The Adolescent

A fateful moment for me. I had to decide at all costs! Can it be that I’m incapable of deciding? What’s so hard about breaking with them, if on top of it they don’t want me themselves? My mother and my sister? But I won’t leave them in any case—whatever turn things take.

It’s true that the appearance of this man in my life, that is, for a moment, in early childhood, was the fateful push with which my consciousness began. If he hadn’t come my way then, my mind, my way of thinking, my fate, would surely have been different, even despite the character fate determined for me, which I couldn’t have escaped anyway.

But it now turned out that this man was only my dream, my dream since childhood. I had thought him up that way, but in fact he turned out to be a different man, who fell far below my fantasy. I had come to a pure man, not to this one. And why had I fallen in love with him, once and for all, in that little moment when I saw him while still a child? This “for all” had to go. Someday, if I find room, I’ll describe our first meeting: it’s a most empty anecdote, from which precisely nothing could come. But for me a whole pyramid came from it. I began on that pyramid while still under my child’s blanket, when, as I was falling asleep, I would weep and dream—about what?—I myself don’t know. About being abandoned? About being tormented? But I was tormented only a little, for just two years, while I was at Touchard’s boarding school, where he tucked me away then and left forever. After that nobody tormented me; even the contrary, I myself looked proudly at my comrades. And I can’t stand this orphanhood whining about itself! There’s no more loathsome role than when orphans, illegitimate children, all these cast-offs, and generally all this trash, for whom I have not the slightest drop of pity, suddenly rise up solemnly before the public and start their pitiful but admonitory whining: “Look at how we’ve been treated!” I’d thrash all these orphans. Not one of all that vile officialdom understands that it’s ten times nobler for him to keep silent, and not to whine, and not deign to complain. And since you’ve started to deign, it serves you right, love-child. That’s what I think!

But what is ridiculous is not that I used to dream “under the blanket,” but that I came here for him, once again for this thought-up man, all but forgetting my main goals. I was coming to help him to smash slander, to crush his enemies. The document Kraft spoke of, that woman’s letter to Andronikov, which she is so afraid of, which can smash her life and reduce her to poverty, and which she supposes to be in Versilov’s possession—this letter was not in Versilov’s possession, but in mine, sewn into my side pocket! I had sewn it myself, and no one in the whole world knew of it yet. That the novelistic Marya Ivanovna, who “had charge” of the document, found it necessary to turn it over to me and no one else, was merely her view and her will, and I’m not obliged to explain it; maybe someday I’ll tell about it by the way; but, being so unexpectedly armed, I could not but be tempted by the wish to come to Petersburg. Of course, I proposed to help this man not otherwise than secretly, without showing off or getting excited, without expecting either his praise or his embraces. And never, never would I deign to reproach him with anything! And was it his fault that I had fallen in love with him and made him into a fantastic ideal? Maybe I didn’t even love him at all! His original mind, his curious character, his intrigues and adventures of some sort, and the fact that my mother was with him—all this, I thought, could not stop me now; it was enough that my fantastic doll was smashed and that I could perhaps not love him anymore. And so, what was stopping me, what was I stuck on? That was the question. The upshot of it all was that I was the only stupid one, and nobody else.

But, since I demand honesty of others, I’ll be honest myself: I must confess that the document sewn into my pocket did not only arouse in me a passionate desire to fly to Versilov’s aid. That is all too clear to me now, though even then I already blushed at the thought. I kept imagining a woman, a proud high-society being, whom I would meet face to face; she would despise me, laugh at me as at a mouse, not even suspecting that I was the master of her fate. This thought intoxicated me still in Moscow, and especially on the train as I was coming here; I’ve already confessed that above. Yes, I hated this woman, yet I already loved her as my victim, and this is all true, this was all actually so. But it was all such childishness as I hadn’t expected even from someone like myself. I’m describing my feelings at that time, that is, what went through my head as I sat in the tavern under the nightingale and decided to break with them ineluctably that same evening. The thought of today’s meeting with this woman suddenly brought a flush of shame to my face. A disgraceful meeting! A disgraceful and stupid little impression and—above all—the strongest proof of my inability to act! It proved simply, as I thought then, that I was unable to hold out even before the stupidest enticements, whereas I had just told Kraft that I had “my own place,” my own business, and that if I had three lives, even that would be too little for me. I had said it proudly. That I had dropped my idea and gotten drawn into Versilov’s affairs—that could still be excused in some way; but that I rush from side to side like a startled hare and get drawn into every trifle, that, of course, was only my own stupidity. What the deuce pushed me to go to Dergachev’s and pop up with my stupid talk, if I had long known that I’m unable to tell anything intelligently and sensibly, and that the most advantageous thing for me is to be silent? And then some Vasin brings me to reason by saying that I still have “fifty years of life ahead of me, and so there’s nothing to be upset about.” His objection is splendid, I agree, and does credit to his indisputable intelligence; it’s splendid already in that it’s the simplest, and what is simplest is always understood only in the end, once everything cleverer or stupider has been tried; but I knew this objection myself even before Vasin; I had deeply sensed this thought more than three years ago; moreover, “my idea” partly consists in it. That’s what I was thinking about in the tavern then.

I felt vile when I reached the Semyonovsky quarter that evening, between seven and eight, weary from walking and thinking. It was already quite dark, and the weather changed; it was dry, but a nasty Petersburg wind sprang up at my back, biting and sharp, and blew dust and sand around. So many sullen faces of simple folk, hurrying back to their corners from work and trade! Each had his own sullen care on his face, and there was perhaps not a single common, all-uniting thought in that crowd! Kraft was right: everybody’s apart. I met a little boy, so little that it was strange that he could be alone in the street at such an hour; he seemed to have lost his way; a woman stopped for a moment to listen to him, but understood nothing, spread her arms, and went on, leaving him alone in the darkness. I went over to him, but for some reason he suddenly became frightened of me and ran off. Nearing the house, I decided that I would never go to see Vasin. As I went up the stairs, I wanted terribly to find them at home alone, without Versilov, to have time before he came to say something kind to my mother or my dear sister, to whom I had hardly addressed a single special word for the whole month. It so happened that he was not at home . . .

IV

AND BY THE WAY: bringing this “new character” on stage in my “Notes” (I’m speaking of Versilov), I’ll give a brief account of his service record, which, incidentally, is of no significance. I do it to make things clearer for the reader, and because I don’t see where I might stick this record in further on in the story.