The Adolescent (29 page)

I

NOW I’M EVEN afraid to tell about it. It was all long ago; but now, too, it’s like a mirage for me. How could such a woman arrange a rendezvous with such a vile little brat as I was then?—that’s how it was at first sight! When I left Liza and rushed off, my heart pounding, I thought I’d simply lost my mind; the idea of an
appointed
rendezvous suddenly seemed to me such a glaring absurdity that it was impossible to believe it. And yet I had no doubts at all, even to this extent: the more glaring the absurdity, the more strongly I believed in it.

That it had already struck three worried me: “If I’ve been granted a rendezvous, how can I be late for the rendezvous?” I thought. Stupid questions also flashed, such as, “Which is better for me now—boldness or timidity?” But it all only flashed, because in my heart there was one main thing, and such as I couldn’t define. What had been said the day before was this: “Tomorrow at three o’clock I’ll be at Tatyana Pavlovna’s”—that was all. But, first, she had always received me alone, in her room, and she could have told me all she liked without moving to Tatyana Pavlovna’s; so why appoint another place at Tatyana Pavlovna’s? And again a question: will Tatyana Pavlovna be at home, or won’t she? If it’s a rendezvous, then it means Tatyana Pavlovna won’t be at home. And how to accomplish that without explaining it all to Tatyana Pavlovna beforehand? Which means that Tatyana Pavlovna is also in on the secret? This thought seemed wild to me and somehow unchaste, almost crude.

And, finally, she might simply have wanted to visit Tatyana Pavlovna and told me yesterday without any purpose, and I imagined all sorts of things. And it had been said so much in passing, carelessly, calmly, and after a rather boring séance, because all the while I had been at her place yesterday, I had been thrown off for some reason: I sat, mumbled, and didn’t know what to say, grew terribly angry and timid, and she was going out somewhere, as it turned out afterwards, and was visibly glad when I got up to leave. All these considerations crowded in my head. I decided, finally, that I would go, ring the bell, the cook would open the door, and I would ask, “Is Tatyana Pavlovna at home?” If she wasn’t, it meant “rendezvous.” But I had no doubts, no doubts!

I ran up the stairs and—on the stairs, in front of the door, all my fear vanished. “Well, come what may,” I thought, “only quickly!” The cook opened the door and, with her vile phlegm, grumbled that Tatyana Pavlovna was not at home. “And is there anyone else waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna?” I was about to ask, but didn’t. “Better see for myself,” and, muttering to the cook that I would wait, I threw off my coat and opened the door . . .

Katerina Nikolaevna was sitting by the window and “waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“She’s not here?” she suddenly asked me, as if with worry and vexation, the moment she saw me. Both her voice and her face corresponded so little with my expectations that I simply got mired on the threshold.

“Who’s not here?” I murmured.

“Tatyana Pavlovna! Didn’t I ask you yesterday to tell her I’d call on her at three o’clock?”

“I . . . I haven’t seen her at all.”

“You forgot?”

I sat down as if crushed. So that’s how it turned out! And, above all, everything was as clear as two times two, and I—I still stubbornly believed.

“I don’t even remember your asking me to tell her. And you didn’t; you simply said you’d be here at three o’clock,” I cut her short impatiently. I wasn’t looking at her.

“Ah!” she suddenly cried. “So, if you forgot to tell her, and yet knew yourself that I would be here, so then what did you come here for?”

I raised my head. There was neither mockery nor wrath in her face, there was only her bright, cheerful smile and some sort of additional mischievousness in her expression—her perpetual expression, however—an almost childlike mischievousness. “There, you see, I’ve caught you out. Well, what are you going to say now?” her whole face all but said.

I didn’t want to answer, and again looked down. The silence lasted for about half a minute.

“Are you just coming from
papà
?” she suddenly asked.

“I’m just coming from Anna Andreevna, and I wasn’t at Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s at all . . . and you knew that,” I suddenly added.

“Did anything happen to you at Anna Andreevna’s?”

“That is, since I now have such a crazy look? No, I had a crazy look even before Anna Andreevna’s.”

“And you didn’t get smarter at her place?”

“No, I didn’t. Besides, I heard there that you were going to marry Baron Bjoring.”

“Did she tell you that?” she suddenly became interested.

“No, I told her that, and I heard Nashchokin say it to Prince Sergei Petrovich today when he came to visit.”

I still wouldn’t raise my eyes to her; to look at her meant to be showered with light, joy, happiness, and I didn’t want to be happy. The sting of indignation pierced my heart, and in a single instant I made a tremendous decision. Then I suddenly began to speak, I scarcely remember what about. I was breathless and mumbled somehow, but now I looked boldly at her. My heart was pounding. I began talking about something totally unrelated, though maybe it made sense. At first she listened with her steady, patient smile, which never left her face, but, little by little, astonishment and then even alarm flashed in her intent gaze. Her smile still didn’t leave her, but the smile, too, as if trembled at times.

“What’s the matter?” I suddenly asked, noticing that she was all atremble.

“I’m afraid of you,” she replied almost anxiously.

“Why don’t you leave? Look, since Tatyana Pavlovna isn’t here now, and you knew she wouldn’t be, doesn’t that mean you should get up and leave?”

“I wanted to wait, but now . . . in fact . . .”

She made as if to rise.

“No, no, sit down,” I stopped her. “There, you just trembled again, but you smile even when you’re afraid . . . You always have a smile. There, now you’re smiling completely . . .”

“Are you raving?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid . . .” she whispered again.

“Of what?”

“That you’ll . . . start breaking down the walls . . .” She smiled again, but this time indeed timidly.

“I can’t bear your smile! . . .”

And I started talking again. It was just as if I was flying. As if something was pushing me. I had never, never talked with her like that, but always timidly. I was terribly timid now, too, but I went on talking; I remember I began talking about her face.

“I can’t bear your smile anymore!” I suddenly cried. “Why did I imagine you as menacing, magnificent, and with sarcastic society phrases while I was in Moscow? Yes, in Moscow; I talked about you with Marya Ivanovna while I was still there, and we imagined you, how you must be . . . Do you remember Marya Ivanovna? You visited her. As I was coming here, I dreamed of you all night on the train. Before you arrived, I spent a whole month here looking at your portrait in your father’s study, and guessed nothing. The expression of your face is childlike mischievousness and infinite simpleheartedness—there! I’ve marveled at that terribly all the while I’ve been coming to see you. Oh, you know how to look proud and crush one with your gaze. I remember how you looked at me at your father’s when you came from Moscow then . . . I saw you then, and yet if I had been asked then, when I left, what you were like—I wouldn’t have been able to tell. I couldn’t even have said how tall you were. I saw you and just went blind. Your portrait doesn’t resemble you at all: your eyes aren’t dark, but light, and only seem dark because of your long lashes. You’re plump, of average height, but your plumpness is firm, light, the plumpness of a healthy young village girl. And you have a perfect village face, the face of a village beauty—don’t be offended, it’s good, it’s better—a round, ruddy, bright, bold, laughing, and . . . shy face! Really, it’s shy. The shy face of Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov! Shy and chaste, I swear! More than chaste—childlike!—that’s your face! I’ve been struck all this while, and all this while I’ve asked myself: is this that woman? I know now that you’re very intelligent, but in the beginning I thought you were a bit simple. Your mind is gay, but without any embellishments . . . Another thing I like is that the smile never leaves you; that’s my paradise! I also like your calmness, your quietness, and that you articulate your words smoothly, calmly, and almost lazily—I precisely like that laziness. It seems that if a bridge collapsed under you, even then you’d say something smooth and measured . . . I imagined you as the height of pride and passion, yet you’ve talked with me these two whole months like student to student . . . I never imagined your forehead was like that: it’s slightly low, as in statues, but it’s white and delicate as marble under your fluffy hair. You have a high bosom, a light step, you’re of extraordinary beauty, yet you have no pride at all. I’ve come to believe it only now, I didn’t believe it before!”

She listened wide-eyed to this whole wild tirade; she saw that I was trembling myself. She raised her gloved little hand several times in a sweet, cautious gesture, so as to stop me, but each time withdrew it in perplexity and fear. Now and then she even recoiled quickly with her whole body. Two or three times a smile glimmered again on her face; one time she blushed very much, but in the end she was decidedly frightened and began to turn pale. As soon as I paused, she reached out her hand and said in a sort of pleading but still smooth voice:

“You cannot speak like that . . . it’s impossible to speak like that . . .”

And she suddenly got up from her place, unhurriedly taking her scarf and sable muff.

“You’re going?” I cried.

“I’m decidedly afraid of you . . . you abuse . . .” she drew out as if with regret and reproach.

“Listen, by God, I won’t break down any walls.”

“But you’ve already started,” she couldn’t help herself and smiled. “I don’t even know if you’ll let me pass.” And it seemed she truly was afraid that I wouldn’t let her go.

“I’ll open the door for you myself, you can go, but know this: I’ve made a tremendous decision; and if you want to give light to my soul, come back, sit down, and listen to just two words. But if you don’t want to, then go, and I myself will open the door for you.”

She looked at me and sat down.

“With what indignation another woman would have left, but you sat down!” I cried in ecstasy.

“You never allowed yourself to talk like this before.”

“I was always timid before. Now, too, I walked in not knowing what to say. Do you think I don’t feel timid now? I do. But I suddenly made a tremendous decision, and I feel I’ll carry it out. And as soon as I made this decision, I lost my mind at once and began saying all that . . . Listen, here are my two words: am I your spy or not? Answer me—there’s the question!”

Color quickly poured over her face.

“Don’t answer yet, Katerina Nikolaevna, but listen to everything and then tell me the whole truth.”

I broke all the barriers at once and flew off into space.

II

“TWO MONTHS AGO I stood here behind the curtain . . . you know . . . and you were talking with Tatyana Pavlovna about the letter. I ran out, beside myself, and said too much. You knew at once that I knew something . . . you couldn’t help understanding . . . you were looking for an important document and were apprehensive about it . . . Wait, Katerina Nikolaevna, hold off from speaking yet. I declare to you that there were grounds for your suspicions: this document exists . . . that is, it did . . . I saw it; it’s your letter to Andronikov, right?”

“You saw that letter?” she asked quickly, embarrassed and agitated. “Where did you see it?”

“I saw it . . . I saw it at Kraft’s . . . the one who shot himself . . .”

“Really? You saw it yourself? What happened to it?”

“Kraft tore it up.”

“In your presence? You saw it?”

“In my presence. He tore it up, probably, before his death . . . I didn’t know then that he was going to shoot himself . . .”

“So it’s destroyed, thank God!” she said slowly, with a sigh, and crossed herself.

I didn’t lie to her. That is, I did lie, because the document was with me and had never been with Kraft, but that was merely a detail, while in the main thing I didn’t lie, because the moment I lied, I promised myself to burn the letter that very evening. I swear, if I’d had it in my pocket at that moment, I’d have taken it out and given it to her; but I didn’t have it with me, it was at home. However, maybe I wouldn’t have given it to her, because I would have been very ashamed to confess to her then that I had it and that I had been watching her for so long, waiting and not giving it to her. It’s all one: I’d have burned it at home in any case, and I wasn’t lying! I was pure at that moment, I swear.

“And if so,” I went on, almost beside myself, “then tell me, did you attract me, treat me nicely, receive me, because you suspected I had knowledge of the document? Wait, Katerina Nikolaevna, don’t speak for one more little minute, but let me finish everything. All the while I’ve been visiting you, all this time I’ve suspected that you were being nice to me only in order to coax this letter out of me, to drive me to a point where I’d confess . . . Wait one more minute: I suspected, but I suffered. Your duplicity was unbearable for me, because . . . because in you I found the noblest of beings! I’ll say it straight out, straight out: I was your enemy, but in you I found the noblest of beings! Everything was vanquished at once. But the duplicity, that is, the suspicion of duplicity, tormented me . . . Now everything must be resolved, must be explained, the time has come; but wait a little more, don’t speak, learn how I myself look at all this, precisely now, at the present moment. I’ll say it straight out: even if it was so, I won’t be angry . . . that is, I meant to say—won’t be offended, because it’s all so natural, I do understand. What could be unnatural and bad here? You’re suffering over a letter, you suspect that so-and-so knows everything, why, then you might very well wish that so-and-so would speak . . . There’s nothing bad in that, nothing at all. I say it sincerely. But all the same I need you to tell me something now . . . to confess (forgive me the word). I need the truth. For some reason I need it! And so, tell me, were you being nice to me just to coax the document out of me . . . Katerina Nikolaevna!”

I spoke as if I were plunging down, and my forehead was burning. She listened to me without alarm now; on the contrary, there was feeling in her face, but she looked somehow shy, as if ashamed.

“Just for that,” she said slowly and softly. “Forgive me, I was to blame,” she suddenly added, raising her hands towards me slightly. I had never expected that. I had expected anything but those words, even from her whom I already knew.

“And you say to me, ‘I’m to blame!’ Straight out like that: ‘I’m to blame!’” I cried.

“Oh, long ago I began to feel that I was to blame before you . . . and I’m even glad that it’s come out now . . .”

“Felt it long ago? Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

“I didn’t know how to say it,” she smiled. “That is, I did know,” she smiled again, “but I somehow came to feel ashamed . . . because, actually, in the beginning I ‘attracted’ you, as you put it, only for that, but then very soon it became disgusting to me . . . and I was tired of all this pretending, I assure you!” she added with bitter feeling. “And of all this fuss as well!”

“And why, why wouldn’t you ask then in a direct way? You should have said, ‘You know about the letter, why are you pretending?’ And I’d have told you everything at once, I’d have confessed at once!”

“I was . . . a little afraid of you. I confess, I also didn’t trust you. And it’s true: if I was sly, you were, too,” she added with a smile.

“Yes, yes, I was unworthy!” I cried, astounded. “Oh, you don’t know yet all the abysses of my fall!”

“Well, now it’s abysses! I recognize your style.” She smiled quietly. “That letter,” she added sadly, “was the saddest and most thoughtless act of my life. The awareness of that act has always been a reproach to me. Under the influence of circumstances and apprehensions, I doubted my dear, magnanimous father. Knowing that this letter might fall . . . into the hands of wicked people . . . having all the grounds for thinking so,” she added hotly, “I trembled for fear they might make use of it, show it to
papà
. . . and it might make an extreme impression on him . . . in his state . . . on his health . . . and he would stop loving me . . . Yes,” she added, looking brightly into my eyes and probably catching something in my gaze, “yes, I also feared for my own lot: I feared that he . . . under the influence of his illness . . . might also deprive me of his favor . . . That feeling was also part of it, but here I’m probably to blame before him, too: he’s so kind and magnanimous that he would of course have forgiven me. That’s all there was. But the way I acted with you—that should not have happened,” she concluded, suddenly abashed again. “You make me feel ashamed.”

“No, you have nothing to be ashamed of !” I cried.

“I was actually counting . . . on your ardor . . . and I admit it,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Katerina Nikolaevna! Who, tell me, who is forcing you to make such confessions to me aloud?” I cried as if drunk. “Well, what would it have cost you to stand up and prove to me, like two times two, in the choicest expressions and in the subtlest way, that while it did happen, all the same it didn’t happen—you understand, the way you people in high society know how to manage the truth? I’m crude and stupid, I’d have believed you at once, I’d have believed anything you said! It wouldn’t have cost you anything to do that, would it? You’re not really afraid of me! How could you have humiliated yourself so willingly before an upstart, before a pathetic adolescent?”

“In this at least I haven’t humiliated myself before you,” she uttered with extreme dignity, evidently not understanding my exclamation.

“Oh, on the contrary, on the contrary! That’s just what I’m shouting! . . .”

“Ah, it was so bad and so thoughtless on my part!” she exclaimed, raising her hand to her face and as if trying to cover herself with it. “I was already ashamed yesterday, that’s why I was so out of sorts when you were sitting with me . . . The whole truth is,” she added, “that my circumstances have now come together in such a way that I absolutely needed, finally, to know the whole truth about the fate of that unfortunate letter, otherwise I had already begun to forget about it . . . because I didn’t receive you only on account of that,” she added suddenly.

My heart trembled.

“Of course not,” she smiled with a subtle smile, “of course not! I . . . You remarked on it very aptly earlier, Arkady Makarovich, that you and I often talked as student to student. I assure you that I’m sometimes very bored with people; it has become especially so after the trip abroad and all those family misfortunes . . . I even go out very little now, and not only from laziness. I often want to leave for the country. I could reread my favorite books there, which I set aside long ago, otherwise I can’t find time to read them. Remember, you laughed that I read Russian newspapers, two newspapers a day?”

“I didn’t laugh . . .”

“Of course, because it stirred you in the same way, but I confessed to you long ago: I’m Russian, and I love Russia. You remember, we kept reading the ‘facts,’ as you called them” (she smiled). “Though very often you’re somehow . . . strange, yet you sometimes became so animated that you were always able to say an apt word, and you were interested in precisely what interested me. When you’re a ‘student,’ you really are sweet and original. But other roles seem little suited to you,” she added with a lovely, sly smile. “You remember, we sometimes spent whole hours talking about nothing but figures, counting and estimating, concerned about the number of schools we have and where education is headed. We counted up the murders and criminal cases, made comparisons with the good news . . . wanted to know where it was all going and what, finally, would happen with us ourselves. I met with sincerity in you. In society they never talk with us women like that. Last week I tried to talk with Prince ——v about Bismarck, because it interested me very much, but I couldn’t make up my own mind, and, imagine, he sat down beside me and began telling me, even in great detail, but all of it with some sort of irony, and precisely with that condescension I find so unbearable, with which ‘great men’ usually speak to us women when we meddle in what is ‘not our business’ . . . And do you remember how you and I nearly quarreled over Bismarck? You were proving to me that you had an idea of your own that went ‘way beyond’ Bismarck’s,” she suddenly laughed. “I’ve met only two people in my life who have talked quite seriously with me: my late husband, a very, very intelligent and . . . noble man,” she said imposingly, “and then—you yourself know who . . .”

“Versilov!” I cried. I held my breath at each word she said.

“Yes. I liked very much to listen to him, and in the end I became fully . . . perhaps overly candid with him, but it was then that he didn’t believe me!”

“Didn’t believe you!”

“Yes, but then nobody ever believed me.”

“But Versilov! Versilov!”

“It’s not simply that he didn’t believe me,” she said, lowering her eyes and smiling somehow strangely, “but he decided that I had ‘all vices’ in me.”

“Of which you don’t have a single one!”

“No, I do have some.”

“Versilov didn’t love you, that’s why he didn’t understand you,” I cried, flashing my eyes.

Something twitched in her face.

“Drop that and never speak to me of . . . that man . . .” she added hotly and with strong emphasis. “But enough; it’s time to go.” (She got up to leave.) “So, do you forgive me or not?” she said, looking at me brightly.

“Me . . . forgive . . . you! Listen, Katerina Nikolaevna, and don’t be angry! Is it true that you’re getting married?”

“That’s not at all decided yet,” she said, as if afraid of something, with embarrassment.

“Is he a good man? Forgive me, forgive me the question!”

“Yes, very good . . .”

“Don’t answer any more, don’t deign to answer me! I know that such questions are impossible from me! I only wanted to know whether he’s worthy or not, but I’ll find out about him myself.”

“Ah, listen!” she said in alarm.

“No, I won’t, I won’t. I’ll pass by . . . But I’ll only say this: may God grant you every happiness, every one that you choose . . . for having given me so much happiness now, in this one hour! You are now imprinted on my soul forever. I have acquired a treasure: the thought of your perfection. I suspected perfidy, coarse coquetry, and I was unhappy . . . because I couldn’t connect that notion with you . . . during these last days I’ve been thinking day and night; and suddenly it all becomes clear as day! Coming in here, I thought I’d go away with Jesuitism, cunning, a worming-out serpent, but I found honor, glory, a student! . . . You laugh? Go on, go on! But you’re a saint, you can’t laugh at what is sacred . . .”

“Oh, no, I’m only laughing that you use such terrible words . . . Well, what is a ‘worming-out serpent’?” she laughed.

“You let drop one precious word today,” I went on in rapture. “How could you possibly say in front of me ‘that you were counting on my ardor’? Well, so you’re a saint and confess even to that, because you imagined some sort of guilt in yourself and wanted to punish yourself . . . Though, incidentally, there wasn’t any guilt, because even if there was, everything that comes from you is holy! But still you might not have said precisely that word, that expression! . . . Such even unnatural candor only shows your lofty chastity, your respect for me, your faith in me,” I exclaimed incoherently. “Oh, don’t blush, don’t blush! . . . And who, who could slander and say that you are a passionate woman? Oh, forgive me, I see a pained expression on your face, forgive the frenzied adolescent his clumsy words! As if it were a matter of words and expressions now? Aren’t you higher than all expressions? . . . Versilov once said that Othello killed Desdemona and then himself not because he was jealous, but because his ideal was taken from him . . . I understood that, because today my ideal has been given back to me!”

“You praise me too much: I’m not worthy of it,” she said with feeling. “Do you remember what I said to you about your eyes?” she said jokingly.

“That I don’t have eyes, but two microscopes instead, and that I exaggerate every fly into a camel! No, ma’am, there’s no camel here! . . . What, you’re leaving?”

She was standing in the middle of the room, with her muff and shawl in her hand.

“No, I’ll wait till you go, and I’ll go myself afterwards. I still have to write a couple of words to Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“I’ll leave right now, right now, but once more: be happy, alone or with the one you choose, and may God be with you! And I—I only need an ideal!”

“Dear, kind Arkady Makarovich, believe me, of you I . . . My father always says of you: ‘A dear, kind boy!’ Believe me, I’ll always remember your stories about the poor boy abandoned among strangers, and about his solitary dreams . . . I understand only too well how your soul was formed . . . But now, though we’re students,” she added with a pleading and bashful smile, pressing my hand, “it’s impossible for us to go on seeing each other as before, and, and . . . surely you understand that?”