in amazement.

“Yes, and she told me she couldn’t receive me; I stayed with her a couple of minutes, and I had only come to invite her to dinner.”

“Maybe she just came back from somewhere?”

“I don’t know; though—of course not. She was in her housecoat. This was exactly at half-past three.”

“But . . . Tatyana Pavlovna didn’t tell you I was there?”

“No, she didn’t tell me you were there . . . Otherwise I’d have known and wouldn’t be asking you about it.”

“Listen, this is very important . . .”

“Yes . . . depending on one’s point of view; and you’ve even turned pale, my dear; but, anyhow, what’s so important?”

“I’ve been laughed at like a child!”

“She was simply ‘afraid of your ardor,’ as she put it to you herself—well, and so she enlisted Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“But, my God, what a trick it was! Listen, she let me say all that with a third person there, with Tatyana Pavlovna there—who, consequently, heard everything I said! It’s . . . it’s even terrible to imagine!”

“C’est selon, mon cher! ⁴² And besides, you yourself mentioned earlier the ‘breadth’ of view of women in general, and exclaimed, ‘Long live breadth!’”

“If I were Othello and you Iago, you couldn’t have done it better . . . however, I’m laughing! There can’t be any Othello, because there are no such relations. And how not laugh! So be it! I still believe in what is infinitely higher than I am, and I haven’t lost my ideal! . . . If it’s a joke on her part, I forgive her. A joke on the pathetic adolescent—so be it! I didn’t get myself up as anything, and the student—the student was and remains anyway, no matter what, he was in her soul, he exists and will go on existing! Enough! Listen, what do you think: shall I go to her now, to learn the whole truth, or not?”

I said, “I’m laughing,” but there were tears in my eyes.

“Why not? Go, my friend, if you want to.”

“It’s as if I’ve dirtied my soul by telling you all this. Don’t be angry, dear heart, but it’s impossible to tell a third person about a woman, I repeat, about a woman. No confidant will understand; not even an angel will understand. If you respect a woman, don’t take a confidant; if you respect yourself, don’t take a confidant! I don’t respect myself now. Good-bye; I can’t forgive myself . . .”

“Come, my dear, you’re exaggerating. You say yourself ‘there was nothing.’”

We went out to the canal and began saying good-bye.

“Will you never kiss me from the heart, as a child, as a son kisses his father?” he said to me with a strange tremor in his voice. I kissed him warmly.

“My dear . . . always be as pure of heart as you are now.”

I had never kissed him before in my life, I could never have imagined he would want me to.

Chapter Six

I

“GO, OF COURSE!” I decided, hurrying home. “Go at once. Quite possibly I’ll find her at home alone—alone or with someone, it makes no difference—I can call her away. She’ll receive me; she’ll be surprised, but she’ll receive me. And if she doesn’t, I’ll insist that she receive me, I’ll send to tell her it’s extremely necessary. She’ll think it’s something about the document and receive me. And I’ll find out all about Tatyana. And then . . . and then what? If I’m wrong, I’ll make it up to her, and if I’m right, and she’s to blame, then it’s all over! In any case—it’s all over! What can I lose? I can’t lose anything. Go! Go!”

And then—I’ll never forget it and I remember it with pride—I didn’t go! No one will ever know it, it will just die, but it’s enough that I know it and that at such a moment I was capable of the noblest impulse! “This is a temptation, and I’ll pass it by,” I decided finally, thinking better of it. “They frightened me with a fact, but I didn’t believe it and didn’t lose faith in her purity! And why go, why ask? Why should she believe so unfailingly in me as I did in her, believe in my ‘purity,’ not be afraid of my ‘ardor,’ not enlist Tatyana? I haven’t deserved it yet in her eyes. Let her not, let her not know that I do deserve it, that I don’t yield to ‘temptations,’ that I don’t believe wicked calumnies about her; but I myself know it and will respect myself for it. Respect my feeling. Oh, yes, she allowed me to speak myself out with Tatyana there, she allowed Tatyana, she knew that Tatyana was sitting and eavesdropping (because she couldn’t help eavesdropping), she knew that she was laughing at me—it’s terrible, terrible! But . . . but what if it was impossible to avoid? What could she have done in her position today, and how can she be blamed for it? No, I myself lied to her about Kraft, I deceived her, because it was also impossible to avoid it, and I lied involuntarily, innocently. My God,” I suddenly exclaimed, blushing painfully, “and I, what have I just done myself? Haven’t I just dragged her before the same Tatyana, haven’t I just told everything to Versilov? Though—what’s the matter with me?—there’s a difference here. Here it was only about the document; essentially, I just told Versilov about the document, because there was nothing more to tell about, and there couldn’t be. Wasn’t I the first to inform him and cry that ‘there couldn’t be’? He’s a man of understanding. Hm . . . But what hatred there is in his heart for this woman, though, even now! And what a drama must have taken place between them then and from what? Of course, from self-love! Versilov can’t be capable of any other feeling except boundless self-love! ”

Yes, this last thought escaped me then, and I didn’t even notice it. It was such thoughts that raced through my head then one after another, and I was straightforward with myself then: I wasn’t being sly, I wasn’t deceiving myself; and if there was something I didn’t comprehend then at that moment, it was just because I didn’t have brains enough, and not from Jesuitism with myself.

I returned home in a terribly excited and, I don’t know why, a terribly merry state of mind, though a very unclear one. But I was afraid to analyze and tried with all my might to divert myself. I went to my landlady at once; indeed, a terrible falling out was under way between her and her husband. She was a very consumptive clerk’s wife, maybe even a kind one, but, like all consumptives, extremely capricious. I at once began to make peace between them, went to see the tenant, a very coarse, pockmarked fool, an extremely vain clerk who served in a bank, Chervyakov, whom I myself disliked very much, but with whom, anyhow, I got along well, because I often had the baseness to join him in teasing Pyotr Ippolitovich. I at once persuaded him not to move out, and he himself would not have ventured to actually move out. In the end I reassured the landlady definitively and, on top of that, managed to straighten the pillow under her head excellently. “Pyotr Ippolitovich can never manage like that,” she concluded maliciously. Then I busied myself with her mustard plasters in the kitchen, and with my own hands prepared two superb plasters for her. Poor Pyotr Ippolitovich only looked at me with envy, but I didn’t let him touch them and was rewarded literally by tears of gratitude from her. And then, I remember, I suddenly got bored with it all, and I suddenly realized that I was by no means looking after the sick woman out of the goodness of my heart, but just so, for some reason, for something else entirely.

I waited nervously for Matvei. That evening I decided to try my luck for the last time and . . . and, apart from luck, I felt a terrible need to gamble; otherwise it would have been unbearable. If I hadn’t had to go anywhere, maybe I wouldn’t have held out and would have gone to her. Matvei was to come soon, but suddenly the door opened and an unexpected visitor came in—Darya Onisimovna. I winced and was surprised. She knew my lodgings because she had come once on an errand from mama. I sat her down and began looking at her questioningly. She said nothing, but only looked me straight in the eye and smiled submissively.

“Have you come from Liza?” it occurred to me to ask.

“No, just so, sir.”

I warned her that I would be leaving presently; again she answered that she had come “just so” and would leave presently herself. For some reason I suddenly felt sorry for her. I’ll note that she had seen much sympathy from us all, from mama and especially from Tatyana Pavlovna, but once she was placed with Mrs. Stolbeev, we all somehow began to forget her, except perhaps for Liza, who often visited her. She herself, it seems, was the cause of that, because she had a capacity for withdrawing and effacing herself, despite all her submissive and ingratiating smiles. Personally I very much disliked those smiles, and the fact that she always obviously falsified her face, and I even thought once that she had not grieved long over her Olya. But this time for some reason I felt sorry for her.

And then suddenly, without saying a word, she bent forward, looked down, and, suddenly thrusting out both arms, put them around my waist and leaned her face against my knees. She seized my hand, I almost thought she was going to kiss it, but she pressed it to her eyes, and a flood of hot tears poured over it. She was all shaking with sobs, but she wept quietly. My heart was wrung, despite the fact that I was also as if vexed. But she embraced me with complete trust, not afraid in the least that I would get angry, despite the fact that she had smiled at me so timorously and servilely just before. I began asking her to calm down.

“Dear heart, darling, I don’t know what to do with myself. When it gets dark, I can’t stand it; when it gets dark, I can’t stand it any more, I’m drawn outside, into the darkness. What draws me, mainly, is a dream. There’s this dream born in my mind, that just as I step out, I’ll meet her in the street. I walk and it’s as if I see her. That is, it’s somebody else walking, but I walk behind on purpose and think: isn’t it her, there now, I think, isn’t that my Olya? And I think and think. I get stupefied in the end, only knocking into people, it’s sickening. Knocking about like I’m drunk, and people abuse me. I keep it to myself, I don’t go to anyone. Or if I do, it’s more sickening. I was passing by your place and thought, ‘Why don’t I drop in; he’s the kindest of them all, and he was there then.’ Dear heart, forgive a useless woman; I’ll leave now and go away . . .”

She suddenly got up and began to hurry. Just then Matvei arrived; I put her into the sledge and took her home to Mrs. Stolbeev’s apartment on the way.

II

MOST RECENTLY I had started going to play roulette at Zershchikov’s. Before that I had gone to three houses, always with the prince, who had “introduced” me in those places. In one of those houses the game was predominantly faro, and they played for very significant money. But I didn’t like it there; I saw it was only good there if you had big money, and besides, it was frequented by too many insolent people and “thundering” youth from high society. That was what the prince liked; he liked to gamble, but he also liked to hobnob with those rakehells. I noticed on those evenings that, though he sometimes came in with me, he somehow distanced himself from me during the evening and didn’t introduce me to any of “his people.” I looked around like a perfect savage, sometimes even so much so that I happened to attract attention. At the gambling table I sometimes even had to speak with one or another of them; but once, the next day, right there in those rooms, I tried to greet one little sir with whom I had not only talked but even laughed the day before, sitting next to him, and I had even guessed two cards for him, and what then?—he didn’t recognize me at all. Worse than that: he looked at me as if with sham perplexity and walked past smiling. Thus I soon dropped the place and got into the habit of going to a certain cesspool—I don’t know what else to call it. It was a roulette house, rather insignificant, paltry, kept by a certain kept woman, though she never appeared in the room herself. It was a terribly unbuttoned place, and though officers frequented it, and rich merchants, everything came out a bit dirtily, which many, however, found attractive. Besides, I often had luck there. But I dropped that place, too, after a certain repulsive incident that occurred at the height of a game and ended in a fight between two players, and started going to Zershchikov’s, where, again, I was introduced by the prince. The owner was a retired cavalry staff-captain, and the tone at his evenings was quite tolerable, military, ticklishly irritable in observing the forms of honor, clipped and businesslike. Jokers and big carousers, for instance, didn’t show up there. Besides, the faro bank was hardly a joking matter. They played faro and roulette. Up to that evening, the fifteenth of November, I had gone there twice in all, and Zershchikov, it seemed, already knew my face; but I didn’t have any acquaintances yet. As if on purpose, the prince and Darzan showed up that evening only at around midnight, returning from the faro of those society rakehells that I had dropped. Thus, on that evening I was like a stranger in an alien crowd.

If I had a reader and he had read all that I’ve already written about my adventures, doubtless there would be no point in explaining to him that I am decidedly not created for any society whatever. Above all, I’m totally unable to behave myself in society. When I walk in somewhere where there are many people, it always feels to me that all their looks electrify me. I decidedly begin to cringe, cringe physically, even in such places as the theater, to say nothing of private houses. At all these roulettes and gatherings I decidedly failed to acquire any kind of bearing: first I sit and reproach myself for my unnecessary softness and politeness, then suddenly I get up and commit some rudeness. And meanwhile such blackguards, compared with me, managed to behave themselves there with astonishing bearing—and that was what infuriated me most of all, so that I lost my coolheadedness more and more. I’ll say straight out that, not only now, but then as well, this whole society—and even winning itself, if all be told—finally became repugnant and tormenting to me. Decidedly tormenting. Of course, I experienced an extreme pleasure, but that pleasure came by way of torment; all of it, that is, these people, the gambling, and, above all, I myself there with them, seemed terribly dirty to me. “The moment I win, I’ll spit on it all at once!” I said to myself each time, falling asleep at dawn in my lodgings after the night’s gambling. And then again this winning: take just the fact that I had no love of money at all. That is, I’m not going to repeat the vile pronouncements usual in such explanations, that I gambled, say, for the sake of gambling, for the sensation, for the pleasure of risk, passion, and so on, and not at all for gain. I needed money terribly, and though it was not my way, not my idea, somehow or other I still decided then, as an experiment, to try this way, too. One strong thought kept throwing me off here: “You’ve already figured out that you can unfailingly become a millionaire only if you have a suitably strong character. You’ve already tested your character; show yourself here as well: does roulette call for more character than your idea?” That’s what I repeated to myself. And since even to this day I hold the conviction that in games of chance, given a complete calmness of character, which preserves all the subtlety of intelligence and calculation, it is impossible not to overcome the crudeness of blind luck and win—so, naturally, I had to grow more and more vexed, seeing that at every moment I failed to sustain my character and got carried away like a perfect little brat. “I, who could endure hunger, cannot endure such a stupid thing!” That’s what irked me. What’s more, the awareness I have that no matter how ridiculous and humiliated I may seem, there lies within me that treasure of strength which will someday make them all change their opinion of me, this awareness—almost since the humiliated years of my childhood—then constituted the only source of my life, my light and my dignity, my weapon and my consolation, otherwise I might have killed myself while still a child. And therefore how could I not be irritated with myself, seeing what a pathetic being I turned into at the gaming table? That was why I could no longer leave off gambling; now I see it all clearly. Besides that main thing, my petty self-love also suffered. Losing humiliated me before the prince, before Versilov, though he never deigned to say anything, before everybody, even before Tatyana—so it seemed, so it felt to me. Finally, I’ll make yet another confession: I was already corrupted then; it was already hard for me to give up a seven-course dinner in the restaurant, Matvei, the English shop, my perfumer’s opinion—well, and all that. I was aware of it then, too, only I waved it away; now, though, in writing it down, I blush.

III

ARRIVING ALONE AND finding myself in an unfamiliar crowd, I first settled myself at the corner of the table and began staking small sums, and sat like that for about two hours without stirring. In those two hours, terrible rubbish went on—neither this nor that. I missed astonishing chances and tried not to get angry, but to succeed by coolheadedness and confidence. The end was that in the whole two hours I neither lost nor won: of the three hundred roubles, I lost some ten or fifteen. This insignificant result angered me, and what’s more a most unpleasant vileness occurred. I know that there sometimes happen to be thieves at these roulette tables—that is, not from the street, but simply among the well-known gamblers. I’m certain, for instance, that the well-known gambler Aferdov is a thief; to this day he cuts a figure around town: I met him recently driving a pair of his own ponies; but he’s a thief and he stole from me. This story is still to come; what happened that evening was just a prelude: I sat for the whole two hours at the corner of the table, and next to me all the while, on the left, was some rotten little fop—a Yid, I think; he participates somewhere, however, even writes something and gets it published. At the very last moment I suddenly won twenty roubles. Two red banknotes lay in front of me, and suddenly I see this little Yid reach out and quite calmly take one of my notes. I tried to stop him, but he, with a most insolent air and without raising his voice in the least, suddenly declares to me that it was his winnings, that he had just staked and won; he even refused to continue the conversation and turned his back. As if on purpose, I was in a most stupid state of mind at that moment: I had conceived a grand idea, and so I spat, got up quickly, and walked away, not even wanting to argue and making him a gift of the ten roubles. And it would have been hard to carry on with this story of the insolent pilferer, because the moment had been lost; the game had already gone ahead. And that was a huge mistake on my part, which had its consequences: three or four players next to us noticed our altercation and, seeing me give up so easily, probably took me for the same sort. It was exactly midnight; I went to another room, thought a bit, figured out a new plan, and, returning, exchangd my notes for half-imperials. I was now in possession of over forty pieces. I divided them into ten parts and decided to stake on zéro ten times in a row, four half-imperials each time, one after another. “If I win, I’m in luck; if I lose, so much the better; I’m never going to play anymore.” I’ll note that zéro hadn’t come up even once in those two hours, so that in the end nobody even staked on it.

I played standing up, silently frowning and clenching my teeth. On the third stake, Zershchikov loudly announced zéro, which hadn’t come up all day. They counted me out a hundred and forty half-imperials in gold. I still had seven stakes left, and I went on, and meanwhile everything around me began to spin and dance.

“Move over here!” I called the whole length of the table to one of the players who had been sitting next to me earlier, a gray-haired man with a big moustache and a purple face, wearing a tailcoat, who for several hours already, with inexpressible patience, had been staking small sums and losing time after time. “Move over here! The luck’s here!”

“Are you speaking to me?” the moustache responded with some sort of menacing surprise from the other end of the table.

“Yes, you! You’ll lose everything over there!”

“It’s none of your business, and I beg you not to interfere with me!”

But I could no longer control myself. Across the table from me sat an elderly officer. Looking at my pile, he murmured to his neighbor:

“Strange: zéro. No, I won’t venture on zéro .”

“Venture it, Colonel!” I cried, placing another stake.

“I beg you to leave me in peace as well, sir, without your advice,” he snapped sharply. “You shout too much here.”

“I’m giving you good advice. Well, if you want to bet that zéro will come up again right now—here, I’ll stake ten gold pieces, are you game?”

And I put up ten half-imperials.

“Bet ten gold pieces? That I can,” he said drily and sternly. “I bet you that zéro won’t come up.”

“Ten louis d’ors, Colonel.”

“Ten louis d’ors?”

“Ten half-imperials, Colonel, or, in high style—louis d’ors.”

“Say half-imperials, then, and kindly do not joke with me.”

I certainly had no hope of winning the bet: there were thirty-six chances to one that zéro wouldn’t come up; but I proposed it, first, because I was showing off, and second, because I wanted to attract them all to me with something. I could see very well that for some reason nobody there liked me, and they took special pleasure in letting me know it. The roulette wheel spun—and what was the general amazement when zéro came up again! There was even a general outcry. Here the glory of winning befuddled me completely. Again they counted me out a hundred and forty half-imperials. Zershchikov asked me whether I wanted to take part of it in banknotes, but I mumbled something in reply, because I literally could no longer express myself calmly and coherently. My head was spinning, my legs were weak. I suddenly felt that I was about to start taking awful risks; besides, I wanted to undertake something else, propose another bet, count out a few thousand to somebody. Mechanically, I raked in the little pile of banknotes and gold pieces with my palm and couldn’t bring myself to count them. At that moment I suddenly noticed the prince and Darzan behind me. They had just come from their faro, having lost their shirts there, as I learned afterwards.

“Ah, Darzan,” I cried to him, “the luck’s here! Stake on zéro!”

“I’ve lost everything, I have no money,” he answered drily. And as for the prince, it was as if he decidedly did not notice or recognize me.

“There’s money here!” I cried, pointing to my pile of gold. “How much do you want?”

“Devil take it!” cried Darzan, turning all red. “I don’t believe I asked you for money.”

“You’re being called,” Zershchikov pulled me by the sleeve.

I had been called, several times now and almost with curses, by the colonel, who had lost a bet of ten imperials to me.

“Kindly take it!” he cried, all purple with anger. “I’m not obliged to stand over you, and later you may say you didn’t get it. Count it up.”

“I trust you, I trust you, Colonel, without counting; only please don’t shout at me like that and don’t be angry.” And I raked in his pile of gold pieces with my hand.

“My dear sir, I beg you, get at someone else with your raptures, and not at me,” the colonel shouted sharply. “I didn’t herd swine with you!”

“It’s strange to let such people in—who is he?—some youngster,” came low-voiced exclamations.

But I wasn’t listening, I was staking at random, no longer on zéro. I staked a whole wad of hundred-rouble notes on the first eighteen numbers.

“Let’s go, Darzan,” the prince’s voice came from behind me.

“Home?” I turned to them. “Wait for me, let’s leave together, I’m through here.”

My stake won; it was a big win.

“Basta! ” I cried, and with trembling hands began raking up and pouring gold into my pockets, without counting and somehow clumsily crumpling the piles of banknotes with my fingers, wanting to stuff them all together into my side pocket. Suddenly the plump, signet-ringed hand of Aferdov, who was sitting next to me on the right and also staking large sums, reached for my three hundred-rouble notes and covered them with his palm.

“Excuse me, sir, that is not yours,” he pronounced sternly and distinctly, though in a rather soft voice.

That was the prelude which, a few days later, was destined to have such consequences. Now I swear on my honor that those three hundred-rouble notes were mine, but, to my ill fate, though I was certain they were mine, I still had a lingering fraction of a doubt, and for an honest man that is everything; and I am an honest man. Above all, I did not yet know for certain then that Aferdov was a thief; I did not yet know his last name then, so that at that moment I could actually think that I was mistaken and that those three hundred-rouble notes were not among the ones just counted out to me. I hadn’t counted my pile of money all the while and had only raked it in with my hands, but money had also been lying in front of Aferdov all the while, and right next to mine, albeit in good order and counted up. Finally, Aferdov was known there, was considered a rich man, was treated with respect. All this influenced me, and once again I didn’t protest. A terrible mistake! The main swinishness consisted in the fact that I was in ecstasy.

“It’s a great pity that I don’t remember for certain, but it seems terribly likely to me that it’s mine,” I said, my lips trembling with indignation. These words at once aroused a murmur.

“In order to say such things, one needs to remember for certain, but you yourself have been so good as to declare that you do not remember for certain,” Aferdov said with insufferable haughtiness.

“But who is he?—but how can it be permitted?” came several exclamations.

“It’s not the first time for him; earlier there was an incident with Rechberg over a ten-rouble note,” some mean little voice said beside me.

“Well, enough, enough!” I exclaimed, “I won’t protest, take it! Prince . . . where are the prince and Darzan? Gone? Gentlemen, did you see where the prince and Darzan went?” and, having finally picked up all my money, and holding in my hand several half-imperials I hadn’t had time to put in my pocket, I started after the prince and Darzan. The reader can see, I believe, that I’m not sparing myself and that I’m recollecting all of myself as I was at that moment, to the last vileness, so that what came afterwards will be understood.

The prince and Darzan had already gone downstairs, not paying the least attention to my calls and cries. I caught up with them, but paused for a second before the doorman and put three half-imperials in his hand, devil knows why; he looked at me in perplexity and didn’t even thank me. But it was all the same to me, and if Matvei had been there, I surely would have dished out a whole fistful of gold pieces, and it seems that’s what I wanted to do, but, running out to the porch, I suddenly recalled that I had dismissed him earlier. At that moment the prince’s trotter drove up, and he got into the sledge.

“I’m coming with you, Prince, to your place!” I cried, seized the flap and flung it open so as to get into his sledge; but Darzan suddenly jumped into the sledge past me, and the driver, tearing the flap from my hands, covered the two gentlemen.

“Devil take it!” I cried in frenzy. It came out as if I had unfastened the flap for Darzan, like a lackey.

“Home!” cried the prince.

“Stop!” I bellowed, clutching at the sledge, but the horse pulled, and I tumbled into the snow. It even seemed to me that they laughed. Jumping up, I instantly grabbed the first cab that came along and raced to the prince’s, urging my nag on every second.

IV

AS IF ON PURPOSE, the nag crawled on for an unnaturally long time, though I had promised a whole rouble. The driver kept whipping her up and, of course, whipped her enough for a rouble. My heart was sinking; I tried to start talking with the driver, but I couldn’t even get the words out, and mumbled some sort of nonsense. That was the state I was in when I ran up to the prince’s. He had just returned; he had taken Darzan home and was alone. Pale and angry, he was pacing his study. I repeat once more: he had lost terribly. He looked at me with some sort of distracted perplexity.

“You again!” he said, frowning.

“So as to have done with you, sir!” I said breathlessly. “How dared you act that way with me?”

He looked at me questioningly.

“If you were going with Darzan, you might just have told me you were going with Darzan, instead of which you started the horse, and I . . .”

“Ah, yes, it seems you fell in the snow,” and he laughed in my face.

“The response to that is a challenge, and therefore we shall first finish with our accounts . . .”

And with a trembling hand I began taking my money out and placing it on the sofa, on a little marble table, and even into some open book, in piles, handfuls, wads; several coins rolled onto the carpet.

“Ah, yes, it seems you won? . . . One can tell it by your tone.”

Never before had he spoken so impudently with me. I was very pale.

“Here . . . I don’t know how much . . . has to be counted. I owe you up to three thousand . . . or how much? . . . more or less?”

“I don’t believe I’m forcing you to pay.”

“No, sir, I myself want to pay, and you should know why. I know there’s a thousand roubles in this wad—here!” And I started counting with trembling hands, but stopped. “Never mind, I know it’s a thousand. So I’m taking this thousand for myself, and all the rest, these piles, you can take for my debt, part of my debt. I think there’s as much as two thousand here, or maybe more!”

“But you’re still keeping a thousand for yourself ?” the prince bared his teeth.

“Do you need it? In that case . . . I wanted . . . I thought you wouldn’t want . . . but if you need it—here . . .”

“No, no need,” he turned away from me contemptuously and again began pacing the room.

“And devil knows what makes you pay it back,” he suddenly turned to me with a frightful challenge in his face.

“I’m paying it back in order to demand an accounting from you!” I yelled in my turn.

“Get out of here with your eternal words and gestures!” He suddenly stamped his feet at me as if in frenzy. “I wanted to throw you out long ago, you and your Versilov.”

“You’re out of your mind!” I cried. And it did look like it.

“The two of you have worn me out with your catchy phrases, nothing but phrases, phrases, phrases! About honor, for instance! Pah! I’ve long wanted to break . . . I’m glad, glad that the moment has come. I considered myself bound, and I blushed at being obliged to receive you . . . both! But now I don’t consider myself bound by anything, not by anything, know that! Your Versilov set me on to attack Mme. Akhmakov and disgrace her . . . Don’t you dare speak to me about honor after that. Because you’re dishonorable people . . . both, both! And weren’t you ashamed to take money from me?”

Everything went dark in my eyes.

“I took it from you as a comrade,” I began terribly softly. “You yourself offered, and I trusted in your goodwill . . .”

“I’m not your comrade! I didn’t give you money for that, and you yourself know what it was for.”

“I took it against Versilov’s money; of course, it was stupid, but I . . .”

“You couldn’t have taken it against Versilov’s money without his permission, and I couldn’t have given you his money without his permission . . . I gave you my own, and you knew it—knew it and took it—and I suffered this hateful comedy in my own house!”

“What did I know? What comedy? Why did you give me the money?”

“Pour vos beaux yeux, mon cousin!”⁴³ he guffawed right in my face.

“Ah, the devil!” I yelled, “take all of it, here’s the thousand for you! We’re quits now, and tomorrow . . .”

And I hurled the wad of banknotes at him that I had been keeping for my further needs. The wad hit him right in the waistcoat and dropped to the floor. In three huge strides, he quickly came up close to me.

“Do you dare to tell me,” he said ferociously and distinctly, syllable by syllable, “that while you were taking my money all this month, you didn’t know that your sister is pregnant by me?”

“What? How?” I cried, and my legs suddenly became weak, and I sank strengthlessly onto the sofa. He himself told me later that I literally turned as pale as a sheet. My mind became addled. I remember we went on gazing silently into each other’s faces. Fear seemed to pass over his face; he suddenly bent down, seized me by the shoulders, and began to support me. I remember very well his fixed smile; there was mistrust and astonishment in it. No! He had never expected his words would have such an effect, because he was convinced of my guilt.

It ended with my fainting, but only for a minute; I recovered, got to my feet, gazed at him and reflected—and suddenly the whole truth was revealed to my long-sleeping reason! If someone had told me beforehand and asked, “What would you do to him at that moment?” I would probably have answered that I would tear him to pieces. But something quite different took place, and totally beyond my will: I suddenly covered my face with both hands, and wept and sobbed bitterly. It came out that way of itself! The little child suddenly betrayed himself in the young man. Which meant that the little child was still living in my soul by a whole half. I fell on the sofa weeping. “Liza! Liza! Poor, unfortunate girl!” The prince suddenly and completely believed me.

“God, how guilty I am before you!” he cried in deep sorrow. “Oh, what vile thoughts I had of you in my suspiciousness . . . Forgive me, Arkady Makarovich!”

I suddenly jumped up, wanted to say something to him, stood in front of him, but, having said nothing, ran out of the room and out of the house. I plodded home on foot and barely remember the way. I threw myself on my bed, buried my face in the pillow, in the darkness, and thought and thought. At such moments one’s thinking is never orderly and consistent. It was as if the thread of my mind and imagination kept snapping, and, I remember, I would even start dreaming of something totally irrelevant and even of God knows what. But grief and calamity would suddenly come back to my mind with pain and heartache, and I would wring my hands again and exclaim, “Liza, Liza!” and weep again. I don’t remember how I fell asleep, but I slept soundly, sweetly.

Chapter Seven

I

I WOKE UP in the morning at around eight o’clock, instantly locked my door, sat by the window, and started to think. I sat like that until ten o’clock. The maid knocked at my door twice, but I sent her away. Finally, between ten and eleven, there came another knock. I shouted again, but it was Liza. Along with her the maid came in, brought me coffee, and set about lighting the stove. To send the maid away was impossible, and all the while Fekla was putting in the wood and blowing up the fire, I paced my small room with big strides, not starting a conversation and even trying not to look at Liza. The maid worked with inexpressible slowness, and that on purpose, as all maids do in such cases, when they notice that their presence is keeping the masters from talking. Liza sat on a chair by the window and watched me.

“Your coffee will get cold,” she said suddenly.

I looked at her: not the least embarrassment, perfect calm, and even a smile on her lips.

“Women!” I couldn’t stand it and heaved my shoulders. Finally the maid got the stove lighted and began tidying up, but I hotly chased her out and locked the door at last.

“Tell me, please, why you locked the door again?” asked Liza.

I planted myself in front of her:

“Liza, I would never have thought you could deceive me like this!” I exclaimed suddenly, not even thinking at all that I would begin that way, and it was not tears this time, but almost some sort of spiteful feeling that suddenly stung my heart, so much so that I didn’t even expect it. Liza blushed, yet did not answer, but only went on looking me straight in the eye.

“Wait, Liza, wait, oh, how stupid I was! But was I? The hints all came together into one heap only yesterday, and before that how could I have known? From the fact that you went to see Mrs. Stolbeev and this . . . Darya Onisimovna? But I looked upon you as the sun, Liza, and how could anything have occurred to me? Remember how I met you that time, two months ago, in his apartment, and how we walked in the sun then and rejoiced . . . was it already then? Was it?”

She responded by inclining her head affirmatively.

“So you were already deceiving me then! Here it’s not from my stupidity, Liza, the reason here is sooner my egoism, not stupidity, my heart’s egoism and—and, perhaps, the certainty of your holiness. Oh, I was always certain that you were all infinitely higher than I, and—now look! Finally, yesterday, in the course of one day, I didn’t manage to figure it out, despite all the indications . . . But that’s not at all what I was occupied with yesterday!”

Here I suddenly remembered Katerina Nikolaevna, and again something stung my heart painfully, as with a pin, and I blushed all over. Naturally, I couldn’t be kind at that moment.

“But why are you justifying yourself? It seems you’re in a hurry to justify yourself for something, Arkady—what is it?” Liza asked softly and meekly, but in a very firm and convinced voice.

“What is it? Why, what am I to do now?—there’s at least that question! And you say ‘what is it?’ I don’t know how to act! I don’t know how brothers act on such occasions . . . I know marriages can be forced with a pistol in the hand . . . I’ll act as an honorable man should! But, you see, I don’t know how an honorable man should act here! . . . Why? Because we’re not nobility, but he’s a prince and is making his career; he won’t listen to us honorable people. We’re not even brother and sister, but some sort of illegitimates, without a family name, a household serf’s children. Do princes marry household serfs? Oh, how vile! And, on top of that, you sit there and get surprised at me.”

“I believe that you’re suffering,” Liza blushed again, “but you’re in a rush and make yourself suffer.”

“In a rush? So I’m really not behind enough, in your opinion! Is it for you, for you, Liza, to speak to me like that?” I got carried away, finally, by total indignation. “And how much disgrace I endured, and how this prince must have despised me! Oh, it’s all clear to me now, and the whole picture stands before me: he fully imagined that I had guessed about his liaison with you long ago, but that I was keeping quiet or even putting on airs and boasting about ‘honor’—he might even have thought that of me! And that I was taking money for my sister, for my sister’s disgrace! That’s what he found so repulsive to see, and I fully justify him: to see and receive a scoundrel every day, because he’s her brother, and what’s more, he talks about honor . . . it could make the heart wither, even his heart! And you allowed all that, you didn’t warn me! He despised me so much that he talked about me with Stebelkov, and yesterday he told me himself that he wanted to throw both me and Versilov out. And that Stebelkov! ‘Anna Andreevna is as much a sister to you as Lizaveta Makarovna,’ and then he shouts after me: ‘My money’s better.’ And me, me, sprawling insolently on his sofas and foisting myself on his acquaintances as an equal, devil take them! And you allowed all that! Perhaps Darzan knows now, too, at least judging by his tone yesterday evening . . . Everybody, everybody knows, except me!”

“Nobody knows anything, he hasn’t and couldn’t have told any of his acquaintances,” Liza interrupted me, “and about this Stebelkov I know only that Stebelkov torments him, and that this Stebelkov could only have guessed it . . . And I told him about you several times, and he believed me completely that you didn’t know anything, and I simply don’t know why and how it came out between you yesterday.”

“Oh, at least I paid him back yesterday, and that’s a load off my heart anyway! Liza, does mama know? But how could she not know? Yesterday, yesterday, how she rose up against me! . . . Ah, Liza! Can it be that you consider yourself right in decidedly everything, that you don’t blame yourself the tiniest bit? I don’t know how these things are judged nowadays and of what thoughts you are—that is, as regards me, mama, your brother, your father . . . Does Versilov know?”

“Mama hasn’t said anything to him; he doesn’t ask; it must be that he doesn’t want to ask.”

“He knows, but he doesn’t want to know, that’s so, that’s like him! Well, you can make fun of your brother’s role, your stupid brother, talking about pistols, but your mother, your mother! Can it be that you didn’t think, Liza, how this is a reproach to mama? I was suffering over that all night. Mama’s first thought will be, ‘It’s because I was also guilty, and like mother, like daughter!’”

“Oh, how spitefully and cruelly you said that!” Liza cried with tears bursting from her eyes, got up, and went quickly towards the door.

“Wait, wait!” I caught hold of her, sat her back down, and sat down beside her, my arm still around her.

“I just thought it would all be like this, as I was coming here, and that you were sure to want to make sure that I acknowledge my guilt. As you wish, I acknowledge it. It was only out of pride that I was silent just now and didn’t say anything, but I pity you and mama much more than I do myself . . .” She didn’t finish, and suddenly burst into hot tears.

“Come, Liza, don’t, don’t say anything. I’m not your judge. Liza, how is mama? Tell me, has she known for long?”

“I think so; but I told her myself not long ago, when this happened,” she said quietly, lowering her eyes.

“And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Keep it!’” Liza said still more softly.

“Ah, yes, Liza, ‘keep it’! Don’t do anything to yourself, God forbid!”

“I won’t,” she replied firmly and again raised her eyes to me. “Don’t worry,” she added, “that’s not it at all.”

“Liza, dear, I see only that I don’t know anything here, but instead I’ve only now found out how much I love you. There’s only one thing I don’t understand, Liza: it’s all clear to me, there’s only one thing I can’t understand at all: what makes you love him? How could you have fallen in love with such a man? That’s the question!”

“And you probably also suffered over that at night?” Liza smiled gently.

“Wait, Liza, it’s a stupid question, and you’re laughing; laugh, then, but it’s impossible not to be surprised: you and he are such opposites! He—I’ve studied him—he’s gloomy, suspicious, maybe he’s very kind, let it be so, but he’s highly inclined to see evil in everything first of all (in that, however, he’s quite like me!). He passionately respects nobility—I admit that, I see it—but only, it seems, in the ideal. Oh, he’s inclined to repentance, he spends all his life constantly blaming himself and repenting, but on the other hand he never improves; however, maybe that’s also like me. A thousand prejudices and false thoughts and—no thoughts at all! He seeks a great deed and does dirty little tricks. Forgive me, Liza, anyhow I’m a fool: I say this, I hurt you and know it; I understand that . . .”

“The portrait would be true,” Liza smiled, “but you’re too angry with him over me, and therefore none of it is true. He’s been mistrustful of you from the beginning, and you couldn’t see the whole of him, but with me even in Luga . . . He’s seen only me alone, ever since Luga. Yes, he’s suspicious and morbid, and without me he would have lost his mind; and if he leaves me, he will lose his mind or shoot himself; it seems he’s realized that and knows it,” Liza added as if to herself and pensively. “Yes, he’s constantly weak, but these weak ones are occasionally capable of doing something very strong . . . How strangely you said that about the pistol, Arkady; there’s no need for any of that, and I know what will happen myself. It’s not I who am after him, but he who is after me. Mama weeps, she says, ‘If you marry him, you’ll be unhappy, he’ll stop loving you.’ I don’t believe that. Maybe I’ll be unhappy, but he won’t stop loving me. That’s not why I haven’t accepted him all along, but for another reason. For two months now I haven’t given him my acceptance, but today I told him, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’ Arkasha, you know, yesterday” (her eyes shone and she suddenly put her arms around my neck), “yesterday he went to Anna Andreevna and told her directly, in all sincerity, that he couldn’t love her . . . Yes, he gave a complete explanation, and that thought is now finished! He never had any part in that thought, it was all dreamed up by Prince Nikolai Ivanovich, and those tormentors, Stebelkov and another one, kept pushing him . . . And so for that I said yes to him today. Dear Arkady, he’s calling for you very much, and don’t be offended with him for yesterday; he’s not feeling well today, and will be at home all day. He’s really unwell, Arkady, don’t think it’s a pretext. He sent me specially and asked me to tell you that he ‘needs’ you, that he has much to tell you, and it wouldn’t be convenient here in this apartment. Well, good-bye! Ah, Arkady, I’m ashamed even to say it, but as I was coming here, I was terribly afraid that you had stopped loving me, I kept crossing myself on the way, but—you’re so kind, so sweet! I’ll never forget it! I’m going to see mama. And you try to love him a little, hm?”

I embraced her warmly and told her:

“I think, Liza, that you’re a strong character. Yes, I believe it’s not you who are after him, but he who is after you, only still . . .”

“Only still, ‘What makes you love him—that’s the question!’” Liza picked up with a suddenly mischievous smile, as she used to, and said “that’s the question!” terribly like me. And what’s more, exactly as I do with this phrase, she raised her index finger in front of her. We kissed each other, but when she left, my heart was wrung again.

II

I’LL NOTE HERE just for myself : there were, for instance, moments after Liza left when a whole crowd of the most unexpected thoughts came to my head, and I was even very pleased with them. “Well, why do I fuss so,” I thought, “what is it to me? It’s the same with everyone, or almost. So what if it happened with Liza? Do I have to save ‘the family honor’ or what?” I mark all these meannesses in order to show how poorly fortified I was in the understanding of evil and good. The only saving thing was feeling: I knew that Liza was unhappy, that mama was unhappy, and I knew it through feeling, when I remembered about them, and therefore I felt that all that had happened must not be good.

Now I’ll state beforehand that from this day right up to the catastrophe of my illness, events raced on so quickly that, recalling them now, I’m even surprised myself at how I could hold out against them, how fate failed to crush me. They weakened my mind and even my feelings, and if, in the end, I hadn’t held out and had committed a crime (and a crime almost was committed), the jury might very well have acquitted me. But I will try to describe it all in strict order, though I tell you beforehand that there was little order in my thoughts then. Events came pressing like the wind, and thoughts whirled in my mind like dry leaves in autumn. Since I consisted entirely of other people’s thoughts, where could I get my own, when I needed them for an independent decision? And I had no guide at all.

I decided to go to see the prince in the evening, so that we could discuss everything in perfect freedom, and until evening I stayed at home. But at twilight I again received a note from Stebelkov by the city mail, three lines, with an insistent and “earnest” request to call on him the next morning at around eleven o’clock on “most important business, and you will see yourself that it is business.” Having thought it over, I decided to act according to the circumstances, since tomorrow was still a long way off.

It was already eight o’clock. I would have left long ago, but I kept waiting for Versilov; there was much I wanted to express to him, and my heart was burning. But Versilov wouldn’t come and didn’t come. For the time being I couldn’t show myself at mama’s and Liza’s, and I had a feeling that Versilov probably hadn’t been there all day. I went on foot, and it occurred to me on the way to peek into yesterday’s tavern on the canal. Versilov happened to be sitting in yesterday’s place.

“I just thought you’d come here,” he said, smiling strangely and looking at me strangely. His smile was unkind, such as I hadn’t seen on his face in a long time.

I sat down at his table and first told him all the facts about the prince and Liza from the beginning, and about my scene yesterday at the prince’s after the roulette; and I didn’t forget my winning at roulette. He listened very attentively and asked again about the prince’s decision to marry Liza.

“Pauvre enfant, maybe she won’t gain anything by that. But most likely it won’t happen . . . though he’s capable . . .”

“Tell me, as a friend: you did know about it, you had a presentiment?”

“My friend, what could I do here? It’s all a matter of feelings and another person’s conscience, if only on the side of this poor little girl. I repeat to you: I did enough poking into other people’s consciences once upon a time—it’s a most inconvenient maneuver! I won’t refuse to help in misfortune, as much as my strength allows and if I can sort it out myself. And you, my dear, you really suspected nothing all the while?”

“But how could you,” I cried, flushing all over, “how could you, with even a drop of suspicion that I knew about Liza’s liaison with the prince, and seeing that at the same time I was taking the prince’s money—how could you talk to me, sit with me, offer me your hand—me, whom you should have considered a scoundrel! Because I bet you certainly suspected that I knew everything and was knowingly taking the prince’s money for my sister!”

“Once again it’s a matter of conscience,” he smiled. “And how do you know,” he added distinctly, with a certain enigmatic feeling, “how do you know that I wasn’t afraid, too, like you yesterday on a different occasion, to lose my ‘ideal’ and, instead of my ardent and honest boy, to confront a blackguard? Fearing it, I postponed the moment. Why not suppose in me, instead of laziness or perfidy, something more innocent, well, stupid perhaps, but of a more noble sort? Que diable! I’m all too often stupid and without nobility. What use would you be to me, if you had the same inclinations? To persuade and reform in such cases is mean; you’d have lost all value in my eyes, even if you were reformed . . .”

“And Liza—are you sorry, are you sorry for her?”

“Very sorry, my dear. What makes you think I’m so unfeeling? . . . On the contrary, I’ll try as hard as I can . . . Well, and how are you? How are your affairs?”

“Let’s leave my affairs out of it; I have no affairs of my own now. Listen, why do you doubt that he’ll marry her? Yesterday he was at Anna Andreevna’s and positively renounced . . . well, I mean, that a stupid idea . . . conceived by Prince Nikolai Ivanovich—to get them married. He renounced it positively.”

“Oh? When was that? And from whom precisely did you hear it?” he inquired with curiosity. I told him all I knew.

“Hm . . .” he said pensively and as if figuring something out for himself, “meaning that it happened precisely an hour . . . before a certain other talk. Hm . . . well, yes, of course, such a talk could have taken place between them . . . though, incidentally, I’m informed that so far nothing has been said or done on one side or the other . . . Of course, two words are enough for such a talk. But, look here,” he suddenly smiled strangely, “I have a piece of quite extraordinary information, which will, of course, interest you right now: even if your prince had made a proposal to Anna Andreevna yesterday (which I, suspecting about Liza, would have done everything in my power to prevent, entre nous soit dit⁴⁴), Anna Andreevna would certainly and in any case have refused him at once. You seem to love Anna Andreevna very much, to respect and value her? That’s very nice on your part, and therefore you will probably be very glad for her: she’s getting married, my dear, and, judging by her character, it seems she will certainly get married, and I—well, I, of course, will give her my blessing.”

“Getting married? To whom?” I cried, terribly surprised.

“Try to guess. But I won’t torment you: to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich, your dear old man.”

I stared at him all eyes.

“She must have been nursing this idea for a long time, and, of course, she worked it out artistically on all sides,” he went on lazily and distinctly. “I suppose it happened exactly an hour after the visit of ‘Prince Seryozha.’ (See how inopportunely he came galloping!) She simply went to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich and made him a proposal.”

“How, ‘made him a proposal’? You mean he proposed to her?”

“He? Come now! It was she, she herself. That’s just it, that he’s perfectly delighted. They say he sits there now, surprised at how it hadn’t occurred to him. I’ve heard he’s even slightly ill . . . also from delight, it must be.”

“Listen, you speak so mockingly . . . I almost can’t believe it. And how could she propose? What did she say?”

“Rest assured, my friend, that I’m sincerely glad,” he replied, suddenly assuming a terribly serious air. “He’s old, of course, but he can marry, according to all laws and customs, while she—here again it’s a matter of another person’s conscience, something I’ve already repeated to you, my friend. However, she’s more than competent enough to arrive at her own view and her own decision. As for the details proper and the words in which she expressed it, I’m unable to tell you, my friend. But she, of course, was able to do it, and maybe in a way such as you and I would never have come up with. The best thing in all this is that there’s no scandal involved, everything’s très comme il faut⁴⁵ in the world’s eyes. Of course, it’s only too clear that she wanted a position for herself in the world, but then, too, she deserves it. All this, my friend, is a completely worldly thing. And she must have proposed splendidly and gracefully. She’s a stern type, my friend, a girl-nun, as you once defined her; a ‘calm young lady,’ as I’ve long been calling her. She’s almost his ward, you know, and has seen his kindness towards her more than once. She’s been assuring me for a long time now that she ‘so respects and values, so pities and sympathizes with him,’ well, and all the rest, that I was even partly prepared. I was told of it all this morning, on her behalf and at her request, by my son and her brother, Andrei Andreevich, with whom it seems you’re not acquainted, and with whom I meet regularly twice a year. He respectfully approbates her step.”

“Then it’s already public? God, I’m so amazed!”

“No, it’s not public at all yet, not for some time . . . I don’t know about them, generally I’m quite outside of it. But it’s all true.”

“But now Katerina Nikolaevna . . . What do you think, is Bjoring going to like this little snack?”

“That I don’t know . . . what, essentially, there is for him not to like; but, believe me, Anna Andreevna is a highly decent person in that sense as well. And what a one she is, though, this Anna Andreevna! Yesterday morning, just before that, she inquired of me whether I was or was not in love with the widow Akhmakov! Remember, I told you that yesterday with surprise: she wouldn’t be able to marry the father if I married the daughter. Do you understand now?”

“Ah, indeed!” I cried. “But can it be, indeed, that Anna Andreevna supposed you . . . might wish to marry Katerina Nikolaevna?”

“It looks that way, my friend, however . . . however, it seems it’s time you went wherever you’re going. You see, I keep having these headaches. I’ll tell them to play Lucia. I love the solemnity of boredom—however, I’ve already told you that . . . I repeat myself unpardonably . . . However, maybe I’ll leave here. I love you, my dear, but good-bye; when I have a headache or a toothache, I always yearn for solitude.”

Some tormented wrinkle appeared on his face; I believe now that his head did ache then, his head especially . . .

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“What about tomorrow, what’s happening tomorrow?” he smiled crookedly.

“I’ll come to you, or you to me.”

“No, I won’t come to you, but you’ll come running to me . . .” There was something all too unkind in his face, but I had other things to think about: such an event!

III

THE PRINCE WAS actually unwell and was sitting at home alone, his head wrapped in a wet towel. He was waiting very much for me; but it was not his head alone that ached, but rather he ached all over morally. Again I’ll state beforehand: all this time lately, and right up to the catastrophe, I was somehow forced to meet nothing but people who were so agitated that they were almost crazy, so that I myself must have been as if involuntarily infected. I confess, I came with bad feelings, and I was very ashamed that I had burst into tears in front of him the day before. And anyway he and Liza had managed to deceive me so skillfully that I couldn’t help seeing myself as a fool. In short, when I went in, there were false strings sounding in my soul. But all that was affected and false quickly dropped away. I must do him justice: as soon as his suspiciousness fell and broke to pieces, he gave himself definitively, displaying features of an almost infantile affection, trustfulness, and love. He kissed me tearfully and at once began talking business . . . Yes, he really needed me very much; there was an extremely great disorder in his words and flow of ideas.

He announced to me quite firmly his intention to marry Liza and as soon as possible. “That she’s not of the nobility, believe me, has never embarrassed me for a moment,” he said to me. “My grandfather was married to a household serf, a singer from a neighboring landowner’s private serf theater. Of course, my family nursed some hopes in my regard, but they’ll have to give in now, and there won’t be any struggle. I want to break, to break with the whole present definitively! Everything will be different, everything will be in a new way! I don’t understand what makes your sister love me; but, of course, without her maybe I wouldn’t be living in the world now. I swear to you from the bottom of my heart that I now look at my meeting her in Luga as at the finger of Providence. I think she loves me for the ‘boundlessness of my fall’ . . . though, can you understand that, Arkady Makarovich?”

“Perfectly!” I said in a highly convinced voice. I was sitting in an armchair by the table, and he was pacing the room.

“I must tell you this whole fact of our meeting without reserve. It began with my soul’s secret, which she alone has learned, because she’s the only one I’ve ventured to entrust it to. And to this day no one else knows it. I found myself in Luga then with despair in my soul and was living at Mrs. Stolbeev’s, I don’t know why, maybe I was seeking the most complete solitude. At that time I had just retired from service in the ———regiment. I had entered that regiment when I came back from abroad, after that meeting abroad with Andrei Petrovich. I had money then, I squandered it in the regiment, lived openhandedly; but my officer comrades didn’t like me, though I tried not to insult anyone. And I confess to you that no one has ever liked me. There was an ensign there, Stepanov or something, I confess to you, an extremely empty, worthless, and even as if downtrodden man, in short, not distinguished by anything. Indisputably honest, however. He began calling on me, I wasn’t ceremonious with him, he spent whole days sitting in the corner of my room, silently but with dignity, though he didn’t bother me at all. Once I told him a certain current anecdote, which I embellished with a lot of nonsense, such as that the colonel’s daughter was not indifferent to me and that the colonel, who was counting on me, would of course do whatever I liked . . . In short, I’ll omit the details, but from all this later came a very complex and vile piece of gossip. It came not from Stepanov, but from my orderly, who had been eavesdropping and remembered everything, because it involved an anecdote compromising to the young lady. When the gossip went around, this orderly, at the officers’ interrogation, pointed the finger at Stepanov, that is, that I had told it to this Stepanov. Stepanov was put in such a position that he simply couldn’t deny having heard it; it was a matter of honor. And since I had lied for two-thirds of the anecdote, the officers were indignant, and the regimental commander, summoning us to him, was forced to have it out. It was here that the question was put to Stepanov in front of everyone: had he or had he not heard it? And the man told the whole truth. Well, sir, what did I do then, I, a thousand-year prince? I denied it and told Stepanov to his face that he was lying, told him politely, that is, in the sense that he had ‘misunderstood’ it, and so on . . . Again, I’ll omit the details, but the advantage of my position was that, since Stepanov frequented me, I could present the matter, not without some probability, so that it would look as if he had connived with my orderly with a view to some advantage. Stepanov only looked at me silently and shrugged. I remember his look and will never forget it. Then he immediately sent in his resignation, but what do you think happened? The officers, all of them at once, to a man, paid him a visit and persuaded him not to resign. Two weeks later I also left the regiment. Nobody drove me out, nobody asked me to leave, I gave family circumstances as a pretext. That was the end of the matter. At first I was perfectly all right and was even angry with them; I lived in Luga, made the acquaintance of Lizaveta Makarovna, but then, a month later, I began looking at my revolver and thinking about death. I look at everything darkly, Arkady Makarovich. I prepared a letter to the regimental commander and my comrades, with a full confession of my lie, restoring Stepanov’s honor. Having written the letter, I posed myself a problem: ‘Send it and live, or send it and die?’ I wouldn’t have been able to resolve this problem. Chance, blind chance, after one quick and strange conversation with Lizaveta Makarovna, suddenly brought us close. Before then she had come to see Mrs. Stolbeev; we met, greeted each other, and even spoke occasionally. I suddenly revealed everything to her. And it was then that she gave me her hand.”

“How did she resolve the problem?”

“I didn’t send the letter. She decided against sending it. She motivated it like this: if I did send the letter, I would, of course, be committing a noble act, enough to wash away all the dirt and even much more, but could I bear it myself? Her opinion was that no one could bear it, because the future would be ruined then, and resurrection into a new life would be impossible. And besides, it would have been one thing if Stepanov had suffered; but he had been vindicated by all the officers without that. In short—a paradox; but she held me back, and I gave myself to her completely.”

“She resolved it in a Jesuitical way, but like a woman!” I cried. “She already loved you then!”

“And with that I was reborn into a new life. I gave myself a promise to remake myself, to change my life, to be worthy of it before myself and before her, and—look what we ended with! It ended with you and me going to the roulette houses, playing faro; I couldn’t stand up to the inheritance, was glad for my career, all these people, the trotters . . . I tormented Liza—a disgrace!”

He rubbed his forehead with his hand and paced the room.

“You and I have been overtaken by the same Russian fate, Arkady Makarovich: you don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what to do. Once a Russian man gets slightly out of the ordinary rut that custom lays down for him—he immediately doesn’t know what to do. In the rut, everything is clear: income, rank, position in the world, equipage, visits, service, wife—but the slightest something, and what am I? A leaf driven by the wind. I don’t know what to do! These two months I’ve stuggled to keep in the rut, I’ve come to love the rut, I’ve been drawn into the rut. You still don’t know all the depths of my fall here: I loved Liza, sincerely loved her, and at the same time had thoughts of Mme. Akhmakov!”

“Is it possible?” I cried in pain. “By the way, Prince, what did you tell me yesterday about Versilov, that he set you on to some sort of meanness against Katerina Nikolaevna?”

“Maybe I exaggerated and am as guilty in my suspiciousness before him as before you. Let’s drop that. What, can you really think that for all this time, ever since Luga, I haven’t been nursing a lofty ideal of life? I swear to you, it never left me and was with me constantly, not losing the least of its beauty in my soul. I remembered the oath I had given Lizaveta Makarovna to be reborn. Andrei Petrovich, speaking here yesterday about nobility, didn’t say anything new to me, I assure you. My ideal was firmly established: a few score acres of land (and only a few score, because I already have almost nothing left of the inheritance); then a complete, the most complete, break with society and career; a house in the country, a family, and myself—a plowman or something of the sort. Oh, in our family it’s nothing new; my father’s brother plowed with his own hands, so did my grandfather. We’re only thousand-year-old princes and as noble as the Rohans,²⁴ but we’re paupers. And this is what I’d teach my children: ‘Always remember all your life that you are a nobleman, that the sacred blood of Russian princes flows in your veins, but do not be ashamed that your father plowed the earth himself: he did it like a prince.’ I wouldn’t leave them any fortune except for this piece of land, but instead I’d give them a higher education, I’d consider it my duty. Oh, here Liza could help me. Liza, the children, work—oh, how we both dreamed of it all, dreamed of it here, right in these rooms, and what then? At the same time I had thoughts of Mme. Akhmakov, without loving this person at all, and of the possibility of a wealthy society marriage! And only after the news Nashchokin brought yesterday, about this Bjoring, did I decide to go to Anna Andreevna.”

“But didn’t you go to renounce her? That was already an honorable act, I think.”

“You think so?” he stopped in front of me. “No, you still don’t know my nature! Or . . . or there’s something here that I don’t know myself, because here, it must be, there’s not just nature. I love you sincerely, Arkady Makarovich, and, besides that, I’ve been deeply guilty before you for all these two months, and therefore I want you, as Liza’s brother, to know everything: I went to propose to Anna Andreevna, and not to renounce her.”

“Can it be? But Liza said . . .”

“I deceived Liza.”

“I beg your pardon: you made a formal proposal and Anna Andreevna refused you? Is that it? Is that it? The details are extremely important for me, Prince.”

“No, I didn’t make any proposal, but only because I had no time; she let me know beforehand—not directly, of course, but nevertheless in very transparent and clear terms, she ‘delicately’ gave me to understand that the idea was henceforth impossible.”

“That means it’s the same as if you didn’t make the proposal, and your pride hasn’t suffered!”

“How can you possibly reason like that! And the judgment of my own conscience? And Liza, whom I deceived and . . . therefore wanted to abandon? And the vow I made to myself and all the generations of my ancestors—to be reborn and to redeem all my former baseness! I beg you not to tell her about it. Maybe it’s the one thing she’d be unable to forgive me! I’ve been sick since that business yesterday. And the main thing is that it’s all over now, and the last of the Princes Sokolsky will go to hard labor. Poor Liza! I’ve been waiting all day for you, Arkady Makarovich, to reveal to you, as Liza’s brother, something she doesn’t know yet. I am a criminal and a partner in the counterfeiting of shares in the ——sky railroad.”

“What’s this now! Why to hard labor?” I jumped up, looking at him in horror. His face expressed the most deep, dark, and hopeless grief.

“Sit down,” he said, and sat down himself in the facing armchair. “First of all, learn this fact: a little over a year ago, that same summer of Ems, Lydia and Katerina Nikolaevna, and then Paris, precisely at the time when I went to Paris for two months, in Paris, of course, I didn’t have enough money. Just then Stebelkov turned up, whom, incidentally, I had known before. He gave me some money and promised to give more, but for his part also asked me to help him: he had need of an artist, a draftsman, an engraver, a lithographer, and so on, a chemist, and a technician—and all that for certain purposes. About the purposes, even from the first, he spoke quite transparently. And what then? He knew my character—all this only made me laugh. The thing was that since my schooldays I had been acquainted with a certain man, at the present time a Russian émigré, not of Russian origin, however, and living somewhere in Hamburg. In Russia he had already been mixed up once in a story to do with forged documents. It was this man Stebelkov was counting on, but he needed a recommendation, and he turned to me. I gave him two lines and forgot about it at once. Later he met me once more and then again, and I got as much as three thousand from him then. I literally forgot about this whole affair. Here I kept taking money from him on promissory notes and pledges, and he twisted before me like a slave, and suddenly yesterday I find out from him for the first time that I’m a criminal.”

“When yesterday?”

“Yesterday morning, when we were shouting in my study before Nashchokin’s arrival. For the first time, and perfectly clearly now, he dared to bring up Anna Andreevna with me. I raised my hand to strike him, but he suddenly stood up and announced to me that I was solidary with him and that I should remember that I was a partner and as much of a swindler as he—in short, that was the idea, though not in those words.”

“What nonsense, but is this a dream?”

“No, it’s not a dream. He was here today and explained in more detail. These shares have been circulating for a long time, and more are going to be put into circulation, but it seems they’ve already begun to be picked up here and there. Of course, I’m on the sidelines, but ‘all the same, you kindly furnished that letter then, sir’—that’s what Stebelkov told me.”

“But you didn’t know what it was for, or did you?”

“I knew,” the prince replied softly and lowered his eyes. “That is, you see, I knew and didn’t know. I laughed, I found it funny. I didn’t think about anything then, the less so as I had no need at all for counterfeit shares and it wasn’t I who was going to make them. But, all the same, the three thousand he gave me then, he didn’t even set down to my account afterwards, and I allowed that. And, anyway, how do you know, maybe I, too, was a counterfeiter? I couldn’t help knowing—I’m not a child; I knew, but I found it amusing, and so I helped scoundrels and jailbirds . . . and did it for money! Which means that I, too, am a counterfeiter!”

“Oh, you’re exaggerating; you were wrong, but you’re exaggerating!”

“Above all, there’s a certain Zhibelsky here, still a young man, in the legal line, something like a lawyer’s assistant. He was also some sort of partner in these shares, and later he came to me from that gentleman in Hamburg, with trifles, naturally, and I didn’t even know why myself, there was no mention of shares . . . But, anyhow, he saved two documents written in my hand, both two-line notes, and, of course, they are also evidence; today I understood that very well. Stebelkov explains that this Zhibelsky is hindering everything: he stole something there, somebody’s money, public money, it seems, but he intends to steal more and then to emigrate; so he needs eight thousand, not less, to help him emigrate. My share of the inheritance satisfies Stebelkov, but Stebelkov says that Zhibelsky also has to be satisfied . . . In short, I must give up my share of the inheritance, plus ten thousand more—that’s their final word. And then they’ll give me back my two notes. They’re in it together, it’s clear.”

“An obvious absurdity! If they denounce you, they’ll betray themselves! They won’t denounce you for anything.”

“I realize that. They’re not threatening me with denunciation at all; they merely say: ‘We won’t denounce you, of course, but if the affair happens to be discovered, then . . .’—that’s what they say, and that’s all; but I think it’s enough! That’s not the thing: whatever may come of it, and even if those notes were in my pocket now, but to be solidary with those swindlers, to be comrades with them eternally, eternally! To lie to Russia, to lie to my children, to lie to Liza, to lie to my own conscience! . . .”

“Does Liza know?”

“No, she doesn’t know everything. She couldn’t bear it in her condition. I now wear the uniform of my regiment, and every time I meet a soldier of my regiment, every second, I’m conscious in myself that I dare not wear this uniform.”

“Listen,” I cried suddenly, “there’s nothing to talk about here; you have only one way of salvation: go to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich, borrow ten thousand from him, ask without revealing anything, then summon those two swindlers, settle with them finally, and buy your notes back . . . and that will be the end of it! That will be the end of it all, and—off to the plowing! Away with fantasies and trust yourself to life!”

“I’ve thought about that,” he said firmly. “I spent the whole day today deciding, and finally decided. I’ve only been waiting for you. I’ll go. Do you know that I’ve never borrowed a kopeck from Prince Nikolai Ivanovich in my life? He’s kind towards our family and has even . . . contributed, but I myself, I personally, have never taken money from him. But now I’ve decided . . . Note that our branch of the Sokolskys is older than Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s branch: they’re a younger branch, even a collateral one, even a questionable one . . . Our ancestors were enemies. At the beginning of Peter’s reforms, my great-grandfather, also Peter, was and remained a schismatic²⁵ and wandered in the forests of Kostroma. That Prince Peter was also married a second time to a non-noble girl . . . It was then that these other Sokolskys advanced themselves, but I . . . what am I talking about?”

He was very tired and talking as if at random.

“Calm yourself,” I stood up, taking my hat, “go to bed, that’s the first thing. And Prince Nikolai Ivanovich won’t refuse you for anything, especially now, in his joy. Do you know the story there? You really don’t? I’ve heard a wild thing, that he’s getting married; it’s a secret, but not from you, naturally.”

And I told him everything, already standing hat in hand. He knew nothing. He quickly inquired about the details, primarily the time, the place, and the degree of reliability. Of course, I didn’t conceal from him that, according to the story, this had happened immediately after his visit yesterday to Anna Andreevna. I can’t express what a painful impression this news made on him; his face became distorted, as if twisted, and a crooked smile convulsively contracted his lips; in the end he turned terribly pale and lapsed into deep thought, his eyes lowered. I suddenly saw all too clearly that his self-love had been terribly stricken by Anna Andreevna’s refusal yesterday. Maybe, in his morbid mood, he pictured all too vividly at that moment his ridiculous and humiliating role yesterday before this girl, of whose acceptance, it now turned out, he had been so calmly assured all along. And, finally, maybe the thought that he had done such a mean thing to Liza, and for nothing! It’s curious how these society fops regard each other, and on what basis they can respect each other; this prince might have supposed that Anna Andreevna already knew of his liaison with Liza—with her sister, in fact—and if she didn’t, she was sure to find out one day; and yet he “had no doubt of her decision”!

“Could you really think,” he suddenly raised his eyes to me proudly and haughtily, “that I, I am capable of going now, after your communication, and asking Prince Nikolai Ivanovich for money? Asking him who is the fiancé of the girl who has just refused me—how beggarly, how servile! No, now all is lost, and if the help of this old man was my last hope, then let that last hope, too, be lost!”

I agreed with him in my heart; but still, one must take a broader view of reality: was the little old prince a man, a fiancé? Several ideas began seething in my head at once. Even without that, however, I had decided earlier that tomorrow I would visit the old man without fail. But now I tried to soften the impression and put the poor prince to bed: “You’ll have a good sleep, and your ideas will brighten up, you’ll see for yourself !” He shook my hand warmly, but didn’t kiss me. I gave him my word that I’d come the next evening and “we’ll talk, we’ll talk: all too much has accumulated for us to talk about.” At these words of mine he smiled somehow fatally.

Chapter Eight

I

ALL THAT NIGHT I dreamed of roulette, gambling, gold, calculations. I kept calculating something, as if I was at the gaming table, some stake, some chance, and it oppressed me all night like a nightmare. To tell the truth, that whole previous day, despite all my extraordinary impressions, I kept recalling my win at Zershchikov’s. I suppressed the thought, but could not suppress the impression and trembled at the mere recollection. That win had stung my heart. Could it be I was a born gambler? At least it was certain that I had the qualities of a gambler. Even now, as I’m writing all this, I like at moments to think about gambling! It sometimes happens that I spend whole hours sitting silently, making gambling calculations in my mind and dreaming of how it will all go, how I’ll stake and win. Yes, there are many different “qualities” in me, and my soul is restless.

At ten o’clock I intended to set off for Stebelkov’s, and that on foot. I sent Matvei home as soon as he appeared. While having my coffee, I tried to collect my thoughts. For some reason I was pleased; instantly looking into myself, I realized that I was mainly pleased with the fact that “today I would be in the home of Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.” But this day of my life was fateful and unexpected and began at once with a surprise.

At exactly ten o’clock my door was flung open and in flew—Tatyana Pavlovna. I might have expected anything but that woman’s appearance, and I jumped up before her in fright. Her face was ferocious, her gestures disordered, and, if asked, she might not have been able to say herself why she had rushed in on me. I’ll say beforehand: she had just received an extraordinary piece of news which had crushed her, and was under the very first impression of it. And the news touched me as well. However, she spent just half a minute with me, or say a whole minute, but not more. She just fastened on to me.

“So that’s how you are!” she stood in front of me, all thrust forward. “Ah, you puppy! What have you done? Or don’t you know yet? He’s having his coffee! Ah, you babbler, ah, you windmill, ah, you paper lover . . . the likes of you ought to be birched, birched, birched!”

“Tatyana Pavlovna, what’s happened? What’s wrong? Mama? . . .”

“You’ll find out!” she cried menacingly and rushed from the room—that was all I saw of her. Of course, I would have chased after her, but I was stopped by a thought, or not a thought, but some dark anxiety: I had a presentiment that “paper lover” was the chief phrase in her shouting. Of course, I would have guessed nothing on my own, but I quickly left, in order to finish the sooner with Stebelkov and go to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s. “The key to everything is there!” I thought instinctively.

It was astonishing how, but Stebelkov already knew everything about Anna Andreevna, and even in detail; I won’t describe his conversation and gestures, but he was in rapture, in an ecstasy of rapture, from the “artistry of the deed.”

“There’s a person, sir! No, sir, there’s quite a person!” he exclaimed. “No, sir, that’s not our way; we just sit here and nothing more, but she wanted to drink water from a true source—and she did. It’s . . . it’s an ancient statue! It’s an ancient statue of Minerva, sir, only she walks around and wears modern dress!”

I asked him to get down to business. The whole business, as I fully anticipated, consisted merely in inducing and persuading the prince to go and ask for ultimate aid from Prince Nikolai Ivanovich. “Otherwise it may be very, very bad for him, and not by my will; is that so or not?”

He peeked into my eyes, but didn’t seem to suppose that I knew anything more than I had the day before. And he couldn’t have supposed anything: needless to say, I didn’t betray by a word or a hint that I knew “about the shares.” We didn’t talk long, he at once began promising me money, “and a considerable amount, sir, a considerable amount, only help to make the prince go. It’s an urgent matter, very urgent, there’s the force of it, that it’s all too urgent!”

I didn’t want to argue and wrangle with him like the day before, and I got up to go, letting drop to him in any case that I’d “try.” But he suddenly astonished me inexpressibly: I was already going to the door when, putting his arm affectionately around my waist, he unexpectedly began telling me . . . the most incomprehensible things.

I’ll omit the details and not recount the whole thread of the conversation, so as not to be tiresome. The gist of it was that he made me a proposition “to acquaint him with Mr. Dergachev, since you do go there”!

I instantly became quiet, trying as hard as I could not to betray myself by some gesture. I replied at once, however, that I was a complete stranger there, and if I had been there, it was only once by chance.

“But if you were admitted once, then you can go another time, is that so or not?”

I asked him directly, but very coolly, what he needed it for. And to this day I cannot understand how such a degree of naïveté was possible in a seemingly “practical” and not stupid man, as Vasin defined him. He explained to me quite directly that at Dergachev’s, as he suspected, “most likely something forbidden, strictly forbidden, is going on, and so, having investigated, I might make myself a little profit from it.” And, smiling, he winked at me with his left eye.

I answered precisely nothing in the affirmative, but pretended I was thinking it over and “promised to think,” after which I quickly left. Things were getting complicated: I flew to Vasin’s and just caught him at home.

“Ah, and you, too!” he said mysteriously on seeing me.

Not picking up his phrase, I went straight to the point and told him. He was visibly struck, though he didn’t lose his equanimity. He asked me to repeat it all in detail.

“Might it not well be that you misunderstood?”

“No, I understood correctly, the meaning was perfectly straightforward.”

“In any case I’m extremely grateful to you,” he added sincerely. “Yes, indeed, if that’s how it all was, then he supposed you wouldn’t be able to hold out against a certain sum.”

“And besides, he knew my situation all too well: I’ve been gambling, I’ve behaved badly, Vasin.”

“I heard about that.”

“The most puzzling thing of all for me is that he knows about you, that you go there, too,” I risked asking.

“He knows only too well,” Vasin replied quite simply, “that I have nothing to do with them. And all these young people are mostly babblers—and nothing more. You, however, may remember that better than anyone.”

It seemed to me as if he was not trusting me with something.

“In any case I’m extremely grateful to you.”

“I’ve heard that Mr. Stebelkov’s affairs are somewhat in disorder,” I made another attempt to ask. “At least I’ve heard about some shares . . .”

“What shares have you heard about?”

I deliberately mentioned the “shares,” but, naturally, not in order to tell him the prince’s secret from yesterday. I only wanted to drop a hint and see by his face, by his eyes, whether he knew anything about the shares. I achieved my goal: by an imperceptible and instant movement in his face, I guessed that he might know something here as well. I didn’t reply to his question, “What shares?” but remained silent; and he, curiously, didn’t pursue it.

“How is Lizaveta Makarovna’s health?” he inquired with concern.

“She’s well. My sister has always respected you . . .”

Pleasure flashed in his eyes: I had guessed long ago that he was not indifferent to Liza.

“Prince Sergei Petrovich came to see me the other day,” he suddenly imparted.

“When?” I cried.

“Exactly four days ago.”

“Not yesterday?”

“No, not yesterday.” He looked at me questioningly.

“Later maybe I’ll tell you about this meeting in more detail, but now I find it necessary to warn you,” Vasin said enigmatically, “that he appeared to me then to be in an abnormal state of spirit and . . . even of mind. However, I’ve had yet another visit,” he suddenly smiled, “just before you, and I was also forced to conclude that the visitor was not quite in a normal state.”

“The prince was just here?”

“No, not the prince, I’m not talking about the prince now. Andrei Petrovich Versilov was just here and . . . do you know anything? Has anything happened to him?”

“Maybe so, but what precisely went on between you and him?” I asked hastily.

“Of course, I ought to keep this a secret . . . We’re having a strange conversation, you and I, all too secretive,” he smiled again. “However, Andrei Petrovich didn’t order me to keep it a secret. But you’re his son, and since I know your feelings for him, this time it even seems I’ll do well to warn you. Imagine, he came to me with a question: ‘If it so happens, one of these days, very soon, that he needs to fight a duel, would I agree to play the role of his second?’ Naturally, I roundly refused him.”

I was infinitely amazed; this news was the most alarming of all: something had come out, something had gone on, something had certainly happened that I still didn’t know about! I suddenly had a fleeting recollection of Versilov saying to me yesterday, “I won’t come to you, but you’ll come running to me.” I flew to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s, with a still greater presentiment that the answer was there. Vasin, saying good-bye, thanked me once more.

II

THE OLD PRINCE was sitting in front of the fireplace, his legs wrapped in a plaid. He met me even with some sort of questioning look, as if surprised that I had come, and yet he himself sent to invite me almost every day. However, he greeted me affectionately, though he answered my first questions as if somewhat squeamishly and somehow terribly distractedly. Every now and then it was as if he realized something and peered at me intently, as if he had forgotten something and was trying to recall this something that undoubtedly had to be related to me. I told him directly that I had heard everything and was very glad. A cordial and kindly smile immediately appeared on his lips, and he became animated; his wariness and mistrust dropped away at once, as if he had forgotten them. And, of course, he had.

“My dear friend, I just knew you’d be the first to come and, you know, only yesterday I had this thought about you: ‘Who will be glad? He will.’ Well, and really nobody else; but never mind that. People have wicked tongues, but that’s insignificant . . . Cher enfant, this is all so sublime and so lovely . . . But you know her only too well yourself. And Anna Andreevna even has the highest notions of you. It’s . . . it’s a stern and lovely face, a face out of an English keepsake.²⁶ The loveliest English engraving that could ever be . . . Two years ago I had a whole collection of these engravings . . . I always, always had this intention, always; I’m only surprised that I never thought of it.”

“As far as I remember, you always loved and distinguished Anna Andreevna so.”

“My friend, we don’t want to harm anybody. Life with our friends, with our family, with those dear to our hearts—this is paradise. Everyone is a poet . . . In short, it’s all been known from prehistoric times. You know, in the summer we’ll go first to Soden and then to Bad-Gastein.²⁷ But you haven’t come for so long, my friend; what’s the matter with you? I’ve been expecting you. And isn’t it true, so much, so much has gone on since then. It’s only a pity I get restless; as soon as I’m left alone, I get restless. That’s why I shouldn’t be left alone, isn’t it true? It’s two times two. I understood it at once from her first words. Oh, my friend, she said only two words, but it . . . it was like a magnificent poem. But anyhow, you’re her brother, almost a brother, isn’t it true? My dear, it’s not for nothing that I loved you so! I swear, I anticipated it all. I kissed her little hand and wept.”

He pulled out his handkerchief as if he was going to weep again. He was badly shaken and seemed to be in one of the worst “states” I could remember him being in during all the time of our acquaintance. Ordinarily, and even almost always, he was incomparably more fresh and hearty.

“I would forgive everyone, my friend,” he prattled on. “I want to forgive everyone, and I haven’t been angry with anyone for a long time. Art, la poésie dans la vie,⁴⁶ helping the poor, and she, a biblical beauty. Quelle charmante personne, eh? Les chants de Salomon . . . non, ce n’est pas Salomon, c’est David qui mettait une jeune fille dans son lit pour se chau fer dans sa vieillesse. Enfin David, Salomon,⁴⁷²⁸ it’s all going around in my head—some sort of jumble. Each and every thing, cher enfant, can be both majestic and at the same time ridiculous. Cette jeune belle de la vieillesse de David—c’est tout un poème,⁴⁸ but Paul de Kock²⁹ would make some scène de bassinoire ⁴⁹; out of it, and we’d all laugh. Paul de Kock has neither measure nor taste, though he is talented . . . Katerina Nikolaevna smiles . . . I told her we wouldn’t bother anybody. We’ve begun our romance, and they should let us finish it. Let it be a dream, but let them not take this dream away from us.”

“How is it a dream, Prince?”

“A dream? How a dream? Well, let it be a dream, only let them allow us to die with this dream.”

“Oh, Prince, what’s this about dying? Live, only live now!”

“But what am I saying? That’s all I keep repeating. I decidedly don’t know why life is so short. So as not to be boring, of course, for life is also a work of art by the Creator himself, in the finished and impeccable form of a Pushkin poem. Brevity is the first condition of artistry. But if there are some who aren’t bored, they should be allowed to live longer.”

“Tell me, Prince, is it already public?”

“No, my dear, by no means! We all agreed on that. It’s a family matter, a family matter, a family matter. For now I’ve only revealed it fully to Katerina Nikolaevna, because I consider myself guilty before her. Oh, Katerina Nikolaevna is an angel, she’s an angel!”

“Yes, yes!”

“Yes? You, too, say ‘yes’? And I precisely thought you were her enemy. Ah, yes, incidentally, she asked me not to receive you anymore. And imagine, when you came in, I suddenly forgot it.”

“What are you saying?” I jumped up. “What for? When?”

(My presentiment had not deceived me; yes, I had had precisely that presentiment ever since Tatyana!)

“Yesterday, my dear, yesterday. I don’t even understand how you came in, for measures were taken. How did you come in?”

“I simply came in.”

“Most likely. If you had come in cunningly, they would certainly have caught you, but since you simply came in, they let you in. Simplicity, mon cher, is in fact the highest form of cunning.”

“I don’t understand anything. So you, too, have decided not to receive me?”

“No, my friend, I said I’d keep out of it . . . That is, I gave my full consent. And you may be sure, my dear boy, that I love you very much. But Katerina Nikolaevna demanded it all very, very insistently . . . Ah, there!”

At that moment Katerina Nikolaevna suddenly appeared in the doorway. She was dressed to go out, and, as she used to do before, had come to kiss her father. Seeing me, she stopped, became embarrassed, turned quickly, and left.

“Voilà! ” cried the prince, struck and terribly alarmed.

“It’s a misunderstanding!” I cried. “It’s some sort of momentary . . . I . . . I’ll be right back, Prince!”

And I ran after Katerina Nikolaevna.

Everything that followed after that happened so quickly that I was not only unable to collect my thoughts, but couldn’t even prepare in the least how to behave. If I could have prepared myself, I would, of course, have behaved differently. But I was at a loss, like a little boy. I was rushing to her rooms, but a footman on the way told me that Katerina Nikolaevna had already gone out and was getting into the carriage. I rushed headlong to the front stairway. Katerina Nikolaevna was going down the stairs in her fur coat, and beside her, or, better to say, leading her, was a tall, trim officer in uniform, without a greatcoat, wearing a saber; a footman behind him was carrying his greatcoat. This was the baron, a colonel, about thirty-five, the foppish type of officer, lean, with a slightly too-elongated face, with a reddish moustache and even eyelashes. His face, though not at all handsome, had a sharp and defiant physiognomy. I’m describing him hastily, as I noticed him at that moment. I had never seen him before. I ran down the stairs after them, without hat or coat. Katerina Nikolaevna noticed me first and quickly whispered something to him. He made as if to turn his head, but nodded at once to the servant and the porter. The servant was stepping towards me just at the front door, but I moved him aside with my arm and jumped out after them onto the porch. Bjoring was helping Katerina Nikolaevna into the carriage.

“Katerina Nikolaevna! Katerina Nikolaevna!” I exclaimed senselessly (like a fool! Like a fool! Oh, I remember it all, I had no hat on!).

Bjoring again turned fiercely to the servant and loudly shouted something to him, one or two words, I didn’t make it out. I felt someone seize me by the elbow. At that moment the carriage started; I cried out again and rushed after the carriage. Katerina Nikolaevna, I saw this, peeked out the window of the carriage and seemed to be greatly troubled. But in my quick movement as I rushed, I suddenly gave Bjoring a strong shove, not thinking of it at all, and, it seems, stepped very painfully on his foot. He cried out slightly, gnashed his teeth, and with his strong hand seized me by the shoulder and spitefully shoved me away, so that I went flying two or three paces. At that moment they handed him his greatcoat, he threw it on, got into a sledge, and shouted menacingly once more, pointing me out to the lackeys and the porter. Here they seized me and held me back. One servant threw my coat over my shoulders, the other handed me my hat, and—I don’t remember what they said then; they were saying something, and I stood and listened to them without understanding anything. But suddenly I abandoned them and ran off.

III

SEEING NOTHING AND bumping into people as I ran, I finally reached Tatyana Pavlovna’s apartment, not even thinking of hiring a cab on the way. Bjoring had shoved me aside in her presence! Of course, I had stepped on his foot, and he had shoved me aside instinctively, like a man whose corn has been stepped on (and maybe I had indeed squashed his corn!). But she had seen it, and had seen the servants seize me, and it had all happened in front of her, in front of her! When I came running into Tatyana Pavlovna’s apartment, for the first minute I couldn’t say anything, and my lower jaw trembled as in a fever. And I was in a fever and, on top of that, I was weeping . . . Oh, I had been so insulted!

“Eh! What! Kicked out? Serves you right, serves you right!” said Tatyana Pavlovna. I lowered myself silently onto the sofa and looked at her.

“But what’s the matter with him?” she looked me over intently. “Here, drink this glass, drink some water, drink it! Speak, what other mischief have you been up to?”

I murmured that I had been thrown out, and Bjoring had pushed me in the street.

“Are you able to understand anything yet, or not? Here, read and admire.” And taking a note from the table, she handed it to me and stood in front of me expectantly. I at once recognized Versilov’s hand, there were just a few lines: it was a note to Katerina Nikolaevna. I gave a start, and understanding immediately came back to me in full force. Here are the contents of this terrible, outrageous, preposterous, and villainous note, word for word:

Dear Madam, Katerina Nikolaevna,

However depraved you are, by your nature and by your art, still I always thought that you would restrain your passion and at least not make attempts on children. But even of that you were not ashamed. I inform you that the document known to you has certainly not been burned in a candle and was never with Kraft, so you will not gain anything here. And therefore do not corrupt the youth for nothing. Spare him, he is still under age, almost a boy, undeveloped mentally and physically, what use is he to you? I have sympathy for him, and therefore I have risked writing to you, though I have no hope of success. I have the honor of forewarning you that I am simultaneously sending a copy of this present to Baron Bjoring. A. Versilov.

I turned pale as I read, but then suddenly flushed, and my lips trembled with indignation.

“He means me! It’s about what I revealed to him two days ago!” I cried in fury.

“That’s just it—revealed!” Tatyana Pavlovna tore the note from my hands.

“But . . . that’s not, that’s not at all what I said! Oh, my God, what can she think of me now! But isn’t this mad? Yes, he’s mad . . . I saw him yesterday. When was the letter sent?”

“It was sent yesterday afternoon, it came in the evening, and today she gave it to me personally.”

“But I saw him yesterday myself. He’s mad! Versilov couldn’t have written like that, it was written by a madman! Who can write like that to a woman?”

“Such madmen write like that in a fury, when they go blind and deaf from jealousy and spite, and their blood turns to poisonous arsenic . . . But you still didn’t know about him, what kind he is! They’ll swat him for that now, there’ll be nothing left but a wet spot. He’s put himself under the axe! Better go to the Nikolaevsky railroad at night, lay his head on the rails, and get it lopped off, since he finds it so heavy to carry around! What drove you to tell him? What drove you to tease him? Did you want to boast?”

“But what hatred! What hatred!” I slapped myself on the head with my hand. “And what for, what for? Towards a woman! What has she done to him? What kind of relations did they have, that he can write such letters?”

“Ha-a-atred!” Tatyana Pavlovna imitated me with furious mockery.

The blood rose to my face again; it was as if I suddenly realized something quite new; I looked at her questioningly as hard as I could.

“Get out of here!” she shrieked, quickly turning away and waving her hand at me. “I’ve bothered enough with all of you! That will do now! You can all fall through the earth! . . . It’s only your mother I’m still sorry for . . .”

Naturally, I went running to Versilov. But such perfidy! Such perfidy!

IV

VERSILOV WAS NOT ALONE. I’ll explain beforehand: having sent such a letter to Katerina Nikolaevna the day before, and having actually (God only knows why) sent a copy of it to Baron Bjoring, he naturally had to expect that day, in the course of the day, certain “consequences” of his act, and therefore had taken measures of a sort. In the morning he had transferred mama and Liza (who, as I learned later, on coming back in the morning, had felt unwell and was lying in bed) upstairs to the “coffin,” and the rooms, especially our “drawing room,” had been thoroughly tidied up and cleaned. And indeed, at two o’clock in the afternoon, he had been visited by a certain Baron R., an army colonel, a gentleman of about forty, of German origin, tall, dry, with the look of a man of great physical strength, also with reddish hair like Bjoring, and slightly bald. He was one of those Barons R., of whom there are so many in the Russian army, all people of strong baronial arrogance, utterly without fortune, who live on their pay alone and are extremely soldierly and disciplinarian. I didn’t catch the beginning of their talk; they were both very animated, and how could they not be. Versilov was sitting on the sofa in front of the table, and the baron in an armchair to the side. Versilov was pale, but spoke with restraint and through his teeth, while the baron kept raising his voice and was obviously inclined to impulsive gestures, restrained himself with effort, but had a stern, haughty, and even scornful look, though not without a certain surprise. Seeing me, he frowned, but Versilov was almost glad of me:

“Greetings, my dear. Baron, this is that same very young man who is mentioned in the note, and believe me, he won’t hinder us, and may even be needed.” (The baron looked me over scornfully.) “My dear,” Versilov added to me, “I’m even glad you’ve come, so sit in the corner, I beg you, while the baron and I finish here. Don’t worry, Baron, he’ll just sit in the corner.”

It was all the same to me, because I had made up my mind, and besides, all this struck me; I sat silently in the corner, as far as possible in the corner, and sat without batting an eye or stirring till the end of their talk . . .

“I repeat to you once more, Baron,” Versilov said, firmly rapping out the words, “that I consider Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov, to whom I wrote that unworthy and morbid letter, not only the noblest being, but also the height of all perfections!”

“Such a refutation of your own words, as I’ve already observed to you, looks like a new confirmation of them,” grunted the baron. “Your words are decidedly disrespectful.”

“But, all the same, it would be most correct if you took them in their precise sense. You see, I suffer from fits and . . . various disorders, and am even being treated, and so it happened that in one such moment . . .”

“These explanations can in no way enter in. I have told you again and again that you stubbornly go on being mistaken, and maybe you deliberately want to be mistaken. I already warned you at the very beginning that the whole question concerning this lady, that is, about your letter to Mme. Akhmakov proper, must be definitively eliminated from our present conversation; yet you keep returning to it. Baron Bjoring asked me and charged me particularly to clarify, properly speaking, only that which concerns him, that is, your brazen communicating of this ‘copy’ and then your postscript, that ‘you are prepared to answer for it in whatever way he pleases.’”