Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Perhaps he felt a little uncomfortable at first, somewhat as a mouse must feel when he finds himself unexpectedly in the trap.

  Velchaninoff very soon lost his patience.

  “Well?” he cried, “you are not a fantasy or a dream or anything of that kind, are you? You aren’t a corpse, are you? Come, my friend, this is not a game or play. I want your explanation, please!”

  The visitor fidgeted about a little, smiled, and began to speak cautiously.

  “So far as I can see,” he said, “the time of night of my visit is what surprises you, and that I should have come as I did; in fact, when I remember the past, and our intimacy, and all that, I am astonished myself; but the fact is, I did not mean to come in at all, and if I did so it was purely an accident.”

  “An accident! Why, I saw you creeping across the road on tip-toes!”

  “You saw me? Indeed! Come, then you know as much or more about the matter than I do; but I see I am annoying you. This is how it was: I’ve been in town three weeks or so on business. I am Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky, you recognized me yourself, my business in town is to effect an exchange of departments. I am trying for a situation in another place — one with a large increase of salary; but all this is beside the point; the fact of the matter is, I believe I have been delaying my business on purpose. I believe if everything were settled at this moment I should still be dawdling in this St. Petersburg of yours in my present condition of mind. I go wandering about as though I had lost all interest in things, and were rather glad of the fact, in my present condition of mind.”

  “What condition of mind?” asked Velchaninoff, frowning.

  The visitor raised his eyes to Velchaninoff’s, lifted his hat from the ground beside him, and with great dignity pointed out the black crape band.

  “There, sir, in that condition of mind!” he observed.

  Velchaninoff stared stupidly at the crape, and thence at the man’s face. Suddenly his face flushed up in a hot blush for a moment, and he was violently agitated.

  “Not Natalia Vasilievna, surely?”

  “Yes, Natalia Vasilievna! Last March! Consumption, sir, and almost suddenly — all over in two or three months — and here am I left as you see me!”

  So saying, Pavel Pavlovitch, with much show of feeling, bent his bald head down and kept it bent for some ten seconds, while he held out his two hands, in one of which was the hat with the band, in explanatory emotion.

  This gesture, and the man’s whole air, seemed to brighten Velchaninoff up; he smiled sarcastically for one instant, not more at present, for the news of this lady’s death (he had known her so long ago, and had forgotten her many a year since) had made a quite unexpected impression upon his mind.

  “Is it possible!” he muttered, using the first words that came to his lips, “and pray why did you not come here and tell me at once?”

  “Thanks for your kind interest, I see and value it, in spite of — —”

  “In spite of what?”

  “In spite of so many years of separation you at once sympathised with my sorrow — and in fact with myself, and so fully too — that I feel naturally grateful. That’s all I had to tell you, sir! Don’t suppose I doubt my friends, you know; why, even here, in this place, I could put my finger on several very sincere friends indeed (for instance, Stepan Michailovitch Bagantoff); but remember, my dear Aleksey Ivanovitch — nine years have passed since we were acquaintances — or friends, if you’ll allow me to say so — and meanwhile you have never been to see us, never written.”

  The guest sang all this out as though he were reading it from music, but kept his eyes fixed on the ground the while, although, of course, he saw what was going on above his eyelashes exceedingly well all the same.

  Velchaninoff had found his head by this time.

  With a strange sort of fascinated attention, which strengthened itself every moment, he continued to gaze at and listen to Pavel Pavlovitch, and of a sudden, when the latter stopped speaking, a flood of curious ideas swept unexpectedly through his brain.

  “But look here,” he cried, “how is it that I never recognized you all this while? — we’ve met five times, at least, in the streets!”

  “Quite so — I am perfectly aware of the circumstance. You chanced to meet me two or three times, and — —”

  “No, no! you met me, you know — not I you!” Velchaninoff suddenly burst into a roar of laughter, and rose from his seat. Pavel Pavlovitch paused a moment, looked keenly at Velchaninoff, and then continued:

  “As to your not recognizing me, in the first place you might easily have forgotten me by now; and besides, I have had small-pox since last we met, and I daresay my face is a good deal marked.”

  “Smallpox? why, how did you manage that? — he has had it, though, by Jove!” cried Velchaninoff. “What a funny fellow you are — however, go on, don’t stop.”

  Velchaninoff’s spirits were rising higher and higher; he was beginning to feel wonderfully light-hearted. That feeling of agitation which had lately so disturbed him had given place to quite a different sentiment. He now began to stride up and down the room, very quickly.

  “I was going to say,” resumed Pavel Pavlovitch, “that though I have met you several times, and though I quite intended to come and look you up, when I was arranging my visit to Petersburg, still, I was in that condition of mind, you know, and my wits have so suffered since last March, that — —”

  “Wits since last March, — yes, go on: wait a minute — do you smoke?”

  “Oh — you know, Natalia Vasilievna, never—”

  “Quite so; but since March — eh?”

  “Well — I might, a cigarette or so.”

  “Here you are, then! Light up and go on, — go on! you interest me wonderfully.”

  Velchaninoff lit a cigar and sat down on his bed again. Pavel Pavlovitch paused a moment.

  “But what a state of agitation you seem to be in yourself!” said he, “are you quite well?”

  “Oh, curse my health!” cried Velchaninoff,— “you go on!”

  The visitor observed his host’s agitation with satisfaction; he went on with his share of the talking with more confidence.

  “What am I to go on about?” he asked. “Imagine me, Alexey Ivanovitch — a broken man, — not simply broken, but gone at the root, as it were; a man forced to change his whole manner of living, after twenty years of married life, wandering about the dusty roads without an object, — mind lost — almost oblivious of his own self, — and yet, as it were, taking some sort of intoxicated delight in his loneliness! Isn’t it natural that if I should, at such a moment of self-forgetfulness come across a friend — even a dear friend, I might prefer to avoid him for that moment? and isn’t it equally natural that at another moment I should long to see and speak with some one who has been an eye-witness of, or a partaker, so to speak, in my never-to-be-recalled past? and to rush — not only in the day, but at night, if it so happens, — to rush to the embrace of such a man? — yes, even if one has to wake him up at three in the morning to do it! I was wrong in my time, not in my estimate of my friend, though, for at this moment I feel the full rapture of success; my rash action has been successful: I have found sympathy! As for the time of night, I confess I thought it was not twelve yet! You see, one sups of grief, and it intoxicates one, — at least, not grief, exactly, it’s more the condition of mind — the new state of things that affects me.”

  “Dear me, how oddly you express yourself!” said Velchaninoff, rising from his seat once more, and becoming quite serious again.

  “Oddly, do I? Perhaps.”

  “Look here: are you joking?”

  “Joking!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, in shocked surprise; “joking — at the very moment when I am telling you of — —”

  “Oh — be quiet about that! for goodness sake.”

  Velchaninoff started off on his journey up and down the room again.

  So matters stood for five minutes or so: the visitor seemed incli
ned to rise from his chair, but Velchaninoff bade him sit still, and Pavel Pavlovitch obediently flopped into his seat again.

  “How changed you are!” said the host at last, stopping in front of the other chair, as though suddenly struck with the idea; “fearfully changed!”

  “Wonderful! you’re quite another man!”

  “That’s hardly surprising! nine years, sir!”

  “No, no, no! years have nothing to do with it! it’s not in appearance you are so changed: it’s something else!”

  “Well, sir, the nine years might account for anything.”

  “Perhaps it’s only since March, eh?”

  “Ha-ha! you are playful, sir,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, laughing slyly. “But, if I may ask it, wherein am I so changed?”

  “Oh — why, you used to be such a staid, sober, correct Pavel Pavlovitch; such a wise Pavel Pavlovitch; and now you’re a good-for-nothing sort of Pavel Pavlovitch.”

  Velchaninoff was in that state of irritation when the steadiest, gravest people will sometimes say rather more than they mean.

  “Good-for-nothing, am I? and wise no longer, I suppose, eh?” chuckled Pavel Pavlovitch, with disagreeable satisfaction.

  “Wise, indeed! My dear sir, I’m afraid you are not sober,” replied Velchaninoff; and added to himself, “I am pretty fairly insolent myself, but I can’t compare with this little cad! And what on earth is the fellow driving at?”

  “Oh, my dear, good, my best of Alexey Ivanovitches,” said the visitor suddenly, most excitedly, and twisting about on his chair, “and why should I be sober? We are not moving in the brilliant walks of society — you and I — just now. We are but two dear old friends come together in the full sincerity of perfect love, to recall and talk over that sweet mutual tie of which the dear departed formed so treasured a link in our friendship.”

  So saying, the sensitive gentleman became so carried away by his feelings that he bent his head down once more, to hide his emotion, and buried his face in his hat.

  Velchaninoff looked on with an uncomfortable feeling of disgust.

  “I can’t help thinking the man is simply silly,” he thought; “and yet — no, no — his face is so red he must be drunk. But drunk or not drunk, what does the little wretch want with me? That’s the puzzle.”

  “Do you remember — oh, don’t you remember — our delightful little evenings — dancing sometimes, or sometimes literary — at Simeon Simeonovitch’s?” continued the visitor, gradually removing his hat from before his face, and apparently growing more and more enthusiastic over the memories of the past, “and our little readings — you and she and myself — and our first meeting, when you came in to ask for information about something connected with your business in the town, and commenced shouting angrily at me; don’t you remember — when suddenly in came Natalia Vasilievna, and within ten minutes you were our dear friend, and so remained for exactly a year? Just like Turgenieff’s story ‘The Provincialka!’ ”

  Velchaninoff had continued his walk up and down the room during this tirade, with his eyes on the ground, listening impatiently and with disgust — but listening hard, all the same.

  “It never struck me to think of ‘The Provincialka’ in connection with the matter,” he interrupted. “And look here, why do you talk in that sneaking, whining sort of voice? You never used to do that. Your whole manner is unlike yourself.”

  “Quite so, quite so. I used to be more silent, I know. I used to love to listen while others talked. You remember how well the dear departed talked — the wit and grace of her conversation. As to The Provincialka, I remember she and I used often to compare your friendship for us to certain episodes in that piece, and especially to the doings of one Stupendief. It really was remarkably like that character and his doings.”

  “What Stupendief do you mean, confound it all?” cried Velchaninoff, stamping his foot with rage. The name seemed to have evoked certain most irritating thoughts in his mind.

  “Why, Stupendief, don’t you know, the ‘husband’ in ‘Provincialka,’ ” whined Pavel Pavlovitch, in the very sweetest of tones; “but that belongs to another set of fond memories — after you departed, in fact, when Mr. Bagantoff had honoured us with his friendship, just as you had done before him, only that his lasted five whole years.”

  “Bagantoff? What Bagantoff? Do you mean that same Bagantoff who was serving down in your town? Why, he also — —”

  “Yes, yes! quite so. He also, he also!” cried the enthusiastic Pavel Pavlovitch, seizing upon Velchaninoff’s accidental slip. “Of course! So that there you are — there’s the whole company. Bagantoff played the ‘count,’ the dear departed was the ‘Provincialka,’ and I was the ‘husband,’ only that the part was taken away from me, for incapacity, I suppose!”

  “Yes; fancy you a Stupendief. You’re a — you’re first a Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky!” said Velchaninoff, contemptuously, and very unceremoniously. “But look here! Bagantoff is in town; I know he is, for I have seen him. Why don’t you go to see him as well as myself?”

  “My dear sir, I’ve been there every day for the last three weeks. He won’t receive me; he’s ill, and can’t receive! And, do you know, I have found out that he really is very ill! Fancy my feelings — a five-year’s friend! Oh, my dear Alexey Ivanovitch! you don’t know what my feelings are in my present condition of mind. I assure you, at one moment I long for the earth to open and swallow me up, and the next I feel that I must find one of those old friends, eyewitnesses of the past, as it were, if only to weep on his bosom, only to weep, sir — give you my word.”

  “Well, that’s about enough for to-night; don’t you think so?” said Velchaninoff, cuttingly.

  “Oh, too — too much!” cried the other, rising. “It must be four o’clock; and here am I agitating your feelings in the most selfish way.”

  “Now, look here; I shall call upon you myself, and I hope that you will then —— but, tell me honestly, are you drunk to-night?”

  “Drunk! not the least in the world!”

  “Did you drink nothing before you came here, or earlier?”

  “Do you know, my dear Alexey Ivanovitch, you are quite in a high fever!”

  “Good-night. I shall call to-morrow.”

  “And I have noticed it all the evening, really quite delirious!” continued Pavel Pavlovitch, licking his lips, as it were, with satisfaction as he pursued this theme. “I am really quite ashamed that I should have allowed myself to be so awkward as to agitate you. Well, well; I’m going! Now you must lie down at once and go to sleep.”

  “You haven’t told me where you live,” shouted Velchaninoff after him as he left the room.

  “Oh, didn’t I? Pokrofsky Hotel.”

  Pavel Pavlovitch was out on the stairs now.

  “Stop!” cried Velchaninoff, once more. “You are not ‘running away,’ are you?”

  “How do you mean, ‘running away?’ ” asked Pavel Pavlovitch, turning round at the third step, and grinning back at him, with his eyes staring very wide open.

  Instead of replying, Velchaninoff banged the door fiercely, locked and bolted it, and went fuming back into his room. Arrived there, he spat on the ground, as though to get rid of the taste of something loathsome.

  He then stood motionless for at least five minutes, in the centre of the room; after which he threw himself upon his bed, and fell asleep in an instant.

  The forgotten candle burned itself out in its socket.

  CHAPTER IV.

  Velchaninoff slept soundly until half-past nine, at which hour he started up, sat down on the side of his bed, and began to think.

  His thoughts quickly fixed themselves upon the death of “that woman.”

  The agitating impression wrought upon his mind by yesterday’s news as to her death had left a painful feeling of mental perturbation.

  This morning the whole of the events of nine years back stood out before his mind’s eye with extraordinary distinctness.

  He had loved thi
s woman, Natalia Vasilievna — Trusotsky’s wife, — he had loved her, and had acted the part of her lover during the time which he had spent in their provincial town (while engaged in business connected with a legacy); he had lived there a whole year, though his business did not require by any means so long a visit; in fact, the tie above mentioned had detained him in the place.

  He had been so completely under the influence of this passion, that Natalia Vasilievna had held him in a species of slavery. He would have obeyed the slightest whim or the wildest caprice of the woman, at that time. He had never, before or since, experienced anything approaching to the infatuation she had caused.

  When the time came for departing, Velchaninoff had been in a state of such absolute despair, though the parting was to have been but a short one, that he had begged Natalia Vasilievna to leave all and fly across the frontier with him; and it was only by laughing him out of the idea (though she had at first encouraged it herself, probably for a joke), and by unmercifully chaffing him, that the lady eventually persuaded Velchaninoff to depart alone.

  However, he had not been a couple of months in St. Petersburg before he found himself asking himself that question which he had never to this day been able to answer satisfactorily, namely, “Did he love this woman at all, or was it nothing but the infatuation of the moment?” He did not ask this question because he was conscious of any new passion taking root in his heart; on the contrary, during those first two months in town he had been in that condition of mind that he had not so much as looked at a woman, though he had met hundreds, and had returned to his old society ways at once. And yet he knew perfectly well that if he were to return to T —— he would instantly fall into the meshes of his passion for Natalia Vasilievna once more, in spite of the question which he could not answer as to the reality of his love for her.

  Five years later he was as convinced of this fact as ever, although the very thought of it was detestable to him, and although he did not remember the name of Natalia Vasilievna but with loathing.

  He was ashamed of that episode at T —— . He could not understand how he (Velchaninoff) could ever have allowed himself to become the victim of such a stupid passion. He blushed whenever he thought of the shameful business — blushed, and even wept for shame.