The Adolescent (23 page)

V

AND ALL THAT would have been fine, but there was one thing that wasn’t fine: one oppressive idea had been throbbing in me since nightfall and would not leave my mind. This was that when I had met that unfortunate girl by the gate last evening, I had told her that I myself was leaving my home, my nest, that one could leave wicked people and start one’s own nest, and that Versilov had many illegitimate children. These words about a father from a son had most certainly confirmed in her all her suspicions about Versilov and about his having insulted her. I had accused Stebelkov, but maybe it was I myself, above all, who had poured oil on the fire. This thought was terrible, it’s terrible even now . . . But then, that morning, though I was already beginning to suffer, it had still seemed nonsense to me: “Eh, even without me, a lot was ‘seething and smoldering’ there,” I repeated at times. “Eh, never mind, it’ll pass! I’ll come right! I’ll make up for it . . . by some good deed . . . I’ve still got fifty years ahead of me!”

But the idea still throbbed.

I

I FLY OVER a space of nearly two months; let the reader not worry: everything will be clear from the further account. I sharply mark off the day of the fifteenth of November—a day all too memorable to me for many reasons. And first of all, nobody would have recognized me who had seen me two months earlier, at least externally; that is, they’d have recognized me, but wouldn’t have known what to make of it. I’m dressed like a fop—that’s the first thing. That “conscientious Frenchman and with taste,” whom Versilov once wanted to recommend me to, had not only already made all my clothes, but had already been rejected by me: other tailors stitch for me, higher class, the foremost, and I even have an account with them. I also have an account in a certain famous restaurant, but here I’m still afraid, and the moment I have money I pay it at once, though I know it’s mauvais ton
³³
and that I compromise myself by it. A French barber on Nevsky Prospect is on familiar terms with me, and when he does my hair, he tells me anecdotes. I confess, I practice my French with him. Though I know the language, and even quite decently, I’m still somehow afraid to start speaking it in grand society; besides, my pronunciation must be far from Parisian. I have Matvei, a coachman with a trotter, and he appears to serve me when I send for him. He has a light bay stallion (I don’t like grays). There are, however, also some irregularities: it’s the fifteenth of November, and the third day since winter settled in, but my fur coat is old, a raccoon from Versilov’s shoulders, worth twenty-five roubles if I were to sell it. I must buy a new one, but my pockets are empty, and besides, I must provide myself with money for this evening, and that at all costs—otherwise I’m “wretched and forlorn,” those were my own utterances at the time. Oh, meanness! What then, where have they suddenly come from, these thousands, these trotters, and les Borel?
¹
How could I so suddenly forget everything and change so much? Disgrace! Reader, I am now beginning the history of my shame and disgrace, and nothing in life can be more shameful for me than these memories!

I speak thus as a judge, and I know that I’m guilty. In that whirl in which I then spun, though I was alone, without guide or counselor, I swear, I was already aware of my fall, and therefore had no excuse. And yet all those two months I was almost happy—why almost? I was only too happy! And even to the point that the consciousness of disgrace, flashing at moments (frequent moments!), which made my soul shudder—that very awareness—will anyone believe me?—intoxicated me still more: “And so what, if I fall, I fall; but I won’t fall, I’ll get out! I have my star!” I was walking on a slender bridge made of splinters, without railings, over an abyss, and it was fun for me to walk like that; I even peeked into the abyss. It was risky, and it was fun. And the “idea”? “The idea” later, the idea was waiting; all that was going on—“was only a deviation to the side”: “why not amuse myself ?” The bad thing about “my idea,” I’ll repeat it once more, is that it allows for decidedly all deviations; had it not been so firm and radical, I might have been afraid to deviate.

And meanwhile I still continued to occupy my wretched little apartment, to occupy it, but not to live in it: there lay my suitcase, bag, and some things; my main residence was at Prince Sergei Sokolsky’s. I sat there, slept there, and did so for whole weeks even . . . How it happened, I shall tell presently, but meanwhile I’ll tell about this wretched little apartment. It was already dear to me: here Versilov came to see me, of himself, for the first time after that quarrel, and later came many times. I repeat, this was a time of terrible disgrace, but also of enormous happiness . . . And everything turned out so well then, everything smiled at me! “And why all that former gloom?” I thought in some rapturous moments. “Why all those old, morbid strains, my lonely and sullen childhood, my stupid dreams under the blanket, vows, calculations, and even the ‘idea’? I had imagined and invented all that, and it turned out that the world wasn’t like that at all; here I am feeling so joyful and light: I have a father—Versilov; I have a friend—Prince Seryozha; I also have . . .” But let’s drop that “also.” Alas, it was all done in the name of love, magnanimity, honor, and later it turned out ugly, impudent, dishonorable.

Enough.

II

HE CAME TO see me for the first time on the third day after our breakup then. I wasn’t at home, and he stayed to wait. When I came into my tiny closet, even though I had been waiting for him all those three days, my eyes clouded over, as it were, and my heart gave such a throb that I even stopped in the doorway. Fortunately, he was sitting with my landlord, who found it necessary, so that the visitor would not be bored waiting, to become acquainted at once and begin telling him heatedly about something. He was a titular councillor,
²
about forty years old, very pockmarked, very poor, burdened with a consumptive wife and a sick child; of an extremely gregarious and placid character, though also rather tactful. I was glad of his presence, and he even helped me out, because what would I have said to Versilov? I knew, seriously knew, all those three days, that Versilov would come on his own, first—exactly as I wanted, because I would not have gone to him first for anything in the world, and not out of contrariness, but precisely out of love for him, out of some sort of jealous love—I don’t know how to express it. And generally the reader won’t find any eloquence in me. But though I had been waiting for him all those three days, and had imagined to myself almost continuously how he would come in, still I had been quite unable to picture beforehand, though I tried as hard as I could to picture it, what he and I would suddenly start talking about after all that had happened.

“Ah, here you are.” He held out his hand to me amicably, without getting up from his seat. “Sit down with us. Pyotr Ippolitovich tells the most interesting story about this stone, near the Pavlovsky barracks . . . or somewhere there . . .”

“Yes, I know that stone,” I answered quickly, lowering myself into a chair beside them. They were sitting at the table. The whole room was precisely two hundred square feet. I took a deep breath.

A spark of pleasure flashed in Versilov’s eyes: it seemed he had doubts and thought I might want to make gestures. He calmed down.

“Start again from the beginning, Pyotr Ippolitovich.” They were already addressing each other by first name and patronymic.

“So, this happened under the late sovereign,
³
sir,” Pyotr Ippolitovich addressed me, nervously and somewhat painfully, as if suffering ahead of time over the success of the effect. “You know that stone—a stupid stone in the street, why, what for, it’s in everybody’s way, right, sir? The sovereign drove by many times, and each time there was this stone. In the end, the sovereign didn’t like it, and indeed, a whole mountain, a mountain is standing in the street, ruining the street: ‘The stone must not be!’ Well, he said it must not be—you understand what ‘it must not be’ means? Remember the late tsar? What to do with the stone? Everybody’s at their wit’s end, including the Duma,
⁴
and mainly, I don’t remember who precisely, but it was one of the foremost courtiers of the time who was charged with it. So this courtier listens: they say it would cost fifteen thousand, not less, in silver, sir (because paper banknotes had just been converted to silver under the late sovereign). ‘How come fifteen thousand, that’s wild!’ First the Englishmen wanted to bring rails up to it, put it on rails, and take it away by steam; but what would that have cost? There were no railroads yet then, except for the one to Tsarskoe Selo
⁵
. . .”

“Well, look, they could have sawed it in pieces.” I was beginning to frown; I was terribly vexed and ashamed in front of Versilov, but he listened with visible pleasure. I understood that he, too, was glad of the landlord, because he also felt abashed with me, I could see it; for me, I remember, that even seemed touching in him.

“Precisely saw it in pieces, sir, they precisely hit upon that idea, and it was precisely Montferrand; he was then building St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
⁶
Saw it up, he says, and then take it away. Yes, sir, but what will that cost?”

“It won’t cost anything. Simply saw it up and take it away.”

“No, pardon me, but here you’d have to set up a machine, a steam engine, and then again, take it away where? And then again, such a mountain? Ten thousand, they say, you won’t get away with less, ten or twelve thousand.”

“Listen, Pyotr Ippolitovich, that’s nonsense, it wasn’t like that . . .” But just then Versilov winked at me inconspicuously, and in that wink I saw such delicate compassion for the landlord, even commiseration with him, that I liked it terribly much, and I burst out laughing.

“Well, so, so,” rejoiced the landlord, who hadn’t noticed anything and was terribly afraid, as such storytellers always are, that he would be thrown off by questions, “only just then some tradesman comes up to them, still a young man, well, you know, a Russian, wedge-shaped beard, in a long-skirted kaftan, and on the verge of being a little drunk . . . though, no, not drunk, sir. So this tradesman stands there while they’re talking about it, the Englishmen and Montferrand, and this person who’s in charge also drives up in a carriage, listens, and gets angry: how is it they keep deciding and can’t decide? And suddenly he notices this little tradesman standing some distance away and smiling sort of falsely, that is, not falsely, I got it wrong, but how should I say . . .”

“Mockingly,” Versilov put in cautiously.

“Mockingly, sir, that is, slightly mockingly, with this kindly Russian smile, you know; well, the person, of course, takes it with vexation, you know: ‘You in the beard, what are you waiting here for? Who are you?’

“‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I’m just looking at this little stone, Your Highness.’ Precisely, I believe, ‘Your Highness’—it was all but Prince Suvorov of Italy, a descendant of the generalissimo
⁷
. . . Though, no, not Suvorov, and it’s a pity I’ve forgotten precisely who, only you know, though he’s a highness, he’s such a pure Russian man, this Russian type, a patriot, a developed Russian heart, so he guessed it: ‘What are you going to do,’ he says, ‘take the stone away? What are you grinning at?’ ‘More at the Englishmen, Your Highness, the price they’re asking is way out of proportion, sir, because the Russian purse is fat, and they’ve got nothing to eat at home. Allot me a hundred little roubles, Your Highness, and by tomorrow night we’ll remove this little stone.’ Well, can you imagine such an offer? The Englishmen, of course, want to eat him up; Montferrand laughs; only this highness prince, he’s a Russian heart: ‘Give him a hundred roubles!’ he says. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you’ll really take it away?’ ‘By tomorrow night it’ll be to your satisfaction, Your Highness.’ ‘And how will you do it?’ ‘That—no offense to Your Highness—is our secret, sir,’ he says, and you know, in such Russian language. This was liked: ‘Eh, give him everything he asks for!’ Well, so they left him there; and what do you think he did?”

The landlord paused and began looking at us with a sweet gaze.

“I don’t know,” Versilov smiled. I was frowning deeply.

“Here’s what he did, sir,” the landlord said with such triumph as if he had done it himself. “He hired some peasants with spades, simple Russian ones, and started digging a hole right by the stone, at the very edge; they dug all night, made an enormous hole, exactly the size of the stone, only a couple of inches deeper, and when they were done, he told them to gradually and carefully dig the ground from under the stone. Well, naturally, when they dug away under it, the stone had no support, and the balance got tipsy; and once the balance got tipsy, they pushed the stone from the other side with their hands, with a hurrah, Russian-style: the stone plopped right into the hole! They straight away shoveled the dirt back over it, tamped it down with a tamper, paved it over—smooth, the stone vanished!”

“Fancy that!” said Versilov.

“I mean, people, people come running, untold numbers of them; those Englishmen, who had guessed long ago, stand there angry. Montferrand arrives: This is a peasant job, he says, it’s too simple, he says. But that’s the whole trick, that it’s simple, and it didn’t occur to you fools! And I’ll tell you, that superior, that state personage, he just gasped, hugged him, kissed him: ‘And where might the likes of you be from?’ ‘Yaroslavl province, Your Highness, myself I’m a tailor by trade, but in summer I come to the capital to sell fruit, sir.’ Well, it reached the authorities; the authorities ordered a medal hung on him; he went around like that with the medal on his neck, and later they say he drank himself up; you know, a Russian man, can’t help himself! That’s why the foreigners prey on us to this day, yes, sir, so there, sir!”

“Yes, of course, the Russian mind . . .” Versilov began.

But here, fortunately for him, the storyteller was summoned by his ailing wife, and he ran off, otherwise I couldn’t have stood it. Versilov was laughing.

“My dear, he entertained me for a whole hour before you came. That stone . . . that’s everything there is of the most patriotically indecent among such stories, but how interrupt him? You saw him, he was melting with pleasure. And besides, the stone, it seems, is still standing there, unless I’m mistaken, and isn’t buried in a hole at all . . .”

“Ah, my God!” I cried, “but that’s true. How did he dare! . . .”

“What’s with you? No, come now, it seems you’re quite indignant. And he actually got it confused: I heard some such story about a stone back in the time of my childhood, only, naturally, it wasn’t the same and wasn’t about that stone. Good heavens, ‘it reached the authorities.’ His whole soul sang at that moment when it ‘reached the authorities.’ In this sorry milieu, it’s impossible to do without such anecdotes. They have a host of them—above all from their lack of restraint. They haven’t studied anything, they don’t know anything precisely, well, and besides cards and promotions, they want to talk about something generally human, poetic . . . What is he, who is he, this Pyotr Ippolitovich?”

“The poorest of beings, and also unfortunate.”

“Well, so you see, maybe he doesn’t even play cards! I repeat, while telling this rubbish, he satisfies his love for his neighbor: you see, he wanted to make us happy as well. The feeling of patriotism is also satisfied; for instance, they also have an anecdote that the English offered Zavyalov
⁸
a million only so that he wouldn’t stamp his brand on his products . . .”

“Ah, my God, I’ve heard that anecdote.”

“Who hasn’t heard it, and he knows perfectly well, as he tells it, that you’ve certainly heard it already, but still he tells it, deliberately imagining that you haven’t. It seems the vision of the Swedish king
⁹
has become outdated with them; but in my youth they repeated it with gusto, and in a mysterious whisper, as well as the one about somebody at the beginning of the century supposedly kneeling before the senators in the Senate.
¹⁰
There were also many anecdotes about Commandant Bashutsky
¹¹
and how the monument was taken away. They’re terribly fond of anecdotes about the court; for instance, the stories about Chernyshov,
¹²
a minister in the previous reign, how as a seventy-year-old man he made himself up so that he looked like a thirty-year-old, so much so that the late sovereign was astonished at his receptions . . .”

“I’ve heard that, too.”

“Who hasn’t? All these anecdotes are the height of indecency, but you should know that this type of the indecent is much deeper and more widespread than we think. Even in our most decent society, you meet with the wish to lie with the purpose of making your neighbor happy, for we all suffer from this unrestraint of the heart. Only with us the stories are of a different kind; what they tell about America alone is something awful, and that’s even statesmen! I confess, I myself belong to this indecent type and have suffered from it all my life . . .”

“I’ve told the story about Chernyshov several times myself.”

“Have you really?”

“There’s another tenant here besides me, a clerk, also pockmarked, and already old, but he’s a terribly prosaic man, and as soon as Pyotr Ippolitovich starts talking, he immediately sets about confusing and contradicting him. And he’s driven him to such a state that Pyotr Ippolitovich serves him like a slave and humors him, only so as he listens.”

“That’s already another type of the indecent, and maybe even more loathsome than the first. The first is all rapture! ‘Just let me tell you a lie—you’ll see how well it comes out.’ The second is all spleen and prose: ‘I won’t let you lie—when, where, in what year?’ In short, he has no heart. My friend, always let a man lie a little—it’s innocent. Even let him lie a lot. First, it will show your delicacy, and second, you’ll also be allowed to lie in return—two enormous profits at once. Que diable!
³⁴
one must love one’s neighbor! But it’s time I left. You’ve settled in quite nicely,” he added, getting up from his chair. “I’ll tell Sofya Andreevna and your sister that I called and found you in good health. Good-bye, my dear.”

What, could that be all? No, this was by no means what I needed; I was waiting for something else, the
main thing
, though I understood perfectly well that it couldn’t be otherwise. I began showing him to the stairs with a candle; the landlord also jumped over, but, in secret from Versilov, I seized his arm with all my strength and shoved him away fiercely. He looked at me in amazement, but effaced himself at once.

“These stairs . . .” Versilov mumbled, drawing out the words, evidently so as to say something, and evidently for fear I might say something, “these stairs—I’m not used to them, and you’re on the third floor, but, anyhow, I’ll find my way now . . . Don’t trouble yourself, my dear, you’ll catch cold.”

But I didn’t leave. We were going down the second flight of stairs.

“I’ve been waiting for you all these three days,” escaped me suddenly, as if of itself; I was breathless.

“Thank you, my dear.”

“I knew you wouldn’t fail to come.”

“And I knew you knew I wouldn’t fail to come. Thank you, my dear.”

He fell silent. We had already reached the front door, and I was still walking behind him. He opened the door; the wind burst in at once and blew out my candle. Here I suddenly seized him by the hand; it was completely dark. He gave a start, but said nothing. I bent to his hand and suddenly began kissing it greedily, several times, many times.