Demons

And at the same time a certain capricious smugness, something frivolously playful, peeped out through all these plaintive exclamations. In the evening we drank some more.

3: Someone Else's Sins

I

About a week went by, and the affair began to expand itself somewhat.

I will observe in passing that I endured much anguish during this unfortunate week, staying almost constantly at the side of my poor matchmade friend in the quality of his closest confidant. It was mainly shame that oppressed him, though during this week we did not see anyone and sat by ourselves all the time; but he was ashamed even before me, and to such an extent that the more he revealed to me, the more vexed he was with me for it. In his insecurity he suspected that everyone already knew everything, all over town, and was afraid to show himself not only at the club but in his own circle as well. Even for a stroll, to get the necessary exercise, he would go out only at full dusk, when it was already quite dark.

A week went by, and he still did not know whether he was engaged or not, and had no way of finding out for certain, however much he tried. He still had not seen the fiancée; did not even know if she was his fiancée; did not even know if there was anything serious in it all! Varvara Petrovna for some reason decidedly did not want to admit him to the house. She replied to one of his first letters (and he wrote her a great many) with a direct request that he spare her any relations with him for the time being, because she was busy, and as she herself had much of the greatest importance to tell him, she was deliberately waiting for a freer moment than the present, and would in time let him know herself when he could come to her. And she vowed to send his letters back unopened, because it was all "just sheer indulgence." I myself read this note; he showed it to me.

And yet all of it, all this rudeness and uncertainty, was nothing compared with his chief care. This care tormented him greatly, relentlessly; he kept losing weight over it, and his spirits declined. It was something he was ashamed of most of all, and which he by no means wished to speak about even with me; on the contrary, whenever the occasion arose, he lied and hedged before me like a little boy; and yet he himself would send for me every day, he was unable to be without me even for two hours, needing me like water or air.

Such behavior wounded my pride somewhat. Needless to say, I had long since guessed this chief secret for myself and seen through it all. According to my deepest conviction then, the revealing of this secret, this chief care of Stepan Trofimovich's, would not have added to his credit, and therefore, being still a young man, I was somewhat indignant at the coarseness of his feelings and the ugliness of some of his suspicions. In the heat of passion—and, I confess, finding it boring to be a confidant—I perhaps blamed him too much. In my cruelty, I tried to obtain a full confession from him, though, by the way, I did allow that to confess certain things might prove embarrassing. He, too, understood me thoroughly; that is, he clearly saw that I understood him thoroughly, and that I was even angry with him, and was himself angry with me for being angry with him and for understanding him thoroughly. Perhaps my irritation was petty and stupid; but shared isolation is sometimes extremely damaging to true friendship. From a certain angle he understood some aspects of his position correctly, and even defined it quite subtly in those points about which he did not find it necessary to be secretive.

"Oh, is this how she was then?" he would sometimes let slip about Varvara Petrovna. "Is she the same woman she once was, when she and I used to talk ... Do you know that she was still able to talk then? Can you believe that she had thoughts then, her own thoughts! That's all changed now! She says it was all just the same old blather! She despises the former times... She's become some sort of steward, an economist, a hard person, and she's angry all the time..."

"What is there for her to be angry about, since you've done whatshe demanded?" I objected to him.

He gave me a subtle look.

"Cher ami, if I hadn't consented she would have been terribly angry, ter-ri-bly! But still less than she is now that I have consented."

He remained pleased with this phrase of his, and we finished a little bottle that evening. But it was only momentary; the next day he was more terrible and morose than ever.

But I was vexed with him most of all because he could not even bring himself to go and pay the necessary call on the just-arrived Drozdovs, to renew the acquaintance, which it was heard they themselves desired, for they had already asked about him, and which grieved him daily. He spoke of Lizaveta Nikolaevna with a sort of rapture which was incomprehensible to me. No doubt he remembered in her the child he had once loved so much; but, besides that, for some unknown reason he fancied that near her he would at once find relief from all his present torments and would even resolve his most important doubts. He hoped to find some extraordinary being in Lizaveta Nikolaevna. And yet he would not go to her, though he made ready to do so every day. The main thing was that at the time I myself wanted terribly to be introduced and recommended to her, for which I had only Stepan Trofimovich to count on. I had been greatly impressed then by my frequent meetings with her—in the street, of course, when she went for an outing on horseback, dressed in a riding habit and mounted on a beautiful horse, accompanied by her so-called relative, a handsome officer, the late General Drozdov's nephew. My blindness lasted only a moment, and soon afterwards I understood all the impossibility of my dream—but it really did exist, if only for a moment, and therefore it may be imagined how indignant I occasionally became with my poor friend at that time for his persistent seclusion.

Our group was officially notified from the very begi