The Adolescent

IV

I CAN’T EXPRESS how my heart was wrung when I was left alone: as if I had cut off a piece of my own living flesh! Why I had suddenly gotten so angry, and why I had offended him like that—so intensely and deliberately—I couldn’t tell now, of course, or then either. And how pale he had turned! And what, then? Maybe that paleness was an expression of the most sincere and pure feelings and the deepest grief, and not of anger and offense. It always seemed to me that there were moments when he loved me very much. Why, why should I not believe that now, the more so as so much has now been completely explained?

But maybe indeed I grew angry all at once and drove him out because of the sudden guess that he had come to me hoping to find out whether any more of Andronikov’s letters had been left to Marya Ivanovna? That he must have been looking for those letters and was looking for them—that I knew. But who knows, maybe then, precisely at that moment, I was terribly mistaken! And who knows, maybe it was I, by that very mistake, who prompted him afterwards in the thought of Marya Ivanovna and the possibility of her having letters?

And, finally, again a strange thing: again he had repeated word for word my own thought (about three lives), which I had told to Kraft earlier that day and, above all, in my own words. The coincidence of words was once again chance, but all the same how well he knows the essence of my character: what insight, what perception! But if he understands one thing so well, why doesn’t he understand another at all? And can it be that he wasn’t faking, but was indeed unable to guess that what I needed was not Versilovian nobility, that it was not my birth that I couldn’t forgive him, but that all my life I’ve needed Versilov himself, the whole man, the father, and that this thought has already entered my blood? Can it be that such a subtle man can be so dull and crude? And if not, then why does he enrage me, why does he pretend?

Chapter Eight

I

THE NEXT MORNING I tried to get up as early as possible. Ordinarily we got up at around eight o’clock, that is, my mother, my sister, and I; Versilov indulged himself till half-past nine. Precisely at half-past eight my mother would bring me coffee. But this time, not waiting for coffee, I slipped out of the house at exactly eight o’clock. The evening before, I had made up a general plan of action for this whole day. In this plan, despite my passionate resolve to set about fulfilling it at once, I sensed that there was a great deal that was unstable and uncertain at the most important points; that was why almost all night I had been as if in half-sleep, delirious, had an awful lot of dreams, and hardly a moment of proper sleep. Nevertheless I got up brisker and fresher than ever. I especially did not want to meet my mother. I couldn’t talk to her otherwise than on a certain subject, and I was afraid to distract myself from the goals I had set myself by some new and unexpected impression.

The morning was cold, and a damp, milky fog lay upon everything. I don’t know why, but I always like the busy early morning in Petersburg, despite its extremely nasty look, and all these egoistic and ever-pensive folk, hurrying about their business around eight in the morning, have some special attraction for me. I especially like, as I hurry on my way, either to ask somebody something businesslike, or to have somebody ask me something: both question and answer are always brief, clear, sensible, given without stopping, and are almost always friendly, and the readiness to respond is greatest at that hour. The Petersburger becomes less communicative in the middle of the day or towards evening, and is ready to abuse or deride at the least opportunity; it’s quite different in the early morning, before work, at the most sober and serious time. I’ve noticed that.

I was again heading for the Petersburg side. Since I absolutely had to be back on the Fontanka by twelve to see Vasin (who could most often be found at home at twelve), I hurried and didn’t stop, in spite of a great urge to have coffee somewhere. Besides, I also had absolutely to catch Efim Zverev at home; I was going to him again and in fact almost came too late; he was finishing his coffee and getting ready to go out.

“What brings you so often?” he met me without getting up from his place.

“I’m about to explain that.”

Any early morning, a Petersburg one included, has a sobering effect on man’s nature. Some flaming night’s dream even evaporates completely with the coming of morning’s light and cold, and I myself have happened of a morning to recall some of my night’s only just-passed reveries, and sometimes also acts, with reproach and shame. However, I’ll observe in passing that I consider the Petersburg morning, seemingly the most prosaic on the whole earth, to be all but the most fantastic in the world. That is my personal view, or, better to say, impression, but I’ll stand up for it. On such a Petersburg morning, foul, damp, and foggy, the wild dream of some Pushkinian Herma

I’ll say beforehand: there are projects and dreams in every life so seemingly eccentric that at first sight they might unmistakably be taken for madness. It was with one of these fantasies that I went that morning to Zverev—to Zverev, because I had no one else in Petersburg to whom I could turn this time. And yet Efim was precisely the last person to whom, if I had had a choice, I would have turned with such a suggestion. When I sat down facing him, it even seemed to me myself that I, the incarnation of fever and delirium, was sitting down facing the incarnation of the golden mean and prose. But on my side was an idea and a right feeling, while on his there was only the practical conclusion that it’s never done that way. In short, I explained to him, briefly and clearly, that apart from him I had absolutely no one in Petersburg whom I could send, in view of an urgent matter of honor, to act as a second; that he was an old comrade and therefore did not even have the right to refuse, and that I wanted to challenge the lieutenant of the guards, Prince Sokolsky, on the grounds that, a little more than a year ago, in Ems, he had given my father, Versilov, a slap in the face. I’ll note, at the same time, that Efim knew even in great detail all my family circumstances, my relations with Versilov, and almost all that I myself knew of Versilov’s history; I had told it to him myself at various times, except, of course, for certain secrets. He sat and listened, as he usually did, ruffled up like a sparrow in a cage, silent and serious, puffy-faced, with his disheveled flaxen hair. A motionless, mocking smile never left his lips. This smile was the nastier in that it was involuntary and not at all deliberate; it was evident that he really and truly considered himself at that moment vastly superior to me in intelligence and character. I also suspected that, besides that, he also despised me for yesterday’s scene at Dergachev’s; that was as it should have been: Efim was the crowd, Efim was the street, and that always bows down only to success.