Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (567 page)

“Yes, by Jove!  A young person who has lost her fair fame . . . a frequently recurring exception — you follow?”  And he poked me in the chest with his finger.

“Ech, damnation!”  I pushed away his finger.  But he suddenly and quite unexpectedly went off into a low, noiseless, prolonged chuckle of merriment.  Finally he put on his hat and, with a rapid change to an expression of gloom, he observed, frowning:

“The landlady must be informed . . . they must be turned out of the lodgings, to be sure, and without loss of time too, or they’ll be . . . you will see!  Mark my words, you will see!  Yes, by Jove!” he was gleeful again all at once.  “You’ll wait for Grisha, I suppose?”

“No, I shan’t wait,” I answered resolutely.

“Well, it’s all one to me. . . .”

And without adding another syllable he turned, went out, and walked downstairs, without vouchsafing a glance in the landlady’s direction, though she was evidently expecting news and explanations. I, too, took up my hat, and asking the landlady to tell Vassin that I, Dolgoruky, had called, I ran downstairs.

3

I had merely wasted my time.  On coming out I set to work at once to look for lodgings; but I was preoccupied.  I wandered about the streets for several hours, and, though I went into five or six flats with rooms to let, I am sure I passed by twenty without noticing them.  To increase my vexation I found it far more difficult to get a lodging than I had imagined.  Everywhere there were rooms like Vassin’s, or a great deal worse, while the rent was enormous, that is, not what I had reckoned upon.  I asked for nothing more than a “corner” where I could turn round, and I was informed contemptuously that if that was what I wanted, I must go where rooms were let “in corners.”  Moreover, I found everywhere numbers of strange lodgers, in whose proximity I could not have lived; in fact, I would have paid anything not to have to live in their proximity.  There were queer gentlemen in their waistcoats without their coats, who had dishevelled beards, and were inquisitive and free-and-easy in their manners.  In one tiny room there were about a dozen such sitting over cards and beer, and I was offered the next room.  In another place I answered the landlady’s inquiries so absurdly that they looked at me in surprise, and in one flat I actually began quarrelling with the people.  However, I won’t describe these dismal details; I only felt that I was awfully tired.  I had something to eat in a cookshop when it was almost dark.  I finally decided that I would go and give Versilov the letter concerning the will, with no one else present (making no explanation), that I would go upstairs, pack my things in my trunk and bag, and go for the night, if need be, to an hotel.  At the end of the Obuhovsky Prospect, at the Gate of Triumph, I knew there was an inn where one could get a room to oneself for thirty kopecks; I resolved for one night to sacrifice that sum, rather than sleep at Versilov’s.  And as I was passing the Institute of Technology, the notion suddenly struck me to call on Tatyana Pavlovna, who lived just opposite the institute.  My pretext for going in was this same letter about the will, but my overwhelming impulse to go in was due to some other cause, which I cannot to this day explain.  My mind was in a turmoil, brooding over “the baby,” the “exceptions that pass into rules.”  I had a longing to tell some one, or to make a scene, or to fight, or even to have a cry — I can’t tell which, but I went up to Tatyana Pavlovna’s.  I had only been there once before, with some message from my mother, soon after I came from Moscow, and I remember I went in, gave my message, and went out a minute later, without sitting down, and indeed she did not ask me to.

I rang the bell, and the cook at once opened the door to me, and showed me into the room without speaking.  All these details are necessary that the reader may understand how the mad adventure, which had so vast an influence on all that followed, was rendered possible.  And to begin with, as regards the cook.  She was an ill- tempered, snub-nosed Finnish woman, and I believe hated her mistress Tatyana Pavlovna, while the latter, on the contrary, could not bring herself to part with her from a peculiar sort of infatuation, such as old maids sometimes show for damp-nosed pug dogs, or somnolent cats.  The Finnish woman was either spiteful and rude or, after a quarrel, would be silent for weeks together to punish her mistress.  I must have chanced upon one of these dumb days, for even when I asked her, as I remember doing, whether her mistress were at home, she made no answer, but walked off to the kitchen in silence.  Feeling sure after this that Tatyana Pavlovna was at home, I walked into the room, and finding no one there, waited expecting that she would come out of her bedroom before long; otherwise, why should the cook have shown me in?  Without sitting down, I waited two minutes, three; it was dusk and Tatyana Pavlovna’s dark flat seemed even less hospitable from the endless yards of cretonne hanging about.  A couple of words about that horrid little flat, to explain the surroundings of what followed.  With her obstinate and peremptory character, and the tastes she had formed from living in the country in the past, Tatyana Pavlovna could not put up with furnished lodgings, and had taken this parody of a flat simply in order to live apart and be her own mistress.  The two rooms were exactly like two bird-cages, set side by side, one smaller than the other; the flat was on the third storey, and the windows looked into the courtyard.  Coming into the flat, one stepped straight into a tiny passage, a yard and a half wide; on the left, the two afore-mentioned bird-cages, and at the end of the passage the tiny kitchen.  The five hundred cubic feet of air required to last a human being twelve hours were perhaps provided in this room, but hardly more.  The rooms were hideously low- pitched, and, what was stupider than anything, the windows, the doors, the furniture, all were hung or draped with cretonne, good French cretonne, and decorated with festoons; but this made the room twice as dark and more than ever like the inside of a travelling-coach.  In the room where I was waiting it was possible to turn round, though it was cumbered up with furniture, and the furniture, by the way, was not at all bad: there were all sorts of little inlaid tables, with bronze fittings, boxes, an elegant and even sumptuous toilet table.  But the next room, from which I expected her to come in, the bedroom, screened off by a thick curtain, consisted literally of a bedstead, as appeared afterwards.  All these details are necessary to explain the foolishness of which I was guilty.

So I had no doubts and was waiting, when there came a ring at the bell.  I heard the cook cross the little passage with lagging footsteps, and admit the visitors, still in silence, just as she had me.  They were two ladies and both were talking loudly, but what was my amazement when from their voices I recognized one as Tatyana Pavlovna, and the other as the woman I was least prepared to meet now, above all in such circumstances!  I could not be mistaken: I had heard that powerful, mellow, ringing voice the day before, only for three minutes it is true, but it still resounded in my heart.  Yes, it was “yesterday’s woman.”  What was I to do?  I am not asking the reader this question, I am only picturing that moment to myself, and I am utterly unable to imagine even now how it came to pass that I suddenly rushed behind the curtain, and found myself in Tatyana Pavlovna’s bedroom.  In short, I hid myself, and had scarcely time to do so when they walked in.  Why I hid and did not come forward to meet them, I don’t know.  It all happened accidentally and absolutely without premeditation.

After rushing into the bedroom and knocking against the bed, I noticed at once that there was a door leading from the bedroom into the kitchen, and so there was a way out of my horrible position, and I could make my escape but — oh, horror! the door was locked, and there was no key in it.  I sank on the bed in despair; I realized that I should overhear their talk, and from the first sentence, from the first sound of their conversation, I guessed that they were discussing delicate and private matters.  Oh, of course, a straightforward and honourable man should even then have got up, come out, said aloud, “I’m here, stop!” and, in spite of his ridiculous position, walked past them; but I did not get up, and did not come out; I didn’t dare, I was in a most despicable funk.

“My darling Katerina Nikolaevna, you distress me very much,” Tatyana Pavlovna was saying in an imploring voice.  “Set your mind at rest once for all, it’s not like you.  You bring joy with you wherever you go, and now suddenly . . . I suppose you do still believe in me?  Why, you know how devoted I am to you.  As much so as to Andrey Petrovitch, and I make no secret of my undying devotion to him. . . .  But do believe me, I swear on my honour he has no such document in his possession, and perhaps no one else has either; and he is not capable of anything so underhand, it’s wicked of you to suspect him.  This hostility between you two is simply the work of your own imaginations. . . .”

“There is such a document, and he is capable of anything.  And there, as soon as I go in yesterday, the first person I meet is ce petit espion, whom he has foisted on my father.”

“Ach, ce petit espion!  To begin with he is not an espion at all, for it was I, I insisted on his going to the prince, or else he would have gone mad, or died of hunger in Moscow — that was the account they sent us of him; and what’s more, that unmannerly urchin is a perfect little fool, how could he be a spy?”

“Yes, he is a fool, but that does not prevent his being a scoundrel.  If I hadn’t been so angry, I should have died of laughing yesterday: he turned pale, he ran about, made bows and talked French.  And Marie Ivanovna talked of him in Moscow as a genius.  That that unlucky letter is still in existence and is in dangerous hands somewhere, I gathered chiefly from Marie Ivanovna’s face.”

“My beauty! why you say yourself she has nothing!”

“That’s just it, that she has; she does nothing but tell lies, and she is a good hand at it, I can tell you!  Before I went to Moscow, I still had hopes that no papers of any sort were left, but then, then. . . .”

“Oh, it’s quite the contrary, my dear, I am told she is a good- natured and sensible creature; Andronikov thought more of her than of any of his other nieces.  It’s true I don’t know her well — but you should have won her over, my beauty!  It’s no trouble to you to win hearts — why, I’m an old woman, but here I’m quite in love with you already, and can’t resist kissing you. . . .  But it would have been nothing to you to win her heart.”

“I did, Tatyana Pavlovna, I tried; she was enchanted with me, but she’s very sly too. . . .  Yes, she’s a regular type, and a peculiar Moscow type. . . .  And would you believe it, she advised me to apply to a man here called Kraft, who had been Andronikov’s assistant.  ‘Maybe he knows something,’ she said.  I had some idea of what Kraft was like, and in fact, I had a faint recollection of him; but as she talked about Kraft, I suddenly felt certain that it was not that she simply knew nothing but that she knew all about it and was lying.”

“But why, why?  Well, perhaps you might find out from him!  That German, Kraft, isn’t a chatterbox, and I remember him as very honest — you really ought to question him!  Only I fancy he is not in Petersburg now. . . .”

“Oh, he came back yesterday evening, I have just been to see him. . . .  I have come to you in such a state, I’m shaking all over.  I wanted to ask you, Tatyana Pavlovna, my angel, for you know every one, wouldn’t it be possible to find out from his papers, for he must have left papers, to whom they will come now?  They may come into dangerous hands again!  I wanted to ask your advice.”

“But what papers are you talking about?” said Tatyana Pavlovna, not understanding.  “Why, you say you have just been at Kraft’s?”

“Yes, I have been, I have, I have just been there, but he’s shot himself! Yesterday evening.”

I jumped up from the bed.  I was able to sit through being called a spy and an idiot, and the longer the conversation went on the more impossible it seemed to show myself.  It was impossible to contemplate!  I inwardly determined with a sinking heart to stay where I was till Tatyana Pavlovna went to the door with her visitor (if, that is, I were lucky, and she did not before then come to fetch something from the bedroom), and afterwards, when Mme. Ahmakov had gone out, then, if need be, I’d fight it out with Tatyana Pavlovna. . . .  But when, now, suddenly hearing about Kraft, I jumped up from the bed, I shuddered all over.  Without thinking, without reflecting, or realizing what I was doing, I took a step, lifted the curtain, and appeared before the two of them.  It was still light enough for them to see me, pale and trembling. . . . They both cried out, and indeed they well might.

“Kraft?” I muttered, turning to Mme. Ahmakov— “he has shot himself?  Yesterday?  At sunset?”

“Where were you?  Where have you come from?” screamed Tatyana Pavlovna, and she literally clawed my shoulder.  “You’ve been spying?  You have been eavesdropping?”

“What did I tell you just now?” said Katerina Nikolaevna, getting up from the sofa and pointing at me.

I was beside myself.

“It’s a lie, it’s nonsense!” I broke in furiously.  “You called me a spy just now, my God!  You are not worth spying on, life’s not worth living in the same world with such people as you, in fact!  A great-hearted man has killed himself, Kraft has shot himself — for the sake of an idea, for the sake of Hecuba. . . . But how should you know about Hecuba? . . .  And here — one’s to live among your intrigues, to linger in the midst of your lying, your deceptions and underhand plots. . . .  Enough!”

“Slap him in the face!  Slap him in the face!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, and as Katerina Nikolaevna did not move, though she stared fixedly at me (I remember it all minutely), Tatyana Pavlovna would certainly have done so herself without loss of time, so that I instinctively raised my hand to protect my face; and this gesture led her to imagine that I meant to strike her.

“Well, strike me, strike me, show me that you are a low cur from your birth up: you are stronger than women, why stand on ceremony with them!”

“That’s enough of your slander!” I cried.  “I have never raised my hand against a woman!  You are shameless, Tatyana Pavlovna, you’ve always treated me with contempt.  Oh, servants must be treated without respect!  You laugh, Katerina Nikolaevna, at my appearance I suppose; yes, God has not blessed me with the elegance of your young officers.  And, yet I don’t feel humbled before you, on the contrary I feel exalted. . . .  I don’t care how I express myself, only I’m not to blame!  I got here by accident, Tatyana Pavlovna, it’s all the fault of your cook, or rather of your devotion to her: why did she bring me in here without answering my question?  And afterwards to dash out of a woman’s bedroom seemed so monstrous, that I made up my mind not to show myself, but to sit and put up with your insults. . . .  You are laughing again, Katerina Nikolaevna!”