The Adolescent (50 page)

I babbled these last incoherent phrases when we were already in the street. Oh, I’m recalling it all in detail, to let the reader see that, for all my raptures and for all my vows and promises to be regenerated for the better and to seek seemliness, I could fall so easily then, and into such mire! And I swear, if I weren’t fully and completely certain that I’m not at all like that now and that I have developed my character through practical life, I would not have confessed all this to the reader for anything.

We came out of the shop, and Lambert supported me, putting his arm lightly around me. Suddenly I looked at him and saw almost the same expression in his eyes—intent, scrutinizing, terribly attentive, and at the same time sober in the highest degree—as on that morning when I was freezing and he led me to a cab, with his arm around me in exactly the same way, and listened, all ears and eyes, to my incoherent babble. People who are getting drunk, but are not quite drunk yet, can suddenly have moments of the fullest sobriety.

“I won’t go to your place for anything!” I uttered firmly and coherently, looking at him mockingly and pushing him away with my hand.

“Ah, come on, I’ll tell Alphonsine to make tea, come on!”

He was terribly certain that I wouldn’t escape; he held and supported me with relish, like a dear little victim, and I, of course, was just what he needed, precisely that evening and in that condition! Why—will be explained later.

“I’m not going!” I repeated. “Cabbie!”

Just then a cab came trotting up, and I hopped into the sledge.

“Where are you going? What’s with you?” yelled Lambert, in terrible alarm, seizing my fur coat.

“And don’t you dare follow me,” I cried, “don’t try to overtake me!” At that moment the cab started, and my coat was torn from Lambert’s hand.

“You’ll come anyway!” he shouted after me in an angry voice.

“I’ll come if I want to—by my own will!” I turned to him from the sledge.

II

HE DIDN’T PURSUE ME, of course, because there happened to be no other cab at hand, and I managed to disappear from his sight. I drove only as far as the Haymarket, and there I got out and dismissed the sledge. I wanted terribly to go by foot. I felt no fatigue, no great drunkenness, but was just full of vigor; there was an influx of strength, there was an extraordinary ability for any undertaking, and an endless number of pleasant thoughts in my head.

My heart was pounding intensely and distinctly—I could hear each beat. And everything seemed so nice to me, everything was so easy. Walking past the guardhouse on the Haymarket, I wanted terribly to go up to the sentry and kiss him. There was a thaw, the square turned black and smelly, but the square, too, I liked very much.

“I’ll go to Obukhovsky Prospect now,” I thought, “then turn left and come out in the Semyonovsky quarter, I’ll make a detour, it’s excellent, it’s all excellent. My fur coat’s unbuttoned—why doesn’t anybody take it off me, where are the thieves? They say there are thieves in the Haymarket, let them come, maybe I’ll give them my fur coat. What do I need a fur coat for? A fur coat is property. La propriété, c’est le vol.
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But anyhow, what nonsense, and how good everything is. It’s good that there’s a thaw. Why frost? There’s no need at all for frost. It’s also good to talk nonsense. What was it I said to Lambert about principles? I said there are no general principles, but only special cases. That’s nonsense, that’s arch-nonsense! I said it on purpose, to show off. It’s a bit shameful, but anyhow—never mind, I’ll smooth it over. Don’t be ashamed, don’t torment yourself, Arkady Makarovich. Arkady Makarovich, I like you. I even like you very much, my young friend. It’s too bad you’re a little knave . . . and . . . and . . . ah, yes . . . ah!”

I suddenly stopped, and again my whole heart was wrung in ecstasy:

“Lord! What was it he said? He said she loves me. Oh, he’s a crook, he told a lot of lies here; it was so that I’d go and spend the night with him. But maybe not. He said Anna Andreevna thought so, too . . . Bah! Nastasya Egorovna could also find out a thing or two here: she pokes around everywhere. And why didn’t I go to his place? I’d learn everything. Hm! he’s got a plan, and I anticipated it all to the last stroke. A dream. It’s broadly conceived, Mr. Lambert, only you’re wrong, it won’t be that way. But maybe it will! Maybe it will! And can he really get me married? But maybe he can. He’s naïve and credulous. He’s stupid and impudent, like all practical people. Stupidity and impudence, joined together, are a great force. And confess that you were in fact afraid of Lambert, Arkady Makarovich! What does he need honest people for? He says it so seriously: there’s not one honest man here! And you yourself—who are you? Eh, never mind me! Don’t scoundrels need honest people? In knavery, honest people are more needed than anywhere else. Ha, ha! You’re the only one who didn’t know that before, Arkady Makarovich, with your total innocence. Lord! What if he really gets me married!”

I paused again. Here I must confess one stupidity (since it happened so long ago), I must confess that I had already wanted to marry long before—that is, I didn’t want to and it would never have happened (and it won’t in the future, I give my word), but already more than once and long before then I had dreamed of how nice it would be to get married—that is, terribly many times, especially on going to sleep each night. This began with me when I was almost sixteen. I had a schoolmate, Lavrovsky, the same age as me—such a nice, quiet, pretty boy, though not distinguished in any way. I hardly ever spoke to him. Suddenly one day we were sitting next to each other alone, and he was very pensive, and suddenly he says to me, “Ah, Dolgoruky, what do you think about getting married now? Really, when should one get married if not now? Now would be the very best time, and yet it’s quite impossible!” And he said it so candidly. And I suddenly agreed with him wholeheartedly, because I myself had dreamed of something like it. Then we came together for several days in a row and kept talking about it, as if in secret, though only about that. And then, I don’t know how it happened, but we drifted apart and stopped talking. But ever since then I began to dream. This, of course, would not be worth recalling, but I only wanted to show how far back these things can sometimes go . . .

“There’s only one serious objection here,” I went on dreaming as I walked. “Oh, of course, the insignificant difference in age would be no obstacle, but there’s this: she’s such an aristocrat, and I’m—simply Dolgoruky! Awfully nasty! Hm! Surely Versilov, once he’s married my mother, could ask the authorities for permission to adopt me . . . for the father’s services, so to speak . . . He was in the service, so of course there were services; he was an arbiter of the peace . . . Oh, devil take it, what vileness!”

I suddenly exclaimed that and suddenly stopped for the third time, but now as if squashed on the spot. All the painful feeling of humiliation from the consciousness that I could wish for such a disgrace as a change of name through adoption, this betrayal of my whole childhood—all this in almost one instant destroyed my whole previous mood, and all my joy vanished like smoke. “No, I won’t tell this to anyone,” I thought, blushing terribly. “I stooped so low because I’m . . . in love and stupid. No, if Lambert is right about anything, it’s that nowadays all this foolishness is simply not required, and that the main thing in our age is the man himself, and then his money. That is, not his money, but his power. With my capital I’ll throw myself into the ‘idea,’ and in ten years all Russia will be talking, and I’ll have my revenge on everyone. And there’s no need to be ceremonious with her, here again Lambert is right. She’ll turn coward and simply marry me. In the simplest and most banal way, she’ll accept and marry me. ‘You don’t know, you don’t know in what sort of back room it went on!’” Lambert’s words came to my mind. “And that’s so,” I confirmed, “Lambert is right in everything, a thousand times righter than I, and Versilov, and all these idealists! He’s a realist. She’ll see that I have character and say, ‘Ah, he has character!’ Lambert is a scoundrel, and all he wants is to fleece me of thirty thousand, and yet he’s the only friend I’ve got. There is no other friendship and cannot be, that was all invented by impractical people. And I don’t even humiliate her; do I humiliate her? Not a bit: women are all like that! Can there be a woman without meanness? That’s why she needs to have man over her, that’s why she was created a subordinate being. Woman is vice and temptation, and man is nobility and magnanimity. And so it will be unto ages of ages. And never mind that I’m preparing to use the ‘document.’ That won’t prevent either nobility or magnanimity. Schillers in a pure form don’t exist—they’ve been invented. Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid! Afterwards it will all be washed away, smoothed over. And now it’s only—breadth, it’s only—life, it’s only—life’s truth—that’s what they call it now!”

Oh, again I repeat: may I be forgiven for citing to the last line all this drunken raving from that time. Of course, this is only the essence of my thoughts from that time, but I believe I did speak in those very words. I had to cite them, because I sat down to write in order to judge myself. And what am I to judge, if not that? Can there be anything more serious in life? Wine is no justification.
In vino veritas.
⁹³

Dreaming thus and all buried in fantasy, I didn’t notice that I had finally reached home, that is, mama’s apartment. I didn’t even notice how I entered the apartment; but as soon as I stepped into our tiny front hall, I understood at once that something extraordinary had happened. In the rooms they were talking loudly, exclaiming, and mama could be heard weeping. In the doorway I was almost knocked off my feet by Lukerya, who ran swiftly from Makar Ivanovich’s room to the kitchen. I threw off my coat and went into Makar Ivanovich’s room, because everyone was crowded there.

There stood Versilov and mama. Mama lay in his arms, and he pressed her tightly to his heart. Makar Ivanovich was sitting, as usual, on his little bench, but as if in some sort of strengthlessness, so that Liza had to support him by the shoulders with her arms to keep him from falling; and it was even obvious that he was all leaning over so as to fall. I swiftly stepped closer, gave a start, and realized that the old man was dead.

He had only just died, about a minute before my arrival. Ten minutes earlier he had felt as much himself as ever. Only Liza was with him; she was sitting with him and telling him about her grief, and he was stroking her hair as the day before. Suddenly he trembled all over (Liza told us), made as if to stand up, made as if to cry out, and silently began to fall towards the left. “Heart failure!” said Versilov. Liza cried out for the whole house to hear, and it was then that they came running—all that about a minute before my arrival.

“Arkady!” Versilov shouted to me. “Run instantly to Tatyana Pavlovna’s. She should certainly be at home. Ask her to come at once. Take a cab. Quickly, I beg you!”

His eyes were flashing—I remember that clearly. I didn’t notice in his face anything like pure pity, tears—only mama, Liza, and Lukerya were weeping. On the contrary, and this I recall very well, what was striking in his face was some extraordinary excitement, almost ecstasy. I ran for Tatyana Pavlovna.

The way, as is known from the foregoing, wasn’t long. I didn’t take a cab, but ran all the way without stopping. There was confusion in my mind, and also even almost something ecstatic. I realized that a radical event had happened. The drunkenness had disappeared completely in me, to the last drop, and along with it all ignoble thoughts, by the time I rang at Tatyana Pavlovna’s.

The Finnish woman unlocked the door: “Not at home!” and wanted to lock it at once.

“What do you mean, not at home?” I burst into the front hall by force. “It can’t be! Makar Ivanovich is dead!”

“Wha-a-at?” Tatyana Pavlovna’s cry suddenly rang out through the closed door of her drawing room.

“Dead! Makar Ivanovich is dead! Andrei Petrovich asks you to come this minute.”

“No, you’re lying! . . .”

The latch clicked, but the door opened only an inch: “What is it, tell me!”

“I don’t know myself, I just arrived and he was already dead. Andrei Petrovich says it’s heart failure!”

“At once, this minute. Run, tell them I’ll be there. Go on, go on, go on! Well, what are you standing there for?”

But I saw clearly through the half-opened door that someone had come out from behind the curtain that screened Tatyana Pavlovna’s bed and was standing there in the room behind Tatyana Pavlovna. Mechanically, instinctively, I seized the latch and would not let her close the door.

“Arkady Makarovich! Is it really true that he’s dead?” the familiar, soft, smooth, metallic voice rang out, at which everything began to tremble in my soul all at once: in the question something could be heard that had penetrated and stirred
her
soul.

“In that case,” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly abandoned the door, “in that case—settle it between you as you like. You want it that way!”

She rushed impetuously out of the apartment, putting on her kerchief and coat as she ran, and started down the stairs. We were left alone. I threw off my coat, stepped in, and closed the door behind me. She stood before me as she had when we met the other time, with a bright face, a bright gaze, and, as then, reached both hands out to me. As if cut down, I literally fell at her feet.

III

I WAS BEGINNING to weep, I don’t know why; I don’t remember how she sat me down beside her, I only remember, in a memory that is priceless for me, how we sat next to each other, hand in hand, and talked impetuously: she was asking about the old man and his death, and I was telling her about him—so that one might have thought I was weeping over Makar Ivanovich, whereas that would have been the height of absurdity; and I know that she could never have supposed in me such a thoroughly childish banality. At last I suddenly recollected myself and felt ashamed. Now I suppose that I wept then solely out of ecstasy, and I think she understood it very well herself, so that with regard to this memory I’m at peace.

It suddenly seemed very strange to me that she should keep asking like that about Makar Ivanovich.

“Did you know him?” I asked in surprise.

“For a long time. I’ve never seen him, but he has played a role in my life, too. At one time the man I’m afraid of told me a great deal about him. You know who that man is.”

“I only know now that ‘the man’ was much nearer to your soul than you revealed to me before,” I said, not knowing myself what I meant to express by it, but as if in reproach and frowning deeply.

“You say he was kissing your mother just now? Embracing her? You saw it yourself ?” she went on asking without listening to me.

“Yes, I saw it; and, believe me, it was all sincere and magnanimous in the highest degree!” I hastened to confirm, seeing her joy.

“God grant it!” She crossed herself. “Now he’s unbound. That beautiful old man only bound his life. With his death, duty and . . . dignity will resurrect in him again, as they already resurrected once. Oh, he’s magnanimous before all else, he’ll give peace to the heart of your mother, whom he loves more than anything on earth, and he himself will finally be at peace, and thank God—it’s high time.”

“Is he very dear to you?”

“Yes, very dear, though not in the sense in which he himself would wish and in which you’re asking.”

“So are you afraid now for him or for yourself ?” I asked suddenly.

“Well, these are intricate questions, let’s drop them.”

“Let’s drop them, of course; only I was ignorant of that, all too much so, maybe; but let it be, you’re right, everything’s new now, and if anyone is resurrected, it’s me first of all. I’ve been mean in my thoughts before you, Katerina Nikolaevna, and maybe no more than an hour ago I committed a meanness against you in deed as well, but you know, here I am sitting next to you, and I feel no remorse. Because everything has vanished now, and everything is new, and that man who was plotting a meanness against you an hour ago, I don’t know and do not want to know!”

“Come to your senses,” she smiled, “it’s as if you’re slightly delirious.”

“And how can a man possibly judge himself sitting next to you,” I went on, “whether he’s honest or mean? You’re like the sun, unattainable . . . Tell me, how could you come out to me after all that’s happened? If you knew what happened an hour ago, only an hour? What sort of dream was coming true?”

“I probably know everything,” she smiled gently. “You wanted to take revenge on me for something just now, swore to ruin me, and certainly would have killed or beaten anyone who uttered even one bad word about me in your presence.”

Oh, she was smiling and joking; but it was only from her immeasurable kindness, because her whole soul was filled at that moment, as I later realized, with such enormous care of her own and such strong and powerful feeling, that she could talk with me and answer my trifling, irksome questions only as one answers a little boy who has asked some importunate, childish question, in order to get rid of him. I suddenly understood that and felt ashamed, but I was no longer able to stop.

“No,” I cried, losing control of myself, “no, I didn’t kill the one who spoke badly of you, but, on the contrary, I even seconded him!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t, there’s no need, don’t tell me anything,” she suddenly reached her hand out to stop me, and even with a sort of suffering in her face, but I had already jumped up from my seat and stood before her in order to speak everything out, and if I had spoken it out, what happened later wouldn’t have happened, because it would certainly have ended with my confessing everything and returning the document to her. But she suddenly laughed:

“Don’t, don’t say anything, no details! I know all your crimes myself. I’ll bet you wanted to marry me or something like that, and were just talking it over with one of your accomplices, a former schoolmate of yours . . . Ah, it seems I’ve guessed right!” she cried, peering gravely into my face.

“How . . . how could you guess?” I stammered like a fool, terribly struck.

“Well, what else! But enough, enough! I forgive you, only stop talking about it,” she waved her hand again, now with visible impatience. “I’m a dreamer myself, and if you knew what means I resort to in my dreams when nothing holds me back! Enough, you keep confusing me. I’m very glad that Tatyana Pavlovna left; I wanted very much to see you, and with her here it would be impossible to speak as we’re doing now. It seems I’m guilty before you for what happened then. Right? Am I right?”

“You, guilty? But I betrayed you to
him
then and—what can you have thought of me! I’ve been thinking about that all this time, all these days, ever since then, every moment, thinking and feeling.” (I wasn’t lying to her.)

“You needn’t have tormented yourself so much, I understood only too well then how it all happened; you simply blurted out to him in joy that you were in love with me and that I . . . well, that I had listened to you. That’s twenty years old for you. You do love him more than anything in the world, you’re looking for a friend, an ideal in him? I understood that only too well, but it was too late. Oh, yes, I was the guilty one then: I should have sent for you right then and put you at ease, but I was vexed; and I requested that you not be received in the house; and what came of it was that scene at the front door, and then that night. And you know, all this time, just like you, I’ve dreamed of meeting you secretly, only I didn’t know how to arrange it. And what do you think I feared most? That you would believe his slander against me.”

“Never!” I cried.

“I value our former meetings; your youth is dear to me, and even, perhaps, this sincerity itself . . . For I’m a most serious character. I’m the most serious and scowling character of all modern women, know that . . . ha, ha, ha! We’ll talk our fill some other time, but now I’m a bit out of sorts, I’m agitated and . . . it seems I’m in hysterics. But at last, at last,
he
will let me live in the world, too!”

This exclamation escaped involuntarily; I understood that at once and didn’t want to pick it up, but I trembled all over.

“He knows I’ve forgiven him!” she suddenly exclaimed again, as if to herself.

“Could you really have forgiven him that letter? And how can he know that you’ve forgiven him?” I exclaimed, no longer restraining myself.

“How does he know? Oh, he knows,” she went on answering me, but looked as if she had forgotten me and was talking to herself. “He’s come to his senses now. And how could he not know I’ve forgiven him, since he knows my soul by heart? He knows I’m somewhat of the same sort as he.”

“You?”

“Well, yes, he’s aware of that. Oh, I’m not passionate, I’m calm: but, like him, I also want everybody to be good . . . He does love me for something after all.”

“Then how is it he said you have all the vices?”

“He just said that; he’s keeping another secret to himself. And isn’t it true that the way he wrote his letter is terribly funny?”

“Funny?” (I was listening to her with all my might; I suppose she really was as if in hysterics and . . . maybe wasn’t speaking for me at all; but I couldn’t keep myself from asking.)

“Oh, yes, funny, and how I’d laugh if . . . if I wasn’t afraid. Though I’m not such a coward, don’t think it; but on account of that letter I didn’t sleep all that night, it’s written as if with some sort of sick blood . . . and after such a letter, what’s left? I love life, I’m terribly afraid for my life, I’m terribly pusillanimous about it . . . Ah, listen!” she suddenly roused herself. “Go to him! He’s alone now, he can’t be there all the time, he must have gone somewhere alone. Find him quickly, you must, run to him quickly, show him you’re his loving son, prove to him that you’re a dear, kind boy, my student, whom I . . . Oh, God grant you happiness! I don’t love anyone, and it’s better that way, but I wish everyone happiness, everyone, and him first, and let him know of it . . . even right now, I’d be very pleased . . .”

She got up and suddenly disappeared behind the portière; tears glistened on her cheeks at that moment (hysterical, after laughing). I remained alone, agitated and confused. I positively did not know to what to ascribe such agitation in her, which I could never have supposed in her. It was as if something contracted in my heart.

I waited five minutes, and finally ten; I was suddenly struck by the profound silence, and I ventured to peek through the door and call out. At my call, Marya appeared and declared to me in the most calm voice that the lady had long since dressed and gone out by the back door.