The Adolescent

And suddenly, I remember, it became terribly loathsome for me to recall . . . and I was vexed and sickened, both at them and at myself. I reproached myself for something and tried to think about other things. “Why is it that I don’t feel the least indignation at Versilov for the story with the woman next door?” suddenly came into my head. For my part, I was firmly convinced that his role here had been amorous and that he had come in order to have some fun, but that in itself did not make me indignant. It even seemed to me that he couldn’t be imagined otherwise, and though I really was glad that he had been disgraced, I didn’t blame him. That was not important for me. What was important for me was that he had looked at me so angrily when I came in with the woman, looked at me as he never had before. “He finally looked at me seriously!” I thought, and my heart stood still. Oh, if I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have been so glad of his hatred!

I finally dozed off and fell sound asleep. I only remember through my sleep that Vasin, having finished his work, put things away neatly, gave my sofa an intent look, undressed, and blew out the candle. It was past midnight.

IV

ALMOST EXACTLY TWO hours later I awoke with a start like a halfwit and sat up on my sofa. Dreadful cries, weeping and howling, were coming from behind the neighbors’ door. Our door was wide open, and in the already lighted corridor people were shouting and ru

“What’s happened?” I cried to him.

“A most unpleasant and troublesome business!” he replied almost angrily. “This young neighbor, the one you were telling me about, has hanged herself in her room.”

I let out a cry. I can’t convey how much my heart was wrung! We ran out to the corridor. I confess, I didn’t dare go into the women’s room, and I saw the unfortunate girl only later, when she had been taken down, and then, to tell the truth, at some distance, covered with a sheet, from under which the two narrow soles of her shoes stuck out. For some reason I never looked at her face. The mother was in a dreadful state; our landlady was with her, not much frightened, however. All the tenants of the apartments came crowding around. There weren’t many: only one elderly sailor, always very gruff and demanding, though now he became very quiet; and some people from Tver province, an old man and woman, husband and wife, quite respectable and civil-service people. I won’t describe the rest of that night, the fuss, and then the official visits; till dawn I literally shivered and considered it my duty not to go to bed, though, anyhow, I didn’t do anything. And everybody had an extremely brisk look, even somehow especially brisk. Vasin even drove off somewhere. The landlady turned out to be a rather respectable woman, much better than I had supposed her to be. I persuaded her (and I put it down to my credit) that the mother couldn’t be left like that, alone with her daughter’s corpse, and that she should take her to her room at least till the next day. She agreed at once and, no matter how the mother thrashed and wept, refusing to leave the corpse, in the end, nevertheless, she still moved in with the landlady, who at once ordered the samovar prepared. After that, the tenants went to their rooms and closed the doors, but I still wouldn’t go to bed and sat for a long time at the landlady’s, who was even glad of an extra person, and one who could, for his part, tell a thing or two about the matter. The samovar proved very useful, and generally the samovar is a most necessary Russian thing, precisely in all catastrophes and misfortunes, especially terrible, unexpected, and eccentric ones; even the mother had two cups, of course after extreme entreaties and almost by force. And yet, sincerely speaking, I had never seen more bitter and outright grief than when I looked at this unfortunate woman. After the first bursts of sobbing and hysterics, she even began speaking eagerly, and I listened greedily to her account. There are unfortunate people, especially among women, for whom it is even necessary that they be allowed to speak as much as possible in such cases. Besides, there are characters that are, so to speak, all too worn down by grief, who have suffered all their lives long, who have endured extremely much both from great griefs and from constant little ones, and whom nothing can surprise anymore, no sort of unexpected catastrophes, and who, above all, even before the coffin of the most beloved being, do not forget a single one of the so-dearly-paid-for rules of ingratiating behavior with people. And I don’t condemn them; it’s not the banality of egoism or coarseness of development; in these hearts maybe one can find even more gold than in the most noble-looking heroines; but the habit of longtime abasement, the instinct of self-preservation, a long intimidation and inhibition finally take their toll. The poor suicide did not resemble her mother in this. Their faces, however, seemed to resemble each other, though the dead girl was positively not bad-looking. The mother was not yet a very old woman, only about fifty, also blond, but with hollow eyes and cheeks, and with big, uneven yellow teeth. And everything in her had some tinge of yellowness: the skin of her face and hands was like parchment; her dark dress was so threadbare that it also looked quite yellow; and the nail on the index finger of her right hand was, I don’t know why, plastered over thoroughly and neatly with yellow wax.

The poor woman’s story was incoherent in some places. I’ll tell it as I understood it and as I have remembered it.

V

THEY CAME FROM Moscow. She had long been a widow, “though the widow of a court councillor,”55 her husband had been in the service, left almost nothing “except two hundred roubles, though, in a pension. Well, what is two hundred roubles?” She raised Olya, though, and had her educated in high school . . . “And how she studied, how she studied; she was awarded a silver medal at graduation . . .” (Long tears here, naturally.) The deceased husband had lost nearly four thousand in capital with one merchant here in Petersburg. Suddenly this merchant became rich again. “I had papers, got some advice, they said, ‘Make a claim, you’re sure to get everything . . .’ So I began, and the merchant started to agree. ‘Go in person,’ they said. Olya and I made ready and came a month ago now. Our means were only so much; we took this room because it was the smallest, and we saw it was an honorable house, and that was the most important thing for us. We’re inexperienced women, anybody can offend us. Well, we paid you for a month, with one thing and another, Petersburg’s expensive, our merchant flatly refused us. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ and the paper I had was not in order, I understood that myself. So they advise me, ‘Go to this famous lawyer, he was a professor, not simply a lawyer, but a jurist, he’ll tell you for certain what to do.’ I took my last fifteen roubles to him; the lawyer came out, and didn’t listen to me for even three minutes: ‘I see,’ he says, ‘I know,’ he says, ‘if he wants to,’ he says, ‘the merchant will pay you back, if he doesn’t, he won’t, but if you start a case, you may have to pay more, best of all is to make peace.’ And he made a joke from the Gospel: ‘Agree with thine adversary,’ he says, ‘whiles thou art in the way, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.’56 He sends me away, laughing. That was the end of my fifteen roubles! I came to Olya, we sit facing each other, I began to weep. She doesn’t weep, she sits there proud, indignant. And she’s always been like that, all her life, even when she was little, she never sighed, never wept, so she sits, glaring terribly, it’s even eerie to look at her. And, would you believe it, I was afraid of her, completely afraid, long afraid; and I’d feel like whining now and then, but I don’t dare in front of her. I went to the merchant for a last time, wept my fill there. ‘All right,’ he says, and doesn’t even listen. Meanwhile, I must confess, since we hadn’t counted on staying so long, we’d already been without money for some time. I gradually began to pawn my clothes, and we lived on that. We pawned everything we had, she began giving up her last bit of linen, and here I started weeping bitter tears. She stamped her foot, jumped up, and ran to the merchant herself. He’s a widower; he talked to her: ‘Come the day after tomorrow at five o’clock,’ he said, ‘maybe I’ll tell you something.’ She came back cheered up: ‘See,’ she says, ‘maybe he’ll tell me something.’ Well, I was glad, too, only my heart somehow went cold in me: what’s going to happen, I think, but I don’t dare ask her. Two days later she came back from the merchant pale, all trembling, threw herself on the bed—I understood everything, but I don’t dare ask. What do you think: he gave her fifteen roubles, the robber, ‘and if I meet with full honor in you,’ he says, ‘I’ll add another forty roubles.’ That’s what he said right to her face, shamelessly. She rushed at him then, she told me, but he pushed her back and even locked himself away from her in another room. And meanwhile, I confess to you in all conscience, we have almost nothing to eat. We took and sold a jacket lined with rabbit fur, and she went to the newspaper and advertised: preparation in all subjects, and also arithmetic. ‘They’ll pay at least thirty kopecks,’ she says. And towards the very end, dear lady, I even began to be horrified at her: she says nothing to me, sits for hours on end at the window, looking at the roof of the house opposite, and suddenly shouts: ‘At least to do laundry, at least to dig the earth!’ She’d shout just some word like that and stamp her foot. And we have no acquaintances here, there’s nobody to go to: ‘What will become of us?’ I think. And I keep being afraid to talk to her. Once she slept in the afternoon, woke up, opened her eyes, looked at me; I sit on the chest, also looking at her; she got up silently, came over to me, embraced me very, very tightly, and then the two of us couldn’t help ourselves and wept, we sit and weep, without letting go of each other’s arms. It was the first time like that in her whole life. So we’re sitting like that with each other, and your Nastasya comes in and says, ‘There’s some lady asking to see you.’ This was just four days ago. The lady comes in. We see she’s very well dressed, speaks Russian, but with what seems like a German accent: ‘You advertised in the newspaper,’ she says, ‘that you give lessons?’ We were so glad then, asked her to sit down, she laughs so sweetly: ‘It’s not me,’ she says, ‘but my niece has small children; if you like, kindly come to see us, we’ll discuss things there.’ She gave the address, by the Voznesensky Bridge, number such-and-such, apartment number such-and-such. She left. Olechka set off, she went ru