The Adolescent

III

ON ENTERING, I suddenly found Liza with her. It almost struck me. I was very well aware that they had seen each other before; it had happened at the “nursing baby’s.” I may tell later, if there’s space, about this fantasy of the proud and modest A

“You’re very cheerful today, and that’s very pleasant,” said A

“Liza knows how unpleasant I am when I’m not cheerful,” I replied cheerfully.

“Maybe A

“What are you doing now?” asked A

“I’m now sitting here and asking myself: why is it always more pleasant for me to find you over a book than over handwork? No, really, handwork doesn’t suit you for some reason. In that sense I take after Andrei Petrovich.”

“You still haven’t made up your mind to enter the university?”

“I’m only too grateful that you haven’t forgotten our conversations; that means you think of me occasionally; but . . . I haven’t formed my idea yet concerning the university, and besides I have goals of my own.”

“That is, he has his secret,” observed Liza.

“Drop your jokes, Liza. A certain intelligent man said the other day that, with all this progressive movement of ours in the last twenty years, we’ve proved first of all that we’re filthily uneducated. Here, of course, he was also speaking of our university men.”

“Well, surely papa said that; you repeat his thoughts terribly often,” observed Liza.

“Liza, it’s as if you don’t believe I have a mind of my own.”

“In our time it’s useful to listen to the words of intelligent people and remember them,” A

“Precisely, A

Liza glanced quickly at A

“Liza, you’re inconceivable!”

“Forgive me!” she said suddenly, ceasing to laugh and almost with sadness. “I’ve got God knows what in my head . . .”

And it was as if tears suddenly trembled in her voice. I felt terribly ashamed; I took her hand and kissed it hard.

“You’re very kind,” A

“I’m glad most of all, Liza, that I find you laughing this time,” I said. “Would you believe it, A

A

“You just said I was kind; you won’t believe how the whole of me changes for the better with you, and how pleasant it is for me to be with you, A

“And I’m very glad you say that to me precisely now,” she replied meaningly. I must say that she never talked to me about my disorderly life and of the abyss I had plunged into, though I knew she not only knew about it all, but even made inquiries indirectly. So that now it was like a first hint, and—my heart turned to her still more.

“How’s our invalid?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s much better. He’s walking, and he went for a ride yesterday and today. But didn’t you go to see him today either? He’s waiting so much for you.”

“I’m guilty towards him, but you visit him now and have fully replaced me. He’s a great traitor and has exchanged me for you.”

She made a very serious face, very possibly because my joke was trivial.

“I was at Prince Sergei Petrovich’s today,” I began to mutter, “and I . . . By the way, Liza, did you go to see Darya Onisimovna today?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered somehow curtly, not raising her head. “It seems you go to see the sick prince every day?” she asked somehow suddenly, maybe in order to say something.

“Yes, I go to see him, only I don’t get there,” I smiled. “I go in and turn left.”

“Even the prince has noticed that you go to see Katerina Nikolaevna very often. He mentioned it yesterday and laughed,” said A

“At what? What did he laugh at?”

“He was joking, you know. He said that, on the contrary, a young and beautiful woman always produces an impression of indignation and wrath in a young man your age . . .” A

“Listen . . . you know, that was a terribly apt remark he made,” I cried. “Probably it wasn’t he, but you who said it to him?”

“Why so? No, it was he.”

“Well, but if this beauty pays attention to him, despite his being so insignificant, standing in the corner, angry at being ‘little,’ and suddenly prefers him to the whole crowd of surrounding admirers, what then?” I asked suddenly, with a most bold and defiant look. My heart began to pound.

“Then you’ll just perish right in front of her,” Liza laughed.

“Perish?” I cried. “No, I won’t perish. I don’t believe I’ll perish. If a woman stands across my path, then she must follow after me. You don’t block my path with impunity . . .”

Liza once said to me in passing, recalling it long afterwards, that I uttered this phrase then terribly strangely, seriously, and as if suddenly growing pensive; but at the same time “so ridiculously that it was impossible to control oneself.” Indeed, A

“Laugh, laugh at me!” I exclaimed in intoxication, because I was terribly pleased with this whole conversation and the direction it had taken. “From you it only gives me pleasure. I love your laughter, A

When I said of the lady that “she was as beautiful as you are,” I was being clever: I pretended that it had escaped me accidentally, as if I hadn’t even noticed; I knew very well that women value such “escaped” praise more highly than any polished compliment you like. And much as A