Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (592 page)

“Oh, why talk of dying, prince?  You have to live now, only to live!”

“Why, what did I say?  That’s just what I keep saying.  I simply can’t understand why life is so short.  To avoid being tedious, no doubt, for life, too, is the Creator’s work of art, in a perfect and irreproachable form like a poem of Pushkin’s.  Brevity is the first essential of true art.  But if anyone is not bored, he ought to be allowed to live longer.”

“Tell me, prince, is it public property yet?”

“No, my dear boy, certainly not!  We have all agreed upon that.  It’s private, private, private.  So far I’ve only disclosed it fully to Katerina Nikolaevna, because I felt I was being unfair to her.  Oh, Katerina Nikolaevna is an angel, she is an angel!”

“Yes, yes!”

“Yes, and you say ‘yes’?  Why, I thought that you were her enemy, too.  Ach, by the way, she asked me not to receive you any more.  And only fancy, when you came in I quite forgot it.”

“What are you saying?” I cried, jumping up.  “Why?  Where?”

(My presentiment had not deceived me; I had had a presentiment of something of this sort ever since Tatyana’s visit.)

“Yesterday, my dear boy, yesterday.  I don’t understand, in fact, how you got in, for orders were given.  How did you come in?”

“I simply walked in.”

“The surest way.  If you had tried to creep in by stealth, no doubt they would have caught you, but as you simply walked in they let you pass.  Simplicity, cher enfant, is in reality the deepest cunning.”

“I don’t understand: did you, too, decide not to receive me, then!”

“No, my dear boy, I said I had nothing to do with it. . . .  That is I gave my full consent.  And believe me, my dear boy, I am much too fond of you.  But Katerina Nikolaevna insisted so very strongly. . . .  So, there it is!”

At that instant Katerina Nikolaevna appeared in the doorway.  She was dressed to go out, and as usual came in to kiss her father.  Seeing me she stopped short in confusion, turned quickly, and went out.

“Voilà!” cried the old prince, impressed and much disturbed.

“It’s a misunderstanding!” I cried.  “One moment . . . I . . . I’ll come back to you directly, prince!”

And I ran after Katerina Nikolaevna.

All that followed upon this happened so quickly that I had no time to reflect, or even to consider in the least how to behave.  If I had had time to consider, I should certainly have behaved differently!  But I lost my head like a small boy.  I was rushing towards her room, but on the way a footman informed me that Katerina Nikolaevna had already gone downstairs and was getting into her carriage.  I rushed headlong down the front staircase.  Katerina Nikolaevna was descending the stairs, in her fur coat, and beside her — or rather arm-in-arm with her — walked a tall and severe-looking officer, wearing a uniform and a sword, and followed by a footman carrying his great-coat.  This was the baron, who was a colonel of five-and-thirty, a typical smart officer, thin, with rather too long a face, ginger moustache and even eyelashes of the same colour.  Though his face was quite ugly, it had a resolute and defiant expression.  I describe him briefly, as I saw him at that moment.  I had never seen him before.  I ran down the stairs after them without a hat or coat.  Katerina Nikolaevna was the first to notice me, and she hurriedly whispered something to her companion.  He slightly turned his head and then made a sign to the footman and the hall-porter.  The footman took a step towards me at the front door, but I pushed him away and rushed after them out on the steps.  Büring was assisting Katerina Nikolaevna into the carriage.

“Katerina Nikolaevna!  Katerina Nikolaevna!” I cried senselessly like a fool! like a fool!  Oh, I remember it all; I had no hat on!

Büring turned savagely to the footman again and shouted something to him loudly, one or two words, I did not take them in.  I felt some one clutch me by the elbow.  At that moment the carriage began to move; I shouted again and was rushing after the carriage.  I saw that Katerina Nikolaevna was peeping out of the carriage window, and she seemed much perturbed.  But in my hasty movement I jostled against Büring unconsciously, and trod on his foot, hurting him a good deal, I fancy.  He uttered a faint cry, clenched his teeth, with a powerful hand grasped me by the shoulder, and angrily pushed me away, so that I was sent flying a couple of yards.  At that instant his great-coat was handed him, he put it on, got into his sledge, and once more shouted angrily to the footman and the porter, pointing to me as he did so.  Thereupon they seized me and held me; one footman flung my great-coat on me, while a second handed me my hat and — I don’t remember what they said; they said something, and I stood and listened, understanding nothing of it.  All at once I left them and ran away.

3

Seeing nothing and jostling against people as I went, I ran till I reached Tatyana Pavlovna’s flat: it did not even occur to me to take a cab.  Büring had pushed me away before her eyes!  I had, to be sure, stepped on his foot, and he had thrust me away instinctively as a man who had trodden on his corn — and perhaps I really had trodden on his corn!  But she had seen it, and had seen me seized by the footman; it had all happened before her, before her!  When I had reached Tatyana Pavlovna’s, for the first minute I could say nothing and my lower jaw was trembling, as though I were in a fever.  And indeed I was in a fever and what’s more I was crying. . . .  Oh, I had been so insulted!

“What!  Have they kicked you out?  Serve you right! serve you right!” said Tatyana Pavlovna.  I sank on the sofa without a word and looked at her.

“What’s the matter with him?” she said, looking at me intently.  “Come, drink some water, drink a glass of water, drink it up!  Tell me what you’ve been up to there now?”

I muttered that I had been turned out, and that Büring had given me a push in the open street.

“Can you understand anything, or are you still incapable?  Come here, read and admire it.”  And taking a letter from the table she gave it to me, and stood before me expectantly.  I at once recognized Versilov’s writing, it consisted of a few lines: it was a letter to Katerina Nikolaevna.  I shuddered and instantly comprehension came back to me in a rush.  The contents of this horrible, atrocious, grotesque and blackguardly letter were as follows, word for word:

“DEAR MADAM       KATERINA NIKOLAEVNA.

Depraved as you are in your nature and your arts, I should have yet expected you to restrain your passions and not to try your wiles on children.  But you are not even ashamed to do that.  I beg to inform you that the letter you know of was certainly not burnt in a candle and never was in Kraft’s possession, so you won’t score anything there.  So don’t seduce a boy for nothing.  Spare him, he is hardly grown up, almost a child, undeveloped mentally and physically — what use can you have for him?  I am interested in his welfare, and so I have ventured to write to you, though with little hope of attaining my object.  I have the honour to inform you that I have sent a copy of this letter to Baron Büring.

“A. VERSILOV.”

I turned white as I read, then suddenly I flushed crimson and my lips quivered with indignation.

“He writes that about me!  About what I told him the day before yesterday!” I cried in a fury.

“So you did tell him!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, snatching the letter from me.

“But . . . I didn’t say that, I did not say that at all!  Good God, what can she think of me now!  But it’s madness, you know.  He’s mad . . . I saw him yesterday.  When was the letter sent?”

“It was sent yesterday, early in the day; it reached her in the evening, and this morning she gave it me herself.”

“But I saw him yesterday myself, he’s mad!  Versilov was incapable of writing that, it was written by a madman.  Who could write like that to a woman?”

“That’s just what such madmen do write in a fury when they are blind and deaf from jealousy and spite, and their blood is turned to venom. . . .  You did not know what he is like!  Now they will pound him to a jelly.  He has thrust his head under the axe himself!  He’d better have gone at night to the Nikolaevsky railway and have laid his head on the rail.  They’d have cut it off for him, if he’s weary of the weight of it!  What possessed you to tell him!  What induced you to tease him!  Did you want to boast?”

“But what hatred!  What hatred!” I cried, clapping my hand on my head.  “And what for, what for?  Of a woman!  What has she done to him?  What can there have been between them that he can write a letter like that?”

“Ha — atred!” Tatyana Pavlovna mimicked me with furious sarcasm.

The blood rushed to my face again; all at once I seemed to grasp something new; I gazed at her with searching inquiry.

“Get along with you!” she shrieked, turning away from me quickly and waving me off.  “I’ve had bother enough with you all!  I’ve had enough of it now!  You may all sink into the earth for all I care! . . .  Your mother is the only one I’m sorry for . . .”

I ran, of course, to Versilov.  But what treachery!  What treachery!

4

Versilov was not alone.  To explain the position beforehand: after sending that letter to Katerina Nikolaevna the day before and actually dispatching a copy of it to Baron Büring (God only knows why), naturally he was bound to expect certain “consequences” of his action in the course of to-day, and so had taken measures of a sort.  He had in the morning moved my mother upstairs to my “coffin,” together with Liza, who, as I learned afterwards, had been taken ill when she got home, and had gone to bed.  The other rooms, especially the drawing-room, had been scrubbed and tidied up with extra care.  And at two o’clock in the afternoon a certain Baron R. did in fact make his appearance.  He was a colonel, a tall thin gentleman about forty, a little bald, of German origin, with ginger-coloured hair like Büring’s, and a look of great physical strength.  He was one of those Baron R.s of whom there are so many in the Russian army, all men of the highest baronial dignity, entirely without means, living on their pay, and all zealous and conscientious officers.

I did not come in time for the beginning of their interview; both were very much excited, and they might well be.  Versilov was sitting on the sofa facing the table, and the baron was in an armchair on one side.  Versilov was pale, but he spoke with restraint, dropping out his words one by one; the baron raised his voice and was evidently given to violent gesticulation.  He restrained himself with an effort, but he looked stern, supercilious, and even contemptuous, though somewhat astonished.  Seeing me he frowned, but Versilov seemed almost relieved at my coming.

“Good-morning, dear boy.  Baron, this is the very young man mentioned in the letter, and I assure you he will not be in your way, and may indeed be of use.”  (The baron looked at me contemptuously.)  “My dear boy,” Versilov went on, “I am glad that you’ve come, indeed, so sit down in the corner please, till the baron and I have finished.  Don’t be uneasy, baron, he will simply sit in the corner.”

I did not care, for I had made up my mind, and besides all this impressed me: I sat down in the corner without speaking, as far back as I could, and went on sitting there without stirring or blinking an eyelid till the interview was over. . . .

“I tell you again, baron,” said Versilov, rapping out his words resolutely, “that I consider Katerina Nikolaevna Ahmakov, to whom I wrote that unworthy and insane letter, not only the soul of honour, but the acme of all perfection!”

“Such a disavowal of your own words, as I have observed to you already, is equivalent to a repetition of the offence,” growled the baron; “your words are actually lacking in respect.”

“And yet it would be nearest the truth if you take them in their exact sense.  I suffer, do you see, from nervous attacks, and . . . nervous ailments, and am in fact being treated for them and therefore it has happened in one such moment . . .”

“These explanations cannot be admitted.  I tell you for the third time that you are persistently mistaken, perhaps purposely wish to be mistaken.  I have warned you from the very beginning that the whole question concerning that lady, that is concerning your letter to Mme. Ahmakov, must be entirely excluded from our explanation; you keep going back to it.  Baron Büring begged and particularly charged me to make it plain that this matter concerns him only; that is, your insolence in sending him that ‘copy’ and the postcript to it in which you write that ‘you are ready to answer for it when and how he pleases.’”

“But that, I imagine, is quite clear without explanation.”

“I understand, I hear.  You do not even offer an apology, but persist in asserting that ‘you are ready to answer for it when and how he pleases.’  But that would be getting off too cheaply.  And therefore I now, in view of the turn which you obstinately will give to your explanation, feel myself justified on my side in telling you the truth without ceremony, that is, I have come to the conclusion that it is ut-ter-ly impossible for Baron Büring to meet you . . . on an equal footing.”

“Such a decision is no doubt advantageous for your friend, Baron Büring, and I must confess you have not surprised me in the least: I was expecting it.”

I note in parenthesis: it was quite evident to me from the first word and the first glance that Versilov was trying to lead up to this outburst, that he was intentionally teasing and provoking this irascible baron, and was trying to put him out of patience.  The baron bristled all over.

“I have heard that you are able to be witty, but being witty is very different from being clever.”

“An extremely profound observation, colonel.”

“I did not ask for your approbation,” cried the baron.  “I did not come to bandy words with you.  Be so good as to listen.  Baron Büring was in doubt how to act when he received your letter, because it was suggestive of a madhouse.  And, of course, means might be taken to . . . suppress you.  However, owing to certain special considerations, your case was treated with indulgence and inquiries were made about you: it turns out that though you have belonged to good society, and did at one time serve in the Guards, you have been excluded from society and your reputation is dubious.  Yet in spite of that I’ve come here to ascertain the facts personally, and now, to make things worse, you don’t scruple to play with words, and inform me yourself that you are liable to nervous attacks.  It’s enough!  Baron Büring’s position and reputation are such that he cannot stoop to be mixed up in such an affair. . . .  In short, I am authorized, sir, to inform you, that if a repetition or anything similar to your recent action should follow hereafter, measures will promptly be found to bring you to your senses, very quickly and very thoroughly I can assure you.  We are not living in the jungle, but in a well ordered state!”