The Adolescent

“Mon cher, you might . . .”

“Oh, never mind, never mind,” I interrupted, “I’ll tell only a little about Touchard. You replied to him from the provinces, Tatyana Pavlovna, two weeks later, and sharply refused. I remember him then, all purple, coming into our classroom. He was a very short and very stocky little Frenchman of about forty-five, and indeed of Parisian origin, from cobblers, of course, but from time immemorial he had held a government post in Moscow as a teacher of French, and even had some rank, which he was extremely proud of—a profoundly uneducated man. We, his pupils, were only six in number; among us there was indeed some nephew of a Moscow senator, and we all lived there in a completely family situation, more under the supervision of his wife, a very affected lady, the daughter of some Russian official. During those two weeks I put on airs terribly in front of my comrades, boasting of my dark blue frock coat and my papa, Andrei Petrovich, and their questions—why was I Dolgoruky and not Versilov—didn’t embarrass me in the least, precisely because I didn’t know why myself.”

“Andrei Petrovich!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna in an almost threatening voice. My mother, on the contrary, could not tear her eyes from me, and obviously wanted me to continue.

“Ce Touchard . . . indeed, I recall him now, was small and fidgety,” Versilov said through his teeth, “but he was recommended to me then from the best side . . .”

“Ce Touchard came in holding the letter, went over to our big oak table, at which all six of us were grinding away at something, seized me firmly by the shoulder, raised me from my chair, and told me to pick up my notebooks.

“‘Your place is not here, but there.’ He pointed to a tiny room to the left of the front hall, in which stood a simple table, a wicker chair, and an oilcloth sofa—exactly as I have now in my little room upstairs. I went there with astonishment and greatly intimidated; never before had I been treated rudely. Half an hour later, when Touchard left the classroom, I began exchanging glances and laughter with my comrades; they, of course, were laughing at me, but I didn’t guess that and thought we were laughing because we were having fun. Here Touchard fell on me all at once, seized me by the forelock, and started pulling.

“‘You dare not sit together with noble children, you’re of mean origin and the same as a lackey!’

“And he hit me painfully on my plump red cheek. He liked that at once and hit me a second and a third time. I wept and sobbed, I was terribly astonished. For a whole hour I sat, covering my face with my hands, and wept and wept. Something had taken place that I could in no way understand. I don’t understand how someone like Touchard, a foreigner, who was not a wicked man, who even rejoiced at the emancipation of the Russian peasants, could beat such a stupid child as I. However, I was only astonished, not insulted; I was still unable to be insulted. It seemed to me that I had done some mischief, but when I improved, I’d be forgiven, and we’d all suddenly become merry again, go and play in the yard, and have the best possible life.”

“My friend, if I’d only known . . .” Versilov drawled with the careless smile of a somewhat weary man. “What a scoundrel this Touchard was, though! However, I still haven’t lost hope that you’ll somehow gather your strength and finally forgive us for it all, and again we’ll have the best possible life.”

He decidedly yawned.

“But I’m not accusing anybody, not at all, and, believe me, I’m not complaining about Touchard!” I cried, somewhat thrown off. “And he beat me only for two months or so. I remember I kept wanting to disarm him in some way, rushed to kiss his hands, and kissed them and kept weeping and weeping. My comrades laughed at me and despised me, because Touchard started using me as a servant, ordered me to hold his clothes while he dressed. Here my lackey character was instinctively of use to me. I tried as hard as I could to cater to him, and wasn’t insulted in the least, because I understood none of it yet, and I’m even astonished to this day that I was so stupid then as not to understand how unequal I was to them all. True, my comrades had already explained a lot to me—it was a good schooling. Touchard ended by preferring to kick me from behind with his knee, rather than slap my face; and six months later he even began to be gentle with me at times; only now and then, but once a month for certain, he would give me a beating, so that I wouldn’t forget myself. Soon I was also seated together with the other children and allowed to play with them, but not once in two and a half years did Touchard forget the difference in our social position, and he still went on using me as a servant, though not too much—I think precisely as a reminder to me.

“As for my ru