The Adolescent (19 page)

“What’s that? . . . What document are you talking about?” Katerina Nikolaevna was at a loss, so much so that she even turned pale, or maybe it just seemed so to me. I realized that I had said too much.

I left quickly; they followed me silently with their eyes, and there was the highest degree of astonishment in their gaze. In short, I had set them a riddle . . .

I

I WAS HURRYING home and—wondrous thing—I was very pleased with myself. Of course, one doesn’t speak that way with women, and with such women at that—or, more precisely, with such a woman, because I didn’t count Tatyana Pavlovna. Maybe it’s quite impossible to tell a woman of that category to her face: “I spit on your intrigues,” but I had said it and was pleased precisely with that. Not to mention other things, I was sure at least that by that tone I had blotted out all that was ridiculous in my position. But I had no time to think very much about it: Kraft was sitting in my head. Not that he tormented me so much, but all the same I was shaken to my foundations; and even to the point that the ordinary human feeling of a certain pleasure at another’s misfortune, that is, when somebody breaks a leg, loses his honor or a beloved being, and so on, even that ordinary feeling of mean satisfaction yielded in me without a trace to another extremely wholesome sensation, namely grief, regret for Kraft, that is, I don’t know whether it was regret, but some very strong and kindly feeling. I was also very pleased by that. It’s astonishing how many extraneous thoughts can flash through your mind precisely when you’re all shaken by some colossal news, which in reality, it seems, ought to overpower all other feelings and scatter all extraneous thoughts, especially petty ones; but it’s the petty ones, on the contrary, that get at you. I also remember that I was gradually overcome by a rather palpable nervous trembling, which went on for several minutes, and even all the while I was at home and having a talk with Versilov.

This talk took place under strange and extraordinary circumstances. I have already mentioned that we lived in a separate wing in the yard; this apartment bore the sign of number thirteen. Even before I went through the gate, I heard a woman’s voice asking someone loudly, with impatience and vexation, “Where’s apartment number thirteen?” It was a lady asking, just by the gate, opening the door of a grocery shop; but it seems they gave her no reply or even chased her away, and she was coming down the steps in distress and anger.

“But where’s the caretaker here?” she cried, stamping her foot. I had long since recognized the voice.

“I’m going to apartment number thirteen,” I went up to her, “whom do you want?”

“For a whole hour I’ve been looking for the caretaker, I’ve asked everybody, climbed all the stairs.”

“It’s in the yard. Don’t you recognize me?”

But she had already recognized me.

“You want Versilov; you have business with him, and so do I,” I went on. “I’ve come to say good-bye to him forever. Come along.”

“Are you his son?”

“That means nothing. However, let’s suppose I am his son, though my name is Dolgoruky. I’m illegitimate. This gentleman has endless illegitimate children. When conscience and honor demand, a son can leave home. It’s in the Bible.
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Besides, he got an inheritance, but I don’t want my share, I go by the labor of my hands. When need be, a magnanimous man even sacrifices his life; Kraft shot himself, Kraft, because of an idea, imagine, a young man, who gave one hopes . . . This way, this way! We’re in a separate wing. It’s in the Bible that children leave their fathers and start their own nest . . . If an idea beckons . . . if there’s an idea! The idea’s the main thing, the idea’s everything . . .”

I babbled to her like that all the while we were climbing up to our place. The reader has probably noticed that I don’t spare myself much and, where needed, give myself an excellent attestation: I want to learn to tell the truth. Versilov was at home. I came in, but didn’t take off my coat, and neither did she. Her clothes were terribly flimsy: over a dark dress hung a scrap of something intended to be a cape or a mantilla; on her head was an old, peeling sailor hat, very unbecoming to her. When we entered the drawing room, my mother was sitting in her usual place over her work, and my sister came out of her room and stopped in the doorway. Versilov was doing nothing, as usual, and rose to meet us; he fixed me with a stern, questioning look.

“I have nothing to do with it.” I hastened to wave it away and stood to one side. “I met this person by the gate; she was looking for you, and nobody could direct her. I’ve come on business of my own, which I shall have the pleasure of explaining after her . . .”

Versilov nevertheless went on looking at me curiously.

“Permit me,” the girl began impatiently. Versilov turned to her. “I’ve long been thinking about why you decided to leave money with me yesterday . . . I . . . in short . . . Here’s your money!” she almost shrieked, as earlier, and flung a wad of banknotes on the table. “I had to look for you through the address bureau, otherwise I’d have brought it sooner. Listen, you!” She suddenly turned to my mother, who became all pale. “I don’t want to insult you, you have an honest look and maybe this is even your daughter. I don’t know if you’re his wife, but you should know that this gentleman cuts out newspaper advertisements that governesses and teachers publish with their last money, and goes to these unfortunate women, looking for a dishonorable profit and getting them into trouble through money. I don’t understand how I could have taken money from him yesterday! He looked so honest! . . . Away, not one word! You’re a blackguard, my dear sir! Even if you had honest intentions, I don’t want your charity. Not a word! Not a word! Oh, how glad I am to have exposed you now in front of your women! A curse on you!”

She quickly ran out, but turned on the threshold for a moment, only to shout:

“They say you’ve received an inheritance!”

And then she vanished like a shadow. I remind you once more: she was beside herself. Versilov was deeply struck; he stood as if pondering and trying to understand; at last he turned suddenly to me:

“You don’t know her at all?”

“Earlier today I accidentally saw her raging in the corridor at Vasin’s, shrieking and cursing you; but I didn’t get into conversation with her and know nothing, and just now we met by the gate. She’s probably yesterday’s teacher ‘who gives lessons in arithmetic’?”

“The very same. Once in my life I did a good deed and . . . But, anyhow, what have you got?”

“Here’s this letter,” I answered. “I consider it unnecessary to explain: it comes from Kraft, who got it from the late Andronikov. You’ll find out from the contents. I’ll add that no one in the whole world knows of this letter now except me, because Kraft, having given me the letter yesterday, shot himself just after I left . . .”

While I spoke, breathless and hurrying, he took the letter and, holding it out in his left hand, watched me attentively. When I announced Kraft’s suicide to him, I peered into his face with particular attention to see the effect. And what?—the news didn’t make the slightest impression on him; he didn’t even raise his eyebrows! On the contrary, seeing that I had stopped, he pulled out his lorgnette, which never left him and hung on a black ribbon, brought the letter over to a candle, and, after glancing at the signature, began to study it closely. I can’t express how I was even offended by this arrogant unfeelingness. He must have known Kraft very well; besides, it was in any case such extraordinary news! Finally, I naturally wanted it to produce an effect. Having waited for half a minute, and knowing that the letter was long, I turned and went out. My suitcase had long been ready, I only had to pack several things into a bundle. I thought of my mother and that I had not gone over to her. Ten minutes later, when I was quite ready and wanted to go for a cab, my sister came into my room.

“Here, mama sends you your sixty roubles and again asks you to forgive her for having told Andrei Petrovich about it, and there’s another twenty roubles. You gave her fifty roubles yesterday for your keep; mother says it’s simply impossible to take more than thirty from you, because she hadn’t spent fifty on you, so she’s sending you twenty roubles in change.”

“Well, thanks, if only she’s telling the truth. Good-bye, sister, I’m going away!”

“Where to now?”

“To an inn for the time being, only so as not to spend the night in this house. Tell mama that I love her.”

“She knows that. She knows that you also love Andrei Petrovich. You ought to be ashamed to have brought that unfortunate girl!”

“I swear to you, it wasn’t me; I met her by the gate.”

“No, you brought her.”

“I assure you . . .”

“Think, ask yourself, and you’ll see that you, too, were the reason.”

“I was only very glad that Versilov was disgraced. Imagine, he has a nursing baby by Lydia Akhmakov . . . however, why am I telling you . . .”

“He has? A nursing baby? But it’s not his baby! Where did you hear such a lie?”

“Well, as if you’d know.”

“Who else should know? It was I who took care of this baby in Luga. Listen, brother: I saw long ago that you know nothing about anything, and yet you insult Andrei Petrovich, well, and mama, too.”

“If he’s right, then I’ll be wrong, that’s all, and I don’t love you any less. Why did you blush so, sister? And still more now! Well, all right, but even so I’ll challenge that princeling to a duel for Versilov’s slap in Ems. The more so if Versilov was in the right with Miss Akhmakov.”

“Brother, come to your senses, really!”

“Since the court has now closed the case . . . Well, and now you’ve turned pale.”

“But the prince won’t fight a duel with you,” Liza smiled a pale smile through her fright.

“Then I’ll disgrace him publicly. What’s wrong, Liza?”

She became so pale that she couldn’t stand on her feet and lowered herself onto the sofa.

“Liza!” mother called from downstairs.

She put herself to rights and stood up; she was smiling tenderly at me.

“Brother, leave these trifles, or wait for a while, till you learn much more: you know so terribly little.”

“I’ll remember, Liza, that you turned pale when you learned I’d be going to a duel!”

“Yes, yes, remember that, too!” she smiled once more in farewell and went downstairs.

I called a cab and, with the driver’s help, carried my things out of the apartment. None of my family opposed me or stopped me. I did not go to say good-bye to my mother, so as not to meet Versilov. When I was already sitting in the cab, a thought suddenly flashed in me.

“To the Fontanka, the Semyonovsky Bridge,” I ordered suddenly, and went to Vasin’s again.

II

IT SUDDENLY OCCURRED to me that Vasin already knew about Kraft, and maybe a hundred times more than I did; and that’s how it turned out to be. Vasin at once and dutifully told me all the details—without great warmth, however; I concluded that he was tired, and so he was. He had been at Kraft’s himself that morning. Kraft had shot himself with a revolver (that same one) the night before, in full darkness, as was made clear by his diary. The last entry in the diary was made just before the shot, and he notes in it that he was writing almost in the dark, barely making out the letters; and he didn’t want to light a candle for fear of leaving a fire behind him. “And I don’t want to light it, only to put it out again before the shot, like my life,” he added strangely in almost the last line. He had undertaken this death diary two days earlier, as soon as he returned to Petersburg, before the visit to Dergachev; after I left, he wrote in it every quarter of an hour; the very last three or four entries were written every five minutes. I voiced my surprise that Vasin, having had this diary under his eyes for so long (it was given him to read), had not made a copy, the more so as it was no more than a printer’s sheet in all, and the entries were short—“at least the last page!” Vasin observed to me with a smile that he remembered it as it was, and moreover the notes were without any system, about whatever came to mind. I tried to argue that that was the precious thing in this case, but dropped it and began pestering him to remember at least something, and he remembered several lines, about an hour before the shot, saying “that he had chills; that he contemplated drinking a glass in order to warm up, but the thought that it would perhaps cause a bigger hemorrhage stopped him.”—“It’s almost all that sort of thing,” concluded Vasin.

“And you call that trifles!” I exclaimed.

“When did I call it that? I simply didn’t make a copy. But though it’s not trifles, the diary is actually quite ordinary, or, rather, natural, that is, precisely as it ought to be in this case . . .”

“But it’s his last thoughts, his last thoughts!”

“Last thoughts can sometimes be extremely insignificant. One such suicide precisely complains in the same sort of diary that at such an important hour at least one ‘lofty thought’ should have visited him, but, on the contrary, they were all petty and empty.”

“And that he had chills is also an empty thought?”

“That is, you mean the chills proper, or the hemorrhage? Yet it’s a known fact that a great many of those who are capable of contemplating their imminent death, self-willed or not, are quite often inclined to be concerned with the handsome appearance in which their corpse will be left. In this sense, Kraft, too, feared an excessive hemorrhage.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a known fact . . . or whether it’s so,” I murmured, “but I’m surprised that you consider it all so natural, and yet was it long ago that Kraft spoke, worried, sat among us? Can it be that you’re not at least sorry for him?”

“Oh, of course I’m sorry for him, and that’s quite another matter; but in any case Kraft himself pictured his death as a logical conclusion. It turns out that everything said about him at Dergachev’s was correct: he left behind a notebook this big, full of learned conclusions, based on phrenology, craniology, and even mathematics, proving that the Russians are a second-rate breed of people, and that, consequently, it’s not at all worth living as a Russian. If you wish, what’s most characteristic here is that it’s possible to draw any logical conclusion you like, but to up and shoot oneself as the result of a conclusion—that, of course, doesn’t happen all the time.”

“At least we must give credit to his character.”

“And maybe not only that,” Vasin observed evasively, but clearly he had in mind stupidity or weakness of reason. All this irritated me.

“You yourself spoke about feelings yesterday, Vasin.”

“Nor do I deny them now; but in view of the accomplished fact, something in him presents itself as so badly mistaken that a severe view of the matter somehow unwillingly drives out pity itself.”

“You know, I could tell earlier by your eyes that you would revile Kraft, and so as not to hear it, I decided not to seek your opinion; but you’ve voiced it yourself, and I’m unwillingly forced to agree with you; but still I’m displeased with you! I feel sorry for Kraft!”

“You know, we’ve gone too far . . .”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, “but it’s comforting at least that in such cases those who are left alive, the judges of the deceased, can always say of themselves, ‘Though the man who shot himself was worthy of all regret and indulgence, we’re still left, and therefore there’s no point in grieving too much.’”

“Yes, naturally, if you see it from that angle . . . Ah, yes, it seems you were joking! And most wittily. This is my tea time and I’ll have it brought at once—you’ll probably keep me company.”

And he went out, measuring my suitcase and bundle with his eyes.

I actually had wanted to say something malicious, in revenge for Kraft; and I had said it as I could, but, curiously, he had first taken my thought that “the likes of us are left ” as serious. But be that as it may, he was still more right than I in everything, even feelings. I admitted all that without any displeasure, but I decidedly felt that I did not like him.

When tea was brought, I explained to him that I was asking for his hospitality for only one night, and that if it was impossible, he should say so and I would move to the inn. Then I briefly told him my reasons, stating simply and directly that I had quarreled definitively with Versilov, without going into details. Vasin listened attentively, but without any emotion. Generally, he only answered questions, though he answered affably and with sufficient fullness. I passed over in total silence the letter with which I had come to him previously to ask for advice; and I explained my previous call as a simple visit. Having given Versilov my word that no one would know of the letter besides me, I considered myself as no longer having the right to tell anyone about it. For some reason it became particularly repugnant to me to inform Vasin of certain things. Of certain things, but not of others: I still managed to get him interested in my stories about those scenes in the corridor and with the women in the neighboring room, culminating in Versilov’s apartment. He listened with great attention, especially about Stebelkov. He asked me to repeat twice how Stebelkov inquired about Dergachev, and he even fell to pondering; however, he still smiled in the end. It suddenly seemed to me at that moment that nothing could ever disconcert Vasin; however, the first thought of it, I remember, presented itself to me in a form quite flattering to him.

“Generally, I couldn’t gather much from what Mr. Stebelkov said,” I concluded about Stebelkov. “He speaks somehow confusedly . . . and there seemed to be something light-minded in him . . .”

Vasin immediately assumed a serious look.

“He indeed has no gift of eloquence, but that’s only at first sight. He has managed to make extremely apt observations; and generally—these are more people of business, of affairs, than of generalizing thought; they should be judged from that angle . . .”

Exactly as I had guessed earlier.

“Anyhow he acted up terribly at your neighbors’, and God knows how it might have ended.”

About the neighbors, Vasin told me that they had lived there for about three weeks and had come from somewhere in the provinces; that their room was extremely small, and everything indicated that they were very poor; that they were sitting and waiting for something. He didn’t know that the young one had advertised in the newspapers as a teacher, but he had heard that Versilov had visited them; this had happened while he was away, and the landlady had told him. The neighbors, on the contrary, avoided everybody, even the landlady herself. In the last few days he had begun to notice that something was indeed not right with them, but there had been no such scenes as today’s. All this talk of ours about the neighbors I recall now with a view to what followed; meanwhile a dead silence reigned behind their door. Vasin listened with particular interest when I said that Stebelkov thought it necessary to talk with the landlady about them, and that he had twice repeated, “You’ll see, you’ll see!”

“And you will see,” Vasin added, “that it didn’t come into his head for nothing; he has a very keen eye in that regard.”

“So, then, in your opinion, the landlady should be advised to throw them out?”

“No, I’m not saying they should be thrown out, but so that some sort of story doesn’t happen . . . However, all such stories end one way or another . . . Let’s drop it.”

As for Versilov’s visit to the women, he resolutely refused to offer any conclusion.

“Everything is possible; the man felt money in his pocket . . . However, it’s also probable that he simply offered charity; it suits his tradition, and maybe also his inclination.”

I told him what Stebelkov had babbled that day about the “nursing baby.”

“Stebelkov in this case is completely mistaken,” Vasin said with particular seriousness and particular emphasis (and that I remember all too well).

“Stebelkov,” he went on, “sometimes trusts all too much in his practical sense, and because of that rushes to a conclusion in accordance with his logic, which is often quite perspicacious; yet the event may in fact have a much more fantastic and unexpected coloration, considering the characters involved. And so it happened here: having partial knowledge of the matter, he concluded that the baby belongs to Versilov; however, the baby is not Versilov’s.”

I latched on to him, and here is what I learned, to my great astonishment: the baby was Prince Sergei Sokolsky’s. Lydia Akhmakov, either owing to her illness, or simply because of her fantastic character, sometimes behaved like a crazy woman. She became infatuated with the prince still before Versilov, and the prince “had no qualms about accepting her love,” as Vasin put it. The liaison lasted only a moment: they quarreled, as is already known, and Lydia chased the prince away, “of which, it seems, the man was glad.”

“She was a very strange girl,” Vasin added, “it’s even very possible that she was not always in her right mind. But, as he was leaving for Paris, the prince had no idea of the condition in which he had left his victim, and he didn’t know it to the very end, until his return. Versilov, having become the young person’s friend, offered to marry her precisely in view of the emergent circumstance (which it seems the parents did not suspect almost to the end). The enamored girl was delighted, and saw in Versilov’s proposal ‘not only his self-sacrifice,’ which, however, she also appreciated. However, he certainly knew how to do it,” Vasin added. “The baby, a girl, was born a month or six weeks before term, was placed somewhere in Germany, then Versilov took it back, and it is now somewhere in Russia, maybe in Petersburg.”

“And the phosphorus matches?”

“I know nothing about that,” concluded Vasin. “Lydia Akhmakov died two weeks after the delivery; what happened there—I don’t know. The prince, only just returned from Paris, found out that there was a baby, and, it seems, did not believe at first that it was his . . . Generally, the story is kept secret on all sides even to this day.”

“But how about this prince!” I cried in indignation. “How about the way he behaved with the sick girl!”

“She wasn’t so sick then . . . Besides, she chased him away herself . . . True, maybe he was unnecessarily quick to take advantage of his dismissal.”

“You vindicate such a scoundrel?”

“No, I merely don’t call him a scoundrel. There’s much else here besides direct meanness. Generally, it’s a very ordinary affair.”

“Tell me, Vasin, did you know him closely? I’d especially like to trust your opinion, in view of a circumstance that concerns me greatly.”

But here Vasin’s answers became somehow all too restrained. He knew the prince, but with obvious deliberateness he said nothing about the circumstances under which he had made his acquaintance. Next he said that his character was such that he merited a certain indulgence. “He’s full of honest inclinations and he’s impressionable, but he possesses neither the sense nor the strength of will to sufficiently control his desires. He’s an uneducated man; there is a host of ideas and phenomena that are beyond him, and yet he throws himself upon them. For instance, he would insistently maintain something like this: ‘I am a prince and a descendant of Rurik,
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but why shouldn’t I be a shoemaker’s apprentice, if I have to earn my bread and am incapable of doing anything else? My shingle will say: “Prince So-and-so, Shoemaker”—it’s even noble.’ He’ll say it, and he’ll do it—that’s the main thing,” Vasin added, “and yet there’s no strength of conviction here, but just the most light-minded impressionability. But afterwards repentance would undoubtedly come, and then he would always be ready for some totally contrary extreme; and so for his whole life. In our age many people come a cropper like that,” Vasin concluded, “precisely because they were born in our time.”

I involuntarily fell to thinking.

“Is it true that he was thrown out of his regiment earlier?” I inquired.

“I don’t know if he was thrown out, but he did indeed leave the regiment on account of some unpleasantness. Is it known to you that last autumn, precisely being retired, he spent two or three months in Luga?”

“I . . . I knew that you were living in Luga then.”

“Yes, I, too, for a while. The prince was also acquainted with Lizaveta Makarovna.”

“Oh? I didn’t know. I confess, I’ve spoken so little with my sister . . . But can it be that he was received in my mother’s house?” I cried.

“Oh, no. He was too distantly acquainted, through a third house.”

“Yes, what was it my sister told me about this baby? Wasn’t the baby in Luga as well?”

“For a while.”

“And where is it now?”

“Undoubtedly in Petersburg.”

“Never in my life will I believe,” I cried in extreme agitation, “that my mother participated in any way in this story with this Lydia!”

“Apart from all these intrigues, which I don’t undertake to sort out, the personal role of Versilov in this story had nothing particularly reprehensible about it,” Vasin observed, smiling condescendingly. It was apparently becoming hard for him to speak with me, only he didn’t let it show.