The Adolescent (16 page)

“Impossible, Tatyana Pavlovna,” Versilov answered her imposingly. “Arkady obviously has something in mind, and therefore we absolutely must allow him to finish. Well, and let him! He’ll tell it and get it off his chest, and for him the main thing is to get it off his chest. Begin your new story, my dear—that is, I’m only calling it new; don’t worry, I know the ending.”

IV

“I RAN AWAY, that is, I wanted to run away to you, very simply. Tatyana Pavlovna, you remember how Touchard wrote you a letter two weeks after I was installed there, don’t you? Marya Ivanovna showed me the letter later, it also wound up among the late Andronikov’s papers. Touchard suddenly thought he had asked too little money, and in his letter announced to you ‘with dignity’ that, in his institution, princes and senators’ children were educated, and that he considered it beneath his institution to keep a pupil with such an origin as mine, unless he was paid extra.”

“
Mon cher
, you might . . .”

“Oh, never mind, never mind,” I interrupted, “I’ll tell only a little about Touchard. You replied to him from the provinces, Tatyana Pavlovna, two weeks later, and sharply refused. I remember him then, all purple, coming into our classroom. He was a very short and very stocky little Frenchman of about forty-five, and indeed of Parisian origin, from cobblers, of course, but from time immemorial he had held a government post in Moscow as a teacher of French, and even had some rank, which he was extremely proud of—a profoundly uneducated man. We, his pupils, were only six in number; among us there was indeed some nephew of a Moscow senator, and we all lived there in a completely family situation, more under the supervision of his wife, a very affected lady, the daughter of some Russian official. During those two weeks I put on airs terribly in front of my comrades, boasting of my dark blue frock coat and my papa, Andrei Petrovich, and their questions—why was I Dolgoruky and not Versilov—didn’t embarrass me in the least, precisely because I didn’t know why myself.”

“Andrei Petrovich!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna in an almost threatening voice. My mother, on the contrary, could not tear her eyes from me, and obviously wanted me to continue.

“
Ce Touchard
. . . indeed, I recall him now, was small and fidgety,” Versilov said through his teeth, “but he was recommended to me then from the best side . . .”

“
Ce Touchard
came in holding the letter, went over to our big oak table, at which all six of us were grinding away at something, seized me firmly by the shoulder, raised me from my chair, and told me to pick up my notebooks.

“‘Your place is not here, but there.’ He pointed to a tiny room to the left of the front hall, in which stood a simple table, a wicker chair, and an oilcloth sofa—exactly as I have now in my little room upstairs. I went there with astonishment and greatly intimidated; never before had I been treated rudely. Half an hour later, when Touchard left the classroom, I began exchanging glances and laughter with my comrades; they, of course, were laughing at me, but I didn’t guess that and thought we were laughing because we were having fun. Here Touchard fell on me all at once, seized me by the forelock, and started pulling.

“‘You dare not sit together with noble children, you’re of mean origin and the same as a lackey!’

“And he hit me painfully on my plump red cheek. He liked that at once and hit me a second and a third time. I wept and sobbed, I was terribly astonished. For a whole hour I sat, covering my face with my hands, and wept and wept. Something had taken place that I could in no way understand. I don’t understand how someone like Touchard, a foreigner, who was not a wicked man, who even rejoiced at the emancipation of the Russian peasants, could beat such a stupid child as I. However, I was only astonished, not insulted; I was still unable to be insulted. It seemed to me that I had done some mischief, but when I improved, I’d be forgiven, and we’d all suddenly become merry again, go and play in the yard, and have the best possible life.”

“My friend, if I’d only known . . .” Versilov drawled with the careless smile of a somewhat weary man. “What a scoundrel this Touchard was, though! However, I still haven’t lost hope that you’ll somehow gather your strength and finally forgive us for it all, and again we’ll have the best possible life.”

He decidedly yawned.

“But I’m not accusing anybody, not at all, and, believe me, I’m not complaining about Touchard!” I cried, somewhat thrown off. “And he beat me only for two months or so. I remember I kept wanting to disarm him in some way, rushed to kiss his hands, and kissed them and kept weeping and weeping. My comrades laughed at me and despised me, because Touchard started using me as a servant, ordered me to hold his clothes while he dressed. Here my lackey character was instinctively of use to me. I tried as hard as I could to cater to him, and wasn’t insulted in the least, because I understood none of it yet, and I’m even astonished to this day that I was so stupid then as not to understand how unequal I was to them all. True, my comrades had already explained a lot to me—it was a good schooling. Touchard ended by preferring to kick me from behind with his knee, rather than slap my face; and six months later he even began to be gentle with me at times; only now and then, but once a month for certain, he would give me a beating, so that I wouldn’t forget myself. Soon I was also seated together with the other children and allowed to play with them, but not once in two and a half years did Touchard forget the difference in our social position, and he still went on using me as a servant, though not too much—I think precisely as a reminder to me.

“As for my running away, that is, my wanting to run away, that was five months after those first two months. And generally all my life I’ve been slow to make decisions. When I went to bed and covered myself with the blanket, I at once began dreaming of you, Andrei Petrovich, of you alone; I don’t know at all why it worked out that way. I even saw you in my sleep. Above all, I dreamed passionately that you would suddenly walk in, and I’d rush to you, and you would take me out of that place and bring me to your house, to that study, and we’d go to the theater again, well, and so on. Above all, we wouldn’t part—that was above all! And when I had to wake up in the morning, then suddenly the boys’ mockery and scorn would begin. One of them would begin straight off by beating me and making me bring him his boots; he would abuse me in the nastiest terms, especially trying to explain my origin to me, to the delight of all the listeners. And when Touchard himself suddenly appeared, something unbearable started in my soul. I felt that I’d never be forgiven here—oh, I was gradually beginning to understand precisely what would not be forgiven and precisely where my fault lay! And so I finally resolved to run away. I dreamed of it terribly for a whole two months, and finally decided; it was September then. I waited till all my comrades went away for the weekend, and meanwhile, on the sly, I carefully tied myself up a little bundle of the most necessary things. I had two roubles. I was going to wait till it got dark. ‘I’ll creep down the stairs,’ I thought, ‘and go out, and then go on.’ Where? I knew that Andronikov had already been transferred to Petersburg, so I decided to find Mme. Fanariotov’s house on the Arbat. ‘I’ll spend the night walking or sitting somewhere, and in the morning I’ll ask somebody in the courtyard: where is Andrei Petrovich now, and if not in Moscow, then in what city or country? They’ll surely tell me, I’ll leave, and then in another place somewhere I’ll ask somebody which gate to take in order to go to such and such city, and so I’ll go out, and go on, go on. I’ll keep on going; I’ll spend the nights somewhere under the bushes, and I’ll eat nothing but bread, and for two roubles I’ll have enough bread for a very long time.’ On Saturday, however, I didn’t manage to run away; I had to wait for the next day, Sunday, and, as if on purpose, Touchard and his wife went somewhere on Sunday; Agafya and I were the only ones left in the whole house. I waited for night in terrible anguish, I remember, sitting in our classroom by the window and looking at the dusty street with its little wooden houses and the rare passersby. Touchard lived on the outskirts, and the city gate could be seen from the windows: is that the one? I kept imagining. The setting sun was so red, the sky was so cold, and a sharp wind, just like today, blew the sand about. It finally became completely dark. I stood in front of an icon and began to pray, only quickly, quickly, I was in a hurry; I seized my little bundle and tiptoed down the creaky stairs, terribly afraid that Agafya would hear me from the kitchen. The door was locked, I opened it, and suddenly—dark, dark night stood black before me like an endless and dangerous unknown, and the wind tore at my visored cap. I went out; from across the pavement came the hoarse, drunken bellowing of an abusive passerby; I stood, looked, and quietly turned back, quietly went upstairs, quietly undressed, put down my bundle, and lay facedown, without tears and without thoughts, and it was from that very moment, Andrei Petrovich, that I began to think! From that very moment, when I realized that, besides being a lackey, I was also a coward, my real and correct development began!”

“And at this very moment I see through you once and for all!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly jumped up from her place, and even so unexpectedly that I was quite unprepared for it. “Not only were you a lackey then, you’re a lackey now, you have a lackey soul! What would it have cost Andrei Petrovich to send you to be a cobbler? He’d even have done a good deed, teaching you a craft! Who would ask or demand that he do any more for you? Your father, Makar Ivanych, did not so much ask as almost demand that you, his children, not be taken from the lower estates. No, you don’t appreciate that he got you as far as the university, and that through him you acquired rights.
⁴¹
The boys teased him, you see, and so he swore to take revenge on mankind . . . Scum that you are!”

I confess, I was astounded by this outburst. I stood up and stared for some time, not knowing what to say.

“Why, Tatyana Pavlovna has indeed told me something new,” I finally turned firmly to Versilov. “I’m indeed so much of a lackey that I can in no way be satisfied merely with the fact that Versilov did not send me to be a cobbler; even ‘rights’ didn’t appease me, but give me, say, the whole of Versilov, give me my father . . . that’s what I was demanding—am I not a lackey? Mama, it has been on my conscience for eight years, how you came alone to Touchard’s to visit me, and how I received you then, but there’s no time for that now, Tatyana Pavlovna won’t let me tell it. Till tomorrow, mama, maybe you and I can still see each other. Tatyana Pavlovna! Well, what if I’m once again a lackey to such a degree that I cannot even allow a man whose wife is still living to marry yet another wife? And that’s nearly what happened with Andrei Petrovich in Ems! Mama, if you don’t want to stay with a husband who might marry another woman tomorrow, remember that you have a son, who promises to be a respectful son forever—remember, and let’s go, only with the understanding that it’s ‘either him or me.’ Do you want to? I’m not asking for an answer now; I know it’s impossible to answer such questions straight off . . .”

But I couldn’t finish, first of all, because I became excited and confused. My mother turned all pale and her voice seemed to fail her: she couldn’t utter a word. Tatyana Pavlovna was saying a lot and very loudly, so that I couldn’t even make it out, and twice she shoved me on the shoulder with her fist. I only remember her shouting that my words were “affected, fostered in a petty soul, dug out with a finger.” Versilov sat motionless and very serious, not smiling. I went to my room upstairs. The last look to accompany me out of the room was my sister’s look of reproach; she sternly shook her head behind me.

I

I’M DESCRIBING ALL these scenes without sparing myself, in order to recall it all clearly and restore the impression. Going upstairs to my room, I had absolutely no idea whether I should be ashamed of myself or triumphant, like someone who has done his duty. If I had been a bit more experienced, I would have guessed that the least doubt in such a matter should be interpreted for the worse. But I was thrown off by another circumstance: I don’t understand what I was glad about, but I was terribly glad, in spite of my doubts and the clear awareness that I had flunked it downstairs. Even the fact that Tatyana Pavlovna had abused me so spitefully struck me as only ridiculous and amusing, but didn’t anger me at all. Probably that was all because I had broken the chain anyway and for the first time felt myself free.

I also felt that I had harmed my situation: still greater darkness surrounded the question of how I should now act with the letter about the inheritance. They would now decidedly take it as a wish to be revenged on Versilov. But while still downstairs, during all those debates, I had resolved to submit the matter of the letter about the inheritance to arbitration, and to appeal to Vasin as arbiter, and, failing Vasin, to yet another person, I already knew whom. Once, this time only, I’ll go to Vasin, I thought to myself, and then—disappear from them all for a long time, for several months, and I’ll even especially disappear from Vasin; only maybe I’ll see my mother and sister every once in a while. All this was disorderly; I felt I had done something, though not in the right way, and—and I was pleased; I repeat, all the same I was glad of something.

I had decided to go to bed early, foreseeing a lot of running around the next day. Besides renting an apartment and moving, I took a few other decisions which I resolved to carry out in one way or another. But the evening was not to end without its curiosity, and Versilov did manage to astonish me greatly. He had decidedly never come up to my little room, and suddenly, I hadn’t been there an hour when I heard his footsteps on the little stairs: he called me to light his way. I brought a candle and, reaching out my hand, which he seized, helped him to drag himself up.

“
Merci
, friend, I never once crept up here, not even when I was renting the apartment. I sensed it was something like this, but all the same I never supposed it was quite such a kennel,” he stood in the middle of my room, looking around with curiosity. “Why, it’s a coffin, a perfect coffin!”

Indeed, it had a certain resemblance to the inside of a coffin, and I even marveled at how correctly he had defined it with a single word. It was a long and narrow closet; at the height of my shoulder, not more, the angle between the wall and the roof began, the top of which I could touch with my palm. For the first minute, Versilov instinctively stooped, for fear of bumping his head on the ceiling, though he didn’t and ended by sitting down quite calmly on my sofa, where my bed was already made up. As for me, I did not sit down and looked at him in deep astonishment.

“Your mother tells me she didn’t know if she should take the money you offered her today for your monthly upkeep. In view of this coffin, not only should the money not be taken, but, on the contrary, a deduction should be made from us in your favor! I’ve never been here and . . . can’t imagine that it’s possible to live here.”

“I’m used to it. But what I can’t get used to is seeing you here after all that went on downstairs.”

“Oh, yes, you were considerably rude downstairs, but . . . I also have my particular goals, which I’ll explain to you, though, anyhow, there’s nothing extraordinary in my visit. Even what took place downstairs is also perfectly in the order of things. But explain this to me, for Christ’s sake: what you told us there, downstairs, and which you prepared for us and set about so solemnly—can that be all you intended to reveal or tell? Was there nothing else?”

“That was all. That is, let’s say it was all.”

“A bit lacking, my friend; I confess, judging by the way you set about it, and how you invited us to laugh—in short, seeing how anxious you were to tell it, I expected more.”

“But isn’t it all the same to you?”

“I’m concerned, essentially, with the sense of measure: it wasn’t worth such noise, and so the measure was upset. For a whole month you were silent, making ready, and suddenly—nothing!”

“I wanted to go on longer, but I’m ashamed that I told even that much. Not everything can be told in words, certain things it’s better never to tell. I did tell enough, though, but you didn’t understand me.”

“Ah! so you, too, suffer sometimes because a thought won’t go into words! It’s a noble suffering, my friend, and granted only to the chosen; a fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides, he always says more than he needs to; they like extras.”

“As I did downstairs, for instance. I also said more than I needed to; I demanded ‘the whole of Versilov,’ which is much more than I need. I don’t need any Versilov at all.”

“My friend, I see you want to make up for what you lost downstairs. You’re obviously repentant, and since with us to repent means immediately to fall upon someone again, you don’t want to miss the mark with me a second time. I came early, you haven’t cooled off yet, and, besides, you have difficulty putting up with criticism. But sit down, for God’s sake, I’ve come to tell you something; that’s right, thank you. From what you said to your mother downstairs, on your way out, it’s only too clear that it will be better, even in any case, if we live separately. I’ve come in order to persuade you to do it as softly as possible and without a scandal, so as not to upset or frighten your mother still more. Even the fact that I’ve come here myself has already cheered her up; she somehow believes that we’ll still manage to be reconciled, well, and everything will go as before. I think if you and I laughed loudly now once or twice, we’d fill their timid hearts with delight. They may be simple hearts, but they are sincerely and artlessly loving, why shouldn’t we pamper them on occasion? Well, that’s one thing. Second: why should we necessarily part still with a thirst for vengeance, with a grinding of teeth, with curses, and so on? Without any doubt, it won’t do at all for us to go hanging on each other’s necks, but we can part, so to speak, with mutual respect, isn’t that true, eh?”

“That’s all nonsense! I promise I’ll move out without a scandal—and enough. Are you going to this trouble because of my mother? Yet to me it seems that my mother’s peace makes decidedly no difference to you, and you’re only saying it.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You speak to me decidedly as to a child!”

“My friend, I’m ready to ask your forgiveness for it a thousand times, and for all you’ve laid to my account, for all those years of your childhood and so on, but,
cher enfant
, what will come of it? You’re intelligent enough not to want to wind up in such a stupid position. I say nothing of the fact that even up to this moment I quite fail to understand the character of your reproaches: indeed, what is it, essentially, that you blame me for? That you weren’t born a Versilov? Or what? Bah! you laugh scornfully and wave your arms—does that mean no?”

“Believe me, no. Believe me, I find no honor in being named Versilov.”

“Let’s leave honor out of it; besides, your answer was bound to be democratic. But if so, what do you blame me for?”

“Tatyana Pavlovna just said everything I needed to know and never could understand before: that you didn’t send me to be a cobbler, consequently I should be grateful. I fail to understand why I’m not grateful even now, when I’ve been brought to reason. Or is it your proud blood speaking, Andrei Petrovich?”

“Probably not. And, besides, you must agree that all your outbursts downstairs, instead of falling on me, as you meant, only tyrannized and tormented her. Yet it seems it’s not for you to judge her. And how is she guilty before you? Explain to me also, by the way, my friend: why was it and with what purpose that you spread it around in school, and in high school, and all your life, and in front of every first comer, as I’ve heard, that you are illegitimate? I’ve heard that you did it with a sort of special eagerness. And yet it’s all nonsense and vile slander: you are legitimate, a Dolgoruky, the son of Makar Ivanych Dolgoruky, a respectable man, remarkable for his intelligence and character. And if you have received higher education, that is in fact owing to your former master, Versilov, but what of it? Above all, by proclaiming your illegitimacy, which in itself is a slander, you thereby revealed your mother’s secret and, out of some sort of false pride, dragged your mother to judgment before the first scum to come along. My friend, that is very ignoble, the more so as your mother is not personally guilty of anything: hers is the purest character, and if she is not Mrs. Versilov, it is solely because she is still married.”

“Enough, I agree with you completely, and I believe so much in your intelligence that I fully hope you will stop this already too-lengthy scolding of me. You have such a love of measure; and yet everything has its measure, even your sudden love of my mother. This will be better: since you’ve ventured to come to me and sit here for a quarter or half an hour (I still don’t know what for; well, let’s suppose it’s for my mother’s peace of mind)—and, moreover, you talk to me with such eagerness, in spite of what happened downstairs, it would be better if you told me about my father—this Makar Ivanovich, the wanderer.
⁴²
I’d like to hear about him precisely from you; I’ve long meant to ask you. Since we’re parting, and maybe for a long time, I’d also like very much to get an answer from you to this question: how is it possible that in this whole twenty years you could have no effect on my mother’s prejudices, and now also my sister’s, enough to dispel with your civilizing influence the surrounding darkness of her original milieu? Oh, I’m not talking about her purity! Even without that she has always been infinitely superior to you morally, forgive me, but . . . this is merely an infinitely superior corpse. Only Versilov lives, and all the rest around him, and everything connected with him, vegetates under the unfailing condition that it has the honor of nourishing him with its forces, its living juices. But wasn’t she alive once? Wasn’t there something you loved in her? Wasn’t she a woman once?”

“My friend, if you like, she never was,” he answered me, twisting at once into that former manner he had had with me, which I remembered so well, and which infuriated me so much; that is, he was apparently the most sincere simpleheartedness, but look—and everything in him was just the deepest mockery, so that sometimes I couldn’t figure out his face at all, “she never was! A Russian woman can never be a woman.”

“And a Polish woman, a French woman, can be? Or an Italian, a passionate Italian woman, there’s what’s capable of captivating a civilized Russian man of a higher milieu like Versilov?”

“Well, who would have expected to run into a Slavophile?”
⁴³
Versilov laughed.

I remember his story word for word; he even began talking with great eagerness and obvious pleasure. It was all too clear to me that he had by no means come to me for a chat, and not at all so as to calm my mother, but probably with other goals in mind.

II

“ALL THESE TWENTY years, your mother and I have lived in complete silence,” he began his palaver (affected and unnatural in the highest degree), “and all that has been between us has taken place in silence. The main quality of our twenty-year-long liaison has been—speechlessness. I don’t think we even quarreled once. True, I often went away and left her alone, but in the end I always came back.
Nous revenons toujours
,
²²
that’s a fundamental quality of men; it’s owing to their magnanimity. If the matter of marriage depended on women alone, no marriage would stay together. Humility, meekness, lowliness, and at the same time firmness, strength, real strength—that is your mother’s character. Note that she’s the best of all the women I’ve met in the world. And that there is strength in her—that I can testify to; I’ve seen how that strength nourishes her. Where it’s a matter, I wouldn’t say of convictions, there can be no proper convictions here, but of what they consider convictions, which, to their minds, also means sacred, there even torture would be to no avail. Well, but you can judge for yourself: do I look like a torturer? That’s why I preferred to be silent about almost everything, not only because it’s easier, and, I confess, I don’t regret it. In this way everything went over by itself, broadly and humanely, so that I don’t even ascribe to myself any praise for it. I’ll say, by the way, in parenthesis, that for some reason I suspect she never believed in my humaneness, and therefore always trembled; but while trembling, at the same time she never yielded to any culture. They somehow know how to do it, and there’s something here that we don’t understand, and generally they know better than we how to manage their own affairs. They can go on living in their own way in situations that are most unnatural for them, and remain completely themselves in situations that are most not their own. We can’t do that.”

“They who? I don’t quite understand you.”

“The people, my friend, I’m speaking of the people. They have demonstrated this great, vital force and historical breadth both morally and politically. But to return to what we were saying, I’ll observe about your mother that she’s not always silent; your mother occasionally says things, but says them in such a way that you see straight off that you’ve only wasted your time talking, even if you’ve spent five years beforehand gradually preparing her. Besides, her objections are quite unexpected. Note once again that I don’t consider her a fool at all; on the contrary, there’s a certain kind of intelligence here, and even a most remarkable intelligence; however, maybe you won’t believe me about her intelligence . . .”

“Why not? I only don’t believe that you really believe in her intelligence yourself, and are not pretending.”

“Oh? You consider me such a chameleon? My friend, I allow you a bit too much . . . as a spoiled son . . . but let it remain so for this time.”

“Tell me about my father—the truth, if you can.”

“Concerning Makar Ivanovich? Makar Ivanovich is, as you already know, a household serf, who had, so to speak, a desire for a certain glory . . .”

“I’ll bet that at this moment you envy him for something!”

“On the contrary, my friend, on the contrary, and, if you wish, I’m very glad to see you in such whimsical spirits; I swear that precisely now I am in a highly repentant humor, and precisely now, at this moment, and maybe for the thousandth time, I impotently regret all that happened twenty years ago. Besides, as God is my witness, it all happened quite inadvertently . . . well, and afterwards, as far as it was in my power, also humanely; at least so far as I then understood the endeavor of humaneness. Oh, we were all boiling over then with the zeal to do good, to serve civic goals, high ideas; we condemned ranks, our inherited rights, estates, and even moneylenders, at least some of us did . . . I swear to you. We weren’t many, but we spoke well and, I assure you, we sometimes even acted well.”

“That was when you wept on his shoulder?”

“My friend, I agree with you in everything beforehand; by the way, you heard about the shoulder from me, which means that at this moment you are making wicked use of my own simpleheartedness and trustfulness; but you must agree that that shoulder really wasn’t as bad as it seems at first sight, especially for that time; we were only beginning then. I was faking, of course, but I didn’t know I was faking. Don’t you ever fake, for instance, in practical cases?”

“Just now, downstairs, I waxed a little sentimental, and felt very ashamed, as I was coming up here, at the thought that you might think I was faking. It’s true that on some occasions, though your feelings are sincere, you sometimes pretend; but downstairs just now it was all natural.”

“That’s precisely it; you’ve defined it very happily in a single phrase: ‘though your feelings are sincere, all the same you pretend.’ Well, that’s exactly how it was with me: though I was pretending, I wept quite sincerely. I won’t dispute that Makar Ivanovich might have taken that shoulder as an added mockery, if he had been more clever; but his honesty then stood in the way of his perspicacity. Only I don’t know whether he pitied me then or not; I remember I very much wanted that.”

“You know,” I interrupted him, “you’re mocking now, too, as you say that. And generally all the time, whenever you spoke to me during this whole month, you did it mockingly. Why did you always do that when you spoke to me?”

“You think so?” he replied meekly. “You’re very suspicious. However, if I do laugh, it’s not at you, or at least not at you alone, rest assured. But I’m not laughing now, and back then—in short, I did all I could then, and, believe me, not for my own benefit. We, that is, the beautiful people, as opposed to the common folk, did not know at all how to act for our own benefit then; on the contrary, we always mucked things up for ourselves as much as possible, and I confess, among us then we considered that some sort of ‘higher benefit of our own’—in a higher sense, naturally. The present generation of advanced people is much more grasping than we were. At that time, even before the sin, I explained everything to Makar Ivanovich with extraordinary directness. I now agree that much of it didn’t need to be explained at all, still less with such directness; to say nothing of humaneness, it would simply have been more polite. But try restraining yourself when you’re dancing away, and want to perform a nice little step! And maybe such are the demands of the beautiful and the lofty
⁴⁴
in reality, all my life I’ve been unable to resolve that. However, it’s too profound a theme for our superficial conversation, but I swear to you that I sometimes die of shame when I remember it. I offered him three thousand roubles then, and, I remember, he said nothing, I alone did the talking. Imagine, I fancied he was afraid of me, that is, of my serf-owning rights, and, I remember, I tried as hard as I could to encourage him; I persuaded him not to be afraid of anything and to voice all his wishes, and even with all possible criticism. As a guarantee, I gave him my word that if he didn’t accept my conditions, that is, the three thousand, freedom (for him and his wife, naturally), and that he should go off on a journey any which way (without his wife, naturally)—he should tell me so directly, and I would at once grant him his freedom, let him have his wife, reward them both with the same three thousand, I believe, and it would not be they who would go off any which way, but I myself would go away to Italy for three years, all alone.
Mon ami
, I wouldn’t have taken Mlle. Sapozhkov to Italy, I assure you; I was extremely pure at that time. And what then? This Makar understood excellently well that I would do just what I said; but he went on saying nothing, and only when I was about to fall down before him a third time, he drew back, waved his arm, and went out even somewhat unceremoniously, I assure you, which even surprised me then. I saw myself for a moment in the mirror then, and cannot forget it. In general, when they don’t say anything, it’s worst of all, and he was a gloomy character, and, I confess, not only did I not trust him, when I summoned him to my study, but I was even terribly afraid: there are characters in that milieu, and terribly many of them, who contain in themselves, so to speak, the incarnation of unrespectability, and that is something one fears more than a beating. Sic. And what a risk, what a risk I took! What if he had shouted for the whole yard to hear, howled, this provincial Uriah
⁴⁵
—well, how would it have been then for me, an undersized David, and what could I have done? That was why I resorted to the three thousand first, it was instinctive, but, fortunately, I was mistaken; this Makar Ivanovich was something quite different . . .”

“Tell me, was there a sin? You said you sent for the husband even before the sin?”

“That depends, you see, on how you understand . . .”

“Meaning there was. You just said you were mistaken about him, that he was something different. What was different?”

“Precisely what, I don’t know even now. But it was something else, and, you know, even quite respectable; I conclude that because by the end I felt three times more ashamed in his presence. The very next day he agreed to go on a journey, without a word—naturally, not forgetting any of the rewards I had offered.”

“He took the money?”

“What else! You know, my friend, on this point he even quite surprised me. Naturally, I didn’t happen to have three thousand in my pocket at the time, but I got hold of seven hundred roubles and handed them to him to start with. And what then? He requested the remaining two thousand three hundred from me, just to be sure, in the form of a promissory note in the name of some merchant. Two years later he used this letter to request the money from me through the court, and with interest, so that he surprised me again, the more so as he literally went about collecting money for building a church of God, and since then he’s been wandering for twenty years. I don’t understand why a wanderer needs so much money for himself . . . money’s such a worldly thing . . . At that moment, of course, I offered it sincerely and, so to speak, with an initial fervor, but later, when so much time had passed, I naturally might have thought better of it . . . and I hoped he would at least spare me . . . or, so to speak, spare
us
, her and me, would at least wait. However, he didn’t even wait . . .”

(I’ll make a necessary
nota bene
here: if my mother should happen to outlive Mr. Versilov, she would be left literally without a kopeck in her old age, if it weren’t for that three thousand of Makar Ivanovich’s, which had long been doubled by interest, and which he left to her in its entirety, to a rouble, last year in his will. He had divined Versilov even then.)

“You once said that Makar Ivanovich came to visit you several times, and always stayed in my mother’s apartment?”

“Yes, my friend, and I confess, at first I was terribly afraid of those visits. In all this period, in twenty years, he came only six or seven times, and on the first occasions, if I was at home, I hid myself. I didn’t even understand at first what it meant and why he came. But then, owing to certain considerations, it seemed to me that it was not at all that stupid on his part. Then, by chance, I decided out of curiosity to go and look at him, and, I assure you, my impression was most original. This was his third or fourth visit, precisely at the time when I was about to become an arbiter of the peace and when, naturally, I was setting out with all my strength to study Russia. I even heard a great many new things from him. Besides, I met in him precisely what I had never expected to meet: a sort of good humor, an evenness of character, and, most surprisingly, all but mirth. Not the slightest allusion to
that
(
tu comprends
²³
), and, in the highest degree, an ability to talk sense and to talk excellently well, that is, without that stupid homegrown profundity, which, I confess, I cannot stand, despite all my democratism, and without all those strained Russicisms in which ‘real Russian people’ speak in novels or on stage. With all that, extremely little about religion, unless you brought it up yourself, and even quite nice stories of their own sort about monasteries and monastery life, if you yourself became curious. And above all—deference, that modest deference, precisely the deference that is necessary for the highest equality, moreover, without which, in my opinion, one cannot attain to superiority. Precisely here, through the lack of the least arrogance, one attains to the highest respectability, and there appears a person who undoubtedly respects himself, and precisely whatever the situation he finds himself in, and whatever his destiny happens to be. This ability to respect oneself in one’s own situation—is extremely rare in the world, at least as rare as a true sense of one’s own dignity . . . You’ll see for yourself, once you’ve lived. But what struck me most afterwards, precisely afterwards, and not at the beginning” (Versilov added), “was that this Makar was of extremely stately appearance and, I assure you, was extremely handsome. True, he was old, but Dark-faced, tall, and straight,
⁴⁶

simple and grave; I even marveled at how my poor Sofya could have preferred me
then
; he was fifty then, but was still such a fine fellow, and I was such a whirligig beside him. However, I remember he was already unpardonably gray then, which meant he was just as gray when he married her . . . That might have had an influence.”

This Versilov had the most scoundrelly high-toned manner: having said (when it was impossible not to) several quite clever and beautiful things, suddenly to end on purpose with some stupidity like this surmise about Makar Ivanovich’s gray hair and its influence on my mother. He did it on purpose, probably not knowing why himself, from a stupid society habit. To listen to him—it seemed he was speaking very seriously, and yet within himself he was faking or laughing.