The Adolescent

News to me. She became very animated as she spoke. I looked at her with hatred.

“You’ve become very animated since the last time you called on me.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Grown fat, it seems.”

She looked at me strangely.

“I’ve come to like her very much, sir, very much.”

“Who’s that?”

“Why, A

“Just so. And how is she now?”

“She’s very calm, sir, very.”

“She’s always been calm.”

“Always, sir.”

“If you’ve come to gossip,” I suddenly cried, unable to stand it, “know that I don’t meddle with anything, I’ve decided to drop . . . everything, everybody, it makes no difference to me—I’m leaving! . . .”

I fell silent, because I came to my senses. It was humiliating to me that I had begun as if to explain my new goals to her. She listened to me without surprise and without emotion, but silence ensued again. Suddenly she got up, went to the door, and peeked out into the next room. Having made sure there was no one there and we were alone, she quite calmly came back and sat down in her former place.

“Nicely done!” I suddenly laughed.

“That apartment of yours, at the clerk’s, are you going to keep it, sir?” she asked suddenly, leaning towards me slightly and lowering her voice, as if this was the main question she had come for.

“That apartment? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll vacate it . . . How do I know?”

“And your landlords are waiting very much for you; that clerk is in great impatience, and so is his wife. Andrei Petrovich assured them that you’d certainly come back.”

“But why did you ask?”

“A

“And how does she know so certainly that I’ll be sure to stay in that apartment?”

I was about to add, “And what is it to her?”—but I refrained from asking questions out of pride.

“And Mr. Lambert confirmed the same thing to them.”

“Wha-a-at?”

“Mr. Lambert, sir. And to Andrei Petrovich, too, he confirmed as hard as he could that you would stay, and he assured A

I was as if all shaken. What wonders! So Lambert already knows Versilov, Lambert has penetrated as far as Versilov—Lambert and A

“What about Prince Nikolai Ivanovich?” I asked suddenly, as if losing my reason. The thing was that I asked decidedly in order to divert the theme, and once more, unwittingly, posed the most capital question, returning again like a madman to that same world from which I had just so convulsively resolved to flee.

“He’s in Tsarskoe Selo, sir.6 He’s been a bit unwell, and there’s fever going around the city now, so everybody advised him to move to Tsarskoe, to his own house there, for the good air, sir.”

I did not reply.

“A

A

“They’ve become such friends, sir, and A

I still kept silent.

“And Katerina Nikolaevna has ‘struck’ into society again, fête after fête, she quite shines; they say even all the courtiers are in love with her . . . and she’s quite abandoned everything with Mr. Bjoring, and there’ll be no wedding; everybody maintains the same . . . supposedly ever since that time.”

That is, since Versilov’s letter. I trembled all over, but didn’t say a word.

“A

I looked at her hatefully. She got up and suddenly bent over me.

“A

She left. I sat up in bed, cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but it wasn’t fear I felt: the incomprehensible and outrageous news about Lambert and his schemes did not, for instance, fill me with horror at all, compared to the fright—maybe unaccountable—with which I had recalled, both in my illness and in the first days of recovery, my meeting with him that night. On the contrary, in that first confused moment in bed, right after Nastasya Egorovna’s departure, I didn’t even linger over Lambert, but . . . I was thrilled most of all by the news about her, about her break-up with Bjoring, and about her luck in society, about the fêtes, about her success, about her “shining.” “She shines, sir”—I kept hearing Nastasya Egorovna’s little phrase. And I suddenly felt that I did not have strength enough to struggle out of this whirl, though I had been able to restrain myself, keep silent, and not question Nastasya Egorovna after her wondrous stories! A boundless yearning for this life, their life, took all my breath away and . . . and also some other sweet yearning, which I felt to the point of happiness and tormenting pain. My thoughts were somehow spi

Here I suddenly left off thinking all this nonsense and dropped my head back on the pillow in despair. “But that won’t be!” I exclaimed with unexpected resolution, jumped up from the bed, put on the slippers, the robe, and went straight to Makar Ivanovich’s room, as if there lay the warding off of all obsessions, salvation, an anchor I could hold on to.

In fact it may be that I felt that thought then with all the forces of my soul; otherwise why should I jump up from my place so irrepressibly then, and in such a moral state rush to Makar Ivanovich?

III

BUT AT MAKAR Ivanovich’s, quite unexpectedly, I found people—mama and the doctor. Since for some reason I had imagined to myself, going there, that I would certainly find the old man alone, as the day before, I stopped on the threshold in dumb perplexity. Before I had time to frown, Versilov at once came to join them, and after him suddenly Liza as well . . . Everybody, that is, gathered for some reason at Makar Ivanovich’s and “just at the wrong time!”

“I’ve come to inquire about your health,” I said, going straight to Makar Ivanovich.

“Thank you, dear, I was expecting you, I knew you’d come! I thought about you during the night.”

He looked tenderly into my eyes, and it was evident to me that he loved me almost best of all, but I instantly and involuntarily noticed that, though his face was cheerful, the illness had made progress overnight. The doctor had only just examined him quite seriously. I learned afterwards that this doctor (the same young man with whom I had quarreled and who had been treating Makar Ivanovich ever since his arrival) was quite attentive to his patient and—only I can’t speak their medical language—supposed that he had a whole complication of various illnesses. Makar Ivanovich, as I noticed at first glance, had already established the closest friendly relations with him. I instantly disliked that; but anyhow, I, too, of course, was in a bad way at that moment.