Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (585 page)

“O-ho, I don’t care, there’s nothing at all you can prove!  You won’t show yourself so wonderfully clever!”

“Keep hold of him, constable, and take us to the police-station,” Versilov decided emphatically.

“Surely we are not going to the police-station?  Bother the fellow!” I whispered to him.

“Certainly we are, dear boy.  The disorderly behaviour in our streets begins to bore one beyond endurance, and if everyone did his duty it would make it better for us all.  C’est comique, mais c’est ce que nous ferons.”

For a hundred paces the lieutenant kept up a bold and swaggering demeanour, and talked with heat; he declared “that it was not the thing to do,” that it was “all a matter of five kopecks,” and so on, and so on.  But at last he began whispering something to the policeman.  The policeman, a sagacious man, with apparently a distaste for exhibitions of “nerves” in the street, seemed to be on his side, though only to a certain degree.  He muttered in an undertone, in reply, that “it was too late for that now,” that “it had gone too far,” and that “if you were to apologize, for instance, and the gentleman would consent to accept your apology, then perhaps. . . .”

“Come li-isten, honoured sir, where are we going?  I ask you what are we hurrying to and what’s the joke of it?” the lieutenant cried aloud: “if a man who is down on his luck is willing to make an apology . . . in fact, if you want to put him down . . . damn it all! we are not in a drawing-room, we are in the street!  For the street, that’s apology enough. . . .”

Versilov stopped, and suddenly burst out laughing; I actually imagined that he had got the whole thing up for amusement, but it was not so.

“I entirely accept your apology, Monsieur l’officier, and I assure you that you are a man of ability.  Behave like that in the drawing-room; it will soon pass muster perfectly there, too, and meanwhile here are twenty kopecks for you; eat and drink your fill with it; pardon me, constable, for troubling you; I would have thanked you more substantially for your pains, but you are so highly respectable nowadays. . . .  My dear boy,” he added turning to me, “there’s an eating house close here, it’s really a horrible sewer, but one could get tea there, and I invite you to a cup . . . this way, quite close, come along.”

I repeat, I had never seen him so excited, though his face was full of brightness and gaiety; yet I noticed that when he was taking the coin out of his purse to give it to the officer, his hands trembled, and his fingers refused to obey him, so that at last he asked me to take out the money, and give it to the man for him; I cannot forget it.

He took me to a little restaurant on the canal side, in the basement.  The customers were few.  A loud barrel-organ was playing out of tune, there was a smell of dirty dinner napkins; we sat down in a corner.

“Perhaps you don’t know.  I am sometimes so bored . . . so horribly bored in my soul . . . that I like coming to all sorts of stinking holes like this.  These surroundings, the halting tune from ‘Lucia,’ the waiters in their unseemly Russian getup, the fumes of cheap tobacco, the shouts from the billiard-room, it’s all so vulgar and prosaic that it almost borders on the fantastic. . . .  Well, my dear boy, that son of Mars interrupted us, I believe, at the most interesting moment. . . .  Here’s the tea; I like the tea here. . . .  Imagine Pyotr Ippolitovitch suddenly began to-day assuring the other lodger, the one marked with small-pox, that during the last century a special committee of lawyers was appointed in the English parliament to examine the trial of Christ before the High Priest and Pilate, with the sole object of finding how the case would have gone nowadays by modern law, and that the inquiry was conducted with all solemnity, with counsel for the prosecution and all the rest of it. . . .  And that the jury were obliged to uphold the original verdict. . . .  A wonderful story!  That fool of a lodger began to argue about it, lost his temper, quarrelled and declared he should leave next day. . . .  The landlady dissolved in tears at the thought of losing his rent . . .  Mais passons.  In these restaurants they sometimes have nightingales.  Do you know the old Moscow anecdote à la Pyotr Ippolitovitch?  A nightingale was singing in a Moscow restaurant, a merchant came in; ‘I must have my fancy, whatever it costs, said he, ‘what’s the price of the nightingale?’  ‘A hundred roubles.’  ‘Roast it and serve it.’  So they roasted it and served it up.  ‘Cut me off two-pennorth.’  I once told it to Pyotr Ippolitovitch, but he did not believe it, and was quite indignant.”

He said a great deal more.  I quote these fragments as a sample of his talk.  He repeatedly interrupted me every time I opened my mouth to begin my story.  He began each time talking of some peculiar and utterly irrelevant nonsense; he talked gaily, excitedly; laughed, goodness knows what at, and even chuckled in an undignified way, as I had never seen him do before.  He swallowed a glass of tea at one gulp, and poured out another.  Now I can understand it, he was like a man who had received a precious, interesting, and long-expected letter, and who lays it down before him and purposely refrains from opening it, turning it over and over in his hands, examining the envelope and the seal, going to see to things in another room, in short deferring the interesting moment of perusal, knowing that it cannot escape him.  And all this he does to make his enjoyment more complete.

I told him all there was to tell, of course, everything from the very beginning, and it took me perhaps an hour telling it.  And indeed how could I have helped telling him?  I had been dying to talk of it that afternoon.  I began with our very first meeting at the old prince’s on the day she arrived from Moscow; then I described how it had all come about by degrees.  I left nothing out, and indeed I could not have left anything out; he led me on, he guessed what was coming and prompted me.  At moments it seemed to me that something fantastic was happening, that he must have been sitting or standing behind the door, for those two months; he knew beforehand every gesture I made, every feeling I had felt.  I derived infinite enjoyment from this confession to him, for I found in him such intimate softness, such deep psychological subtlety, such a marvellous faculty for guessing what I meant from half a word.  He listened as tenderly as a woman.  And above all he knew how to save me from feeling ashamed; at times he stopped me at some detail; often when he stopped me he repeated nervously:  “Don’t forget details; the great thing is, not to forget any details; the more minute a point is, the more important it may sometimes be.”  And he interrupted me several times with words to that effect.  Oh, of course I began at first in a tone of superiority, superiority to her, but I quickly dropped into sincerity.  I told him honestly that I was ready to kiss the spot on the floor where her foot had rested.  The most beautiful and glorious thing was that he absolutely understood that she might “be suffering from terror over the letter” and yet remain the pure and irreproachable being she had revealed herself to be.  He absolutely realized what was meant by the word “student.”  But when I was near the end of my story I noticed that behind his good-natured smile there were signs in his face from time to time of some impatience, some abruptness and preoccupation; when I came to the letter, I thought to myself:

“Shall I tell him the exact truth or not?” and I did not tell it, in spite of my enthusiasm.  I note this here that I may remember it all my life.  I explained to him, as I had done to her, that it had been destroyed by Kraft.  His eyes began to glow; a strange line, a line of deep gloom was visible on his forehead.

“You are sure you remember, my dear boy, that that letter was burned by Kraft in the candle?  You are not mistaken?”

“I am not mistaken,” I repeated.

“The point is that that scrap of paper is of such importance to her, and if you had only had it in your hands to-day, you might. . . .”  But what “I might” he did not say.  “But you haven’t it in your hands now?”

I shuddered all over inwardly, but not outwardly.  Outwardly I did not betray myself, I did not turn a hair; but I was still unwilling to believe in the question:

“Haven’t it in my hands!  In my hands now?  How could I since Kraft burned it that day?”

“Yes?”  A glowing intent look was fastened upon me, a look I shall never forget; he smiled, however, but all his good-nature, all the feminine softness that had been in his expression suddenly vanished.  It was replaced by something vague and troubled; he become more and more preoccupied.  If he had controlled himself at that moment, as he had till then, he would not have asked me that question about the letter; he had asked it, no doubt, because he was carried away himself.  I say this, however, only now; at the time, I did not so quickly perceive the change that had come over him; I still went on plunging, and there was still the same music in my heart.  But my story was over; I looked at him.

“It’s strange,” he said suddenly, when I had told him everything to the minutest detail: “it’s a very strange thing, my dear boy: you say that you were there from three o’clock till four and that Tatyana Pavlovna was not at home?”

“From three o’clock till half-past four exactly.”

“Well, only fancy, I went to see Tatyana Pavlovna exactly at half- past four to the minute, and she met me in the kitchen: I nearly always go to see her by the back entrance.”

“What, she met you in the kitchen?” I cried, staggering back in amazement.

“And she told me she could not ask me in; I only stayed two minutes, I only looked in to ask her to come to dinner.”

“Perhaps she had only just come home from somewhere?”

“I don’t know, of course not, though she was wearing a loose dressing-gown.  That was at half-past four exactly.”

“But . . . Tatyana Pavlovna didn’t tell you I was there?”

“No, she did not tell me you were there . . . otherwise I should have known it, and should not have asked you about it.”

“Listen, that’s awfully important. . . .”

“Yes . . . from a certain point of view; and you’ve turned quite white, my dear; but, after all, what is there important in it?”

“They’ve been laughing at me as though I were a baby!”

“It’s simply ‘that she was afraid of your impulsiveness,’ as she expressed it herself — and so she felt safer with Tatyana Pavlovna there.”

“But, good God, what a trick!  Think, she let me say all that before a third person, before Tatyana Pavlovna; so she heard everything I said!  It . . . it’s horrible to conceive of!”

“C’est selon, mon cher.  Besides, you spoke just now of ‘breadth’ of view in regard to women and exclaimed ‘Hurrah for breadth’!”

“If I were Othello and you Jago, you could not have done better. . . .  I am laughing though!  There can be no sort of Othello, because there have been no relations of the kind.  And why laugh indeed?  It doesn’t matter!  I believe she’s infinitely above me all the same, and I have not lost my ideal! . . .  If it was a joke on her part I forgive her.  A joke with a wretched raw youth doesn’t matter!  Besides, I did not pose as anything, and the student — the student was there in her soul, and remained there in spite of everything; it was in her heart, it exists there, and will always exist there!  Enough!  Listen, what do you think: shall I go to her at once to find out the whole truth or not?”

I said “I am laughing,” but there were tears in my eyes.

“Well, my dear boy, go if you want to.”

“I feel as though I were defiled in soul, from having told you all this.  Don’t be angry, dear, but, I repeat, one can’t tell things about a woman to a third person; no confidant will understand.  Even an angel wouldn’t understand.  If you respect a woman, don’t confide in anyone!  If you respect yourself don’t confide in anyone.  Now I don’t respect myself.  Good-bye for the present; I can’t forgive myself.”

“Nonsense, my dear boy, you exaggerate.  You say yourself that ‘there was nothing in it.’”

We came out on the canal bank and said good-bye.

“Will you never give me a real warm kiss, as a child kisses its father?” he said, with a strange quiver in his voice.  I kissed him fervently.

“Dear boy . . . may you be always as pure in heart as you are now.”

I had never kissed him before in my life, I never could have conceived that he would like me to.

CHAPTER VI

1

“I’ll go, of course!” I made up my mind as I hurried home, “I’ll go at once.  Very likely I shall find her at home alone; whether she is alone or with some one else makes no difference: I can ask her to come out to me.  She will receive me; she’ll be surprised, but she will receive me.  And if she won’t see me I’ll insist on her seeing me, I’ll send in word that it’s most urgent.  She will think it’s something about that letter and will see me.  And I’ll find out all about Tatyana there . . . and what then?  If I am not right I will be her servant, if I am right and she is to blame it’s the end of everything!  In any case it’s the end of everything!  What am I going to lose?  I can lose nothing.  I’ll go!  I’ll go!”

I shall never forget and I recall with pride that I did NOT go!  It will never be known to anyone, it will die with me, but it’s enough that I know of it and at such a moment I was capable of an honourable impulse.

“This is a temptation, and I will put it behind me,” I made up my mind at last, on second thoughts.  They had tried to terrify me with a fact, but I refused to believe it, and had not lost my faith in her purity!  And what had I to go for, what was there to find out about?  Why was she bound to believe in me as I did in her, to have faith in my “purity,” not to be afraid of my “impulsiveness” and not to provide against all risks with Tatyana?  I had not yet, as far as she could see, deserved her confidence.  No matter, no matter that she does not know that I am worthy of it, that I am not seduced by “temptations,” that I do not believe in malicious calumnies against her; I know it and I shall respect myself for it.  I shall respect my own feeling.  Oh, yes, she had allowed me to utter everything before Tatyana, she had allowed Tatyana to be there, she knew that Tatyana was sitting there listening (for she was incapable of not listening); she knew that she was laughing at me out there, — that was awful, awful!  But . . . but what if it were impossible to avoid it?  What could she have done in her position, and how could one blame her for it?  Why, I had told her a lie about Kraft, I had deceived her because that, too, could not be helped, and I had lied innocently against my will.  “My God!” I cried suddenly, flushing painfully, “what have I just done myself!  Haven’t I exposed her, too, before Tatyana, haven’t I repeated it all to Versilov just now?  Though, after all, there was a difference. It was only a question of the letter; I had in reality only told Versilov about the letter because there was nothing else to tell, and could be nothing else.  Was not I the first to declare that “there could not be”?  He was a man of insight.  Hm!  But what hatred there was in his heart for this woman even to this day!  And what sort of drama must have taken place between them in the past, and about what?  All due to vanity, of course!”  VERSILOV CANNOT BE CAPABLE OF ANY FEELING BUT BOUNDLESS VANITY!”