The Adolescent (30 page)

“Impossible?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have a headache,” Liza answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Spit on it, my friend.”

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

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

“Why won’t you, why can’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not stupidly put, but don’t nag.”

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

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

“I already know one.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s now sitting and talking to me.”

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone suddenly laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Whose own? What’s your own?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”

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

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

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

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

“I’m to blame, mama . . .” I began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

I became vexed for some reason.

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

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

“Where to now?”

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

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

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

“And lose someone else’s money.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Besides comradeship . . .”

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

“What considerations? I don’t understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mama . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did she formulate it with?”

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

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

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

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

“And you’ve done wisely, my dear.”

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

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

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

The reader can judge what a frenzy I was in.

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

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

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

“As your heart dictates.”

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

“Let’s suppose there were lapses.”

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

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

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

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

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

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