The Adolescent

I was surprised. “And she?” the question flashed in me.

“Well, and how was your meeting with mama then?” I asked warily.

“Then? But I didn’t meet her then at all. She barely got as far as Königsberg then, and she stayed there, while I was on the Rhine. I didn’t go to her, but told her to stay and wait. We saw each other much later, oh, a long time later, when I went to ask her permission to marry . . .”

II

HERE I’LL CONVEY the essence of the matter, that is, only what I myself could take in; and he also began telling me things incoherently. His speech suddenly became ten times more incoherent and disorderly, just as he reached this point.

He met Katerina Nikolaevna suddenly, precisely when he was expecting mama, at the most impatient moment of expectation. They were all on the Rhine then, at the waters, all taking the cure. Katerina Nikolaevna’s husband was almost dying by then, or at least he had already been sentenced to death by the doctors. From the first meeting she struck him as with some sort of sorcery. It was a fatum.95 It’s remarkable that, writing it down and recalling it now, I don’t remember him once using the word “love” or saying he was “in love” in his account then. The word fatum I do remember.

And it certainly was a fatum. He did not want it, “did not want to love.” I don’t know whether I can convey it clearly; only his whole soul was indignant precisely at the fact that this could have happened to him. All that was free in him was a

She soon penetrated his secret then. Oh, maybe she also flirted with him on purpose. Even the most shining women are mean on such occasions; that is their irrepressible instinct. It ended with an embittered break between them, and it seems he wanted to kill her; he frightened her and maybe would have killed her; “but it all suddenly turned to hatred.” A strange period ensued. He suddenly came up with the strange thought of tormenting himself with discipline, “the same sort that monks exercise. Gradually and by methodical practice, you overcome your will, begi

“All your development, all your soul came to you through suffering and through your whole life’s struggle—while all her perfection came to her gratis. There’s inequality here . . . Women are outrageous in that,” I said, not at all to ingratiate myself with him, but with fervor and even with indignation.

“Perfection. Her perfection? Why, there’s no perfection in her!” he said suddenly, all but astonished at my words. “She’s a most ordinary woman, she’s even a trashy woman . . . But she’s obliged to have every perfection!”

“Why obliged?”

“Because, having such power, she’s obliged to have every perfection!” he cried spitefully.

“The saddest thing is that you’re so tormented even now!” suddenly escaped me involuntarily.

“Now? Tormented?” he repeated my words again, stopping before me as if in some perplexity. And then suddenly a quiet, long, thoughtful smile lit up his face, and he raised his finger before him as if reflecting. Then, recovering completely, he snatched an unsealed letter from the table and flung it down before me.

“Here, read it! You absolutely must know everything . . . and why did you let me rummage around so much in that old rubbish! . . . I’ve only defiled and embittered my heart! . . .”

I’m unable to express my astonishment. It was a letter from her to him, written that day, received at around five o’clock in the afternoon. I read it almost trembling with excitement. It wasn’t long, but was written so directly and candidly that, as I read it, it was as if I could see her before me and hear her words. Truthfully in the highest degree (and therefore almost touchingly), she confessed to him her fear and then simply entreated him “to leave her in peace.” In conclusion, she informed him that she was now positively going to marry Bjoring. Until that occasion, she had never written to him.

And here is what I understood then from his explanations:

As soon as he read this letter earlier, he suddenly sensed a most unexpected phenomenon in himself: for the first time in those fateful two years, he felt neither the slightest hatred for her nor the slightest shock, similar to the way he had “gone out of his mind” not long ago at the mere rumor about Bjoring. “On the contrary, I sent her a blessing from my whole heart,” he said to me with deep feeling. I listened to these words with delight. It meant that everything there was in him of passion, of torment, had disappeared all at once, of itself, like a dream, like a two-year-long enchantment. Still not believing himself, he rushed to mama—and what then: he came in precisely at the moment when she became free, and the old man who had bequeathed her to him the day before died. These two coincidences shook his soul. A little later he rushed to look for me—and his thinking of me so soon I will never forget.