The Adolescent

He was put out; he saw clearly that scandal and publicity were now almost inevitable. No big scandal occurred, however, only rumors came of it. They didn’t manage to conceal the shot—that’s true—but the whole main story, in its main essence, went almost unknown. The investigation determined only that a certain V., a man in love, a family man at that and nearly fifty years old, beside himself with passion and while explaining his passion to a person worthy of the highest respect, but who by no means shared his feelings, had shot himself in a fit of madness. Nothing more came to the surface, and in this form the news, as dark rumors, penetrated the newspapers, without proper names, only with initials. At least I know that Lambert, for instance, wasn’t bothered at all. Nevertheless, Bjoring, who knew the truth, was frightened. Just then, as if by design, he suddenly managed to learn that a meeting, tête-à-tête, of Katerina Nikolaevna and Versilov, who was in love with her, had taken place two days before the catastrophe. This made him explode, and he rather imprudently allowed himself to observe to Katerina Nikolaevna that, after that, he was no longer surprised that such fantastic stories could happen to her. Katerina Nikolaevna rejected him at once, without wrath, but also without hesitation. Her whole preconceived opinion about some sort of reasonableness in marrying this man vanished like smoke. Maybe she had already figured him out long before, or maybe, after the shock she had received, some of her views and feelings had suddenly changed. But here again I will keep silent. I will only add that Lambert vanished to Moscow, and I’ve heard that he got caught at something there. As for Trishatov, I lost sight of him long ago, almost from that same time, despite my efforts to find his trail even now. He vanished after the death of his friend, legrand dadais, who shot himself.

II

I’VE MENTIONED THE death of old Prince Nikolai Ivanovich. This kindly, sympathetic old man died soon after the event, though, anyhow, a whole month later—died at night, in bed, of a nervous stroke. After that same day he spent in my apartment, I never saw him again. It was told of him that during that month he had supposedly become incomparably more reasonable, even more stern, was no longer frightened, did not weep, and in all that time never once uttered a single word about A

But bitter, truly bitter, are the words I’m now faced with saying in particular about my sister Liza. Here is real unhappiness, and what are all my failures beside her bitter fate! It began with Prince Sergei Petrovich not recovering and dying in the hospital without waiting for the trial. He passed away before Prince Nikolai Ivanovich. Liza was left alone with her future child. She didn’t weep and, by the look of it, was even calm; she became meek, humble; but all the former ardor of her heart was as if buried at once somewhere in her. She humbly helped mama, took care of the sick Andrei Petrovich, but she became terribly taciturn, did not even look at anyone or anything, as if it was all the same to her, as if she was just passing by. When Versilov got better, she began to sleep a lot. I brought her books, but she didn’t want to read them; she began to get awfully thin. I somehow didn’t dare to start comforting her, though I often came precisely with that intention; but in her presence I somehow had difficulty approaching her, and I couldn’t come up with the right words to begin speaking about it. So it went on until one awful occasion: she fell down our stairs, not all the way, only three steps, but she had a miscarriage, and her illness lasted almost all winter. Now she has gotten up from bed, but her health has suffered a long-lasting blow. She is silent and pensive with us as before, but she has begun to talk a little with mama. All these last days there has been a bright, high spring sun, and I kept remembering that su

Some three weeks ago, however, I managed to get her interested in news about Vasin. He was finally released and set completely free. This sensible man gave, they say, the most precise explanations and the most interesting information, which fully vindicated him in the opinion of the people on whom his fate depended. And his notorious manuscript turned out to be nothing more than a translation from the French—material, so to speak, that he had gathered solely for himself, intending afterwards to compose from it a useful article for a magazine. He has now gone to ———province, but his stepfather, Stebelkov, still goes on sitting in prison on his case, which, I’ve heard, keeps growing and gets more and more complicated as time goes on. Liza listened to the news about Vasin with a strange smile and even observed that something like that was bound to happen to him. But she was obviously pleased by the fact that the late Prince Sergei Petrovich’s interference had done Vasin no harm. I have nothing to tell here about Dergachev and the others.

I have finished. Maybe some readers would like to know what became of my “idea” and what this new life is that is begi