Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (584 page)

“And lose other people’s money, too.”

“Have you lost other people’s money?”

“I have lost yours.  I borrowed of Prince Sergay, from what was owing you.  Of course it was fearfully stupid and absurd of me . . . to consider your money mine, but I always meant to win it back.”

“I must warn you once more, my dear boy, that I have no money in Prince Sergay’s hands.  I know that young man is in straits himself, and I am not reckoning on him for anything, in spite of his promises.”

“That makes my position twice as bad. . . .  I am in a ludicrous position!  And what grounds has he for lending me money, and me for borrowing in that case?”

“That’s your affair. . . .  But there’s not the slightest reason for you to borrow money from him, is there?”

“Except that we are comrades. . . .”

“No other reason?  Is there anything which has made you feel it possible to borrow from him?  Any consideration whatever?”

“What sort of consideration do you mean?  I don’t understand.”

“So much the better if you don’t, and I will own, my boy, that I was sure of it.  Brisons-là, mon cher, and do try to avoid playing somehow.”

“If only you had told me before!  You seem half-hearted about it even now.”

“If I had spoken to you about it before, we should only have quarrelled, and you wouldn’t have let me come and see you in the evenings so readily.  And let me tell you, my dear, that all such saving counsels and warnings are simply an intrusion into another person’s conscience, at another person’s expense.  I have done enough meddling with the consciences of others, and in the long run I get nothing but taunts and rebuffs for it.  Taunts and rebuffs, of course, don’t matter; the point is that one never obtains one’s object in that way: no one listens to you, however much you meddle . . . and every one gets to dislike you.”

“I am glad that you have begun to talk to me of something besides abstractions.  I want to ask you one thing, I have wanted to for a long time, but it’s always been impossible when I’ve been with you.  It is a good thing we are in the street.  Do you remember that evening, the last evening I spent in your house, two months ago, how we sat upstairs in my ‘coffin,’ and I questioned you about mother and Makar Ivanovitch; do you remember how free and easy I was with you then?  How could you allow a young puppy to speak in those terms of his mother?  And yet you made not the faintest sign of protest; on the contrary, ‘you let yourself go,’ and so made me worse than ever.”

“My dear boy, I’m very glad to hear . . . such sentiments, from you. . . .  Yes, I remember very well; I was actually waiting to see the blush on your cheek, and if I fell in with your tone, it was just to bring you to the limit. . . .”

“And you only deceived me then, and troubled more than ever the springs of purity in my soul!  Yes, I’m a wretched raw youth, and I don’t know from minute to minute what is good and what is evil.  Had you given me the tiniest hint of the right road, I should have realized things and should have been eager to take the right path.  But you only drove me to fury.”

“Cher enfant, I always foresaw that, one way or another, we should understand one another; that ‘blush’ has made its appearance of itself, without my aid, and that I swear is better for you. . . .  I notice, my dear boy, that you have gained a great deal of late . . . can it be the companionship of that princeling?”

“Don’t praise me, I don’t like it.  Don’t leave me with a painful suspicion that you are flattering me without regard for truth, so as to go on pleasing me.  Well, lately . . . you see . . . I’ve been visiting ladies.  I am very well received, you know, by Anna Andreyevna, for instance.”

“I know that from her, my dear boy.  Yes, she is very charming and intelligent.  Mais brisons-là, mon cher.  It’s odd how sick I feel of everything to-day, spleen I suppose.  I put it down to haemorrhoids.  How are things at home?  All right?  You made it up, of course, and embraces followed?  Celà va sans dire.  It’s melancholy sometimes to go back to them, even after the nastiest walk.  In fact, I sometimes go a longer way round in the rain, simply to delay the moment of returning to the bosom of my family. . . .  And how bored I am there, good God, how bored!”

“Mother . . .”

“Your mother is a most perfect and delightful creature, mais. . . .  In short I am probably unworthy of them.  By the way, what’s the matter with them to-day?  For the last few days they’ve all been out of sorts somehow. . . .  I always try to ignore such things you know, but there is something fresh brewing to-day. . . .  Have you noticed nothing?”

“I know nothing positive, and in fact I should not have noticed it at all it if hadn’t been for that confounded Tatyana Pavlovna, who can never resist trying to get her knife in.  You are right; there is something wrong.  I found Liza at Anna Andreyevna’s this morning, and she was so . . . she surprised me in fact.  You know, of course, that she visits Anna Andreyevna?”

“I know, my dear.  And you . . . when were you at Anna Andreyevna’s, to-day?  At what time?  I want to know for a reason.”

“From two till three.  And only fancy as I was going out Prince Sergay arrived. . . .”

Then I described my whole visit very circumstantially.  He listened without speaking; he made no comment whatever on the possibility of a match between Prince Sergay and Anna Andreyevna; in response to my enthusiastic praise of Anna Andreyevna he murmured again that “she was very charming.”

“I gave her a great surprise this morning, with the latest bit of drawing-room gossip that Mme. Ahmakov is to be married to Baron Büring,” I said all of a sudden, as though something were torn out of me.

“Yes?  Would you believe it, she told me that ‘news’ earlier in the day, much earlier than you can have surprised her with it.”

“What do you mean?” I was simply struck dumb.  “From whom could she have heard it?  Though after all, there’s no need to ask; of course she might have heard it before I did; but only imagine, she listened to me when I told her as though it were absolutely news to her!  But . . . but what of it?  Hurrah for ‘breadth!’  One must take a broad view of people’s characters, mustn’t one?  I, for instance, should have poured it all out at once, and she shuts it up in a snuff box . . . and so be it, so be it, she is none the less a most delightful person, and a very fine character!”

“Oh, no doubt of it, every one must go his own way.  And something more original — these fine characters can sometimes baffle one completely — just imagine.  Anna Andreyevna took my breath away this morning by asking:  ‘Whether I were in love with Katerina Nikolaevna Ahmakov or not?’”

“What a wild and incredible question!” I cried, dumbfoundered again.  There was actually a mist before my eyes I had never yet broached this subject with him, and here he had begun on it himself.

“In what way did she put it?”

“No way, my dear boy, absolutely no way; the snuff-box shut again at once, more closely than ever, and what’s more, observe, I’ve never admitted the conceivability of such questions being addressed to me, nor has she . . . however, you say yourself that you know her and therefore you can imagine how far such a question is characteristic. . . .  Do you know anything about it by chance?”

“I am just as puzzled as you are.  Curiosity, perhaps, or a joke.”

“Oh, quite the contrary, it was a most serious question, hardly a question in fact, more a cross-examination, and evidently there were very important and positive reasons for it.  Won’t you be going to see her?  Couldn’t you find out something?  I would ask you as a favour, do you see . . .”

“But the strangest thing is that she could imagine you to be in love with Katerina Nikolaevna!  Forgive me, I can’t get over my amazement.  I should never, never have ventured to speak to you on this subject, or anything like it.”

“And that’s very sensible of you, my dear boy.”

“Your intrigues and your relations in the past — well, of course, the subject’s out of the question between us, and indeed it would be stupid of me, but of late, the last few days, I have several times exclaimed to myself that if you had ever loved that woman, if only for a moment — oh, you could never have made such a terrible mistake in your opinion of her as you did!  I know what happened, I know of your enmity, of your aversion, so to say, for each other, I’ve heard of it, I’ve heard too much of it; even before I left Moscow I heard of it, but the fact that stands out so clearly is intense aversion, intense hostility, the very OPPOSITE of love, and Anna Andreyevna suddenly asks point-blank, ‘Do you love her?’  Can she have heard so little about it?  It’s wild!  She was laughing, I assure you she was laughing!”

“But I observe, my dear boy,” said Versilov, and there was something nervous and sincere in his voice, that went to one’s heart, as his words rarely did: “that you speak with too much heat on this subject.  You said just now that you have taken to visiting ladies . . . of course, for me to question you . . . on that subject, as you expressed it. . . .  But is not ‘that woman’ perhaps on the list of your new acquaintances?”

“That woman” . . . my voice suddenly quivered; “listen, Andrey Petrovitch, listen.  That woman is what you were talking of with Prince Sergay this morning, ‘living life,’ do you remember?  You said that living life is something so direct and simple, something that looks you so straight in the face, that its very directness and clearness make us unable to believe that it can be the very thing we’re seeking so laboriously all our lives. . . .  With ideas like that, you met the ideal woman and in perfection, in the ideal, you recognized ‘all the vices’!  That’s what you did!”

The reader can guess what a state of frenzy I was in.

“All the vices!  Oho!  I know that phrase,” cried Versilov: “and if things have gone so far, that you are told of such a phrase, oughtn’t I to congratulate you?  It suggests such a degree of intimacy, that perhaps you deserve credit for a modesty and reserve of which few young men are capable.”

There was a note of sweet, friendly and affectionate laughter in his voice . . . there was something challenging and charming in his words, and in his bright face, as far as I could see it in the night.  He was strangely excited.  I beamed all over in spite of myself.

“Modesty, reserve!  Oh, no, no!” I exclaimed blushing and at the same time squeezing his hand, which I had somehow seized and was unconsciously holding.  “No, there’s no reason! . . .  In fact there’s nothing to congratulate me on, and nothing of the sort can ever, ever happen.”

I was breathless and let myself go, I so longed to let myself go, it was so very agreeable to me.

“You know. . . .  Well, after all I will . . . just this once. . . . You are my darling, splendid father; you will allow me to call you father; it’s utterly out of the question for a son to speak to his father — for anyone, in fact, to speak to a third person — of his relations with a woman, even if they are of the purest!  In fact, the purer they are the greater the obligation of silence.  It would be distasteful, it would be coarse; in short, a confidant is out of the question!  But if there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, then surely one may speak, mayn’t one?”

“As your heart tells you!”

“An indiscreet, a very indiscreet question: I suppose in the course of your life you’ve known women, you’ve had intimacies? . . .  I only ask generally, generally, I don’t mean anything particular!”  I blushed, and was almost choking with delight.

“We will assume there have been transgressions.”

“Well then, I want to ask you this, and you tell me what you think of it, as a man of more experience: a woman suddenly says, as she is taking leave of you, casually, looking away, ‘Tomorrow at three o’clock I shall be at a certain place . . . at Tatyana Pavlovna’s, for example,’” I burst out, taking the final plunge.  My heart throbbed and stood still; I even ceased speaking, I could not go on.  He listened eagerly.  “And so next day at three o’clock I went to Tatyana Pavlovna’s, and this is what I thought: ‘when the cook opens the door’ — you know her cook—’I shall ask first thing whether Tatyana Pavlovna is at home?  And if the cook says Tatyana Pavlovna is not at home, but there’s a visitor waiting for her,’ what ought I to conclude, tell me if it were you. . . .  In short, if you . . .”

“Simply that an appointment had been made you.  Then I suppose that did happen, and it happened to-day.  Yes?”

“Oh no, no, no, nothing, nothing of the sort!  It did happen, but it wasn’t that; it was an appointment, but not of that sort, and I hasten to say so or I should be a blackguard; it did happen, but. . . .”

“My dear fellow, all this begins to be so interesting that I suggest . . .”

“I used to give away ten roubles and twenty-five roubles at a time to those who begged of me.  For a drink! just a few coppers, it’s a lieutenant implores your aid, a former lieutenant begging of you!”

Our road was suddenly barred by the figure of a tall beggar possibly, in fact, a retired lieutenant.  What was most singular was that he was very well dressed for his profession, and yet he was begging.

3

I purposely do not omit this paltry incident of the wretched lieutenant, for my picture of Versilov is not complete without the petty details of his surroundings at that minute, which was so momentous for him — momentous it was, and I did not know it!

“If you don’t leave off, sir, I shall call the police at once,” Versilov said, suddenly raising his voice unnaturally, and standing still before the lieutenant.  I could never imagine such anger from a man so philosophic, and for such a trivial cause.  And, note, our conversation was interrupted at the point of most interest to him, as he had just said himself.

“What, you haven’t a five-kopeck piece?” the lieutenant cried rudely, waving his hand in the air.  “And indeed what canaille have five kopecks nowadays! the low rabble! the scoundrels!  He goes dressed in beaver, and makes all this to-do about a copper!”

“Constable,” cried Versilov.

But there was no need to shout, a policeman was standing close by, at the corner, and he had heard the lieutenant’s abuse himself.

“I ask you to bear witness to this insult, I ask you to come to the police-station,” said Versilov.