Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (595 page)

“Your mamma does not seem to like our coffee.”

I collected my exercise books and carried them to my waiting mother, passing through the crowd of “counts’ and senators’ children” in the classroom who were staring at mother and me.  And it actually pleased me to carry out Touchard’s behests with literal exactitude.  “Here are my lessons in French grammar, here are my dictation exercises, here are the conjugations of the auxiliary verbs avoir and être, here is the geography, descriptions of the principal towns of Europe, and all parts of the world,” and so on.  For half an hour or more I went on explaining in a monotonous little voice, keeping my eyes sedately cast down.  I knew that my mother knew nothing of these learned subjects, could not perhaps even write, but in this too I was pleased with my part.  But I did not succeed in wearying her: she listened all the time without interrupting me, with extraordinary and even reverent attention, so that at last I got tired of it myself and left off; her expression was sad, however, and there was something pitiful in her face.

She got up to go at last; Touchard suddenly walked in, and with an air of foolish importance asked her:  “Whether she was satisfied with her son’s progress?  Mother began muttering incoherent thanks; Antonina Vassilyevna came up too.  Mother began begging them both “not to abandon the orphan, who was as good as an orphan now, but to treat him with kindness.” . . .  And with tears in her eyes she bowed to them both, each separately, and to each with a deep bow, exactly as “simple people” bow down when they ask a favour of the gentry.  The Touchards had not expected this, and Antonina Vassilyevna was evidently softened, and revised her opinion about the cup of coffee.  Touchard humanely responded with even greater dignity “that he made no distinction between the children, that here all were his children, and he was their father, that I was almost on an equal footing with the sons of senators and counts, and that she ought to appreciate that,” and so on, and so on.  Mother only bowed down, but was much embarrassed.  At last she turned to me, and with tears shining in her eyes said:  “Good-bye, darling.”

She kissed me, that is I allowed myself to be kissed.  She evidently wanted to go on kissing, embracing and hugging me, but either she herself felt ashamed before company, or felt hurt by something else, or guessed that I was ashamed of her, for she hurriedly went out, bowing once more to the Touchards.  I stood still.

“Mais suivez donc votre mère,” said Antonina Vassilyevna: “il n’a pas de coeur, cet enfant!”

Touchard responded by shrugging his shoulders, which meant, of course, “it’s not without reason that I treat him as a lackey.”

I obediently followed my mother; we went out on to the steps.  I knew that they were all looking at me out of the window.  Mother turned towards the church and crossed herself three times; her lips were trembling, the deep bell chimed musically and regularly from the belfry.  She turned to me and could not restrain herself, she laid both hands on my head and began crying over it.

“Mother, stop . . . I’m ashamed . . . they can see from the window. . . .”

She broke out hurriedly:

“Well God . . . God be with you. . . .  The heavenly angels keep you.  Holy Mother, Saint Nikolay. . . .  My God, my God!” she repeated, speaking rapidly and making as many signs of the cross over me as she possibly could.  “My darling, my darling!  Stay, my darling. . . .”

She hurriedly put her hand in her pocket and drew out a handkerchief, a blue checked handkerchief, with a tightly fastened knot at the corner, and began untying the knot . . . but it would not come untied. . . .

“Well never mind, take it with the handkerchief: it’s clean, it may be of use perhaps.  There are four fourpenny-bits in it, perhaps you’ll need the money; forgive me, darling, I have not got any more just now . . . forgive me, darling.”

I took the handkerchief.  I wanted to observe that we were allowed very liberal diet by M. Touchard and Antonina Vassilyevna, and were not in need of anything, but I restrained myself and took the handkerchief.

Once more she made the sign of the cross over me, once more she whispered a prayer, and suddenly — suddenly bowed to me exactly as she had done to the Touchards upstairs — a prolonged low bow — I shall never forget it!  Then I shuddered, I don’t know why.  What had she meant by that bow?  “Was she confessing the wrong she had done me?” as I fancied once long afterwards — I don’t know.  But at the time it made me more ashamed than ever that they “were looking out of window and that Lambert would, most likely, begin beating me.”

At last she went away.  The apples and oranges had been devoured by the sons of counts and senators, and the four fourpenny-bits were promptly taken from me by Lambert and spent at the confectioner’s on tarts and chocolates, of which I was not offered a taste.

Fully six months had passed and it was a wet and windy October.  I had quite forgotten about mother.  Oh, by then hate, a blind hatred of everything had crept into my heart, and was its sustenance, though I still brushed Touchard as before; but I hated him with all my might, and every day hated him more and more.  It was then that in the melancholy dusk of one evening I began rummaging for something in my little box, and suddenly in the corner I saw her blue cotton handkerchief; it had been lying there ever since I had thrust it away.  I took it out and even looked at it with some interest.  The corner of the handkerchief still retained the creases made by the knot, and even the round impress of the money was distinctly visible; I put the handkerchief in again, however, and pushed the box back.  It was the eve of a holiday, and the bells were ringing for the all-night service.  The pupils had all gone to their homes after dinner, but this time Lambert had stayed for Sunday.  I don’t know why he hadn’t been fetched.  Though he used still to beat me, as before, he used to talk to me a great deal, and often needed me.  We talked the whole evening about Lepage’s pistols, which neither of us had seen, and Circassian swords and how they cut, how splendid it would be to establish a band of brigands, and finally Lambert passed to the familiar obscene subjects which were his favourite topics, and though I wondered at myself, I remember I liked listening.  Suddenly I felt it unbearable, and I told him I had a headache.  At ten o’clock we went to bed; I turned away with my head under the quilt and took the blue handkerchief from under my pillow: I had for some reason fetched it from the box an hour before, and as soon as our beds were made I put it under the pillow.  I put it to my face and suddenly began kissing it:  “Mother, mother,” I whispered, and my whole chest contracted as though in a vice.  I closed my eyes, and saw her face with the quivering lips when she crossed herself facing the church, and afterwards made the sign of the cross over me, and I said to her, “I’m ashamed, they are looking at us.”  “Mother darling, mother, were you really with me once? . . .  Mother darling, where are you now, my far-away visitor?  Do you remember your poor boy, whom you came to see? . . .  Show yourself to me just this once, come to me if only in a dream, just that I may tell you how I love you, may hug you and kiss your blue eyes, and tell you that I’m not ashamed of you now, and tell you that I loved you even then, and that my heart was aching then, though I simply sat like a lackey.  You will never know, mother, how I loved you then!  Mother, where are you now?  Do you hear me?  Mother, mother, do you remember the dove in the country? . . .”

“Confound him. . . .  What’s the matter with him!” Lambert grumbled from his bed.  “Stop it, I’ll give it you!  You won’t let me sleep. . . .”  He jumped out of bed at last, ran to me, and began pulling off the bedclothes, but I kept tight hold of the quilt, which I had wrapped round my head.

“You are blubbering; what are you blubbering about, you fool?  I’ll give it you!” and he thumped me, he thumped me hard on my back, on my side, hurting me more and more and . . . and I suddenly opened my eyes. . . .

It was bright daylight, and the snow on the wall was glistening with hoarfrost. . . .  I was sitting huddled up, almost frozen, and almost numb in my fur coat, and some one was standing over me, waking me up, abusing me loudly, and kicking me in the ribs with his right foot.  I raised myself and looked: I saw a man wearing a splendid bear-lined coat, and a sable cap.  He had black eyes, foppish pitch-black whiskers, a hook nose, white teeth grinning at me, a face white and red like a mask. . . .  He bent down over me very close, and a frosty vapour came from his lips at each breath.

“Frozen, the drunken fool!  You’ll freeze like a dog; get up!  Getup!”

“Lambert,” I cried.

“Whoever are you?”

“Dolgoruky.”

“Who the devil’s Dolgoruky?”

“SIMPLY Dolgoruky! . . . Touchard. . . .  The one you stuck a fork into, in the restaurant! . . .”

“Ha-a-a!” he cried, with a slow smile of recollection (could he possibly have forgotten me?), “ha!  So it’s you, it’s you!”

He lifted me up and put me on my legs; I could hardly stand, could hardly walk; he led me, supporting me with his arm.  He looked into my eyes as though considering and recalling, and listening to me intently, and I babbled on continuously without pause, and I was delighted, so delighted to be talking, and so delighted too that it was Lambert.  Whether for some reason I looked on him as my “salvation,” or whether I pounced on him at that moment because I took him for some one of another world, I don’t know — I did not consider it then — but I pounced on him without considering.  What I said then, I don’t remember at all, and I doubt whether any of it was coherent, I doubt whether I even pronounced a word clearly; but he listened very attentively.  He took the first sledge we came upon, and within a few minutes I was sitting in his room in the warmth.

3

Every man, whoever he may be, must certainly preserve a recollection of something which has happened to him, upon which he looks, or is inclined to look, as something fantastic, exceptional, outside the common order of things, almost miraculous, whether it be a dream, a meeting, a divination, a presentiment or anything of that kind.  I am to this day inclined to look upon this meeting with Lambert as something almost supernatural . . . judging, that is, from the circumstances and consequences of that meeting.  It all happened from one point of view, however, perfectly naturally; he was simply returning from one of his nocturnal pursuits (the nature of it will be explained later on) half-drunk, and stopping at the gate for a moment, caught sight of me.  He had only been in Petersburg a few days.

The room in which I found myself was small and furnished in an unsophisticated style, a typical example of the ordinary Petersburg furnished lodgings of the middling sort.  Lambert himself, however, was very well and expensively dressed.  On the floor there lay two trunks, only half unpacked.  A corner of the room was shut off by a screen which concealed the bed.

“Alphonsine!” cried Lambert.

“Présente!” responded from behind the screen a cracked female voice with a Parisian accent, and two minutes later Mlle. Alphonsine emerged, just out of bed, hurriedly dressed in a loose wrapper, a queer creature, tall and as lean as a rake, a brunette with a long waist and a long face, with dancing eyes and sunken cheeks, who looked terribly the worse for wear.

“Make haste” (he spoke to her in French, I translate), “they must have got a samovar; hot water quick, red wine and sugar, a glass here, look sharp, he’s frozen, it’s a friend of mine . . . he’s been sleeping the night in the snow. . . .”

“Malheureux!” she exclaimed with a theatrical air, clasping her hands.

“Now then!” he shouted, holding up his finger and speaking exactly as though to a dog; she at once desisted and ran to carry out his orders.

He examined me and felt me over; tried my pulse, touched my forehead and my temple.  “It’s strange,” he muttered, “that you did not freeze. . . .  However, you were entirely covered with your fur coat, head and all, so that you were sitting in a sort of nest of fur. . . .”

A glass of something hot arrived, I sipped it greedily and it revived me at once; I began babbling again; I was half lying on the sofa in a corner and was talking all the time, I talked even as I sipped — but what I said, again I scarcely remember; moments and even whole intervals of time I’ve completely forgotten.  I repeat: whether he understood anything of what I said, I don’t know; but one thing I distinctly gathered afterwards, and that was that he succeeded in understanding me sufficiently to deduce that he must not take his meeting with me lightly. . . .  I will explain later in its proper place how he came to make this calculation.

I was not only extremely lively, but at moments, I believe, cheerful.  I remember the sun suddenly flooding the room with light when the blinds were drawn up, and the crackling stove which some one was lighting, who and how I forget.  I remember, too, the tiny black lap-dog which Mlle. Alphonsine held in her arms, coquettishly pressing it to her heart.  This lap-dog attracted me so much that I left off talking and twice stretched out towards it, but Lambert waved his hand, and Alphonsine with her lap-dog instantly vanished behind the screen.

He was very silent himself, he sat facing me and bending close down to me, listened without moving; at times he smiled, a broad slow smile, showing his teeth, and screwing up his eyes as though reflecting intensely and trying to guess something.  I have a clear recollection only of the fact that when I told him about the “document,” I could not express myself intelligibly and tell the story consecutively, and from his face I quite saw that he could not understand me, but that he would very much have liked to understand, so much so that he even ventured to stop me with a question, which was risky, as at the slightest interruption I broke off and forgot what I was talking of.  How long we sat and talked like this I don’t know and cannot even imagine.  He suddenly got up and called to Alphonsine.

“He needs rest; he may have to have the doctor.  Do everything he asks, that is . . . vous comprenez, ma fille?  Vous avez l’argent, no? here!” and he drew out a ten-rouble note.  He began whispering with her:  “Vous comprenez? vous comprenez?” he repeated to her, holding up his finger menacingly to her, and frowning sternly.  I saw that she was dreadfully afraid of him.