The Adolescent

“I pardon you completely, Mr. Lieutenant, and I assure you that you have abilities. Act this way in a drawing room, and soon it will be quite enough for the drawing room as well, but meanwhile here’s forty kopecks for you, have a drink and a bite to eat. Pardon me for the trouble, officer, I’d reward you, too, for your labors, but you’re all on such a noble footing now . . . My dear,” he turned to me, “there’s an eatery here, in fact a terrible cesspool, but one can have tea there, and I’d suggest to you . . . here it is now, come on.”

I repeat, I had never seen him in such excitement, though his face was cheerful and shone with light; but I noticed that when he was taking the two twenty-kopeck pieces from his purse to give to the lieutenant, his hands shook and his fingers wouldn’t obey at all, so that he finally asked me to take them out and give them to the man. I can’t forget that.

He brought me to a little tavern on the canal, in the basement. The customers were few. A hoarse little organ was playing out of tune, it smelled of dirty napkins; we sat down in the corner.

“Maybe you don’t know? I like sometimes, out of boredom, out of terrible i

He said a lot more. I quote these fragments as a sample. He interrupted me continually, as soon as I opened my mouth to begin my story, and began talking some sort of completely peculiar and inappropriate nonsense; he talked excitedly, gaily; laughed at God knows what, and even tittered—something I had never seen him do. He drank a glass of tea at one gulp and poured another. Now I understand: he was then like a man who has received a precious, curious, and long-awaited letter, which he places before him and doesn’t open on purpose; on the contrary, he turns it over in his hands for a long time, studies the envelope, the seal, goes to another room to give orders, puts off, in short, the most interesting moment, knowing that it won’t get away from him for anything, and all this for the greater fullness of pleasure.

I, naturally, told him everything, everything from the very begi

“You firmly recall, my dear, about that letter, that Kraft burned it in a candle? You’re not mistaken?”

“I’m not mistaken,” I confirmed.

“The thing is that that piece of writing is very important for her, and if it had been in your hands today, then even today you might . . .” But “might ” what, he didn’t finish saying. “And so, it’s not in your hands now?”

I shuddered inwardly, but not outwardly. Outwardly I didn’t betray myself in any way, didn’t bat an eye; but still I couldn’t believe the question.

“How not in my hands? In my hands now? If Kraft burned it then?”

“Yes?” he aimed a fiery, fixed gaze at me, a gaze I remembered. However, he was smiling, but all his goodnaturedness, all the femininity of expression he had had till then, suddenly disappeared. What came was something indefinite and disco

“An amazing thing,” he said suddenly, when I had spoken everything out to the last comma, “a very strange thing, my friend: you say you were there from three to four, and that Tatyana Pavlovna wasn’t at home?”

“Exactly from three till half-past four.”

“Well, imagine, I stopped to see Tatyana Pavlovna at exactly half-past three to the minute, and she met me in the kitchen—I almost always come to see her by the back entrance.”

“What, she met you in the kitchen?” I cried, drawing back in amazement.

“Yes, and she told me she couldn’t receive me; I stayed with her a couple of minutes, and I had only come to invite her to di

“Maybe she just came back from somewhere?”

“I don’t know; though—of course not. She was in her housecoat. This was exactly at half-past three.”