Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (547 page)

Tatyana Pavlovna was playing a strange part at the time when I found her in Petersburg.  I had almost forgotten her, and had not at all expected to find her possessed of such influence.  She had met me three or four times during my life in Moscow, and had always turned up, goodness knows where from, sent by some one or other whenever I needed fitting out — to go into Touchard’s boarding school, or two and a half years later, when I was being transferred to the grammar school and sent to board with Nikolay Semyonovitch, a friend I shall never forget.  She used to spend the whole day with me and inspect my linen and my clothes.  She drove about the town with me, took me to Kuznetsky Street, bought me what was necessary, provided me with a complete outfit, in fact, down to the smallest box and penknife.  All the while she nagged at me, scolded me, reproached me, cross-examined me, quoting as examples to me various phantom boys among her relations and acquaintances who were all said to be better than I was.  She even pinched me and actually gave me several vicious pokes.  After fitting me out and installing me, she would disappear completely for several years.  On this occasion, too, she turned up at once on my arrival to instal me again.  She was a spare little figure with a sharp nose like a beak, and sharp little eyes like a bird’s.  She waited on Versilov like a slave, and grovelled before him as though he were the Pope, but she did it through conviction.  But I soon noticed with surprise that she was respected by all and, what was more, known to every one everywhere.  Old Prince Sokolsky treated her with extraordinary deference; it was the same thing with his family; the same with Versilov’s haughty children; the same with the Fanariotovs; and yet she lived by taking in sewing, and washing lace, and fetched work from the shops.  She and I fell out at the first word, for she thought fit to begin nagging at me just as she had done six years before.  And from that time forward we quarrelled every day, but that did not prevent us from sometimes talking, and I must confess that by the end of the month I began to like her: for her independent character, I believe.  But I did not tell her so.

I realized at once that I had only been given this post at the old invalid prince’s in order to “amuse” him, and that that was my whole duty.  Naturally this was humiliating, and I should at once have taken steps, but the queer old fellow soon made an unexpected impression upon me.  I felt something like compassion for him, and by the end of the month I had become strangely attached to him; anyway I gave up my intention of being rude.  He was not more than sixty, however, but there had been a great to-do with him a year and a half before, when he suddenly had a fit.  He was travelling somewhere and went mad on the way, so there was something of a scandal of which people talked in Petersburg.  As is usual in such cases, he was instantly taken abroad, but five months later he suddenly reappeared perfectly well, though he gave up the service.  Versilov asserted seriously (and with noticeable heat) that he had not been insane at all, but had only had some sort of nervous fit.  I promptly made a note of Versilov’s warmth about it.  I may observe, however, that I was disposed to share his opinion.  The old man only showed perhaps an excessive frivolity at times, not quite appropriate to his years, of which, so they say, there was no sign in him before.  It was said that in the past he had been a councillor of some sort, and on one occasion had quite distinguished himself in some commission with which he had been charged.  After knowing him for a whole month, I should never have supposed he could have any special capacity as a councillor. People observed (though I saw nothing of it) that after his fit he developed a marked disposition to rush into matrimony, and it was said that he had more than once reverted to this idea during the last eighteen months, that it was known in society and a subject of interest. But as this weakness by no means fell in with the interests of certain persons of the prince’s circle, the old man was guarded on all sides.  He had not a large family of his own; he had been a widower for twenty years, and had only one daughter, the general’s widow, who was now daily expected from Moscow.  She was a young person whose strength of will was evidently a source of apprehension to the old man.  But he had masses of distant relatives, principally through his wife, who were all almost beggars, besides a multitude of protégés of all sorts, male and female, all of whom expected to be mentioned in his will, and so they all supported the general’s widow in keeping watch over the old man.  He had, moreover, had one strange propensity from his youth up (I don’t know whether it was ridiculous or not) for making matches for poor girls.  He had been finding husbands for the last twenty-five years — for distant relations, for the step-daughters of his wife’s cousins, for his god-daughters; he even found a husband for the daughter of his house porter.  He used to take his protégées into his house when they were little girls, provide them with governesses and French mademoiselles, then have them educated in the best boarding schools, and finally marry them off with a dowry. The calls upon him were continually increasing.  When his protégées were married they naturally produced more little girls and all these little girls became his protégées.  He was always having to stand as god-father.  The whole lot turned up to congratulate him on his birthdays, and it was all very agreeable to him.

I noticed at once that the old man had lurking in his mind a painful conviction (it was impossible to avoid noticing it, indeed) that every one had begun to look at him strangely, that every one had begun to behave to him not as before, not as to a healthy man.  This impression never left him even at the liveliest social functions.  The old man had become suspicious, had begun to detect something in every one’s eyes.  He was evidently tormented by the idea that every one suspected him of being mad.  He sometimes looked mistrustfully even at me.  And if he had found out that some one was spreading or upholding such rumours, the benevolent old man would have become his implacable foe.  I beg that this circumstance may be noted.  I may add that it was what decided me from the first day not to be rude to him; in fact, I was glad if I were able sometimes to amuse or entertain him; I don’t think that this confession can cast any slur on my dignity.

The greater part of his money was invested.  He had since his illness become a partner in a large joint stock enterprise, a very safe one, however.  And though the management was in other hands he took a great interest in it, too, attended the shareholders’ meetings, was appointed a director, presided at the board-meetings, opposed motions, was noisy and obviously enjoyed himself.  He was very fond of making speeches: every one could judge of his brain anyway.  And in general he developed a great fancy for introducing profound reflections and bon mots in his conversation, even in the intimacy of private life.  I quite understand it.

On the ground floor of his house there was something like a private office where a single clerk kept the books and accounts and also managed the house.  This clerk was quite equal to the work alone, though he had some government job as well, but by the prince’s own wish I was engaged to assist him; but I was immediately transferred to the prince’s study, and often had no work before me, not even books or papers to keep up appearances.  I am writing now sobered by time; and about many things feel now almost like an outsider; but how can I describe the depression (I recall it vividly at this moment) that weighed down my heart in those days, and still more, the excitement which reached such a pitch of confused feverishness that I did not sleep at night — all due to my impatience, to the riddles I had set myself to solve.

2

To ask for money, even a salary, is a most disgusting business, especially if one feels in the recesses of one’s conscience that one has not quite earned it.  Yet the evening before, my mother had been whispering to my sister apart from Versilov (“so as not to worry Andrey Petrovitch”) that she intended to take the ikon which for some reason was particularly precious to her to the pawnbroker’s.  I was to be paid fifty roubles a month, but I had no idea how I should receive the money; nothing had been said to me about it.

Meeting the clerk downstairs three days before, I inquired of him whom one was to ask for one’s salary.  He looked at me with a smile as though of astonishment (he did not like me).

“Oh, you get a salary?”

I thought that on my answering he would add:

“What for?”

But he merely answered drily, that he “knew nothing about it,” and buried himself in the ruled exercise book into which he was copying accounts from some bills.

He was not unaware, however, that I did something.  A fortnight before I had spent four days over work he had given me, making a fair copy, and as it turned out, almost a fresh draft of something.  It was a perfect avalanche of “ideas” of the prince’s which he was preparing to present to the board of directors.  These had to be put together into a whole and clothed in suitable language.  I spent a whole day with the prince over it afterwards, and he argued very warmly with me, but was well satisfied in the end.  But I don’t know whether he read the paper or not.  I say nothing of the two or three letters, also about business, which I wrote at his request.

It was annoying to me to have to ask for my salary because I had already decided to give up my situation, foreseeing that I should be obliged through unavoidable circumstances to go away.  When I waked up and dressed that morning in my garret upstairs, I felt that my heart was beating, and though I pooh-poohed it, yet I was conscious of the same excitement as I walked towards the prince’s house.  That morning there was expected a woman, whose presence I was reckoning upon for the explanation of all that was tormenting me!  This was the prince’s daughter, the young widow of General Ahmakov, of whom I have spoken already and who was bitterly hostile to Versilov.  At last I have written that name!  I had never seen her, of course, and could not imagine how I should speak to her or whether I should speak, but I imagined (perhaps on sufficient grounds) that with her arrival there would be some light thrown on the darkness surrounding Versilov in my eyes.  I could not remain unmoved.  It was frightfully annoying that at the very outset I should be so cowardly and awkward; it was awfully interesting, and, still more, sickening — three impressions at once.  I remember every detail of that day!

My old prince knew nothing of his daughter’s probable arrival, and was not expecting her to return from Moscow for a week.  I had learnt this the evening before quite by chance: Tatyana Pavlovna, who had received a letter from Mme. Ahmakov, let it out to my mother.  Though they were whispering and spoke in veiled allusions, I guessed what was meant.  Of course I was not eavesdropping, I simply could not avoid listening when I saw how agitated my mother was at the news of this woman’s arrival.  Versilov was not in the house.

I did not want to tell the old prince because I could not help noticing all that time how he was dreading her arrival.  He had even let drop three days before, though only by a timid and remote hint, that he was afraid of her coming on my account; that is that he would have trouble about me.  I must add, however, that in his own family he preserved his independence and was still master in his own house, especially in money matters.  My first judgment of him was that he was a regular old woman, but I was afterwards obliged to revise my opinion, and to recognize that, if he were an old woman, there was still a fund of obstinacy, if not of real manliness, in him.  There were moments when one could hardly do anything with him in spite of his apprehensive and yielding character.  Versilov explained this to me more fully later.  I recall now with interest that the old prince and I scarcely ever spoke of his daughter, we seemed to avoid it: I in particular avoided it, while he, on his side, avoided mentioning Versilov, and I guessed that he would not answer if I were to ask him one of the delicate questions which interested me so much.

If anyone cares to know what we did talk about all that month I must answer that we really talked of everything in the world, but always of the queerest things.  I was delighted with the extraordinary simplicity with which he treated me.  Sometimes I looked with extreme astonishment at the old man and wondered how he could ever have presided at meetings.  If he had been put into our school and in the fourth class too, what a nice schoolfellow he would have made.  More than once, too, I was surprised by his face; it was very serious-looking, almost handsome and thin; he had thick curly grey hair, wide-open eyes; and he was besides slim and well built; but there was an unpleasant, almost unseemly, peculiarity about his face, it would suddenly change from excessive gravity to an expression of exaggerated playfulness, which was a complete surprise to a person who saw him for the first time.  I spoke of this to Versilov, who listened with curiosity; I fancy that he had not expected me to be capable of making such observations; he observed casually that this had come upon the prince since his illness and probably only of late.

We used to talk principally of two abstract subjects — of God and of His existence, that is, whether there was a God or not — and of women.  The prince was very religious and sentimental.  He had in his study a huge stand of ikons with a lamp burning before them.  But something seemed to come over him — and he would begin expressing doubts of the existence of God and would say astounding things, obviously challenging me to answer.  I was not much interested in the question, speaking generally, but we both got very hot about it and quite genuinely.  I recall all those conversations even now with pleasure.  But what he liked best was gossiping about women, and he was sometimes positively disappointed at my disliking this subject of conversation, and making such a poor response to it.

He began talking in that style as soon as I went in that morning.  I found him in a jocose mood, though I had left him the night before extremely melancholy.  Meanwhile it was absolutely necessary for me to settle the matter of the salary — before the arrival of certain persons.  I reckoned that that morning we should certainly be interrupted (it was not for nothing my heart was beating) and then perhaps I should not be able to bring myself to speak of money.  But I did not know how to begin about money and I was naturally angry at my stupidity.  And, as I remember now in my vexation at some too jocular question of his, I blurted out my views on women point-blank and with great vigour.