The Adolescent

“But it seems the last part is already clear without explanations.”

“I understand, I’ve heard. You do not even apologize, but just go on insisting that ‘you are prepared to answer in whatever way he pleases.’ But that would be too cheap. And therefore I now find myself right, in view of the turn you so stubbornly want to give our talk, to tell you everything from my side without constraint; that is, I have come to the conclusion that Baron Bjoring cannot possibly have any dealings with you . . . on an equal footing.”

“Such a decision is, of course, one of the more advantageous for your friend, Baron Bjoring, and, I confess, you haven’t surprised me in the least: I was expecting that.”

I’ll note in parenthesis: it was all too evident to me from the first words, the first look, that Versilov was even seeking an outburst, that he was provoking and teasing this irritable baron, and maybe trying his patience too much. The baron winced.

“I have heard that you can be witty, but wit is not yet intelligence.”

“An extremely profound observation, Colonel.”

“I did not ask for your praise,” cried the baron, “and I have not come to pour through a sieve! Be so good as to listen: Baron Bjoring was in great doubt on receiving your letter, because it testified to the madhouse. And, of course, means could have been found at once to . . . calm you down. But, owing to certain special considerations, you were granted indulgence, and inquiries were made about you. It turned out that, though you belonged to good society and had once served in the guards, you have been excluded from society, and your reputation is more than dubious. However, even despite that, I have come here to ascertain personally, and here, on top of everything else, you allow yourself to play with words and yourself assert that you are subject to fits. Enough! Baron Bjoring’s position and his reputation cannot indulge you in this affair . . . In short, dear sir, I am authorized to announce to you that if this is followed by a repetition or merely by anything resembling the previous action, means will immediately be found to pacify you, quite quick and reliable ones, I can assure you. We do not live in the forest, but in a well-organized state!”

“Are you so sure of that, my good Baron R.?”

“Devil take it,” the baron suddenly stood up, “you tempt me too much to prove to you right now that I am hardly your ‘good Baron R.’”

“Ah, once again I warn you,” Versilov also got up, “that my wife and daughter are not far from here . . . and therefore I would beg you not to speak so loudly, because your shouts may reach them.”

“Your wife . . . the devil . . . If I sat and talked with you now, it was solely with the aim of clarifying this vile affair,” the baron went on with the same wrath and not lowering his voice in the least. “Enough!” he cried out furiously. “You are not only excluded from the circle of decent people, but you are a maniac, a real crazy maniac, and so you have been attested! You are not worthy of indulgence, and I announce to you that this very day measures will be taken regarding you, and you will be invited to one such place, where they will know how to restore your reason . . . and they will remove you from town!”

With big and rapid strides he left the room. Versilov didn’t see him off. He stood, gazed at me distractedly, and seemed not to notice me; suddenly he smiled, shook his hair, and, taking his hat, also started towards the door. I seized him by the arm.

“Ah, yes, you’re here, too? You . . . heard?” he stopped in front of me.

“How could you have done it? How could you so distort, so disgrace! . . . With such perfidy!”

He gazed intently, but his smile extended more and more and decidedly turned to laughter.

“But I’ve been disgraced . . . in front of her! In front of her! I was derided in her eyes, and he . . . shoved me!” I cried, beside myself.

“Really? Ah, poor boy, I’m so sorry for you . . . So they . . . de-ri-ded you there!”

“You’re laughing, you’re laughing at me! You think it’s funny!”

He quickly tore his arm from my hand, put his hat on, and laughing, laughing with genuine laughter now, left the apartment. Why should I go after him? What for? I had understood everything and—lost everything in a single moment! Suddenly I saw mama; she had come down from upstairs and was timidly looking around.

“He’s gone?”

I silently embraced her, and she me, tightly, tightly, pressing herself against me.

“Mama, my own, can you possibly stay here? Let’s go now, I’ll protect you, I’ll work for you like at hard labor, for you and for Liza . . . Let’s leave them all, all, and go away. We’ll be by ourselves. Mama, do you remember how you came to see me at Touchard’s and how I refused to recognize you?”

“I remember, my own, all my life I’ve been guilty before you, I gave birth to you, but I didn’t know you.”

“He’s the guilty one, mama, it’s he who is guilty of everything; he never loved us.”

“No, he did love us.”

“Let’s go, mama.”

“How can I go away from him, is he happy, do you think?”

“Where’s Liza?”

“Lying down. She came back and felt unwell; I fear for her. What, are they very angry with him there? What will they do with him now? Where did he go? What was this officer threatening here?”

“Nothing will happen to him, mama, nothing will ever happen to him, and nothing can, he’s that kind of man! Here’s Tatyana Pavlovna, ask her, if you don’t believe me, here she is.” (Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly came into the room.) “Good-bye, mama. I’ll come back to you right away, and when I do, I’ll ask you the same thing again . . .”

I ran off; I couldn’t see anybody at all, not only Tatyana Pavlovna, and mama tormented me. I wanted to be alone, alone.

V

BUT BEFORE I reached the end of the street, I felt that I couldn’t walk around senselessly bumping into these alien, indifferent people; but what to do with myself? Who needs me and—what do I need now? Mechanically, I trudged to Prince Sergei Petrovich’s, without thinking of him at all. He wasn’t home. I told Pyotr (his man) that I’d wait in the study (as I had done many times). His study was a big, very high room, cluttered with furniture. I wandered into the darkest corner, sat down on the sofa, and, placing my elbows on the table, propped my head in both hands. Yes, that was the question: “What do I need now?” And if I could have formulated the question then, the last thing I could have done was answer it.

But I was no longer able either to think or to ask properly. I’ve already made known above that by the end of those days I was “crushed by events”; I sat there now and everything was spinning like chaos in my mind. “Yes, I failed to see everything in him and perceived nothing,” I fancied at moments. “He laughed in my face just now: it wasn’t at me; it’s all Bjoring here, and not me. Two days ago, over dinner, he already knew everything and was gloomy. He picked up my stupid confession in the tavern and distorted all that concerned any truth, only what did he need the truth for? He doesn’t believe half a word of what he wrote to her. He only needed to insult her, to insult her senselessly, not even knowing what for, snatching at a pretext, and I gave him a pretext . . . The act of a rabid dog! Does he want to kill Bjoring now, or what? Why? His heart knows why! And I know nothing of what’s in his heart . . . No, no, even now I don’t know. Can he love her with so much passion? Or hate her with so much passion? I don’t know, but does he know himself? What was that I said to mama, that ‘nothing can happen to him’? What did I mean to say by that? Have I lost him or not?

“. . . She saw how he shoved me . . . Did she also laugh or not? I’d have laughed! The spy’s been beaten, the spy! . . .

“What does it mean” (it suddenly flashed in me), “what does it mean, his including in that nasty letter that the document hasn’t been burned at all, but still exists? . . .

“He won’t kill Bjoring, but he’s certainly sitting in the tavern now, listening to Lucia! And maybe after Lucia he’ll go and kill Bjoring. Bjoring shoved me, almost hit me; did he hit me? Bjoring scorns to fight even with Versilov, how can he go fighting with me? Maybe I should kill him tomorrow with a revolver, waiting in the street . . .” And I let this thought pass through my head quite mechanically, without lingering over it in the least.

At moments it was as if I dreamed that the door would open now, Katerina Nikolaevna would come in, give me her hand, and we’d both laugh . . . Oh, my dear student! I imagined it, that is, wished for it, when it was already very dark in the room. “But was it so long ago that I stood before her, saying good-bye to her, and she gave me her hand and laughed? How could it happen that in such a short time such a terrible distance appeared! Simply go to her and talk it over right now, this minute, simply, simply! Lord, how is it that a totally new world has begun so suddenly! Yes, a new world, totally, totally new . . . And Liza, and the prince, that’s still the old . . . Here I am now at the prince’s. And mama—how could she live with him, if it’s so? I could, I can do anything, but she? What will happen now?” And here, as in a whirl, the figures of Liza, Anna Andreevna, Stebelkov, the prince, Aferdov, everybody flashed tracelessly in my sick brain. But my thoughts were growing more formless and elusive; I was glad when I managed to comprehend one of them and get hold of it.

“I have my ‘idea’!” I thought suddenly. “But is that so? Don’t I just repeat it by rote? My idea is darkness and solitude, but is it possible now to crawl back into the former darkness? Ah, my God, I haven’t burned the ‘document’! I simply forgot to burn it two days ago. I’ll go back and burn it in a candle, precisely in a candle; I don’t know whether what I think now . . .”

It had long been dark, and Pyotr brought in candles. He stood over me and asked whether I had eaten. I only waved my hand. However, an hour later he brought me tea, and I greedily drank a big cup. Then I inquired what time it was. It was half-past eight, and I wasn’t even surprised that I had been sitting there for five hours already.

“I’ve come to you three times now,” said Pyotr, “but it seemed you were asleep.”

I didn’t remember him coming in. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt terribly frightened at having “slept,” got up and began pacing the room so as not to “fall asleep” again. Finally, my head began to ache badly. At exactly ten o’clock the prince came in, and I was surprised that I had waited for him; I had totally forgotten about him, totally.

“You’re here, and I went to your place looking for you,” he said to me. His face was dark and stern, without the slightest smile. There was a fixed idea in his eyes.

“I’ve struggled all day and used all measures,” he went on focusedly. “Everything kept collapsing, and there’s horror to come . . .” (N.B. He never went to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.) “I saw Zhibelsky, he’s an impossible man. You see: first I must have the money, and then we’ll see. And if, with the money, it still doesn’t work out, then . . . But today I decided not to think about it. Let’s just get the money today, and tomorrow we’ll see about it all. Your winnings from three days ago are still intact to the kopeck. It’s three thousand minus three roubles. Subtracting your debt, you’re left with three hundred and forty in change. Take that and another seven hundred to make a thousand, and I’ll take the remaining two thousand. Then we’ll sit down at Zershchikov’s at two different ends and try to win ten thousand—maybe we’ll do something, and if we don’t win, then . . . Anyhow, that’s the only way left.”

He gave me a fateful look.

“Yes, yes!” I cried suddenly, as if resurrecting. “Let’s go! I’ve only been waiting for you . . .”

I’ll note that I hadn’t thought about roulette for a moment in all those hours.

“But the baseness? But the meanness of the act?” the prince asked suddenly.

“That we’re going to play roulette? No, that’s everything!” I cried. “Money is everything! It’s only we who are saints, and Bjoring has sold himself. Anna Andreevna has sold herself, and Versilov—have you heard that Versilov’s a maniac? A maniac! A maniac!”

“Are you well, Arkady Makarovich? Your eyes are somehow strange.”

“Are you saying that in order to go without me? But I won’t leave you now. Not for nothing was I dreaming about gambling all night. Let’s go, let’s go!” I kept crying, as if I had suddenly found the solution to everything.

“Let’s go, then, though you’re in a fever, but there . . .”

He didn’t finish. His face looked heavy, terrible. We were already going out.

“Do you know,” he said suddenly, pausing in the doorway, “there’s yet another way out of my trouble besides gambling?”

“Which?”

“The princely way!”

“But what? But what?”

“Later you’ll find out what. Only know that I’m no longer worthy of it, because it’s too late. Let’s go, and remember my words. Let’s try the lackey’s way out . . . As if I don’t know that I am consciously, of my own full will, going and acting like a lackey!”

VI

I FLEW TO the roulette table as if my whole salvation, my whole way out, was focused in it, and yet, as I’ve already said, before the prince came, I hadn’t even thought of it. And I was going to play, not for myself, but for the prince, on the prince’s money; I can’t conceive what drew me on, but it drew me irresistibly. Oh, never had these people, these faces, these croupiers, these gambling cries, this whole squalid hall at Zershchikov’s, never had it all seemed so loathsome to me, so dismal, so coarse and sad, as this time! I remember only too well the grief and sadness that seized my heart at times during all those hours at the table. But what made me not leave? What made me endure, as if I had taken a fate, a sacrifice, a heroic deed upon myself? I’ll say one thing: I can scarcely say of myself that I was in my right mind then. And yet I had never played so intelligently as that evening. I was silent and concentrated, attentive and terribly calculating; I was patient and stingy and at the same time decided in decisive moments. I placed myself again by the zéro, that is, again between Zershchikov and Aferdov, who always sat next to Zershchikov on the right; I detested that place, but I wanted absolutely to stake on zéro, and all the other places by the zéro were taken. We had been playing for over an hour; finally, from my place, I saw the prince suddenly get up, pale, and walk over to us, and stand facing me across the table. He had lost everything and silently watched my game, though he probably understood nothing in it and was no longer thinking about the game. By that time I was just beginning to win, and Zershchikov counted out money to me. All at once Aferdov, silently, before my eyes, in the most brazen way, took one of my hundred-rouble notes and added it to his pile of money lying in front of him. I cried out and seized him by the hand. Here something unexpected happened to me: it was as if I snapped my chain, as if all the horrors and injuries of that day were suddenly focused on this one instant, on this disappearance of a hundred-rouble note. As if all that was stored up and suppressed in me had only been waiting for this moment to break out.

“He’s a thief! He just stole a hundred-rouble note from me!” I exclaimed, looking around, beside myself.

I won’t describe the tumult that arose; such an incident was a complete novelty here. People behaved decently at Zershchikov’s, and the place was known for that. But I forgot myself. Amidst the noise and shouting, Zershchikov’s voice was suddenly heard:

“And by the way, there’s money missing, and it was lying right here! Four hundred roubles!”

Another incident took place at once: money had disappeared from the bank, under Zershchikov’s nose, a roll of four hundred roubles. Zershchikov pointed to the spot where it was lying, “was lying just now,” and that spot turned out to be right next to me, adjoining me, the place where my money lay, meaning much closer to me than to Aferdov.

“Here’s the thief! It’s him stealing again, search him!” I exclaimed, pointing at Aferdov.

“It’s all because unknown people are let in,” someone’s thundering and impressive voice rang out amidst the general outcry. “They get in without any recommendation! Who brought him? Who is he?”

“Some Dolgoruky.”

“Prince Dolgoruky?”

“Prince Sokolsky brought him,” somebody cried.

“Listen, Prince,” I screamed to him across the table in a frenzy, “they consider me a thief, when it’s I who have just been robbed here! Tell them, tell them about me!”

And here something took place that was the most terrible of all that had happened that whole day . . . even in my whole life: the prince disavowed me. I saw him shrug his shoulders and, in reply to the flood of questions, utter sharply and clearly:

“I don’t answer for anyone. I beg you to leave me alone.”

Meanwhile Aferdov stood amidst the crowd and loudly demanded to be searched. He turned out his pockets himself. His demand was answered with shouts: “No, no, the thief is known!” Two summoned lackeys seized me by the arms from behind.

“I will not let you search me, I will not allow it!” I shouted, struggling to free myself.

But they dragged me to the next room, and there, amidst the crowd, they searched me down to the last fold. I shouted and struggled.

“Dropped it, must be, have to look on the floor,” somebody decided.

“Go now and look on the floor!”

“Under the table, must be he managed to throw it there!”

“Of course, the trail’s cold . . .”

They led me out, but I somehow managed to stand in the doorway and shout with senseless fury to the whole hall:

“Roulette is forbidden by law. Today I shall denounce you all!”

They took me downstairs, dressed me, and . . . opened the door to the street before me.

Chapter Nine

I

THE DAY ENDED with catastrophe, but there remained the night, and this is what I remembered from that night.

I think it was just past midnight when I found myself in the street. The night was clear, still, and frosty. I almost ran, was hurrying terribly, but—certainly not for home. “Why home? Can there be a home now? At home you live, I’d wake up tomorrow to live—but is that possible now? Life is over, it’s no longer possible to live now.” And so I plodded along the streets, not knowing where I was going, and I doubt that I wanted to get anywhere. I felt very hot and kept throwing open my heavy raccoon coat. “Now no sort of action,” it seemed to me at that moment, “can have any purpose.” And, strangely, I kept fancying that everything around me, even the air I breathed, was as if from another planet, as though I suddenly found myself on the moon. All of it—the city, the passersby, the sidewalk I was running along—all of it was suddenly not mine anymore. “This is the Palace Square, this is St. Isaac’s,” went through my head, “but now I have nothing to do with them.” Everything somehow forsook me, suddenly became not mine. “I have mama, Liza—well, what of it, what are Liza and my mother to me now? Everything is over, everything is over all at once, except one thing: that I am a thief forever.

“How can I prove that I’m not a thief? Is it possible now? Shall I go to America? Well, what would I prove by that? Versilov will be the first to believe that I stole! My ‘idea’? What ‘idea’? What of that now? In fifty years, in a hundred years, I’ll be walking along, and a man will always turn up who will point at me and say: ‘Look at that thief. He began his “idea” by stealing money at roulette’. . .”

Was there anger in me? I don’t know, maybe there was. Strangely, there had always been this feature in me, maybe ever since earliest childhood: once evil had been done to me, fulfilled to the utmost, and I had been offended to the final limits, there always appeared in me at once an unquenchable desire to submit passively to the offense and even to outstrip the offender’s desires: “There, you’ve humiliated me, so I’ll humiliate myself still more, look here, admire!” Touchard used to beat me and wanted to show that I was a lackey and not a senator’s son, and so I myself at once entered into the role of lackey then. I not only helped him to dress, but would seize the brush myself and begin brushing the last specks of dust off him, without any request or order from him, sometimes ran after him, in the heat of my lackey zeal, to brush off some last speck of dust from his tailcoat, so that he himself sometimes stopped me: “Enough, enough, Arkady, enough.” He used to come and take off his street clothes—and I would clean them, fold them carefully, and cover them with a checked silk handkerchief. I knew that my comrades laughed and despised me for that, I knew it perfectly well, but that was what I liked: “You wanted me to be a lackey, well, so I’m a lackey, a boor—yes, a boor.” I could keep up this passive hatred and underground spite for years. And what then? At Zershchikov’s I had shouted to the whole hall, in complete frenzy: “I shall denounce you all, roulette is forbidden by law!” And I swear that here, too, there was something as if similar: I had been humiliated, searched, declared a thief, destroyed—“well, then know, all of you, that you’ve guessed right, I’m not only a thief, I’m an informer as well!” Recalling it now, I sum it up and explain it in precisely that way; but then I couldn’t be bothered with analyzing; then I shouted without any intention; even a moment before, I hadn’t known I’d shout that; it shouted itself—there was that streak in my soul.

While I ran, the delirium was undoubtedly already starting, but I remember very well that I was acting consciously. And yet I will say firmly that there was a whole cycle of ideas and conclusions that was impossible for me then; even in those minutes, I felt about myself that “certain thoughts I can have, but others I can’t possibly have.” So, too, certain of my decisions, though made with clear awareness, might not have the least logic in them. Not only that: I remember very well that at some moments I could be fully aware of the absurdity of some decision, and at the same time, with full awareness, set about realizing it. Yes, a crime was hatching that night, and it is only by chance that it wasn’t committed.

Tatyana Pavlovna’s phrase about Versilov suddenly flashed in me then: “He should go to the Nikolaevsky railroad and lay his head on the rails: he’d get it lopped off for him.” This thought momentarily took hold of all my feelings, but I instantly and painfully drove it away: “I’ll lay my head on the rails and die, and tomorrow they’ll say: he did it because he stole, he did it out of shame—no, not for anything!” And then, at that moment, I remember, I suddenly felt an instant of terrible anger. “What then?” raced through my mind. “There’s no way I can vindicate myself, to start a new life is also impossible, and so—submit, become a lackey, a dog, an insect, an informer, a real informer now, but at the same time quietly make preparations, and one day—blow it all sky high, destroy everything, everybody—the guilty and the not-guilty, and then suddenly they’ll all find out that it’s the same one they called a thief . . . and only then kill myself.”

I don’t remember how I ran into a lane somewhere near the Konnogvardeisky Boulevard. In this lane there were high stone walls on both sides, for almost a hundred paces—the enclosures of backyards. Behind one wall to the left I saw an enormous woodpile, a long woodpile, as in a lumberyard, and higher than the wall by some seven feet. I suddenly stopped and began to ponder. In my pocket I had wax matches in a small silver matchbox. I repeat, I was fully and distinctly aware then of what I was pondering and what I wanted to do, as I am in recollecting it now, but why I wanted to do it—I have no idea, none at all. I only remember that I suddenly wanted it very much. “It’s very possible to climb onto the wall,” I reasoned. Just two steps away there was a gate in the wall, which must have been tightly shut for months. “If I step on the ledge below,” I reflected further, “I can get hold of the top of the gate and climb onto the wall—and nobody will notice, there’s nobody here, silence! And then I’ll sit on top of the wall and set fire to the wood quite excellently, possibly even without getting down, because the wood is almost touching the wall. It will burn still better from the cold, all I have to do is take one birch log . . . and there’s even no need to take a log: simply sit on the wall, peel some bark off a birch log with my hand, and set fire to it with a match, set fire to it, and shove it between the logs—and there’s your fire. And I’ll jump down and leave; there’s even no need to run, because they won’t notice for a long time . . .” So I reasoned it all out and—suddenly became quite decided. I felt extreme pleasure, delight, and began to climb. I was an excellent climber: gymnastics had been my specialty back in high school, but I was wearing galoshes, and the thing proved difficult. Nevertheless I did manage to get hold of a barely perceptible ledge above and pull myself up, while swinging my other arm to grab at the top of the wall, but here I suddenly lost hold and fell backwards. I suppose I hit the ground with the back of my head and must have lain unconscious for a minute or two. Coming to, I mechanically wrapped myself in my fur coat, suddenly feeling unbearably cold, and, still not fully conscious of what I was doing, crawled into the corner of the gateway and sat down there, huddling and crouching in the nook between the gate and the projecting wall. My thoughts were confused, and I probably dozed off very quickly. I now remember as if through sleep that a deep, heavy bell suddenly rang in my ears, and I began listening to it with delight.

II

THE BELL STRUCK firmly and distinctly once every two or even three seconds, but it was not a tocsin, but some pleasant, smooth ringing, and I suddenly realized that it was familiar, that it was ringing in the red church of St. Nicholas opposite Touchard’s—the ancient Moscow church that I remember so well, built in the time of Alexei Mikhailovich,³⁰ fretty, many-domed, and “all in pillars,” and that Holy Week³¹ was just over, and the newborn little green leaves were already trembling on the scrawny birches in the front garden of Touchard’s house. The bright late-afternoon sun is pouring its slanting rays into our classroom, and in my little room to the left, where Touchard had put me a year before, away from the “princely and senatorial children,” a visitor is sitting. Yes, I, the kinless one, suddenly have a visitor—for the first time since I’ve been at Touchard’s. I recognized this visitor as soon as she came in: it was mama, though I hadn’t seen her even once since the time she brought me to communion in the village church and the dove flew across the cupola. We were sitting together, and I was watching her strangely. Afterwards, many years later, I learned that, having been left then without Versilov, who had suddenly gone abroad, she had come to Moscow on her own pitiful means, without leave, almost in secret from those who were then charged with taking care of her, and had done it solely in order to see me. Another strange thing was that, having come in and spoken with Touchard, she had not even said a word to me about being my mother. She sat by me and, I remember, I was even surprised that she spoke so little. She had a small bundle with her, and she untied it: there were six oranges in it, several gingerbreads, and two loaves of ordinary French bread. I was offended by the French bread and, with a wounded look, replied that our “food” here was very good and that we were given a whole loaf of French bread with tea every day.

“Never mind, darling, I just thought in my simplicity, ‘Maybe they feed them poorly in that school.’ Don’t hold it against me, dearest.”

“And Antonina Vassilievna” (Touchard’s wife) “will be offended. My comrades will also laugh at me . . .”

“Don’t you want to take them, maybe you’ll eat them?”

“Leave them, if you like, ma’am . . .”

I didn’t even touch the treats; the oranges and gingerbreads lay in front of me on the little table, and I sat looking down, but with a great air of personal dignity. Who knows, maybe I also wanted very much not to conceal from her that her visit even shamed me in the eyes of my comrades; to show it to her at least a little, so that she’d understand: “You see, you shame me and don’t even understand it yourself.” Oh, I was already running after Touchard with a brush then, whisking specks of dust off him! I also pictured how much mockery I’d have to endure from the boys as soon as she left, and maybe from Touchard himself—and there was not the slightest kind feeling for her in my heart. I only looked out of the corner of my eye at her dark old dress, her rather coarse, almost working-woman’s hands, her completely coarse shoes, and her very thin face; little wrinkles already ran across her forehead, though Antonina Vassilievna told me later in the evening, when she had left: “Your maman must have been very good-looking once.”

We were sitting like that, and suddenly Agafya came in with a cup of coffee on a tray. It was after dinner, and the Touchards always had coffee in their living room at that time. But mama thanked her and did not take the cup: as I learned later, she didn’t drink coffee at all then, because it gave her heart palpitations. The thing was that to themselves the Touchards probably considered her visit and the permission for her to see me an extraordinary indulgence on their part, so that the cup of coffee they sent to mama was, so to say, a deed of humaneness, comparatively speaking, which did extraordinary credit to their civilized feelings and European notions. And, as if on purpose, mama refused it.

I was summoned to Touchard, and he told me to take all my books and notebooks to show mama: “So that she can see how much you’ve managed to acquire in my institution.” Here Antonina Vassilievna, pursing her lips, said to me for her part, touchily and mockingly, through her teeth:

“It seems your maman didn’t like our coffee.”

I gathered a pile of notebooks and carried them to my waiting mama, past the “princely and senatorial children,” who were crowding in the classroom and spying on mama and me. And I even liked fulfilling Touchard’s order with literal precision. I methodically began to open my notebooks and explain, “This is a lesson in French grammar, this is an exercise from dictation, here is the conjugation of the auxiliary verbs avoir and être , here’s something from geography, a description of the major cities of Europe and all parts of the world,” and so on, and so forth. For half an hour or more I went on explaining in an even little voice, looking down like a well-behaved boy. I knew that mama understood nothing in my studies, maybe couldn’t even write, but it was here that my role pleased me. But I couldn’t weary her—she went on listening without interrupting me, with extraordinary attention and even awe, so that I myself finally became bored and stopped; her look was sad, however, and there was something pitiful in her face.

She finally got up to leave. Suddenly Touchard himself came in and, with a foolishly important air, asked her: “Was she pleased with her son’s progress?” Mama began murmuring and thanking him incoherently; Antonina Vassilievna came in, too. Mama started asking them both “not to abandon the little orphan, he’s the same as an orphan now, be his benefactors . . .” and with tears in her eyes she bowed to them both, each separately, with a deep bow, precisely as “simple folk” bow when they come to ask important people about something. The Touchards weren’t even expecting that, and Antonina Vassilievna was visibly softened and, of course, at once changed her conclusion about the cup of coffee. Touchard, with increased importance, replied humanely that he “made no distinction among the children, that here they were all his children, and he their father, and that he held me on almost the same footing with princely and senatorial children, and that that should be appreciated,” and so on, and so forth. Mama only kept bowing, but with embarrassment, finally turned to me, and with tears glistening in her eyes, said, “Good-bye, darling!”

And she kissed me—that is, I allowed myself to be kissed. She obviously would have liked to kiss me again and again, to embrace me, to hug me, but whether she was ashamed to do it in front of people, or was bitter about something else, or realized that I was ashamed of her, in any case, having bowed once more to the Touchards, she hastily started for the door. I just stood there.

“Mais suivez donc votre mère,” said Antonina Vassilievna. “Il n’a pas de coeur cet enfant!”⁵⁰

Touchard shrugged his shoulders in reply, which, of course, signified: “It’s not for nothing I treat him as a lackey.”

I obediently followed mama downstairs; we went out to the porch. I knew they were now all watching from the window. Mama turned to the church and crossed herself deeply three times before it, her lips twitched, the bell tolled densely and measuredly from the belfry. She turned to me and—couldn’t help herself, she laid both hands on my head and wept over it.

“Mama, come on . . . it’s shameful . . . they can see me from the window . . .”

She roused herself and began to hurry:

“Well, the Lord . . . well, the Lord be with you . . . the angels in heaven, the most-pure Mother, Saint Nicholas protect you . . . Lord, Lord!” she repeated in a quick patter, crossing me all the while, trying quickly to make as many crosses as possible, “my darling, my dear. But wait, darling . . .”

She hurriedly put her hand in her pocket and took out a handkerchief, a blue checked handkerchief tightly knotted at the corner, and began to untie the knot . . . but it wouldn’t come untied . . .

“Well, it makes no difference, take it with the handkerchief, it’s clean, maybe you can use it, there are maybe four twenty-kopeck pieces in it, maybe you’ll need it, forgive me, darling, it’s all I have . . . forgive me, darling.”

I accepted the handkerchief, was about to observe that we “were very well kept here by Mr. Touchard and Antonina Vassilievna, and that we didn’t need anything,” but I restrained myself and took the handkerchief.

Once more she crossed me, once more she whispered some prayer, and suddenly—and suddenly she bowed to me, too, just as she had to the Touchards upstairs—a deep, long, slow bow—I’ll never forget it! I just shuddered, and didn’t know why myself. What did she mean to say by this bow: that she “acknowledged her guilt before me,” as I once thought up long afterwards? I don’t know. But then I at once felt still more ashamed, because “they were watching from up there, and Lambert might even start beating me.”

She finally left. The princely and senatorial children had eaten the oranges and gingerbreads before I came back, and Lambert took the four twenty-kopeck pieces from me at once; they bought pastry and chocolate with them in a pastry shop and didn’t even offer me any.

A whole half-year went by, and a windy and foul October came. I completely forgot about mama. Oh, by then hatred, a dull hatred for everything, had already penetrated my heart, saturating it completely; though I brushed Touchard off as before, I already hated him with all my might, and more and more every day. And it was then, once in the sad evening twilight, that I began rummaging in my little drawer for some reason, and suddenly saw her blue cambric handkerchief in the corner. It had lain like that ever since I stuffed it there then. I took it out and looked it over even with a certain curiosity; the end of the handkerchief still kept traces of the former knot and even the clearly outlined round imprint of a coin; however, I put the handkerchief back in its place and closed the drawer. It was the eve of a holiday, and the bell began ringing for the vigil. The pupils had gone home after dinner, but this time Lambert had stayed for Sunday, I don’t know why no one had sent for him. Though he still beat me then, as before, he used to tell me a great deal, and he needed me. We talked all evening about Lepage pistols, which neither one of us had seen, about Circassian sabers and how they cut, and about how good it would be to start a band of robbers, and in the end Lambert got on to his favorite conversation about a certain smutty subject, and though I wondered to myself, I liked listening very much. But this time I suddenly couldn’t stand it, and I told him I had a headache. At ten o’clock we went to bed; I pulled the covers over my head and took the blue handkerchief from under the pillow: for some reason I had gone an hour earlier to take it from the drawer, and as soon as our beds were made, had put it under the pillow. I pressed it to my face at once and suddenly began kissing it. “Mama, mama,” I whispered, remembering, and my whole breast was clenched as in a vise. I closed my eyes and saw her face with trembling lips, when she crossed herself before the church, then crossed me, and I said to her, “It’s shameful, they’re watching.” “Mama, dearest mama, just once in my life you came to me . . . Dearest mama, where are you now, my faraway visitor? Do you remember your poor boy now, the one you came to see? . . . Show yourself to me now just one little time, come to me just only in a dream, only so I can tell you how I love you, only so I can embrace you and kiss your blue eyes, and tell you that I’m not ashamed of you at all now, and that I loved you then, too, and that my heart ached then, but I only sat there like a lackey. You’ll never know how I loved you then, mama! Dearest mama, where are you now, can you hear me? Mama, mama, do you remember the little dove, in the village? . . .”

“Ah, the devil . . . What ails him!” Lambert grumbles from his bed. “Wait, I’ll show you! Won’t let me sleep . . .” He finally jumps out of bed, runs over to me, and starts tearing the blanket off me, but I hold very, very tightly to the blanket, covering my head with it.

“Whimpering, what are you whimpering for, cretin, cghretin! Take that!” and he beats me, he hits me painfully with his fist on the back, on the side, more and more painfully, and . . . and I suddenly open my eyes . . .

It’s already bright dawn, needles of frost sparkle on the snow, on the wall . . . I’m sitting, crouched, barely alive, frozen in my fur coat, and someone is standing over me, rousing me, abusing me loudly, and kicking me painfully in the side with the toe of his right boot. I raise myself, look: a man in a rich bearskin coat, a sable hat, with black eyes, pitch-black foppish side-whiskers, a hooked nose, his white teeth bared at me, a white and ruddy face like a mask . . . He has bent down very close to me, and cold steam comes from his mouth with each breath:

“Frozen, the drunken mug, the cghretin! You’ll freeze like a dog! Get up! Get up!”

“Lambert!” I shout.

“Who are you?”

“Dolgoruky!”

“What the hell kind of Dolgoruky?”

“Simply Dolgoruky! . . . Touchard . . . The one you stuck in the side with a fork in the tavern! . . .”

“Ha-a-a!” he cries out, smiling some sort of long, recollecting smile (but he can’t have forgotten me!). “Ha! So it’s you, you!”

He pulls me up, sets me on my feet; I can barely stand, barely move, he leads me, supporting me on his arm. He peers into my eyes, as if pondering and recalling and listening to me with all his might, and I babble on, also with all my might, ceaselessly, without pause, and I’m so glad, so glad I’m talking, and glad that it’s Lambert. Whether he appeared to me somehow as my “salvation,” or I rushed to him at that moment because I took him for a man from an entirely different world—I don’t know, I didn’t reason then, but rushed to him without reasoning. What I said then I don’t remember at all, and I hardly spoke coherently, hardly even articulated the words clearly; but he listened intently. He grabbed the first cab that came along, and a few moments later I was sitting in the warmth, in his room.

III

EVERY PERSON, WHOEVER he may be, certainly preserves some recollection of something that has happened to him which he regards or is inclined to regard as fantastic, remarkable, out of the ordinary, almost miraculous, whether it’s a dream, a meeting, a divination, a presentiment, or something of the sort. To this day I am inclined to regard this meeting of mine with Lambert as something even prophetic . . . judging at least by the circumstances and consequences of the meeting. It all happened, however, on the one hand at least, in the most natural way: he was simply coming back from one of his nighttime occupations (which one will become clear later) half drunk, and, stopping for a moment by the gate in the lane, saw me. He had been in Petersburg for only a few days then.

The room I found myself in was a small, quite unassumingly furnished example of ordinary Petersburg chambres garnies⁵¹ of the middling sort. Lambert himself, however, was excellently and expensively dressed. On the floor lay two suitcases only half unpacked. A corner of the room was partitioned off by a screen, concealing a bed.

“Alphonsine!” cried Lambert.

“Présente! ” ⁵² a cracked female voice replied in a Parisian accent from behind the screen, and in no more than two minutes out popped Mlle. Alphonsine, hastily dressed in a bed jacket, only just risen—a strange sort of being, tall and lean as a splinter, a young girl, a brunette, with a long waist, a long face, darting eyes, and sunken cheeks—an awfully worn-out creature!

“Quick!” (I’m translating, but he spoke to her in French.) “They must have a samovar going, fetch some boiling water, red wine and sugar, and a glass here, quick, he’s frozen, this is a friend of mine . . . he slept all night in the snow.”

“Malheureux! ”⁵³ she cried out, clasping her hands with a theatrical gesture.

“Uh-uh!” Lambert shouted at her as at a little dog, and shook his finger; she stopped gesturing at once and ran to fulfill his order.

He examined and palpated me; he felt my pulse, touched my forehead, my temples.

“Strange,” he muttered, “how you didn’t freeze . . . though you were all covered up in your fur coat, including your head, like sitting in a fur hole . . .”

The hot glass arrived, I gulped it down greedily, and it revived me at once; I started babbling again; I was half-reclining on the sofa in the corner and talking away—I was spluttering as I talked—but of precisely what and how I was speaking, once again I have almost no recollection; there are moments and even whole stretches that I’ve completely forgotten. I repeat: whether he understood anything then from what I was telling, I don’t know; but one thing I realized clearly afterwards—namely, that he managed to understand me well enough to draw the conclusion that he ought not to disregard his meeting with me . . . Later I’ll explain in its place what reckoning he might have made here.

I was not only terribly animated, but at moments, it seems, quite merry. I remember the sun suddenly lighting up the room when the blinds were raised, and the stove crackling when someone lit it—who and how, I don’t remember. I also have the memory of a tiny black dog that Mlle. Alphonsine held in her arms, coquettishly pressing it to her heart. This lapdog somehow diverted me very much, even so much that I stopped talking and twice reached out for it, but Lambert waved his hand, and Alphonsine and her lapdog instantly effaced themselves behind the screen.

He was very silent himself, sat facing me and, leaning strongly towards me, listened without tearing himself away; at times he smiled a long, drawn-out smile, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes, as if making an effort to think and wishing to guess. I’ve kept a clear recollection only of the fact that, when I was telling him about the “document,” I simply couldn’t express myself understandably and make a coherent story of it, and by his face I could see only too well that he couldn’t understand me, but that he wanted very much to understand, so that he even risked stopping me with a question, which was dangerous, because as soon as I was interrupted, I at once interrupted the subject and forgot what I was talking about. How long we sat and talked like that I don’t know and can’t even reckon. He suddenly got up and called Alphonsine:

“He needs rest; he may also need a doctor. Do whatever he asks, that is . . . vous comprenez, ma fille? Vous avez de l’argent,⁵⁴ no? Here!” And he took out a ten-rouble note for her. He started whispering to her: “Vous comprenez! Vous comprenez! ” he repeated to her, shaking his finger at her and frowning sternly. I saw that she trembled frightfully before him.

“I’ll be back, and you’d best have a good sleep,” he smiled to me and took his hat.

“Mais vous n’avez pas dormi du tout, Maurice! ” ⁵⁵ Alphonsine cried out pathetically.

“Taisez-vous, je dormirai après,” ⁵⁶ and he left.

“Sauvée! ” ⁵⁷; she whispered pathetically, pointing after him to me with her hand.

“Monsieur, monsieur! ” she began declaiming at once, assuming a pose in the middle of the room. “Jamais homme ne fut si cruel, si Bismarck, que cet être, qui regarde une femme comme une saleté de hasard. Une femme, qu’est-ce que ça dans notre époque? ‘Tue-la’—voilà le dernier mot de l’Académie française!...” ⁵⁸

I goggled my eyes at her; I was seeing double, there seemed to be two Alphonsines in front of me . . . Suddenly I noticed that she was weeping, gave a start, and realized that she had been talking to me for a very long time now, which meant that during that time I had been asleep or unconscious.

“. . . Hélas! de quoi m’aurait servi de le découvrir plutôt,” she exclaimed, “et n’aurais-je pas autant gagné à tenir ma honte cachée toute ma vie? Peut-être, n’est-il pas honnête à une demoiselle de s’expliquer si librement devant monsieur, mais enfin je vous avoue, que s’il m’était permis de vouloir quelque chose, oh, ce serait de lui plonger au coeur mon couteau, mais en détournant les yeux, de peur que son regard exécrable ne fit trembler mon bras et ne glaçât mon courage! Il a assassiné ce pope russe, monsieur, il lui arracha sa barbe rousse pour la vendre à un artiste en cheveux au pont des Maréchaux, tout près de la Maison de monsieur Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles de Paris, linge, chemises, vous savez, n’est-ce pas? . . . Oh, monsieur, quand l’amitié rassemble à table épouse, enfants, soeurs, amis, quand une vive allégresse enflamme mon coeur, je vous le demande, monsieur: est-il bonheur préférable à celui dont tout jouit? Mais il rit, monsieur, ce monstre exécrable et inconcevable et si ce n’était pas par l’entremise de monsieur Andrieux, jamais, oh, jamais je ne serais . . . Mais quoi, monsieur, qu’avez vous, monsieur? ”⁵⁹

She rushed to me: it seems I had a chill, and maybe had also swooned. I can’t express what a painful, morbid impression this half-crazed being made on me. Maybe she imagined that she had been ordered to entertain me; at any rate she never left me for a moment. Maybe she had been on the stage once; she declaimed awfully, fidgeted, talked nonstop, while I had long been silent. All I could understand from her stories was that she was closely connected with some “Maison de M. Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles de Paris, etc.” and maybe even came from la Maison de M. Andrieux, but she had somehow been torn forever from M. Andrieux par ce monstre furieux et inconcevable,⁶⁰ and this was what the tragedy consisted in . . . She sobbed, but it seemed to me that it was only as a matter of course and that she wasn’t crying at all; at times I fancied that she was suddenly going to fall apart like a skeleton; she articulated her words in some crushed, cracked voice; the word préférable, for instance, she pronounced préfér-a-able and on the syllable a bleated like a sheep. Coming to my senses once, I saw her making a pirouette in the middle of the room, yet she wasn’t dancing, but this pirouette also had some relation to the story, and she was only doing an impersonation. Suddenly she rushed and opened the small, old, out-of-tune piano that was in the room, started strumming on it and singing . . . It seems that for ten minutes or more I became completely unconscious, fell asleep, but the lapdog squeaked and I came to: full consciousness suddenly returned to me for a moment and lit me up with all its light. I jumped up in horror.

“Lambert, I’m at Lambert’s!” I thought and, seizing my hat, I rushed for my fur coat.

“Où allez-vous, monsieur? ”⁶¹ cried the keen-eyed Alphonsine.

“I want to get out, I want to leave! Let me go, don’t keep me . . .”

“Oui, monsieur! ” Alphonsine concurred with all her might, and rushed to open the door to the corridor for me herself. “Mais ce n’est pas loin, monsieur, c’est pas loin du tout, ça ne vaut pas la peine de mettre votre chouba, c’est ici près, monsieur! ”⁶² she exclaimed to the whole corridor. Running out of the room, I turned to the right.

“Par ici, monsieur, c’est par ici! ”⁶³ she exclaimed with all her might, clutching at my coat with her long, bony fingers, and with her other hand pointing me to the left somewhere down the corridor, where I had no wish to go. I tore myself free and ran for the door to the stairs.

“Il s’en va, il s’en va! ”⁶⁴; Alphonsine raced after me, shouting in her cracked voice. “Mais il me tuera, monsieur, il me tuera!”⁶⁵ But I had already run out to the stairs, and though she even raced after me down the stairs, I managed to open the outside door, run out to the street, and jump into the first cab. I gave mama’s address . . .

IV

BUT CONSCIOUSNESS, having flashed for a moment, quickly went out. I still have a slight memory of how I was brought in and taken to mama’s, but there I fell almost at once into complete oblivion. The next day, as I was told later (though this I also remembered myself ), my reason became clear again for a moment. I remembered myself in Versilov’s room on his sofa; I remember the faces of Versilov, mama, Liza around me, remember very well how Versilov spoke to me about Zershchikov, about the prince, showed me some letter, reassured me. They told me later that I kept asking in horror about some Lambert, and kept hearing the barking of some lapdog. But the faint light of consciousness quickly dimmed; by evening of this second day I was already totally delirious. But I’ll forestall events and explain them beforehand.

When I ran out of Zershchikov’s that evening and everything calmed down somewhat there, Zershchikov, having started the game, suddenly announced in a loud voice that a lamentable error had occurred: the lost money, the four hundred roubles, had been found in a pile of other money and the accounts of the bank proved to be perfectly correct. Then the prince, who had remained in the hall, accosted Zershchikov and demanded insistently that he make a public declaration of my innocence and, besides that, offer his apologies in the form of a letter. Zershchikov, for his part, found the demand worthy of respect and gave his word, in front of everybody, to send me a letter of explanation and apology the next day. The prince gave him Versilov’s address, and indeed the very next day Versilov personally received from Zershchikov a letter in my name and over thirteen hundred roubles that belonged to me and that I had forgotten on the roulette table. Thus ended the affair at Zershchikov’s. This joyful news contributed greatly to my recovery when I regained consciousness.

The prince, on coming back from gambling, wrote two letters that same night, one to me, and the other to his former regiment, where he had had the incident with Ensign Stepanov. He sent both letters the next morning. After which he wrote a report to his superiors, and with this report in hand, early in the morning, he went in person to the commander of his regiment and announced to him that he, “a common criminal, a partner in counterfeiting the ——sky shares, surrenders himself into the hands of justice and asks to be put on trial.” With that he handed over the report, in which it was all explained in writing. He was arrested.

Here is the letter he wrote to me that night, word for word:

Priceless Arkady Makarovich,

Having tried the lackeyish “way out,” I have thereby lost the right to comfort my soul at least somewhat with the thought that I, too, was finally able to venture upon a righteous deed. I am guilty before my fatherland and before my family, and for that, as the last of my family, I am punishing myself. I do not understand how I could have seized upon the base thought of self-preservation and dreamed for some time of buying myself back from them with money. All the same, I myself, before my own conscience, would have remained forever a criminal. Those people, even if they did return the compromising notes to me, would never have left me all my life! What remained then: to live with them, to be one with them all my life—that was the lot that awaited me! I could not accept it, and finally found in myself enough firmness, or maybe just despair, to act as I am acting now.

I have written a letter to my former regiment, to my former comrades, and vindicated Stepanov. In this act there is not and cannot be any redeeming deed: it is all just the dying bequest of tomorrow’s dead man. That is how it must be regarded.

Forgive me for turning away from you in the gambling house; it was because I was not sure of you at that moment. Now that I am a dead man, I can make such confessions . . . from the other world.

Poor Liza! She knows nothing of this decision; may she not curse me, but judge for herself. I cannot justify myself and do not even find words to explain anything to her. Know also, Arkady Makarovich, that yesterday, in the morning, when she came to me for the last time, I revealed my deceit to her and confessed that I had gone to Anna Andreevna with the intention of proposing to her. I could not leave that on my conscience before the last, already taken decision, seeing her love, and so I revealed it to her. She forgave me, forgave me everything, but I did not believe her; it was not forgiveness; in her place I would not be able to forgive.

Remember me.

Your unfortunate last Prince Sokolsky.

I lay unconscious for exactly nine days.

PART THREE

Chapter One

I

NOW ABOUT SOMETHING completely different.

I keep announcing: “something different, something different,” and I keep scribbling away about myself alone. Yet I’ve already declared a thousand times that I don’t want to describe myself at all, and I firmly didn’t want to when I began my notes; I understand only too well that the reader hasn’t got the slightest need of me. I’m describing and want to describe others, and not myself, and if I keep turning up all the time, that is a sad mistake, because I simply can’t avoid it, however much I wish to. Above all, it vexes me that, in describing my own adventures with such ardor, I thereby give reason for thinking that I’m the same now as I was then. The reader will remember, however, that I’ve already exclaimed more than once: “Oh, if only one could change the former and start completely anew!” I wouldn’t be able to exclaim like that if I hadn’t changed radically now and become a totally different person. That is all too obvious; and you can’t imagine how sick I am of all these apologies and prefaces that I’m forced to squeeze every minute even into the very middle of my notes!

To business.

After nine days of unconsciousness, I came to my senses regenerated, but not reformed; my regeneration, however, was stupid, naturally, if it’s taken in the vast sense, and maybe if it were now, it wouldn’t be so. The idea, that is, the feeling, again consisted (as a thousand times before) only in the fact that I should leave them completely, but this time leave without fail, and not as before, when I set myself the same topic a thousand times and never could do it. I didn’t want revenge on anyone, and I give my word of honor on that—though I had been offended by everyone. I was going to leave without disgust, without curses, but I wanted my own strength, and genuine this time, not dependent on any of them or the whole world; for I was all but reconciled with everything in the world! I record this dream of mine not as a thought, but as an irresistible feeling at that time. I didn’t want to formulate it yet, while I was in bed. Sick and without strength, lying in Versilov’s room, which they set aside for me, I was painfully aware of what a low degree of strengthlessness I had come to: some sort of little straw, not a man, lolled there in bed, and not only on account of illness—and how offensive that was to me! And so, from the very depths of my being, from all my strength, a protest began to rise, and I choked with a feeling of boundlessly exaggerated arrogance and defiance. I don’t even remember a time in my whole life when I was more filled with arrogant feelings than in those first days of my recovery, that is, when the little straw lolled in bed.

But for the moment I was silent and even decided not to think about anything! I kept peeking into their faces, trying to guess everything I needed by them. It was evident that they did not wish to ask questions or show curiosity either, but talked to me about completely irrelevant things. I liked that and at the same time it upset me; I won’t explain this contradiction. I saw Liza more rarely than mama, though she came to see me every day and even twice a day. From bits of their conversation and from the whole look of them I concluded that Liza had accumulated an awful lot of cares, and that she was even frequently away from home because of her affairs. For me it was as if the mere idea of the possibility of “her own affairs” already contained something offensive; however, these were all just sick, purely physiological feelings, which are not worth describing. Tatyana Pavlovna also came to see me almost daily, and though she wasn’t gentle with me at all, at least she didn’t abuse me as before, which vexed me in the extreme, so that I simply said to her, “Tatyana Pavlovna, when you’re not abusing me, you’re a great bore.” “Well, then I won’t come to see you,” she snapped, and left. And I was glad to have chased at least one of them away.

Most of all I tormented mama and got very irritated with her. I suddenly had a terrible appetite, and I grumbled a lot that the food came late (but it never came late). Mama didn’t know how to please me. Once she brought me soup and, as usual, began to feed me herself, but I kept grumbling while I ate. And suddenly I became vexed that I was grumbling: “She’s maybe the only one I love, and it’s her that I torment.” But my anger wouldn’t subside, and I suddenly burst into tears from anger, and she, poor dear, thought I was weeping from tenderness, leaned over, and started kissing me. I restrained myself and somehow endured it and actually hated her in that second. But I always loved mama, loved her then, too, and didn’t really hate her, but it was what always happens: the one you love most is the first one you insult.

The only one I did hate in those first days was the doctor. This doctor was a young man with a presumptuous air, who spoke sharply and even impolitely. As if all those people in science, just yesterday and suddenly, had found out something special, whereas nothing special had happened yesterday; but “the middle” and “the street ” are always that way. I endured for a long time, but in the end suddenly burst out and declared to him, before all our people, that he needn’t drag himself here, that I’d get well without him, that he, though he had the look of a realist, was filled with nothing but prejudice and didn’t understand that medicine had never yet cured anyone; that finally, in all probability, he was grossly uneducated, “like all our present-day engineers and specialists, who have lately started turning up their noses at us.” The doctor was very offended (proving what he was by that alone), yet he continued to visit. I finally announced to Versilov that if the doctor did not stop coming, I’d tell him something ten times more unpleasant. Versilov only observed that it was impossible to say anything even twice more unpleasant than what had been said, let alone ten times. I was glad he had noticed that.

What a man, though! I’m speaking of Versilov. He, he alone, was the cause of it all—and yet he was the only one I wasn’t angry with then. It wasn’t only his manner with me that won me over. I think we felt mutually then that we owed each other many explanations . . . and that, precisely for that reason, it would be best never to explain. It is extremely agreeable, on such occasions in life, to run into an intelligent person! I have already mentioned in the second part of my story, running ahead, that he gave me a very brief and clear account of the arrested prince’s letter to me, about Zershchikov, about his explanation in my favor, and so on. Since I had decided to be silent, I put to him, with all possible dryness, only two or three very brief questions; he answered them clearly and precisely, but entirely without superfluous words and, what was best of all, without superfluous feelings. I was afraid of superfluous feelings then.

About Lambert I say nothing, but the reader has, of course, guessed that I thought all too much about him. In my delirium, I spoke several times about Lambert; but once I came out of my delirium and could observe attentively, I quickly realized that everything about Lambert remained a secret, and that they knew nothing, not excepting Versilov. I was glad then, and my fear went away, but I was mistaken, as I found out later, to my astonishment: he had come to see me during my illness, but Versilov said nothing about it, and I concluded that for Lambert I had already sunk into oblivion. Nevertheless I often thought about him; what’s more, I thought not only without disgust, not only with curiosity, but even with concern, as if anticipating here something new, a way out that corresponded to the new feelings and plans that were being born in me. In short, I proposed to think Lambert over first of all, once I decided to start thinking. I’ll add one strange thing: I had completely forgotten where he lived and on what street it had all happened then. The room, Alphonsine, the little dog, the corridor—all that I remembered; I could paint a picture of it all now; but where it had all happened, that is, on what street and in what house—I had completely forgotten. And what’s strangest of all, I figured it out only on my third or fourth day of full consciousness, when I had long begun to be concerned with Lambert.

And so, such were my first sensations upon my resurrection. I’ve indicated only the most superficial, and very probably was unable to indicate the important. In fact, maybe it was precisely then that everything important was being defined and formulated in my heart; surely I didn’t spend the whole time being vexed and angry only because they hadn’t served me my broth. Oh, I remember how sad I could be then, and how grieved I sometimes was in those moments, especially when I was left alone for a long time. And they, as if on purpose, quickly understood that I felt oppressed with them and that their sympathy annoyed me, and they started leaving me alone more and more often: an unnecessarily subtle perceptivity.

II

ON MY FOURTH day of consciousness, I was lying in my bed between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, and there was no one with me. It was a clear day, and I knew that after three, when the sun would be setting,¹ its slanting red ray would strike straight into the corner of my wall, and there would be a bright spot of light there. I knew it from the previous days, and the fact that it would unfailingly happen in an hour, and, above all, that I knew it beforehand, like two times two, angered me to the point of spite. I turned my whole body convulsively, and suddenly, amidst the deep silence, clearly heard the words: “Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us.” The words were pronounced in a half-whisper, followed by a deep, full-chested sigh, and then everything became perfectly still again. I quickly raised my head.

Earlier, that is, the day before, and even two days before, I had begun to notice something peculiar in our three downstairs rooms. In that little room across the drawing room, which used to be mama’s and Liza’s, there was apparently someone else. More than once I had heard some sort of sounds during the daytime and at night, but it was all for moments, the briefest moments, then total silence would set in again at once for several hours, so that I paid no attention. The day before, the thought had occurred to me that it was Versilov there, the more so as he had come to my room soon afterwards, though I knew for certain from their own conversations that Versilov had moved somewhere to another apartment during the time of my illness, and spent his nights there. And about mama and Liza I had long known that (for the sake of my tranquillity, I thought) they had both moved upstairs, to my former “coffin,” and I had even thought once to myself, “How can the two of them have enough room there?” And now it suddenly turns out that some man is living in their old room and that the man is not Versilov at all. With an ease I wouldn’t have supposed I had (imagining till then that I was totally strengthless), I lowered my feet from the bed, put them into my slippers, threw on a gray lambskin robe that lay next to me (and had been donated to me by Versilov), and set out across our living room to mama’s former bedroom. What I saw there totally confounded me; I had never anticipated anything like it, and stopped as if rooted to the threshold.

There sat a very gray-haired old man with a big, awfully white beard, and it was clear that he had been sitting there for a long time. He sat not on the bed but on mama’s little bench, and only leaned his back against the bed. However, he held himself so straight that it seemed he didn’t need any support, though he was obviously ill. Over his shirt he wore a jacket lined with sheepskin, his knees were covered with mama’s plaid, there were slippers on his feet. One could tell that he was tall and broad-shouldered, and he looked quite hale, despite his illness, though somewhat pale and thin. He had an oblong face, very thick hair, but not too long, and he seemed to be over seventy. Beside him on a little table, within his reach, lay three or four books and a pair of silver spectacles. Though I hadn’t had the least thought of meeting him, I guessed that same moment who he was, only I still couldn’t figure out how he had sat there all those days, almost next to me, so quietly that up to then I had never heard a thing.

He didn’t stir when he saw me, but gazed at me intently and silently, as I did at him, with the difference that I gazed with boundless astonishment, and he without the least. On the contrary, having scrutinized the whole of me, to the last line, in those five or ten seconds of silence, he suddenly smiled and even laughed softly and inaudibly, and though the laughter passed quickly, its bright, mirthful trace remained on his face, and above all in his eyes, very blue, radiant, big, but with lids slightly drooping and swollen with age and surrounded by countless tiny wrinkles. This laughter of his affected me most of all.

I think that when a person laughs, in the majority of cases he becomes repulsive to look at. Most often something banal is revealed in people’s laughter, something as if humiliating for the laugher, though the laughing one almost always knows nothing of the impression he makes. Just as he doesn’t know, as nobody generally knows, what kind of face he has when he’s asleep. Some sleepers have intelligent faces even in sleep, while other faces, even intelligent ones, become very stupid in sleep and therefore ridiculous. I don’t know what makes that happen; I only want to say that a laughing man, like a sleeping one, most often knows nothing about his face. A great many people don’t know how to laugh at all. However, there’s nothing to know here: it’s a gift, and it can’t be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one’s character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better. A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all his innermost secrets. Even indisputably intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive. Laughter calls first of all for sincerity, but where is there any sincerity in people? Laughter calls for lack of spite, but people most often laugh spitefully. Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful? (About mirth in our time—that was Versilov’s observation, and I remembered it.) A man’s mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone’s character won’t be cracked for a long time, then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I’m not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he’s a good man. Note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man’s laughter must in no case seem stupid to you, however merry and simplehearted it may be. The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone’s laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence, though he may do nothing but pour out ideas. Or if his laughter isn’t stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you, even just slightly—know, then, that the man has no real sense of dignity, not fully in any case. Or, finally, if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal to you, know, then, that the man’s nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later on the man is certain to change for the worse, to take up what’s “useful” and throw his noble ideas away without regret, as the errors and infatuations of youth.

I am intentionally placing this long tirade about laughter here, even sacrificing the flow of the story, for I consider it one of the most serious conclusions of my life. And I especially recommend it to those would-be brides who are ready to marry their chosen man, but keep scrutinizing him with hesitation and mistrust, and can’t make the final decision. And let them not laugh at the pathetic adolescent for poking with his moral admonitions into the matter of marriage, of which he doesn’t understand the first thing. But I understand only that laughter is the surest test of a soul. Look at a child: only children know how to laugh perfectly—that’s what makes them seductive. A crying child is repulsive to me, but a laughing and merry child is a ray from paradise, a revelation from the future, when man will finally become as pure and simplehearted as a child. And so something childlike and incredibly attractive also flashed in the fleeting laughter of this old man. I went up to him at once.

III

“SIT, SIT A WHILE, must be your legs don’t stand firm yet,” he invited me affably, pointing to the place next to him and continuing to look into my face with the same radiant gaze. I sat down next to him and said:

“I know you, you’re Makar Ivanovich.”

“So I am, dear heart. And it’s a fine thing that you got up. You’re a young man, it’s a fine thing for you. An old man looks towards the grave, but a young man must live.”

“But are you ill?”

“I am, my friend, the legs mostly; they brought me as far as the doorstep, but once I sat down here, they got swollen. It came over me last Thursday, when the degrees set in” (N.B.—that is, when the frost set in). “I’ve been rubbing them with ointment so far, you see; two years ago Lichten, the doctor, Edmund Karlych, prescribed it to me in Moscow, and the ointment helped, oh, it helped; well, but now it’s stopped helping. And my chest is blocked up, too. And since yesterday it’s the back as well, like dogs nipping at me . . . I don’t sleep nights.”

“How is it I haven’t heard you here at all?” I interrupted. He looked at me as if he was trying to figure something out.

“Just don’t wake your mother,” he added, as if recalling something. “She fussed around me all night here, and so inaudibly, like a fly; but now I know she’s lying down. Ah, it’s bad for a sick old man,” he sighed. “Not much for the soul to hang on to, it seems, but still it holds on, but still it’s glad of the world; and, it seems, if you were to begin your whole life over again, the soul mightn’t fear even that; though maybe such a thought is sinful.”

“Why sinful?”

“It’s a dream, this thought, and an old man ought to depart in a handsome way. Again, if you meet death with murmuring or displeasure, it’s a great sin. Well, but if you love life out of spiritual mirth, then I suppose God will forgive, even if you’re an old man. It’s hard for a man to know about every sin, what’s sinful and what’s not; there’s a mystery here that passes human reason. An old man should be pleased at all times, and he should die in the full flower of his mind, blessedly and handsomely, full of days, sighing at his last hour and rejoicing, departing like the ear to its sheaf, and fulfilling his mystery.”

“You keep saying ‘mystery’; what is this ‘fulfilling his mystery’?” I asked, and looked back at the door. I was glad that we were alone and that there was undisturbed silence around us. The sun was shining brightly through the window before sunset. He spoke somewhat grandiloquently and imprecisely, but very sincerely and with some strong excitement, as if he was indeed so glad of my coming. But I noticed that he was undoubtedly in a feverish condition and even a strong one. I was also sick, also in a fever, from the moment I went in to him.

“What is a mystery? Everything is a mystery, my friend, there is God’s mystery in everything. Every tree, every blade of grass contains this same mystery. Whether it’s a small bird singing or the whole host of stars shining in the sky at night—it’s all one mystery, the same one. And the greatest mystery of all is what awaits the human soul in the other world. That’s how things are, my friend!”

“I don’t know in what sense . . . Of course, I’m not saying it to tease you, and, believe me, I do believe in God, but all these mysteries have long been revealed by the human mind, and what hasn’t been revealed will be revealed, quite certainly and maybe in the nearest time. Botany has perfect knowledge of how trees grow, physiologists and anatomists even know why birds sing, or will know it soon, and as for the stars, they’ve not only all been counted, but all their movements have been calculated to the minute, so that it’s possible to predict the appearance of some comet a thousand years ahead . . . and now even the composition of the remotest stars has become known. Take a microscope—it’s like a magnifying glass that magnifies objects a million times—and examine a drop of water through it, and you’ll see a whole new world there, a whole life of living beings, and yet this was also a mystery, but now it has been revealed.”

“I’ve heard of that, dear heart, more than once I’ve heard it from people. There’s nothing to say, it’s a great and glorious thing; everything has been given over to man by the will of God; it’s not for nothing that God blew into him the breath of life: ‘Live and know.’”

“Well, that’s a commonplace. Anyhow, you’re not an enemy of science, not a clericalist? That is, I don’t know if you’ll understand . . .”

“No, dear heart, from my youth I’ve respected learning, and though I have no knowledge myself, I don’t murmur about that; if I don’t have it, someone else does. And maybe it’s better that way, because to each his own. Because, my dear friend, not everyone profits from learning. They’re all intemperate, they all want to astonish the whole universe, and I might want it more than anyone, if I were clever. But not being clever at all now, how can I exalt myself, when I don’t know anything? You’re young and sharp, and that’s the lot that has fallen to you, you must study. Learn everything, so that when you meet a godless or mischievous man, you can give him answers, so that he won’t hurl insensate words at you and confuse your immature thoughts. And that glass I saw not so long ago.”

He paused for breath and sighed. I had decidedly given him great pleasure by coming. He had a morbid desire for communication. Besides that, I will decidedly not be mistaken if I maintain that he looked at me, at moments, even with some extraordinary love: he placed his hand on my arm caressingly, stroked my shoulder . . . well, but at moments, I must confess, he seemed to forget all about me, as though he were sitting alone, and while he went on speaking ardently, it was as if somewhere into the air.

“In St. Gennady’s hermitage, my friend,” he went on, “there’s a man of great intelligence. He’s of a noble family and a lieutenant-colonel by rank, and he possesses great wealth. While he lived in the world, he did not want to commit himself to marriage; he withdrew from the world ten years ago now, loving peace and silent havens and resting his senses from worldly vanities. He observes the whole monastic rule, but he doesn’t want to be tonsured. And of books, my friend, he has so many, I’ve never seen anyone have so many—he told me himself it was eight thousand roubles’ worth. Pyotr Valeryanych he’s called. He taught me much at various times, and I loved listening to him exceedingly. I said to him once, ‘How is it, sir, that with such great intelligence as yours, and living for ten years now in monastic obedience and the complete cutting off of your will—how is it that you don’t accept honorable tonsuring so as to be more perfect?’ And to that he replied, ‘How can you go talking about my intelligence, old man? Maybe it’s my intelligence that holds me captive, and not I who control it. And how can you discuss my obedience? Maybe I lost my measure long ago. And about the cutting off of my will? I could give away my money this very moment, and give up my rank, and put all my medals on the table this very moment, but for ten years I’ve struggled to give up my tobacco pipe, and I can’t. What kind of monk am I after that, and what is this cutting off of my will that you praise?’ And I was astonished then at this humility. Well, so last summer, during the Peter and Paul fast,² I came to that hermitage again—the Lord brought me—and I saw that very thing—a microscope—standing in his cell—he had ordered it from abroad for a lot of money. ‘Wait, old man,’ he says, ‘I’ll show you an astonishing thing, because you’ve never seen it before. You see a drop of water pure as a tear, well, then look at what there is in it, and you’ll see that the mechanics will soon search out all the mysteries of God and won’t leave a single one for you and me’—that’s what he said. I remember it. And I had already looked through a microscope thirty-five years ago, at Alexander Vladimirovich Malgasov’s, our master, Andrei Petrovich’s uncle on his mother’s side, whose estate went to Andrei Petrovich after his death. He was an important squire, a big general, and kept a big pack of hounds, and I lived for many years as his huntsman. It was then that he also set up this microscope, he brought it with him and told all the servants to come and look, one by one, both the male and the female sex, and they were shown a flea, and a louse, and the point of a needle, and a hair, and a drop of water. And it was funny: they were afraid to go look, and they were afraid of the master, too—he was hot-tempered. Some didn’t even know how to look, they squinted one eye but didn’t see anything, others got scared and shouted, and the headman Savin Makarov covered his eyes with both hands and shouted, ‘Do what you want with me—I won’t look!’ There was a lot of empty laughter. However, I didn’t tell Pyotr Valeryanych that I had seen this same wonder before, thirty-five years ago, because I saw the man took great pleasure in showing it, so I began, on the contrary, to marvel and be terrified. He waited a while and then asked, ‘Well, old man, what do you say now?’ And I straightened myself up and said, ‘The Lord said: Let there be light, and there was light.’ But to that he suddenly replied, ‘And wasn’t there darkness?’ And he said it so strangely, not even smiling. I was astonished at him then, but he even seemed a little angry and fell silent.”

“Quite simply, your Pyotr Valeryanych eats kutya³ in the monastery and bows, but doesn’t believe in God, and you happened onto such a moment—that’s all,” I said. “And on top of that, he’s a rather ridiculous man: he had probably already seen a microscope ten times before, why did he lose his mind the eleventh time? Some sort of nervous impressionability . . . worked up in the monastery.”

“He’s a pure man and of lofty mind,” the old man said imposingly, “and he’s not godless. He has a solid mind, but his heart is uneasy. There are a great many such people now, come from gentle-folk and of learned rank. And I’ll say this as well: the man punishes himself. But you avoid them and don’t vex them, and remember them in your prayers before sleep at night, for such men seek God. Do you pray before sleep?”

“No, I consider it empty ritualism. I must confess, however, that I like your Pyotr Valeryanych: at least he’s not made of straw, but a human being, somewhat resembling a certain man close to us both, whom we both know.”

The old man paid attention only to the first part of my answer.

“It’s too bad you don’t pray, my friend; it’s a good thing, it gladdens the heart, before sleep, and rising from sleep, and waking up in the night. That I can tell you. In summer, in the month of July, we were hastening to the Bogorodsky Monastery for the feast. The closer we came to the place, the more people joined us, and finally almost tenscore people came together, all hurrying to kiss the holy and incorrupt relics of two great wonder-workers, Aniky and Grigory. We spent the night in the fields, brother, and I woke up early in the morning, everybody was still asleep, and the sun hadn’t even peeked out from behind the forest yet. I raised my head, my dear, gazed about me, and sighed: inexpressible beauty everywhere! All’s still, the air’s light; the grass is growing—grow, grass of God; a bird’s singing—sing, bird of God; a baby squeals in a woman’s arms—the Lord be with you, little person, grow and be happy, youngling! And for the first time in my life it was as if I contained it all in myself . . . I lay down again and fell asleep so easily. It’s good in the world, my dear! If I mended a bit, I’d go again in the spring. And that it’s a mystery makes it even better; your heart fears and wonders, and this fear gladdens the heart: ‘All is in thee, Lord, and I am in thee, and so receive me!’ Don’t murmur, young one: it’s all the more beautiful that it’s a mystery,” he added tenderly.

“‘It’s even more beautiful that it’s a mystery . . .’ I’ll remember those words. You express yourself terribly imprecisely, but I understand . . . It strikes me that you know and understand much more than you can express; only it’s as if you’re in delirium . . .” escaped me, looking at his feverish eyes and pale face. But it seems he didn’t hear my words.

“Do you know, my dear young one,” he began again, as if continuing his former speech, “do you know that there’s a limit to the memory of a man on this earth? The limit to the memory of a man is set at just a hundred years. A hundred years after a man’s death, his children or grandchildren, who have seen his face, can still remember him, but after that, though his memory may persist, it’s just orally, mentally, for all who have seen his face will have passed on. And his grave in the cemetery will overgrow with grass, its white stone will chip away, and all people will forget him, even his own posterity, then his very name will be forgotten, for only a few remain in people’s memory—and so be it! And let me be forgotten, my dears, but I’ll love you even from the grave. I hear your merry voices, little children, I hear your footsteps on your parents’ graves on forefathers’ day;⁴ live under the sun meanwhile, rejoice, and I’ll pray to God for you, I’ll come to you in a dream . . . it’s all the same and there is love after death! . . .”

Mainly, I was in as much of a fever as he was; and instead of leaving or persuading him to calm down, and maybe putting him on the bed, because he seemed to be quite delirious, I suddenly seized him by the hand and, leaning towards him and pressing his hand, said in an excited whisper and with tears in my soul:

“I’m glad of you. Maybe I’ve been waiting for you a long time. I don’t love any of them; they have no seemliness . . . I won’t go after them, I don’t know where I’ll go, I’ll go with you . . .”

But, fortunately, mama suddenly came in, otherwise I don’t know where it would have ended. She came in with a just-awakened and alarmed face, a vial and a tablespoon in her hands. Seeing us, she exclaimed:

“I just knew it! I’m late giving him his quinine, he’s all in a fever! I overslept, Makar Ivanovich, dear heart!”

I got up and left. She gave him the medicine anyway and laid him down in bed. I also lay down in mine, but in great agitation. I went back with great curiosity and thought as hard as I could about this encounter. What I expected from it then—I don’t know. Of course, I was reasoning incoherently, and not thoughts but only fragments of thoughts flashed through my mind. I lay with my face to the wall, and suddenly in the corner I saw the bright spot of light from the setting sun, the one I had been waiting for earlier with such a curse, and I remember it was as if my whole soul leaped up and a new light penetrated my heart. I remember that sweet moment and do not want to forget it. It was just a moment of new hope and new strength . . . I was recovering then, and therefore such impulses might have been the inevitable consequence of the state of my nerves; but I believe in that bright hope even now—that’s what I want to write down now and remember. Of course, I also knew firmly then that I wouldn’t go wandering with Makar Ivanovich and that I myself didn’t know what this new yearning was that had come over me, but I had uttered one phrase, though in delirium: “There’s no seemliness in them!” “That’s it,” I thought, beside myself, “from this moment on I’m seeking ‘seemliness,’ but they don’t have it, and for that I’ll leave them.”

Something rustled behind me. I turned: mama stood bending over me and peeking into my eyes with timid curiosity. I suddenly took her by the hand.

“And why didn’t you tell me anything about our dear guest, mama?” I asked suddenly, myself almost not expecting I’d say it. All anxiety left her face at once, and it was as if joy lit up in it, but she answered me with nothing except a single phrase:

“Liza, don’t forget Liza either; you’ve forgotten Liza.”

She spoke it in a quick patter, blushing, and wanted to leave quickly, because she also awfully disliked smearing feelings around, and in this respect was just like me, that is, shy and chaste; besides, naturally, she wouldn’t have wanted to start on the theme of Makar Ivanovich with me; what we could say by exchanging looks was enough. But I, who precisely hated any smearing around of feelings, it was I who stopped her forcefully by the hand; I looked sweetly into her eyes, laughed softly and tenderly, and with my other hand stroked her dear face, her sunken cheeks. She bent down and pressed her forehead to mine.

“Well, Christ be with you,” she said suddenly, straightening up and beaming all over, “get well. I’ll credit you with that. He’s sick, very sick . . . Life is in God’s will . . . Ah, what have I said, no, it can’t be that! . . .”

She left. All her life, in fear and trembling and awe, she had greatly respected her lawful husband, the wanderer Makar Ivanovich, who had magnanimously forgiven her once and for all.

Chapter Two

I

BUT I HAD NOT “forgotten” Liza, mama was mistaken. The sensitive mother saw what seemed to be a cooling off between brother and sister, but it was not a matter of not loving, but sooner of jealousy. In view of what follows, I’ll explain in a couple of words.

Ever since the prince’s arrest, a sort of arrogant pride had appeared in poor Liza, a sort of unapproachable haughtiness, almost unbearable; but everyone in the house understood the truth and how she was suffering, and if I pouted and frowned in the beginning at her manner with us, it was solely from my own petty irritability, increased tenfold by illness—that’s how I think of it now. No, I never stopped loving Liza but, on the contrary, loved her still more, only I didn’t want to approach her first, though I understood that she wouldn’t come to me first for anything.

The thing was that as soon as everything was revealed about the prince, right after his arrest, Liza, first of all, hastened to assume such a position with regard to us and to anyone you like, as though she couldn’t admit even the thought that she could be pitied or in any way comforted, or the prince justified. On the contrary—trying not to have any explanations or arguments with anyone—it was as if she were constantly proud of her unfortunate fiancé’s action as of the highest heroism. It was as if she were saying to us all every moment (I repeat: without uttering a word): “No, none of you would do such a thing, none of you would give yourself up from the demands of honor and duty; none of you has such a sensitive and pure conscience! And as for his deeds, who doesn’t have bad deeds on his soul? Only everybody hides them, and this man wished rather to ruin himself than remain unworthy in his own eyes.” That is what her every gesture apparently expressed. I don’t know, but I would have done exactly the same thing in her place. I also don’t know whether she had the same thoughts in her soul, that is, to herself; I suspect not. With the other, clear half of her mind, she must certainly have perceived all the worthlessness of her “hero”; for who would not agree now that this unfortunate and even magnanimous man was at the same time in the highest degree a worthless man? Even this very arrogance and snappishness, as it were, with all of us, this constant suspicion that we thought differently of him, partly allowed for the surmise that in the secret places of her heart she might have formed another opinion of her unfortunate friend. I hasten to add, however, for my own part, that in my opinion she was at least half right; for her it was even more forgivable than for the rest of us to hesitate in her ultimate conclusion. I myself confess with all my heart that, to this day, when everything has already passed, I absolutely do not know how or at what to ultimately evaluate this unfortunate man, who set us all such a problem.

Nevertheless, on account of it the house nearly became a little hell. Liza, who loved so strongly, must have suffered very much. By her character, she preferred to suffer silently. Her character was like mine, that is, domineering and proud, and I always thought, both then and now, that she came to love the prince precisely because, having no character, he submitted fully to her domination, from the first word and hour. That happens in one’s heart somehow of itself, without any preliminary calculation; but such love, of a strong person for a weak one, is sometimes incomparably stronger and more tormenting than the love of equal characters, because one involuntarily takes upon oneself the responsibility for one’s weak friend. So I think at least. All of us, from the very beginning, surrounded her with the tenderest care, especially mama; but she didn’t soften, didn’t respond to sympathy, and as if rejected all help. At first she still spoke with mama, but every day she grew more and more sparing of words, more abrupt and even hard. She asked Versilov’s advice at first, but soon she chose Vasin as her adviser and helper, as I was surprised to learn later . . . She went to see Vasin every day, also went to the courts, to the prince’s superiors, went to the lawyers, the prosecutor; in the end she spent almost whole days away from home. Naturally, twice every day she visited the prince, who was confined in prison, in a section for the nobility, but these meetings, as I became fully convinced later, were very painful for Liza. Naturally, a third person cannot know fully what goes on between two lovers. But it is known to me that the prince deeply insulted her all the time—and how, for instance? Strangely enough, by constant jealousy; however, of that later; but I’ll add one thought to it: it’s hard to decide which of them tormented the other more. Proud of her hero among us, Liza may have treated him quite differently when they were alone, as I firmly suspect, on the basis of certain facts, of which, however, also later.

And so, as for my feelings and relations with Liza, everything that was on the surface was only an affected, jealous falsehood on both sides, but never did the two of us love each other more strongly than at that time. I’ll add, too, that towards Makar Ivanovich, from his very appearance among us, Liza, after the first surprise and curiosity, began for some reason to behave herself almost disdainfully, even condescendingly. It was as if she deliberately paid not the slightest attention to him.

Having promised myself to “keep silent,” as I explained in the previous chapter, in theory, of course, that is, in my dreams, I thought to keep my promise. Oh, with Versilov, for instance, I would sooner speak about zoology or the Roman emperors than, for instance, about her, or about, for instance, that most important line in his letter to her, where he informed her that “the document has not been burned, but is alive and will emerge”—a line I immediately began to ponder to myself again, as soon as I managed to recover and come to reason after my fever. But alas! with my first steps in practice, and almost before any steps, I realized how difficult and impossible it was to keep myself to such a predetermination: on the very next day after my first acquaintance with Makar Ivanovich, I was awfully disturbed by one unexpected circumstance.

II

I WAS DISTURBED by the unexpected visit of Nastasya Egorovna,⁵ the mother of the deceased Olya. I had heard from mama that she had come twice during my illness and was very interested in my health. Whether this “good woman,” as my mother always referred to her, came specifically on my account, or was simply visiting mama, following the previously established order—I didn’t ask. Mama always told me about everything at home, usually when she came with soup to feed me (when I still couldn’t eat by myself ), in order to entertain me; while I persistently tried to show each time that this information had little interest for me, and therefore I didn’t ask for any details about Nastasya Egorovna, and even remained quite silent.

It was around eleven o’clock. I was just about to get out of bed and move to the armchair by the table when she came in. I purposely stayed in bed. Mama was very busy with something upstairs and did not come down when she arrived, so that we suddenly found ourselves alone with each other. She sat down facing me, on a chair by the wall, smiling and not saying a word. I anticipated a game of silence; and generally her coming made a most irritating impression on me. I didn’t even nod to her and looked directly into her eyes; but she also looked directly at me.

“It must be boring for you alone in that apartment, now that the prince is gone?” I asked suddenly, losing patience.

“No, sir, I’m no longer in that apartment. Through Anna Andreevna, I’m now looking after his baby.”

“Whose baby?”

“Andrei Petrovich’s,” she said in a confidential whisper, looking back at the door.

“But Tatyana Pavlovna’s there . . .”

“Tatyana Pavlovna and Anna Andreevna, the both of them, sir, and Lizaveta Makarovna also, and your mother . . . everybody, sir. Everybody’s taking part. Tatyana Pavlovna and Anna Andreevna are now great friends with each other, sir.”

News to me. She became very animated as she spoke. I looked at her with hatred.

“You’ve become very animated since the last time you called on me.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Grown fat, it seems.”

She looked at me strangely.

“I’ve come to like her very much, sir, very much.”

“Who’s that?”

“Why, Anna Andreevna. Very much, sir. Such a noble young lady, and so sensible . . .”

“Just so. And how is she now?”

“She’s very calm, sir, very.”

“She’s always been calm.”

“Always, sir.”

“If you’ve come to gossip,” I suddenly cried, unable to stand it, “know that I don’t meddle with anything, I’ve decided to drop . . . everything, everybody, it makes no difference to me—I’m leaving! . . .”

I fell silent, because I came to my senses. It was humiliating to me that I had begun as if to explain my new goals to her. She listened to me without surprise and without emotion, but silence ensued again. Suddenly she got up, went to the door, and peeked out into the next room. Having made sure there was no one there and we were alone, she quite calmly came back and sat down in her former place.

“Nicely done!” I suddenly laughed.

“That apartment of yours, at the clerk’s, are you going to keep it, sir?” she asked suddenly, leaning towards me slightly and lowering her voice, as if this was the main question she had come for.

“That apartment? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll vacate it . . . How do I know?”

“And your landlords are waiting very much for you; that clerk is in great impatience, and so is his wife. Andrei Petrovich assured them that you’d certainly come back.”

“But why did you ask?”

“Anna Andreevna also wanted to know; she was very pleased to learn that you’re staying.”

“And how does she know so certainly that I’ll be sure to stay in that apartment?”

I was about to add, “And what is it to her?”—but I refrained from asking questions out of pride.

“And Mr. Lambert confirmed the same thing to them.”

“Wha-a-at?”

“Mr. Lambert, sir. And to Andrei Petrovich, too, he confirmed as hard as he could that you would stay, and he assured Anna Andreevna of it.”

I was as if all shaken. What wonders! So Lambert already knows Versilov, Lambert has penetrated as far as Versilov—Lambert and Anna Andreevna—he has penetrated as far as her! Heat came over me, but I said nothing. An awful surge of pride flooded my whole soul, pride or I don’t know what. But it was as if I suddenly said to myself at that moment, “If I ask for just one word of explanation, I’ll get mixed up with this world again and never break with it.” Hatred kindled in my heart. I resolved with all my might to keep silent and lay there motionlessly; she also fell silent for a whole minute.

“What about Prince Nikolai Ivanovich?” I asked suddenly, as if losing my reason. The thing was that I asked decidedly in order to divert the theme, and once more, unwittingly, posed the most capital question, returning again like a madman to that same world from which I had just so convulsively resolved to flee.

“He’s in Tsarskoe Selo, sir.⁶ He’s been a bit unwell, and there’s fever going around the city now, so everybody advised him to move to Tsarskoe, to his own house there, for the good air, sir.”

I did not reply.

“Anna Andreevna and Mme. Akhmakov visit him every three days, they go together, sir.”

Anna Andreevna and Mme. Akhmakov (that is, she) are friends! They go together! I kept silent.

“They’ve become such friends, sir, and Anna Andreevna speaks so well of Katerina Nikolaevna . . .”

I still kept silent.

“And Katerina Nikolaevna has ‘struck’ into society again, fête after fête, she quite shines; they say even all the courtiers are in love with her . . . and she’s quite abandoned everything with Mr. Bjoring, and there’ll be no wedding; everybody maintains the same . . . supposedly ever since that time.”

That is, since Versilov’s letter. I trembled all over, but didn’t say a word.

“Anna Andreevna is so sorry about Prince Sergei Petrovich, and Katerina Nikolaevna also, sir, and everybody says he’ll be vindicated, and the other one, Stebelkov, will be condemned . . .”

I looked at her hatefully. She got up and suddenly bent over me.

“Anna Andreevna especially told me to find out about your health,” she said in a complete whisper, “and very much told me to ask you to call on her as soon as you start going out. Good-bye, sir. Get well, sir, and I’ll tell her so . . .”

She left. I sat up in bed, cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but it wasn’t fear I felt: the incomprehensible and outrageous news about Lambert and his schemes did not, for instance, fill me with horror at all, compared to the fright—maybe unaccountable—with which I had recalled, both in my illness and in the first days of recovery, my meeting with him that night. On the contrary, in that first confused moment in bed, right after Nastasya Egorovna’s departure, I didn’t even linger over Lambert, but . . . I was thrilled most of all by the news about her, about her break-up with Bjoring, and about her luck in society, about the fêtes, about her success, about her “shining.” “She shines, sir”—I kept hearing Nastasya Egorovna’s little phrase. And I suddenly felt that I did not have strength enough to struggle out of this whirl, though I had been able to restrain myself, keep silent, and not question Nastasya Egorovna after her wondrous stories! A boundless yearning for this life, their life, took all my breath away and . . . and also some other sweet yearning, which I felt to the point of happiness and tormenting pain. My thoughts were somehow spinning, but I let them spin. “What’s the point of reasoning!”—was how I felt. “Though even mama didn’t let on to me that Lambert came by,” I thought in incoherent fragments, “it was Versilov who told them not to let on . . . I’ll die before I ask Versilov about Lambert!” “ Versilov,” flashed in me again, “Versilov and Lambert—oh, so much is new with them! Bravo, Versilov! Frightened the German Bjoring with that letter; he slandered her; la calomnie . . . il en reste toujours quelque chose,⁶⁶ and the German courtier got scared of a scandal—ha, ha . . . there’s a lesson for her!” “Lambert . . . mightn’t Lambert have gotten in with her as well? What else! Why couldn’t she get ‘connected’ with him as well?”

Here I suddenly left off thinking all this nonsense and dropped my head back on the pillow in despair. “But that won’t be!” I exclaimed with unexpected resolution, jumped up from the bed, put on the slippers, the robe, and went straight to Makar Ivanovich’s room, as if there lay the warding off of all obsessions, salvation, an anchor I could hold on to.

In fact it may be that I felt that thought then with all the forces of my soul; otherwise why should I jump up from my place so irrepressibly then, and in such a moral state rush to Makar Ivanovich?

III

BUT AT MAKAR Ivanovich’s, quite unexpectedly, I found people—mama and the doctor. Since for some reason I had imagined to myself, going there, that I would certainly find the old man alone, as the day before, I stopped on the threshold in dumb perplexity. Before I had time to frown, Versilov at once came to join them, and after him suddenly Liza as well . . . Everybody, that is, gathered for some reason at Makar Ivanovich’s and “just at the wrong time!”

“I’ve come to inquire about your health,” I said, going straight to Makar Ivanovich.

“Thank you, dear, I was expecting you, I knew you’d come! I thought about you during the night.”

He looked tenderly into my eyes, and it was evident to me that he loved me almost best of all, but I instantly and involuntarily noticed that, though his face was cheerful, the illness had made progress overnight. The doctor had only just examined him quite seriously. I learned afterwards that this doctor (the same young man with whom I had quarreled and who had been treating Makar Ivanovich ever since his arrival) was quite attentive to his patient and—only I can’t speak their medical language—supposed that he had a whole complication of various illnesses. Makar Ivanovich, as I noticed at first glance, had already established the closest friendly relations with him. I instantly disliked that; but anyhow, I, too, of course, was in a bad way at that moment.

“Indeed, Alexander Semyonovich, how is our dear patient today?” Versilov inquired. If I hadn’t been so shaken, I would have been terribly curious, first thing, to follow Versilov’s relations with this old man, which I had already thought about the day before. I was struck most of all now by the extremely soft and pleasant expression on Versilov’s face; there was something perfectly sincere in it. I have already observed, I believe, that Versilov’s face became astonishingly beautiful as soon as he turned the least bit simplehearted.

“We keep on quarreling,” replied the doctor.

“With Makar Ivanovich? I don’t believe it; it’s impossible to quarrel with him.”

“He won’t obey me; he doesn’t sleep at night . . .”

“Stop it now, Alexander Semyonovich, enough grumbling,” laughed Makar Ivanovich. “Well, Andrei Petrovich, dear heart, what have they done with our young lady? Here she’s been clucking and worrying all morning,” he added, pointing to mama.

“Oh, Andrei Petrovich,” mama exclaimed, greatly worried indeed, “tell us quickly, don’t torment us: what did they decide about the poor thing?”

“Our young lady has been sentenced!”

“Oh!” mama cried out.

“Not to Siberia, don’t worry—only to a fifteen-rouble fine. It turned into a comedy!”

He sat down, the doctor sat down, too. They were talking about Tatyana Pavlovna, and I still knew nothing at all about this story. I was sitting to the left of Makar Ivanovich, and Liza sat down opposite me to the right; she evidently had her own special grief today, with which she had come to mama; the expression on her face was anxious and annoyed. At that moment we somehow exchanged glances, and I suddenly thought to myself, “We’re both disgraced, and I must make the first step towards her.” My heart suddenly softened towards her. Versilov meanwhile began telling about the morning’s adventure.

The thing was that Tatyana Pavlovna had gone before the justice of the peace that morning with her cook. The case was trifling in the highest degree; I’ve already mentioned that the spiteful Finn would sometimes keep angrily silent even for whole weeks, not answering a word to her lady’s questions; I’ve also mentioned that Tatyana Pavlovna had a weakness for her, endured everything from her, and absolutely refused to dismiss her once and for all. In my eyes, all these psychological caprices of old maids and old ladies are in the highest degree worthy of contempt, and by no means of attention, and if I venture to mention this incident here, it is solely because later on, in the further course of my story, this cook is destined to play a certain not inconsiderable and fateful role. And so, having lost patience with this stubborn Finn, who hadn’t responded to her for several days already, in the end Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly struck her, which had never happened before. The Finn did not emit the slightest sound even then, but that same day she got in touch with the retired midshipman Ossetrov, who lived on the same back stairway somewhere in a corner below, and who occupied himself with soliciting various sorts of cases, and, naturally, with bringing such cases to court, in his struggle for existence. It ended with Tatyana Pavlovna being summoned to the justice of the peace, and Versilov for some reason had to give testimony at the hearing as a witness.

Versilov recounted it all jokingly and with extraordinary merriment, so that even mama burst out laughing; he impersonated Tatyana Pavlovna, and the midshipman, and the cook. The cook announced to the court right from the start that she wanted a fine in money, “otherwise, if you put the lady in prison, who am I going to cook for?” Tatyana Pavlovna answered the judge’s questions with great haughtiness, not even deigning to justify herself; on the contrary, she concluded with the words, “I beat her and I’ll beat her more,” for which she was immediately fined three roubles for insolent answers in court. The midshipman, a lean and lanky young man, began a long speech in defense of his client, but got shamefully confused and made the whole courtroom laugh. The hearing soon ended, and Tatyana Pavlovna was sentenced to pay the injured Marya fifteen roubles. Without delay, she took out her purse on the spot and started handing her the money. The midshipman turned up at once and reached out his hand, but Tatyana Pavlovna almost struck his hand aside and turned to Marya. “Never mind, ma’am, you needn’t trouble yourself, add it to the accounts, and I’ll pay this one myself.” “See, Marya, what a lanky fellow you picked for yourself !” Tatyana Pavlovna pointed to the midshipman, terribly glad that Marya had finally started to speak. “Lanky he is, ma’am,” Marya replied coyly. “Did you order cutlets with peas for today? I didn’t quite hear earlier, I was hurrying here.” “Oh, no, Marya, with cabbage, and please don’t burn it as you did yesterday.” “I’ll do my best today especially, ma’am. Your hand, please”—and she kissed her mistress’s hand as a sign of reconciliation. In short, she made the whole courtroom merry.

“What a one, really!” Mama shook her head, very pleased both by the news and by Andrei Petrovich’s account, but casting anxious glances at Liza on the sly.

“She’s been a willful young lady from early on,” Makar Ivanovich smiled.

“Bile and idleness,” the doctor retorted.

“Me willful, me bile and idleness?” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly came in, apparently very pleased with herself. “Alexander Semyonovich, you of all people shouldn’t go talking nonsense; you knew when you were ten years old what sort of idle woman I was, and as for my bile, you’ve been treating it for a whole year and can’t cure it, so shame on you. Well, enough of your jeering at me. Thank you, Andrei Petrovich, for taking the trouble to come to court. Well, how are you, Makarushka, it’s you I’ve come to see, not this one” (she pointed at me, but at the same time gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder; I’d never seen her in such a merry state of mind before).

“Well, so?” she concluded, suddenly turning to the doctor and frowning worriedly.

“This one doesn’t want to stay in bed, but sitting up like this only wears him out.”

“I’ll just sit a wee bit with people,” Makar Ivanovich murmured, his face as pleading as a child’s.

“Yes, we love that, we do; we love chatting in a little circle, when people gather round us; I know Makarushka,” said Tatyana Pavlovna.

“And, oh, what a speedy one he is,” the old man smiled again, turning to the doctor. “And you don’t give ear to speech; wait, let me say it. I’ll lie down, dear heart, I’ve heard, but to our minds what it means is, ‘Once you lie down, you may not get up again’—that, my friend, is what’s standing back of me.”

“Well, yes, I just knew it, a popular prejudice: ‘I’ll lie down, yes,’ they say, ‘and for all I know, I won’t get up again’—that’s what people are very often afraid of, and they’d rather spend the time of their illness on their feet than go to the hospital. And you, Makar Ivanovich, are simply yearning, yearning for your dear freedom, for the open road; that’s all your illness; you’re not used to living in the same place for long. Aren’t you what’s known as a wanderer? Well, and with our people vagrancy almost turns into a passion. I’ve noticed it more than once in our people. Our people are mostly vagrants.”

“So Makar is a vagrant, in your opinion?” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up.

“Oh, not in that sense; I was using the word in its general sense. Well, so he’s a religious vagrant, a pious one, but a vagrant all the same. In a good, respectable sense, but a vagrant . . . From a medical point of view, I . . .”

“I assure you,” I suddenly addressed the doctor, “that the vagrants are sooner you and I, and everybody else here, and not this old man, from whom you and I have something to learn, because there are firm things in his life, and we, all of us here, have nothing firm in our lives . . . However, you could hardly understand that.”

It appears I spoke cuttingly, but that’s what I had come for. In fact, I don’t know why I went on sitting there and was as if out of my mind.

“What’s with you?” Tatyana Pavlovna looked at me suspiciously. “So, how did you find him, Makar Ivanovich?” she pointed her finger at me.

“God bless him, a sharp boy,” the old man said with a serious air; but at the word “sharp” almost everybody burst out laughing. I restrained myself somehow; the doctor laughed most of all. It was bad enough that I didn’t know then about their preliminary agreement. Three days earlier, Versilov, the doctor, and Tatyana Pavlovna had agreed to try as hard as they could to distract mama from bad anticipations and apprehensions for Makar Ivanovich, who was far more ill and hopeless than I then suspected. That’s why everybody joked and tried to laugh. Only the doctor was stupid and, naturally, didn’t know how to joke: that’s why it all came out as it did later on. If I had also known about their agreement, I wouldn’t have done what came out. Liza also knew nothing.

I sat and listened with half an ear; they talked and laughed, but in my head was Nastasya Egorovna with her news, and I couldn’t wave her away. I kept picturing her sitting and looking, getting up cautiously and peeking into the other room. Finally they all suddenly laughed. Tatyana Pavlovna, I have no idea on what occasion, had suddenly called the doctor a godless person: “Well, you little doctors, you’re all godless folk! . . .”

“Makar Ivanovich!” the doctor cried out, pretending most stupidly that he was offended and was seeking justice, “am I godless or not?”

“You, godless? No, you’re not godless,” the old man replied sedately, giving him an intent look. “No, thank God!” he shook his head. “You’re a mirthful man.”

“And whoever is mirthful isn’t godless?” the doctor observed ironically.

“That’s a thought—in its own way!” Versilov observed, but not laughing at all.

“It’s a powerful thought!” I exclaimed inadvertently, struck by the idea. The doctor looked around questioningly.

“These learned people, these same professors,” Makar Ivanovich began, lowering his eyes slightly (they had probably been saying something about professors before then), “oh, how afraid of them I was at first: I didn’t dare before them, for I feared the godless man most of all. There’s one soul in me, I thought; if I lose it, there’s no other to find. Well, but then I took heart. ‘So what,’ I thought, ‘they’re not gods, they’re like us, fellow-sufferering men the same as us.’ And I had great curiosity: ‘I must find out what this godlessness is!’ Only later, my friend, this same curiosity also went away.”

He fell silent, though intending to continue with that quiet and sedate smile. There is a simpleheartedness that trusts each and everyone, unsuspecting of mockery. Such people are always limited, for they’re ready to bring out the most precious thing from their hearts before the first comer. But in Makar Ivanovich, it seemed to me, there was something else, and it was something else that moved him to speak, not merely the innocence of simpleheartedness. It was as if a propagandist peeped out of him. I had the pleasure of catching a certain as if sly smile that he directed at the doctor, and maybe at Versilov as well. The conversation was evidently a continuation of their previous arguments during the week; but into it, to my misfortune, there again slipped that same fatal little phrase that had so electrified me the day before, and it led me to an outburst that I regret to this day.

“I might be afraid of the godless man even now,” the old man went on with concentration, “only the thing is, my friend Alexander Semyonovich, that I’ve never once met a godless man, what I’ve met instead is vain men—that’s how they’d better be called. They’re all sorts of people; there’s no telling what people: big and small, stupid and learned, even some of the simplest rank, and it’s all vanity. For they read and talk all their lives, filled with bookish sweetness, but they themselves dwell in perplexity and cannot resolve anything. One is all scattered, no longer noticing himself. Another has turned harder than stone, but dreams wander through his heart. Yet another is unfeeling and light-minded and only wants to laugh out his mockery. Another has merely plucked little flowers from books, and even that by his own opinion; he’s all vanity himself, and there’s no judgment in him. Again I’ll say this: there is much boredom. A small man may be needy, have no crust, nothing to feed his little ones, sleep on prickly straw, and yet his heart is always merry and light; he sins, he’s coarse, but still his heart is light. But the big man drinks too much, eats too much, sits on a heap of gold, yet there’s nothing but anguish in his heart. Some have gone through all learning—and are still anguished. And my thinking is that the more one learns, the more boredom there is. Take just this: they’ve been teaching people ever since the world was made, but where is the good they’ve taught, so that the world might become the most beautiful, mirthful, and joy-filled dwelling place? And I’ll say another thing: they have no seemliness, they don’t even want it; they’ve all perished, and each one only praises his perdition, but doesn’t even think of turning to the one truth; yet to live without God is nothing but torment. And it turns out that what gives light is the very thing we curse, and we don’t know it ourselves. And what’s the point? It’s impossible for a man to exist without bowing down; such a man couldn’t bear himself, and no man could. If he rejects God, he’ll bow down to an idol—a wooden one, or a golden one, or a mental one. They’re all idolaters, not godless, that’s how they ought to be called. Well, but how could there not be godless people as well? There are such as are truly godless, only they’re much more frightening than these others, because they come with God’s name on their lips. I’ve heard of them more than once, but I’ve never met any. There are such, my friend, and I think there must needs be.”

“There are, Makar Ivanovich,” Versilov suddenly confirmed, “there are such, and ‘there must needs be.’”

“There certainly are and ‘there must needs be’!” escaped from me irrepressibly and vehemently, I don’t know why; but I was carried away by Versilov’s tone and was captivated as if by some sort of idea in the words “there must needs be.” This conversation was totally unexpected for me. But at that moment something suddenly happened that was also totally unexpected.

IV

IT WAS AN extremely bright day; the blinds in Makar Ivanovich’s room were usually not raised all day, on the doctor’s orders; but there was not a blind but a curtain over the window, so that the uppermost part of the window was uncovered; this was because the old man had been upset, with the former blind, at not seeing the sun at all. And we just went on sitting there till the moment when a ray of sunlight suddenly struck Makar Ivanovich right in the face. He paid no attention at first, while he was talking, but several times as he spoke he mechanically inclined his head to the side, because the bright ray strongly troubled and irritated his ailing eyes. Mama, who was standing next to him, had already glanced worriedly at the window several times; she had simply to cover the window completely with something, but, so as not to hinder the conversation, she decided to try and pull the little bench Makar Ivanovich was sitting on a bit to the right. She only had to move it five inches, six at the most. She had bent down several times and taken hold of the bench, but she coudn’t pull it; the bench, with Makar Ivanovich sitting on it, wouldn’t move. Feeling her effort, but being in the heat of conversation, Makar Ivanovich, quite unconsciously, tried several times to raise himself, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. Mama nevertheless went on straining and pulling, and all this finally angered Liza terribly. I remember her several flashing, irritated glances, only in the first moment I didn’t know what to ascribe them to; besides, I was distracted by the conversation. And then suddenly we heard her almost shout sharply at Makar Ivanovich:

“At least raise yourself a little, you can see how hard it is for mama!”

The old man quickly glanced at her, understood at once, and instantly hastened to raise himself, but nothing came of it; he rose a couple of inches and fell back on the bench.

“I can’t, dear heart,” he answered Liza as if plaintively, looking at her somehow all obediently.

“You can talk whole books full, but you haven’t got the strength to stir yourself ?”

“Liza!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna. Makar Ivanovich again made an extreme effort.

“Take your crutch, it’s lying beside you, you can raise yourself with your crutch!” Liza snapped once more.

“Right you are,” said the old man, and at once hurriedly seized his crutch.

“We simply have to lift him!” Versilov stood up, the doctor also moved, Tatyana Pavlovna also jumped up, but before they had time to approach him, Makar Ivanovich leaned on the crutch with all his strength, suddenly rose, and stood where he was, looking around in joyful triumph.

“And so I got up!” he said with all but pride, smiling joyfully. “Thank you, dear, for teaching me reason, and I thought my little legs wouldn’t serve me at all . . .”

But he didn’t go on standing for long. He hadn’t even managed to finish speaking when his crutch, on which he had rested the whole weight of his body, suddenly slipped on the rug, and as his “little legs” hardly supported him at all, he toppled from his full height onto the floor. This was almost terrible to see, I remember. Everybody gasped and rushed to lift him up, but, thank God, he hadn’t hurt himself; he had only struck the floor heavily, noisily, with both knees, but he had managed to put his right hand in front of him and brace himself with it. He was picked up and seated on the bed. He was very pale, not from fright, but from shock. (The doctor had also found a heart ailment in him, along with everything else.) But mama was beside herself with fright. And suddenly Makar Ivanovich, still pale, his body shaking, and as if not yet quite recovered, turned to Liza and in an almost tender, quiet voice, said to her:

“No, dear, my little legs just won’t stand up! ”

I cannot express my impression at the time. The thing was that there wasn’t the slightest sound of complaint or reproach in the poor old man’s words; on the contrary, you could see straight off that, from the very beginning, he had decidedly noticed nothing spiteful in Liza’s words, but had taken her shouting at him as something due, that is, that he ought to have been “reprimanded” for his fault. All this affected Liza terribly as well. At the moment of his fall, she had jumped up, like everybody else, and stood all mortified and, of course, suffering, because she had been the cause of it all, but, hearing such words from him, she suddenly, almost instantly, became flushed all over with the color of shame and repentance.

“Enough!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly commanded. “It all comes from talk! Time we were in our places; what’s the good of it if the doctor himself starts babbling!”

“Precisely,” Alexander Semyonovich picked up, bustling around the patient. “I’m to blame, Tatyana Pavlovna, he needs rest!”

But Tatyana Pavlovna wasn’t listening: for half a minute she had been silently and intently watching Liza.

“Come here, Liza, and kiss me, old fool that I am—if you want to,” she said unexpectedly.

And she kissed her, I don’t know what for, but that was precisely what needed to be done; so that I almost rushed myself to kiss Tatyana Pavlovna. It was precisely necessary not to crush Liza with reproach, but to greet with joy and felicitation the new beautiful feeling that undoubtedly must have been born in her. But, instead of all these feelings, I suddenly stood up and began, firmly rapping out the words:

“Makar Ivanovich, you have again used the word ‘seemliness,’ and just yesterday and for all these days I’ve been suffering over that word . . . and all my life I’ve been suffering, only before I didn’t know over what. I consider this coincidence of words fateful, almost miraculous . . . I announce it in your presence . . .”

But I was instantly stopped. I repeat: I didn’t know about their agreement concerning mama and Makar Ivanovich; and judging by my former doings, they certainly considered me capable of any scandal of that sort.

“Stifle him, stifle him!” Tatyana Pavlovna turned utterly ferocious. Mama began to tremble. Makar Ivanovich, seeing everyone’s fright, also became frightened.

“Arkady, enough!” Versilov cried sternly.

“For me, ladies and gentlemen,” I raised my voice still more, “for me to see you all next to this babe” (I pointed to Makar) “is unseemly. There’s only one saint here, and that’s mama, but she, too . . .”

“You’ll frighten him!” the doctor said insistently.

“I know I’m the whole world’s enemy,” I began to babble (or something of the sort), but, turning around once more, I looked defiantly at Versilov.

“Arkady,” he cried again, “there has already been exactly the same scene here between us! I beg you, restrain yourself now!”

I cannot express with what strong feeling he uttered this. Extreme sadness, the most sincere, the fullest, was expressed in his features. Most surprising of all was that he looked as if he were guilty: I was the judge, and he was the criminal. All this finished me off.

“Yes!” I cried to him in reply, “there has already been exactly the same scene, when I buried Versilov and tore him out of my heart . . . But then there followed the resurrection from the dead, while now . . . now there will be no dawn! but . . . but all of you here will see what I’m capable of! You don’t even expect what I can prove!”

Having said this, I rushed to my room. Versilov ran after me . . .

V

I SUFFERED A relapse of my illness; I had a very strong attack of fever, with delirium towards nightfall. But it was not all delirium: there were countless dreams, a whole series and without measure, among which there was one dream or fragment of a dream that I’ve remembered all my life. I’ll recount it without any explanations. It was prophetic and I cannot omit it.

I suddenly found myself, with some grand and proud design in my heart, in a big and lofty room; but not at Tatyana Pavlovna’s: I remember the room very well; I make note of that, running ahead. But though I’m alone, I constantly feel, with uneasiness and torment, that I’m not alone at all, that I’m expected and that something is expected of me. Somewhere behind the doors, people sit and expect me to do something. The sensation is unbearable: “Oh, if only I were alone!” And suddenly she comes in. She looks timid, she’s terribly afraid, she peeks into my eyes. The document is in my hand. She smiles in order to charm me, she fawns on me; I’m sorry, but I begin to feel disgust. Suddenly she covers her face with her hands. I fling the “document ” on the table with inexpressible contempt: “Don’t beg, take it, I need nothing from you! I revenge myself for all my insults with contempt! ” I walk out of the room, breathless with immeasurable pride. But in the doorway, in the darkness, Lambert seizes me: “Cghretin, cghretin!” he whispers, holding me back by the arm with all his might. “She’ll have to open a boarding school for high-born girls on Vassilievsky Island” (N.B. that is, to support herself, if her father, learning about the document from me, deprives her of her inheritance and drives her out of the house. I set down Lambert’s words literally as I dreamed them).

“Arkady Makarovich is searching for ‘seemliness,’” comes Anna Andreevna’s little voice, somewhere nearby, right there on the stairs; but it is not praise but unbearable mockery that sounds in her words. I return to the room with Lambert. But, seeing Lambert, she suddenly begins to guffaw. My first impression is horrible fright, such fright that I stop and do not want to go closer. I look at her and can’t believe it; it’s as if she has suddenly taken a mask from her face: the same features, but as if each line of her face has been distorted by boundless impudence. “The ransom, lady, the ransom!” shouts Lambert, and the two of them guffaw still more, and my heart sinks: “Oh, can this shameless woman possibly be the same one at whose mere glance my heart boiled over with virtue?”

“That’s what they’re capable of, these proud ones, in their high society, for money!” exclaims Lambert. But the shameless woman is not embarrassed even by that; she guffaws precisely because I’m so frightened. Oh, she’s ready for the ransom, I can see that and . . . and what’s with me? I no longer feel either pity or loathing; I tremble as never before . . . I’m overcome by a new, inexpressible feeling, such as I’ve never known, and strong as the whole world . . . Oh, I’m no longer able to go away now for anything! Oh, how I like that it’s so shameless! I seize her by the hands, the touch of her hands makes me shiver painfully, I bring my lips to her impudent crimson lips, trembling with laughter and inviting me.

Oh, away with this base memory! A cursed dream! I swear that before this loathsome dream there had been nothing in my mind even resembling this disgraceful thought! There hadn’t even been any involuntary thought of that sort (though I kept the “document” sewn up in my pocket, and I would sometimes snatch at my pocket with a strange smile). Where did this all come from, quite ready-made? It’s because I had the soul of a spider! It means that everything was already born and lying in my depraved heart, lying in my desire, but in a waking state my heart was ashamed and my mind still didn’t dare to imagine anything like that consciously. But in a dream my soul herself presented and laid out all that was in my heart, with perfect precision and in the fullest picture and—in prophetic form. And can it have been this that I wanted to prove to them when I ran out of Makar Ivanovich’s room that morning? But enough, nothing of that for the time being! This dream I dreamed is one of the strangest adventures of my life.

Chapter Three

I

THREE DAYS LATER I got up in the morning and suddenly felt, standing on my legs, that I wouldn’t stay in bed anymore. I fully felt the nearness of recovery. All these little details are maybe not worth including, but then came several days which, though nothing special happened, have all remained in my memory as something delightful and calm, and that is a rare thing in my memories. My inner state I will not meanwhile formulate; if the reader learned what it consisted in, he certainly wouldn’t believe it. Better if everything becomes clear later from the facts. And meanwhile I’ll just say one thing: let the reader remember about the soul of a spider. And that in a man who wanted to go away from them all and from the whole world in the name of “seemliness”! The yearning for seemliness was there in the highest degree, that was certainly so, but how it could be combined with God knows what other yearnings—is a mystery to me. And it has always been a mystery, and I’ve marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul alongside the greatest baseness, and all that in perfect sincerity. Whether it’s a special breadth in the Russian man, which will take him far, or simply baseness—that’s the question!

But let’s leave that. One way or another, a lull came. I simply understood that I had to get well at all costs and as soon as possible, so that I could begin to act as soon as possible, and therefore I resolved to live hygienically and obey the doctor (whoever he was), and with extreme reasonableness (the fruit of breadth) I put off stormy designs till the day of my going out, that is, till my recovery. How all these peaceful impressions and the enjoyment of the lull could combine with a painfully sweet and anxious throbbing of the heart at the anticipation of imminent, stormy decisions—I don’t know, but, again, I attribute it all to “breadth.” But the former recent restlessness was no longer in me; I put it all off for a while, no longer trembling before the future as just recently, but like a rich man assured of his means and powers. My arrogance and defiance of the fate awaiting me swelled more and more, partly, I suppose, from my now actual recovery and the quick return of my vital forces. It is these several days of final and even actual recovery that I recall now with full pleasure.

Oh, they forgave me everything, that is, my outburst, and these were the very same people I had called unseemly to their faces! I like that in people, I call it intelligence of the heart; at least it attracted me at once—to a certain degree, of course. Versilov and I, for instance, went on speaking like the best acquaintances, but to a certain degree: as soon as there was a glimpse of too much expansiveness (and there were glimpses), we both restrained ourselves at once, as if a bit ashamed of something. There are occasions when the victor can’t help being ashamed before the one he has vanquished, precisely for having overcome him. The victor was obviously I; and I was ashamed.

That morning, that is, when I got out of bed after the relapse of my illness, he came to see me, and then I learned from him for the first time about their agreement concerning mama and Makar Ivanovich; he also observed that, though the old man felt better, the doctor would not answer positively for him. I gave him my heartfelt promise to behave more prudently in the future. As Versilov was telling me all that, I then suddenly noticed for the first time that he himself was extremely and sincerely concerned for this old man, that is, far more than I would have expected from a man like him, and that he looked upon him as a being for some reason especially dear to him, and not only because of mama. This interested me at once, almost surprised me, and, I confess, without Versilov I might out of inattention have missed and failed to appreciate much in this old man, who left one of the most lasting and original impressions in my heart.

Versilov seemed to have fears about my attitude towards Makar Ivanovich; that is, he trusted neither my intelligence nor my tact, and therefore he was extremely pleased later, when he discerned that I could occasionally understand how to treat a person of totally different notions and views—in short, that I was able to be both yielding and broad when necessary. I also confess (without humiliating myself, I think) that in this being who was from the people I found something totally new for me in regard to certain feelings and views, something unknown to me, something much clearer and more comforting than the way I myself had understood these things before. Nevertheless, it was sometimes impossible not to get simply beside oneself from certain decided prejudices which he believed with the most shocking calmness and steadfastness. But here, of course, only his lack of education was to blame, while his soul was rather well organized, even so well that I’ve never yet come across anything better of its kind in people.

II

WHAT WAS MOST attractive about him, as I’ve already noted above, was his extreme candor and the absence of the slightest self-love; the feeling was of an almost sinless heart. There was “mirth” of heart, and therefore also “seemliness.” He loved the word “mirth” very much and used it often. True, one sometimes found a sort of morbid rapture in him, as it were, a sort of morbidity of tenderness—in part, I suppose, due also to the fever which, truly speaking, never left him all that time; but that did not interfere with the seemliness. There were also contrasts: alongside an astonishing simpleheartedness, sometimes completely unaware of irony (often to my vexation), there also lived in him a sort of clever subtlety, most often in polemical clashes. And he liked polemics, but only occasionally and in his own way. It was evident that he had walked a lot through Russia, had heard a lot, but, I repeat, he liked tender feeling most of all, and therefore all that led to it, and he himself liked to tell things that moved people to tenderness. Generally he liked telling stories. I heard a lot from him both about his own wanderings and various legends from the lives of the most ancient “ascetics.” I’m not familiar with these things, but I think he distorted a lot in these legends, having learned them mostly by word of mouth from simple folk. It was simply impossible to accept certain things. But alongside obvious alterations or simple lies, there were always flashes of something astonishingly wholesome, full of popular feeling, and always conducive to tenderness . . . Among these stories, for instance, I remember a long one, “The Life of Mary of Egypt.”⁷ Up to that time I had had no conception of this “Life,” nor of almost any like it. I’ll say outright: it was almost impossible to endure it without tears, and not from tender feeling, but from some sort of strange rapture. You felt something extraordinary and hot, like that scorching sandy desert with its lions, in which the saint wandered. However, I don’t want to speak of it, and am also not competent.

Besides tenderness, I liked in him certain sometimes extremely original views of certain still quite disputable things in modern reality. He once told, for instance, a recent story about a discharged soldier; he was almost a witness to this event. A soldier came home from the service, back to the peasants, and he didn’t like living with the peasants again, and the peasants didn’t like him either. The man went astray, took to drinking, and robbed somebody somewhere; there was no firm evidence, but they seized him anyhow and took him to court. In court his lawyer all but vindicated him—there was no evidence, and that was that—when suddenly the man listened, listened, and suddenly stood up and interrupted the lawyer: “No, you quit talking.” And he told everything “to the last speck”; he confessed everything, with tears and repentance. The jury went and locked themselves in for the decision, then suddenly they all come out: “No, not guilty.” Everybody shouted, rejoiced, and the soldier just stood rooted to the spot, as if he’d turned into a post, didn’t understand anything; nor did he understand anything from what the magistrate told him in admonition as he let him go. The soldier was set free again, and still didn’t believe it. He began to be anguished, brooded, didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t speak to people, and on the fifth day he up and hanged himself. “That’s how it is to live with a sin on your soul!” Makar Ivanovich concluded. This story is, of course, a trifling one, and there’s an endless number of them now in all the newspapers, but I liked the tone of it, and most of all a few little phrases, decidedly with a new thought in them. Speaking, for instance, of how the soldier returned to his village and the peasants didn’t like him, Makar Ivanovich said, “And you know what a soldier is: a soldier is a peasant gone bad.” Speaking later about the lawyer who all but won the case, he also said: “And you know what a lawyer is: a lawyer is a hired conscience.” He uttered both of these expressions without any effort and unaware of having done so, and yet in these two expressions there is a whole special view of both subjects, and though, of course, it doesn’t belong to the whole people, still it’s Makar Ivanovich’s own and not borrowed! These ready notions among the people to do with certain subjects are sometimes wonderful in their originality.

“And how do you look at the sin of suicide, Makar Ivanovich?” I asked him on the same occasion.

“Suicide is the greatest human sin,” he answered with a sigh, “but the Lord alone is the only judge here, for He alone knows everything—every limit and every measure. But we’re bounden to pray for such a sinner. Each time you hear of such a sin, then before you go to sleep, pray for the sinner tenderly; at least sigh for him to God; even if you didn’t know him at all—your prayer for him will get through the better.”

“But will my prayer help him if he’s already condemned?”

“But how do you know? There are many, oh, many who don’t believe and deafen ignorant people’s ears with it; but don’t listen, for they don’t know where they’re straying themselves. A prayer from a still-living person for a condemned one truly gets through. How is it for someone who has nobody to pray for him? So when you stand and pray before you go to sleep, add at the end: ‘And have mercy, Lord Jesus, on all those who have nobody to pray for them.’ This prayer really gets through and is pleasing. And also for all the sinners who are still living: ‘Lord, who knowest all destinies, save all the unrepentant’—that’s also a good prayer.”

I promised him that I would pray, feeling that by this promise I would give him the greatest satisfaction. And in fact joy shone in his face; but I hasten to add that he never treated me condescendingly on such occasions, that is, as an old man would treat some adolescent; on the contrary, he quite often liked listening to me himself, even listened with delight, on various themes, supposing that, though he had to do with a “young one,” as he put it in his lofty style (he knew very well that the way to put it would be “youth,” and not “young one”), at the same time this “young one,” as he understood, was infinitely higher than he in education. He liked, for instance, to speak very often about the hermitic life and placed the “hermitage” incomparably higher than “wanderings.” I hotly objected to him, insisting on the egoism of those people, who abandon the world and the benefit they might produce for mankind solely for the egoistic idea of their own salvation. At first he didn’t understand, I even suspect he didn’t understand at all; but he defended the hermitic life very strongly: “At first you’re sorry for yourself, of course (that is, when you’ve settled in the hermitage)—well, but after that you rejoice more and more every day, and then you see God.” Here I developed before him a full picture of the useful activity in the world of the scholar, the doctor, or the friend of mankind in general, and I brought him to real ecstasy, because I myself spoke ardently; he yessed me every minute: “Right, dear, right, God bless you, you think according to the truth.” But when I finished, he still did not quite agree: “That’s all so,” he sighed deeply, “but how many are there who will endure and not get distracted? Though money is not a god yet, it’s at least a half-god—a great temptation; and then there’s the female sex, there’s self-conceit and envy. So they’ll forget the great cause and busy themselves with the little one. A far cry from the hermitic life. In the hermitage a man strengthens himself even for every sort of deed. My friend! What is there in the world?” he exclaimed with great feeling. “Isn’t it only a dream? Take some sand and sow it on a stone; when yellow sand sprouts for you on that stone, then your dream will come true in this world—that’s the saying among us. Not so with Christ: ‘Go and give away your riches and become the servant of all.’ And you’ll become inestimably richer than before; for not only in food, nor in costly clothing, nor in pride nor envy will you be happy, but in immeasurably multiplied love. Not little riches now, not a hundred thousand, not a million, but you’ll acquire the whole world! Now we gather without satiety and squander senselessly, but then there will be no orphans or beggars, for all are mine, all are dear, I’ve acquired them all, bought them all to a man! Now it’s not a rare thing that a very rich and noble man is indifferent to the number of his days, and doesn’t know what amusement to think up; but then our days will multiply as if a thousandfold, for you won’t want to lose a single minute, but will feel each one in your heart’s mirth. And then you’ll acquire wisdom, not from books only, but you’ll be with God himself face to face; and the earth will shine brighter than the sun, and there will be neither sadness nor sighing, but only a priceless paradise . . .”

It was these ecstatic outbursts that Versilov seemed to like greatly. That time he was there in the room.

“Makar Ivanovich!” I interrupted him suddenly, growing excited myself beyond all measure (I remember that evening), “but in that case it’s communism you’re preaching, decidedly communism!”

And as he knew decidedly nothing about communist doctrine, and was hearing the word itself for the first time, I immediately began to expound for him everything I knew on the subject. I confess I knew little and that confusedly, and I’m not quite competent now either, but what I knew I expounded with great ardor, heedless of anything. To this day I recall with pleasure the extraordinary impression I made on the old man. It wasn’t even an impression, but almost a shock. At the same time he was terribly interested in the historical details: “Where? How? Who set it up? Who said it?” Incidentally, I’ve noticed that this is generally a quality of simple people: they won’t be satisfied with a general idea, if they get very interested, but will unfailingly demand the most firm and precise details. I was confused about the details, though, and as Versilov was there, I was a little embarrassed before him, and that made me still more excited. The end was that Makar Ivanovich, moved to tenderness, finally could only repeat “Right, right!” after each word, obviously without understanding and having lost the thread. I became vexed, but Versilov suddenly interrupted the conversation, stood up, and announced that it was time to go to bed. We were all together then, and it was late. When he peeked into my room a few minutes later, I asked him at once how he looked at Makar Ivanovich in general, and what he thought of him. Versilov smiled merrily (but not at all at my mistakes about communism—on the contrary, he didn’t mention them). I repeat again: he decidedly cleaved, as it were, to Makar Ivanovich, and I often caught an extremely attractive smile on his face as he listened to the old man. However, the smile did not prevent criticism.

“Makar Ivanovich, first of all, is not a peasant, but a household serf,” he pronounced with great readiness, “a former household serf and a former servant, born a servant and from a servant. Household serfs and servants shared a great deal in the interests of their masters’ private, spiritual, and intellectual life in the old days. Note that Makar Ivanovich to this day is interested most of all in the events of life among the gentry and in high society. You don’t know yet to what degree he’s interested in certain recent events in Russia. Do you know that he’s a great politician? He’d give anything to know who is at war, and where, and whether we’ll go to war. In former times I used to bring him to a state of bliss with such conversations. He has great respect for science, and of all sciences he likes astronomy the most. For all that, he has worked out something so independent in himself that he won’t be budged from it for anything. He has convictions, firm ones, rather clear . . . and true. For all his perfect ignorance, he’s capable of astounding you by being unexpectedly familiar with certain notions you wouldn’t suppose him to have. He delights in praising the hermitic life, but not for anything would he go to a hermitage or a monastery, because he is in the highest degree a ‘vagrant,’ as Alexander Semyonovich nicely called him—with whom, to mention it in passing, you needn’t be angry. Well, what else, finally: he’s something of an artist, has many words of his own, but also not of his own. He’s somewhat lame in logical explanations, at times very abstract; has fits of sentimentality, but of a completely popular sort, or, better, has fits of that generally popular tenderness that our people introduce so broadly into their religious feeling. Of his purity of heart and lack of malice I won’t speak: it’s not for us to get started on that theme . . .”

III

TO FINISH WITH the characterization of Makar Ivanovich, I shall tell one of his stories from his own private life. His stories had a strange character, or rather, they had no general character at all; it was impossible to squeeze any moral or any general trend out of them, unless it was that they were all more or less moving. But there were also some that were not moving, that were even quite merry, that even made fun of wayward monks, so that he directly harmed his idea by telling them—which I pointed out to him; but he didn’t understand what I meant to say. Sometimes it was hard to make out what prompted him to this storytelling, so that I even wondered at such loquacity and ascribed it in part to old age and to his ailing condition.

“He’s not what he used to be,” Versilov once whispered to me, “he used to be not at all like this. He’ll die soon, much sooner than we think, and we must be prepared.”

I forgot to mention that something like “evenings” had been established among us. Besides mama, who wouldn’t leave Makar Ivanovich’s side, Versilov always came to his little room in the evenings; I, too, always came, and couldn’t be anywhere else; during the last few days, Liza almost always came, though later than everyone else, and almost always sat silently. Tatyana Pavlovna also came sometimes, though rarely, and sometimes the doctor. It suddenly happened somehow that I became friends with the doctor; not very much, but at least there were none of my former outbursts. I liked his simplicity, as it were, which I finally discerned in him, and the certain attachment he had to our family, so that I finally ventured to forgive him his medical arrogance and, on top of that, taught him to wash his hands and clean his fingernails, if he was incapable of wearing clean linen. I explained to him directly that it was not at all for the sake of foppishness or any sort of fine arts, but that cleanliness was a natural part of a doctor’s profession, and I proved it to him. Finally, Lukerya often came to the door from her kitchen and, standing behind it, listened to Makar Ivanovich’s stories. Versilov once called her out from behind the door and invited her to sit with us. I liked that; but from then on she stopped coming to the door. Their ways!

I include one of his stories, without choosing, solely because I remember it more fully. It’s a story about a merchant, and I think that in our towns, big and small, such stories occur by the thousand, if only we know how to look. Those who wish to can skip the story, the more so as I tell it in his style.

IV

AND IN THE town of Afimyevsk, I’ll tell you now, here’s what a wonder we had. There lived a merchant named Skotoboinikov,⁸ Maxim Ivanovich, and there was nobody richer than he in the whole region. He built a calico factory and employed several hundred workers; and he became conceited beyond measure. And it must be said that everything walked at a sign from him, and the authorities themselves didn’t hinder him in anything, and the abbot of the monastery thanked him for his zeal: he donated a lot to the monastery, and when the fancy took him, he sighed greatly for his soul and had no little concern for the age to come. He was a widower and childless; about his wife, rumor had it that he sweetened her away in the first year and that since his youth he had always liked making free with his hands; only that was a very long time back; he never wanted to enter the bonds of matrimony again. He also had a weakness for drink, and when the time came on him, he would run drunkenly around town, naked and yelling; the town was nothing grand, but still it was a shame. When the time was over, he’d get irate, and then everything he decided was good, and everything he ordered was wonderful. And he settled accounts with people arbitrarily; he’d take an abacus, put his spectacles on: “How much for you, Foma?” “Haven’t had anything since Christmas, Maxim Ivanovich, there’s thirty-nine roubles owing to me.” “Oof, that’s a lot of money! It’s too much for you; the whole of you isn’t worth such money; it doesn’t suit you at all; let’s knock off ten roubles, and you’ll get twenty-nine.” The man says nothing; and nobody else dares to make a peep, they all say nothing.

“I know how much he should be given,” he says. “It’s impossible to deal with the people here any other way. The people here are depraved; without me they’d all have died of hunger, however many there are. I say again, the people here are thieves, whatever they see, they filch, there’s no manliness in them. And again take this, that he’s a drunkard; give him money, he’ll bring it to the pot-house and sit there naked, not a stitch left, he goes home stripped. Again, too, he’s a scoundrel: he’ll sit on a stone facing the pot-house and start wailing: ‘Mother, dear, why did you give birth to me, bitter drunkard that I am? It would be better if you’d smothered me, bitter drunkard that I am, at birth!’ Is this a man? This is a beast, not a man; he should be eddicated first of all and then be given money. I know when to give it to him.”

So Maxim Ivanovich spoke about the people of Afimyevsk; though it was bad what he said, all the same it was the truth: they were slack, unsteady folk.

There lived in that same town another merchant, and he died; he was a young and light-minded man, he went broke and lost all his capital. During the last year he struggled like a fish on dry land, but his life had come full term. He had been on bad terms with Maxim Ivanovich all the time, and remained roundly in debt to him. In his last hour he still cursed Maxim Ivanovich. And he left behind a widow, still young, and five children with her. And to be left a solitary widow after your husband is like being a swallow without a nest—no small ordeal, the more so with five little ones and nothing to feed them: their last property, a wooden house, Maxim Ivanovich was taking for debt. And so she lined them all up in a row by the church porch; the eldest was a boy of eight, the rest were all girls with a year’s difference between them, each one smaller than the next; the eldest was four and the youngest was still nursing in her mother’s arms. The liturgy was over, Maxim Ivanovich came out, and all the children knelt before him in a row—she had taught them beforehand—and they pressed their little palms together in front of them all as one, and she herself behind them, with the fifth child in her arms, bowed down to the ground before him in front of all the people: “Dear father, Maxim Ivanovich, have mercy on the orphans, don’t take our last crust of bread, don’t drive us out of our own nest!” And everybody there waxed tearful—she had taught them so well. She thought, “He’ll take pride in front of the people, and forgive us, and give the house back to the orphans,” only it didn’t turn out that way. Maxim Ivanovich stopped: “You’re a young widow,” he said, “you want a husband, it’s not the orphans you’re weeping about. And the deceased man cursed me on his deathbed.” And he walked on and didn’t give them back the house. “Why be indigent” (that is, indulgent) “of their foolishness? I’ll do them a good turn, and they’ll berate me still more; nothing will be accomplished, except that a great rumor will spread.” And there was, in fact, a rumor that he had sent to this widow when she was still a young girl, ten years before, and offered her a large sum (she was very beautiful), forgetting that this sin was the same as desecrating God’s church; but he hadn’t succeeded then. And he did not a few such abominations, in town and even all over the province, and on this occasion even lost all measure.

The mother and her fledglings howled when he drove them orphaned from the house, and not only out of wickedness, but like a man who sometimes doesn’t know himself what makes him stand his ground. Well, people helped her at first, and then she went to look for work. Only what kind of work was there, except for the factory? She’d wash the floors here, weed the vegetable patch there, stoke the stove in a bathhouse, all with the baby in her arms, and start wailing, while the other four ran around outside in nothing but their shirts. When she made them kneel by the church porch, they still had some sort of shoes and some sort of coats, because anyhow they were a merchant’s children; now they ran around barefoot: clothes burn up on children, that’s a known fact. Well, what is that to children? As long as the sun shines, they rejoice, they don’t sense their ruin, they’re like little birds, their voices are like little bells. The widow thinks, “Winter will come, and what am I going to do with you? If only God would take care of you by then!” Only she didn’t have to wait till winter. There’s a children’s disease in our parts, the whooping cough, that goes from one to another. First of all the nursing girl died, after her the rest fell ill, and that same autumn all four girls, one after the other, were carried off. True, one was run over by horses in the street. And what do you think? She buried them and started wailing; she had cursed them before, but once God took them, she was sorry. A mother’s heart!

The only one left alive to her was the oldest boy, and she doted on him, trembled over him. He was weak and delicate, and had a pretty face like a girl’s. And she took him to the factory, to his godfather, who was a manager, and got herself hired in the official’s family as a nanny. One day the boy was running in the yard, and here suddenly Maxim Ivanovich came driving up with a pair, and just then he was tipsy; and the boy ran down the stairs straight at him, slipped accidentally, and bumped straight into him as he was getting out of his droshky, punching him in the belly with both hands. He seized the boy by the hair: “Whose boy is he? The birch! Whip him right now, in front of me!” he yelled. The boy went numb, they started thrashing him, he screamed. “So you scream, too? Whip him till he stops screaming!” Maybe they whipped him a lot, maybe not, but he didn’t stop screaming till he looked quite dead. Then they left off whipping him, they got frightened, the boy wasn’t breathing, he lay there unconscious. Later they said they hadn’t whipped him much, but he was very fearful. Maxim Ivanovich also got frightened. “Whose boy is he?” he asked; they told him. “Really now! Take him to his mother. Why was he loitering around the factory?” For two days afterwards he said nothing and then asked again, “How’s the boy?” And things were bad with the boy: he was sick, lying in his mother’s corner, she left her job at the official’s because of it, and he had an inflammation in his lungs. “Really now!” he said. “And why do you think that is? It’s not that they whipped him painfully: they just gave him a little treatment. I’ve ordered the same kind of beatings for others; it went over without any such nonsense.” He expected the mother to go and make a complaint, and, being proud, said nothing; only how could she, the mother didn’t dare to make a complaint. And then he sent her fifteen roubles and a doctor from himself; not because he was afraid or anything, but just so, from pondering. And soon after that his time came, and he went on a three-week binge.

Winter passed, and on the bright day of Christ’s resurrection itself, on the great day itself, Maxim Ivanovich asked again, “And how’s that same boy?” And for the whole winter he had said nothing, hadn’t asked. They say to him, “He’s recovered, he’s with his mother, and she still does day labor.” That very day Maxim Ivanovich drove to the widow’s, he didn’t go into the house, but called her out to the gate, sitting in the droshky himself: “Here’s what, honest widow,” he says, “I want to be a true benefactor to your son and do no end of good things for him: from now on I’m taking him to live with me, in my own house. And if he pleases me the least bit, I’ll make over a sufficient capital to him; and if he really pleases me, I may set him up as the heir to my whole fortune at my death, as if he were my own son, on condition, however, that your honor doesn’t visit my house except on great feast days.⁹ If that’s agreeable to you, bring the boy tomorrow morning, he can’t go on playing knucklebones.” And having said that, he drove off, leaving the mother as if out of her mind. People heard about it and said to her, “The lad will grow up and reproach you that you deprived him of such a destiny.” She spent the night weeping over him and in the morning she brought the child. And the boy was more dead than alive.

Maxim Ivanovich dressed him like a young gentleman and hired a tutor, and from that hour on had him sitting over books; and it reached the point that he wouldn’t let him out of his sight, but always kept him with him. As soon as the boy starts gaping, he shouts, “To your books! Study! I want to make a man of you.” And the boy was sickly, he had been coughing ever since that time, after the beating. “As if it’s not a fine life with me!” Maxim Ivanovich marveled. “With his mother he just ran around barefoot, chewed on crusts, why is he more sickly than ever?” And the tutor says to him, “Every boy needs to romp and play,” he says, “he shouldn’t study all the time, movement is necessary for him,” and he deduced it all for him reasonably. Maxim Ivanovich thought, “It’s true what you say.” And this tutor, Pyotr Stepanovich, God rest his soul, was like a holy fool;¹⁰ he drank ver-ry much, so that it was even too much, and for that reason had long been removed from any position, and he lived about town like a beggar, but he had great intelligence and a solid education. “I shouldn’t have been here,” he used to say of himself, “I should have been a professor at the university, and here I sink into the mud and ‘even my garments hate my flesh.’”¹¹ Maxim Ivanovich sits and shouts at the boy, “Romp!”—and the boy can barely breathe before him. It reached the point that the child couldn’t bear his voice—he just started trembling all over. And Maxim Ivanovich was still more surprised: “He’s neither this nor that; I took him up from the dirt, dressed him in drap de dames; he’s got nice cloth bootikins, an embroidered shirt, I keep him like a general’s son, why isn’t he well disposed towards me? Why is he silent as a wolf cub?” And though people had long ceased marveling at Maxim Ivanovich, here again they began to wonder: the man’s out of his mind; latched onto the little child and won’t let him be. “Upon my life, I’ll eradicate his character. His father cursed me on his deathbed, after taking holy communion; he has his father’s character.” He didn’t use the birch rod even once (was afraid ever since that time). He intimidated him, that’s what. Intimidated him without the birch rod.

And then the thing happened. Once he went out, and the boy left his book and climbed on a chair. Earlier he had thrown a ball up onto the chiffonier, and he wanted to get his ball, but he caught his sleeve on a china lamp that stood on the chiffonier; the lamp crashed to the floor and broke into smithereens, the clatter was heard all over the house, and it was a costly object—Saxony china. And here suddenly Maxim Ivanovich heard it three rooms away and yelled. The child rushed out and ran in fear wherever his legs would take him, ran out to the terrace, and across the garden, and through the back gate, straight to the riverbank. And there was a boulevard along the bank, old willows, a cheerful spot. He ran down to the water, people saw, clasped his hands, at the very place where the ferry docks, maybe terrified of the water—and stood as if rooted to the spot. And it was a wide place, the river swift, barges going past, on the other side there are shops, a square, the church of God shines with its golden domes. And just then the wife of Colonel Ferzing—an infantry regiment was stationed in town—was hurrying to catch the ferry. Her daughter, also a little child of about eight, walks along in a white dress, looks at the boy and laughs, and she’s carrying a little country basket, and in the basket there’s a hedgehog. “Look, mummy,” she says, “how the boy is looking at my hedgehog.” “No,” says the colonel’s wife, “he’s frightened of something. What are you so afraid of, pretty boy?” (So they told it afterwards.) “And what a pretty boy he is, and how well he’s dressed; whose boy are you?” she says. And he had never seen a hedgehog before, he came closer and looked, and he had already forgotten—childhood! “What’s that you’ve got?” he says. “This,” says the young miss, “is our hedgehog, we just bought it from a village peasant, he found it in the forest.” “What’s a hedgehog like?” he says, and he’s laughing now, and he begins poking his finger at it, and the hedgehog bristles up, and the girl is glad of the boy. “We’re taking it home,” she says, “we want to tame it.” “Ah,” he says, “give me your hedgehog!” And he asked her so touchingly, and no sooner had he said it than Maxim Ivanovich descended on him: “Ah! Here’s where you are! Take him!” (He was so enraged that he had run out of the house without his hat to chase him.) The boy, the moment he remembered everything, cried out, rushed to the water, pressed his little fists to his breast, looked up at the sky (they saw it, they saw it!) and—splash into the water! Well, people shouted, rushed from the ferry, tried to pull him out, but the current was swift, it carried him away, and when they pulled him out he was already dead—drowned. He had a weak chest, he couldn’t endure the water, and how much does it take for such a boy? And in people’s memories in those parts there had never yet been such a small child to take his own life! Such a sin! And what can so small a soul say to the Lord God in the other world!

This was what Maxim Ivanovich brooded over ever after. And the man changed beyond recognition. He was sorely grieved then. He took to drinking, drank a lot, but stopped—it didn’t help. He stopped going to the factory as well, and paid no heed to anybody. They say something to him—he keeps silent or waves his hand. He went about like that for a couple of months, then began talking to himself. He goes about and talks to himself. An outlying village, Vaskova, caught fire, nine houses burned down; Maxim Ivanovich went to have a look. The burnt-out people surrounded him, wailing—he promised to help and gave orders, then summoned his steward and canceled it all: “No need to give them anything,” he said, and didn’t say why. “The Lord gave me over to all people,” he says, “to trample me down like some monster, so let it be so. Like the wind,” he says, “my glory has been scattered.” The abbot himself called on him, a stern old man who had introduced cenobitic order in the monastery.¹² “What’s with you?” he says, so sternly. “Here’s what,” and Maxim Ivanovich opened the book for him and pointed to the place:

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

“Yes,” said the abbot, “though it’s not said directly about that, still it touches upon it. It’s bad if a man loses his measure—he’s a lost man. And you’ve become conceited.”

Maxim Ivanovich sat as if dumbstruck. The abbot looked and looked.

“Listen,” he said, “and remember. It is said, ‘The words of a desperate man fly on the wind.’ And also remember that even the angels of God are not perfect, but the only perfect and sinless one is Jesus Christ our God, whom the angels also serve. You didn’t want the death of that child, you were merely unreasonable. Only,” he says, “here is what I even marvel at: you’ve uttered so many worse outrages, you’ve sent so many people into poverty, corrupted so many, ruined so many—isn’t it the same as if you’d killed them? Hadn’t his sisters died even before then, all four little babies, almost in front of your eyes? Why does this one disturb you so much? For I suppose you’ve forgotten, not only to regret, but even to think about the previous ones? Why are you so frightened of this child, before whom you’re not even so guilty?”

“I see him in my dreams,” said Maxim Ivanovich.

“And what of it?”

But the man revealed no more, he sat and said nothing. The abbot wondered, but with that he left; there was nothing more to be done here.

And Maxim Ivanovich sent for the tutor, for Pyotr Stepanovich; they hadn’t seen each other since that occasion.

“Do you remember?” he says.

“I do,” he says.

“You’ve painted oil paintings for the tavern here,” he says, “and made a copy of the bishop’s portrait. Can you paint a picture for me?”

“I can do everything,” he says. “I,” he says, “have all talents and can do everything.”

“Then paint me a very big picture, over the whole wall, and first of all paint the river on it, and the landing, and the ferry, and so that all the people who were there will be in the picture. The colonel’s wife, and the little girl, and that hedgehog. And paint me the whole other bank as well, so that it’s seen as it was—the church, the square, the shops, and the cab stand—paint it all as it was. And there by the ferry, paint the boy, just over the river, on that very spot, and he must have his two fists pressed to his breast, to both nipples. That without fail! And open up the sky before him on the other side over the church, and have all the angels in the heavenly light come flying to meet him. Can you satisfy me or not?”

“I can do everything.”

“I could invite the foremost painter from Moscow, or even from London itself, instead of a bumpkin like you, only you remember his face. If it comes out not like or a little like, I’ll only give you fifty roubles, but if it comes out very much like, I’ll give you two hundred. Remember, blue eyes . . . And the painting should be very, very big.”

They prepared everything; Pyotr Stepanovich started painting, then suddenly he comes:

“No,” he says, “it’s impossible to paint it like that.”

“How so?”

“Because this sin, suicide, is the greatest of all sins. So how would angels come to meet him after such a sin?”

“But he’s a child, he’s not responsible.”

“No, he’s not a child, but already a boy; he was eight years old when this happened. He has to give at least some sort of answer.”

Maxim Ivanovich was still more terrified.

“But,” says Pyotr Stepanovich, “here’s what I’ve thought up: we won’t open the sky or paint the angels; but I’ll bring a ray of light down from the sky as if to meet him; one bright ray of light: it will be as if there’s something all the same.”

So they brought down the ray of light. And I myself saw this painting afterwards, much later, and that same ray, and the river stretched across the whole wall, all blue; and the dear young boy right there, both hands pressed to his breast, and the young miss, and the hedgehog—he did it all satisfactorily. Only Maxim Ivanovich didn’t show the painting to anybody then, but locked it up in his study, away from all eyes. And they really were eager to have a look at it in town. He ordered everybody to be chased away. There was a lot of talk. And Pyotr Stepanovich was as if out of his mind then: “I can do everything now,” he says, “it’s proper for me to be at the court in St. Petersburg.” He was a most amiable man, but he had an inordinate love of extolling himself. And fate caught up with him: as soon as he received all two hundred roubles, he immediately started drinking and showing the money to everybody, boasting; and he was killed during the night, drunk, by one of our tradesmen, whom he had been drinking with, and robbed of his money. All this became known the next morning.

And it all ended in such a way that even now it’s the first thing they remember. Suddenly Maxim Ivanovich turns up at that same widow’s: she rented in a tradeswoman’s cottage at the edge of town. This time he went into the yard, stood before her, and bowed to the ground. And since those events the woman had been sick, could scarcely move. “Dear heart,” he cried, “honest widow, marry me, monster that I am, let me live in the world!” She looks at him, more dead than alive. “I want,” he says, “another boy to be born to us, and if he gets born, it would mean that that boy has forgiven us both, you and me. The boy told me to do it.” She can see the man is not in his right mind, he’s as if in a frenzy, but still she can’t help herself.

“That’s all trifles,” she said, “and nothing but faintheartedness. On account of this faintheartedness, I lost all my little ones. I can’t even bear the sight of you before me, still less take such an everlasting torment on myself.”

Maxim Ivanovich drove off, but he didn’t calm down. The whole town rumbled at such a wonder. And Maxim Ivanovich sent matchmakers. He summoned two aunts of his from the provincial capital, tradeswomen. Aunts or no aunts, they were relations, meaning it was honest; they started persuading her, turning her head, wouldn’t leave the cottage. He sent women from the towns-folk, from the merchants, sent the archpriest’s wife, and some wives of officials; the whole town surrounded her, but she even scorns them: “If,” she says, “my orphans could come back to life, but now what? To take such a sin on myself before my little orphans?” He persuaded the abbot, and he blew it into her ear: “You,” he says, “can call up a new man in him.” She was horrified. And people are astonished at her: “How is it even possible that she refuses such happiness!” And here’s what he tamed her with: “After all,” he says, “he’s a suicide, and not as a child, but already as a boy, and owing to his years, he couldn’t be admitted to holy communion directly,¹³ and so he still has to give some sort of answer. If you marry me, I’ll make you a great promise: I’ll build a new church only for the eternal commemoration of his soul.” She couldn’t stand up against that, and accepted him. So they were married.

And it turned out to everyone’s amazement. They began to live from the first day in great and unfeigned harmony, carefully preserving their marriage and like one soul in two bodies. She conceived that same winter, and they started going around to the churches of God and trembling before the wrath of the Lord. They visited three monasteries and heard prophecies. He constructed the promised church and built a hospital and an almshouse for the town. He allotted capital for widows and orphans. And he remembered everyone he had injured, and wished to recompense them; he started giving money away without stint, so that his spouse and the abbot restrained his hands, for “this,” they said, “is already enough.” Maxim Ivanovich obeyed: “I cheated Foma that time.” Well, so they paid Foma back. And Foma even wept: “I,” he says, “I’m so . . . There’s so much I’m content with even without that, and I’m eternally bounden to pray to God for you.” So everyone was touched by it, and that means it’s true what they say, that man will live by a good example. And they’re good people there.

His wife began to manage the factory herself, and in such a way that people still remember it. He didn’t stop drinking, but she took care of him on those days, and then also tried to cure him. His speech became decorous, and his voice itself even changed. He became filled with boundless pity, even for animals: from his window he saw a peasant beating his horse outrageously on the head and at once sent to him and bought the horse for twice the price. And he received the gift of tears:¹⁴ someone would start talking to him, and he’d just dissolve in tears. When her time came, the Lord finally heeded their prayers and sent them a son, and Maxim Ivanovich brightened up for the first time since those events; he gave away a lot of alms, forgave many debts, invited the whole town for the baptism. He invited the town, but the next day he came out black as night. His wife saw something had happened to him, she went up to him with the newborn. “The boy,” she says, “has forgiven us, and heeded our tears and prayers for him.” And it must be said that they hadn’t said a word about the matter for that whole year, but had kept it to themselves. And Maxim Ivanovich looked at her black as night. “Wait,” he says, “just consider, for the whole year he hasn’t come, but last night I saw him in a dream again.” “Here, for the first time, terror also entered my heart, after those strange words,” she remembered later.

And it was not for nothing that he had dreamed of the boy. As soon as Maxim Ivanovich mentioned it, almost, so to speak, that very minute, something happened to the newborn: he suddenly fell ill. And the baby was sick for eight days, they prayed tirelessly and invited doctors, and they sent for the foremost doctor to come by train from Moscow. The doctor arrived and was angry. “I,” he said, “am the foremost doctor, the whole of Moscow is waiting for me.” He prescribed some drops and left hurriedly. Took eight hundred roubles with him. And the baby died towards evening.

And what then? Maxim Ivanovich wrote a will leaving all his property to his gentle wife, handed all the capital and papers over to her, completed everything properly and in lawful order, then stood before her and bowed to the ground. “Let me go, my priceless wife, to save my soul while it’s still possible. If I spend my time without progress for my soul, I won’t come back anymore. I was hard and cruel, and imposed heavy burdens, but I imagine that the Lord will not leave me unrewarded for my future sorrows and wanderings, for to leave it all is no small cross and no small sorrow.” And his wife tried to soothe him with many tears: “You’re the only one I have on earth now, who can I stay with? I,” she says, “have laid up mercy in my heart during this year.” And all the town admonished him for the whole month, and begged him, and decided to keep him by force. But he didn’t listen to them, and left secretly at night, and never came back. And we hear that he performs his deeds of wandering and patience even to this day, and sends news to his dear wife every year . . .

Chapter Four

I

NOW I’M APPROACHING the final catastrophe, which concludes my notes. But in order to continue further, I must first run ahead of myself and explain something I had no idea of at the time of the action, but that I learned of and fully explained to myself only much later, that is, when everything was over. Otherwise I won’t be able to be clear, since I would have to write in riddles. And therefore I will give a direct and simple explanation, sacrificing so-called artistic quality, and I will do so as if it were not I writing, without the participation of my heart, but as if in the form of an entrefilet⁶⁷ in the newspapers.

The thing was that my childhood friend Lambert may very well have belonged, even directly, to those vile gangs of petty crooks who communicate among themselves for the sake of what is now called blackmail, and for which they now seek legal definitions and punishments in the code of law. The gang Lambert was part of had begun in Moscow and had already done enough mischief there (afterwards it was partly uncovered). I heard later that in Moscow they had for a while an extremely experienced and clever, and no longer young, leader. They embarked on their ventures as a whole gang or in parts. Along with the most dirty and unprintable things (of which, however, information did appear in the newspapers), they also carried out rather complex and even clever ventures, under the leadership of their chief. I learned about some of them later, but I won’t go into the details. I will only mention that the main feature of their method consisted in finding out certain secrets of people, sometimes very honest and highly placed people; then they went to these persons and threatened to reveal the documents (which they sometimes didn’t have at all), and demanded a ransom to keep silent. There are things that are not sinful and not at all criminal, the revealing of which might frighten even a respectable and firm man. They mostly aimed at family secrets. To indicate how deftly their chief sometimes acted, I will tell, with no details and in only three lines, about one of their tricks. In a certain very honorable house something in fact both sinful and criminal occurred: namely, the wife of a well-known and respected man entered into a secret amorous liaison with a young and rich officer. They got wind of it, and here is what they did: they directly gave the young man to know that they were going to inform the husband. They had not the slightest proof, and the young man knew that perfectly well, and they themselves made no secret of it with him; but all the deftness of the method and the cleverness of the calculation in this case consisted merely in the consideration that the informed husband, even without any proof, would act in the same way and take the same steps as if he had received the most mathematical proof. They aimed here at a knowledge of the man’s character and a knowledge of his family circumstances. The main thing was that one member of the gang was a young man from a very decent circle, who had managed to obtain the preliminary information. They fleeced the lover for a very tidy sum, and that without any danger to themselves, because the victim himself desired secrecy.

Lambert, though he took part, did not belong entirely to that Moscow gang; having acquired a taste for it, he gradually began, by way of trial, to act on his own. I’ll say beforehand: he was not quite up to it. He was calculating and by no means stupid, but he was hot-tempered and, what’s more, simplehearted, or, better to say, naïve—that is, he had no knowledge either of people or of society. For instance, he seemed not to understand at all the significance of their Moscow chief and supposed it was very easy to direct and organize such ventures. Finally, he assumed that almost everyone was the same sort of scoundrel as himself. Or, for instance, once having imagined that so-and-so was afraid or ought to be afraid for such-and-such reason, he no longer doubted that the man was indeed afraid, as in an axiom. I don’t know how to put it; later on I’ll explain it more clearly with facts, but in my opinion he was rather crudely developed, and there were certain good, noble feelings which he not only did not believe in, but maybe even had no conception of.

He had come to Petersburg because he had long been thinking of it as a vaster field than Moscow, and also because in Moscow he had gotten into a scrape somewhere and somehow, and somebody was looking for him with the most ill intentions in his regard. On coming to Petersburg, he immediately contacted a former comrade, but he found the field scant, the affairs petty. His acquaintance later widened, but nothing came of it. “People here are trashy, nothing but kids,” he himself said to me later. And then, one bright morning, at dawn, he suddenly found me freezing under the wall and fell directly onto the trail of the “richest,” in his opinion, of “affairs.”

The whole affair rested on what I had babbled as I thawed out in his apartment then. Oh, I was nearly delirious then! But still it came out clearly from my words that, of all my offenses on that fateful day, the one I remembered most and took closest to heart was the offense from Bjoring and from her: otherwise I wouldn’t have raved about that alone at Lambert’s, but would also have raved, for example, about Zershchikov; yet it turned out to be only the first, as I learned afterwards from Lambert himself. And besides, I was in ecstasy and looked upon Lambert and Alphonsine that terrible morning as some sort of liberators and saviors. Later, while recovering, I tried to figure out as I lay in bed what Lambert might have learned from my babble and precisely to what degree I had babbled—but I never once even suspected that he could have learned so much then! Oh, of course, judging by my pangs of conscience, I already suspected even then that I must have told a lot that was unnecessary, but, I repeat, I could never have supposed it was to such a degree! I also hoped and counted on the fact that I had been unable to articulate clearly at his place then, I had a firm memory of that, and yet it turned out in fact that I had articulated much more clearly than I supposed and hoped afterwards. But the main thing was that it was all revealed only later and long after, and that’s where my trouble lay.

From my raving, babbling, prattling, raptures, and so on, he had learned, first, almost all the family names accurately, and even some addresses. Second, he had formed a rather approximate notion of the significance of these persons (the old prince, her, Bjoring, Anna Andreevna, and even Versilov); third, he had learned that I had been offended and was threatening revenge; and finally, fourth and most important, he had learned that this document existed, mysterious and hidden, this letter which, if shown to the half-mad old prince, he, having read it and learned that his own daughter considered him mad and had already “consulted lawyers” about how to lock him up, would either lose his mind definitively or drive her out of the house and disinherit her, or marry a certain Mlle. Versilov, whom he already wanted to marry but had not been allowed to. In short, Lambert understood a great deal; without doubt terribly much remained obscure, but still the blackmailing artificer had fallen onto a sure trail. When I fled from Alphonsine then, he immediately found my address (by the simplest means: through the information bureau), then immediately made the proper inquiries, from which he learned that all these persons I had babbled about actually existed. Then he proceeded directly to the first step.

The main thing was that there existed a document, and it was in my possession, and this document was of great value; of that Lambert had no doubt. Here I will omit one circumstance, which it would be better to speak of later and in its place, but I will just mention that this circumstance was what most chiefly confirmed Lambert in his conviction of the real existence and, above all, the value of the document. (A fateful circumstance, I say it beforehand, which I could never have imagined, not only then, but even till the very end of the whole story, when everything suddenly began to collapse and got explained by itself.) And so, convinced of the chief thing, as a first step he went to see Anna Andreevna.

And yet for me there’s a puzzle to this day: how could he, Lambert, infiltrate and stick himself to such an unapproachable and lofty person as Anna Andreevna? True, he made inquiries, but what of it? True, he was excellently dressed, spoke Parisian French, and was the bearer of a French name, but how could it be that Anna Andreevna did not discern the swindler in him at once? Or we may suppose that a swindler was just what she needed then. But can it be so?

I was never able to find out the circumstances of their meeting, but later I imagined the scene many times. Most likely Lambert, from the first word and gesture, had played my childhood friend before her, trembling for his beloved and dear comrade. But, of course, in that first meeting he managed to hint very clearly that I also had a “document,” to let her know that this was a secret, and that only he, Lambert, was in possession of this secret, and that with this document I was going to take revenge on Mme. Akhmakov, and so on, and so forth. Above all, he could explain to her, as pointedly as possible, the significance and value of this paper. As for Anna Andreevna, she was precisely in such a position that she could not help snatching at the news of something like that, could not help listening with extreme attention, and . . . could not help getting caught on the bait—“out of the struggle for existence.” Just at that time, she had precisely had her fiancé canceled and taken under tutelage to Tsarskoe, and she herself had been taken under tutelage as well. And suddenly such a find: here it was no longer old wives whispering in each other’s ears, or tearful complaints, or calumny and gossip, here was a letter, a manuscript, that is, a mathematical proof of the perfidy of his daughter’s intentions, and of all those who had taken him from her, and that, therefore, he had to save himself at least by fleeing again to her, the same Anna Andreevna, and marrying her even within twenty-four hours; otherwise they would up and confiscate him to a madhouse.

But it also may be that Lambert used no cunning with the girl at all, not even for a moment, but just blurted out with the first word: “Mademoiselle, either remain an old maid, or become a princess and a millionaire: there is this document, I’ll steal it from the adolescent and hand it over to you . . . on a promissory note from you for thirty thousand.” I even think that’s precisely how it was. Oh, he considered everyone the same sort of scoundrel as himself. I repeat, there was in him a sort of scoundrel’s simpleheartedness, a scoundrel’s innocence . . . Be that as it may, it’s quite possible that Anna Andreevna, even in the face of such an assault, was not thrown off for a minute, but was perfectly able to control herself and hear out the blackmailer, who spoke in his own style—and all that out of “breadth.” Well, naturally, at first she blushed a little, but then she got hold of herself and heard him out. And when I picture that unapproachable, proud, truly dignified girl, and with such a mind, hand in hand with Lambert, then . . . a mind, yes! A Russian mind, of such dimensions, a lover of breadth; and moreover a woman’s, and moreover in such circumstances!