Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  A piece of news! She grew much livelier as she talked. I looked at her with hatred.

  “You are much livelier than when you came to see me last.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I think, you’ve grown stouter?”

  She looked strangely at me:

  “I have grown very fond of her, very.”

  “Fond of whom?”

  “Why, Anna Andreyevna. Very fond. Such a noble young lady, and with such judgment. . . .”

  “You don’t say so! What about her, how are things now?”

  “She is very quiet, very.”

  “She was always quiet.”

  “Always.”

  “If you’ve come here with scandal,” I cried suddenly, unable to restrain myself, “let me tell you that I won’t have anything to do with it, I have decided to drop . . . everything, every one. . . . I don’t care — I am going away! . . .”

  I ceased suddenly, for I realized what I was doing. I felt it degrading to explain my new projects to her. She heard me without surprise and without emotion. But again a pause followed, again she got up, went to the door and peeped into the next room. Having assured herself that there was no one there, and we were alone, she returned with great composure and sat down in the same place as before.

  “You did that prettily!” I laughed suddenly.

  “You are keeping on your lodging at the clerk’s?” she asked suddenly, bending a little towards me, and dropping her voice as though this question were the chief object for which she had come.

  “Lodging? I don’t know. Perhaps I shall give it up. How do I know?”

  “They are anxiously expecting you: the man’s very impatient to see you, and his wife too. Andrey Petrovitch assured them you’d come back for certain.”

  “But what is it to you?”

  “Anna Andreyevna wanted to know, too; she was very glad to learn that you were staying.”

  “How does she know so positively that I shall certainly stay on at that lodging?”

  I wanted to add, “And what is it to her,” but I refrained from asking through pride.

  “And M. Lambert said the same thing, too.”

  “Wha-at?”

  “M. Lambert, he declared most positively to Andrey Petrovitch that you would remain, and he assured Anna Andreyevna of it, too.”

  I felt shaken all over. What marvels! Then Lambert already knew Versilov, Lambert had found his way to Versilov — Lambert and Anna Andreyevna — he had found his way to her too! I felt overcome with fever, but I kept silent. My soul was flooded with a terrible rush of pride, pride or I don’t know what. But I suddenly said to myself at that moment, “If I ask for one word in explanation, I shall be involved in that world again, and I shall never have done with it.” There was a glow of hate in my heart. I resolutely made up my mind to be mute, and to lie without moving; she was silent too, for a full minute.

  “What of Prince Nikolay Ivanovitch?” I asked suddenly, as though I had taken leave of my senses. The fact is, I asked simply to change the subject, and again I chanced to ask the leading question; like a madman I plunged back again into that world from which I had just before, with such a shudder, resolved to flee.

  “His honour is at Tsarskoe Syelo. He is rather poorly; and as the hot days have begun in town, they all advised him to move to their house at Tsarskoe for the sake of the air.”

  I made no answer.

  “Madame and Anna Andreyevna visit him there twice a week, they go together.”

  Anna Andreyevna and Madame (that is SHE) were friends then! They go together! I did not speak.

  “They have become so friendly, and Anna Andreyevna speaks so highly of Katerina Nikolaevna. . . .”

  I still remained silent.

  “And Katerina Nikolaevna is in a whirl of society again; it’s one fête after another; she is making quite a stir; they say all the gentlemen at court are in love with her . . . and everything’s over with M. Büring, and there’s to be no wedding; so everybody declares . . . it’s been off ever since THEN.”

  That is since Versilov’s letter. I trembled all over, but I did not utter a word.

  “Anna Andreyevna is so sorry about Prince Sergay, and Katerina Nikolaevna too, and they all say that he will be acquitted and that Stebelkov will be condemned. . . .”

  I looked at her with hatred. She got up and suddenly bent down to me.

  “Anna Andreyevna particularly told me to find out how you are,” she said quite in a whisper; “and she particularly begged you to go and see her as soon as you begin to go out; good-bye. Make haste and get well and I’ll tell her. . . .”

  She went away. I sat on the edge of the bed, a cold sweat came out on my forehead, but I did not feel terror: the incredible and grotesque news about Lambert and his machinations did not, for instance, fill me with horror in the least, as might have been expected from the dread, perhaps unaccountable, with which during my illness and the early days of my convalescence I recalled my meeting with him on that night. On the contrary, in that first moment of confusion, as I sat on the bed after Darya Onisimovna had gone, my mind did not dwell on Lambert, but . . . more than all I thought about the news of HER, of her rupture with Büring, and of her success in society, of her fêtes, of her triumphs, of the “stir” she was making. “She’s making quite a stir,” Darya Onisimovna’s phrase, was ringing in my ears. And I suddenly felt that I had not the strength to struggle out of that whirlpool; I had known how to control myself, to hold my tongue and not to question Darya Onisimovna after her tales of marvels! An overwhelming thirst for that life, for THEIR life, took possession of my whole spirit and . . . and another blissful thirst which I felt as a keen joy and an intense pain. My thoughts were in a whirl; but I let them whirl. . . . “Why be reasonable,” I felt. “Even mother kept Lambert’s coming a secret,” I thought, in incoherent snatches. “Versilov must have told her not to speak of it. . . . I would rather die than ask Versilov about Lambert!”

  “Versilov,” the thought flashed upon me again. “Versilov and Lambert. Oh, what a lot that’s new among them! Bravo, Versilov! He frightened the German Büring with that letter; he libelled her, la calomnie . . . il en reste tonjours quelque chose, and the German courtier was afraid of the scandal. Ha! ha! it’s a lesson for her.”

  “Lambert . . . surely Lambert hasn’t found his way to her? To be sure he has! Why shouldn’t she have an intrigue with him?”

  At this point I suddenly gave up pondering on this senseless tangle, and sank back in despair with my head on my pillow. “But it shall not be,” I exclaimed with sudden determination. I jumped out of bed, put on my slippers and dressing-gown, and went straight to Makar Ivanovitch’s room, as though there were in it a talisman to repel all enticements, a means of salvation, and an anchor to which I could cling.

  It may really have been that I was feeling this at the time with my whole soul; else why should I have leaped up with such a sudden and irresistible impulse and rushed in to Makar Ivanovitch in such a state of mind?

  3

  But to my surprise I found other people — my mother and the doctor — with Makar Ivanovitch. As I had for some reason imagined I should find the old man alone, as he had been yesterday, I stopped short in the doorway in blank amazement. Before I had time to frown, Versilov came in followed by Liza. . . . So they had all met for some reason in Makar Ivanovitch’s room “just when they were not wanted!”

  “I have come to ask how you are,” I said, going straight up to Makar Ivanovitch.

  “Thank you, my dear, I was expecting you; I knew you would come; I was thinking of you in the night.”

  He looked into my face caressingly, and I saw that perhaps he liked me best of them all, but I could not help seeing instantly that, though his face was cheerful, his illness had made progress in the night. The doctor had only just been examining him very seriously. I learned afterwards that the doctor (the same young man with whom I had quarrelled had been treating Makar Ivanovitch ever since he ar
rived) had been very attentive to the patient and had diagnosed a complication of various diseases in him — but I don’t know their medical terms. Makar Ivanovitch, as I observed from the first glance, was on the warmest, friendliest terms with him; I disliked that at that instant; but I was of course in a very bad mood at the moment.

  “Yes, Alexandr Semyonovitch, how is our dear invalid today,” inquired Versilov. If I had not been so agitated, it would have been most interesting to me to watch Versilov’s attitude to this old man; I had wondered about it the day before. What struck me most of all now was the extremely soft and pleasant expression in Versilov’s face, there was something perfectly sincere in it. I have noted already, I believe, that Versilov’s face became wonderfully beautiful as soon as it became ever so little kindly.

  “Why, we keep quarrelling,” answered the doctor.

  “With Makar Ivanovitch? I don’t believe it; it’s impossible to quarrel with him.”

  “But he won’t obey; he doesn’t sleep at night. . . .”

  “Come give over, Alexandr Semyonovitch, that’s enough scolding,” said Makar Ivanovitch laughing. “Well, Andrey Petrovitch, how have they treated our good lady? Here she’s been sighing and moaning all the morning, she’s worrying,” he added, indicating mother.

  “Ach, Andrey Petrovitch,” cried my mother, who was really very uneasy; “do make haste and tell us, don’t keep us in suspense; how has it been settled for her, poor thing?”

  “They have found her guilty and sentenced her!”

  “Ach!” cried my mother.

  “But not to Siberia, don’t distress yourself — to a fine of fifteen roubles, that’s all; it was a farce!”

  He sat down, the doctor sat down too; they were talking of Tatyana Pavlovna; I knew nothing yet of what had happened. I sat down on Makar Ivanovitch’s left, and Liza sat opposite me on the right; she evidently had some special sorrow of her own to-day, with which she had come to my mother; there was a look of uneasiness and irritation in her face. At that moment we exchanged glances, and I thought to myself, “we are both disgraced, and I must make the first advances.” My heart was suddenly softened to her. Versilov meanwhile had begun describing what had happened that morning.

  It seemed that Tatyana Pavlovna had had to appear before the justice of the peace that morning, on a charge brought against her by her cook. The whole affair was utterly absurd; I have mentioned already that the ill-tempered cook would sometimes, when she was sulky, refuse to speak, and would not say a word to her mistress for a whole week at a time. I mentioned, too, Tatyana’s weakness in regard to her, how she put up with anything from her and absolutely refused to get rid of her. All these whimsical caprices of old maiden ladies are, in my eyes, utterly beneath contempt and so undeserving of attention. And I only mention this story here because this cook is destined to play a leading and momentous part in the sequel of my story.

  So Tatyana Pavlovna, driven out of all patience by the obstinate Finnish woman, who had refused to answer a word for several days, had suddenly at last struck her, a thing she had never done before. Even then the cook did not utter the slightest sound, but the same day she communicated the fact to a discharged midshipman called Osyetrov, who earned a precarious existence by undertaking cases of various sorts and of course, by getting up such cases as this for the courts. It had ended in Tatyana Pavlovna’s being summoned before the justice of the peace, and when the case was tried Versilov had for some reason appeared as a witness.

  Versilov described all this with extraordinary gaiety and humour, so that even mother laughed; he even mimicked Tatyana Pavlovna and the midshipman and the cook. The cook had from the very beginning announced to the court that she wanted a money fine, “For if they put my mistress in prison, whom am I going to cook for?” In answer to the judge, Tatyana Pavlovna answered with immense condescension, not even deigning to defend herself; on the contrary, she had concluded with the words, “I did beat her and I shall do it again,” whereupon she was promptly fined three roubles for her impudent answer. The midshipman, a lean lanky young man, would have begun with a long speech in defence of his client, but broke down disgracefully to the amusement of the whole court.

  The hearing was soon over, and Tatyana Pavlovna was condemned to pay fifteen roubles to the injured Marya.

  Tatyana Pavlovna promptly drew out her purse, and proceeded on the spot to pay the money, whereupon the midshipman at once approached her, and was putting out his hand to take it, but Tatyana Pavlovna thrust aside his hand, almost with a blow, and turned to Marya. “Don’t you trouble, madam, you needn’t put yourself out, put it down in our accounts, I’ll settle with this fellow.” “See, Marya, what a lanky fellow you’ve picked out for yourself,” said Tatyana Pavlovna, pointing to the midshipman, hugely delighted that Marya had spoken to her at last.

  “He is a lanky one to be sure,” Marya answered slily. “Did you order cutlets with peas? I did not hear this morning, I was in a hurry to get here.” “Oh no, with cabbage, Marya, and please don’t burn it to a cinder, as you did yesterday.” “No, I’ll do my best to-day, madam, let me have your hand,” and she kissed her mistress’s hand in token of reconciliation; she entertained the whole court in fact.

  “Ah, what a woman!” said mother, shaking her head, very much pleased with the news and Andrey Petrovitch’s account of it, though she looked uneasily on the sly at Liza.

  “She has been a self-willed lady from her childhood,” smiled Makar Ivanovitch.

  “Spleen and idleness,” opined the doctor.

  “Is it I am self-willed? Is it I am spleen and idleness?” asked Tatyana Pavlovna, coming in upon us suddenly, evidently very well pleased with herself. “It’s not for you to talk nonsense, Alexandr Semyonovitch; when you were ten years old, you knew whether I was idle, and you’ve been treating yourself for spleen for the last year and have not been able to cure yourself, so you ought to be ashamed; well, you’ve picked me to pieces enough; thanks for troubling to come to the court, Andrey Petrovitch. Well, how are you, Makarushka; it’s only you I’ve come to see, not this fellow,” she pointed to me, but at once gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder; I had never before seen her in such a good humour. “Well, how is he?” turning suddenly to the doctor and frowning anxiously.

  “Why, he won’t lie in bed, and he only tires himself out sitting up like this.”

  “Why, I only sit up like this a little, with company,” Makar Ivanovitch murmured with a face of entreaty, like a child’s.

  “Yes, we like this, we like this; we like a little gossip when our friends gather round us; I know Makarushka,” said Tatyana Pavlovna.

  “Yes you’re a quick one, you are! And there’s no getting over you; wait a bit, let me speak: I’ll lie down, darling, I’ll obey, but you know, to my thinking, ‘If you take to your bed, you may never get up,’ that’s what I’ve got at the back of my head, friend.”

  “To be sure I knew that was it, peasant superstitions: ‘If I take to my bed,’ they say, ‘ten to one I shan’t get up,’ that’s what the peasants very often fear, and they would rather keep on their legs when they’re ill than go to a hospital. As for you, Makar Ivanovitch, you’re simply home-sick for freedom, and the open road — that’s all that’s the matter with you, you’ve got out of the habit of staying long in one place. Why, you’re what’s called a pilgrim, aren’t you? And tramping is almost a passion in our peasantry. I’ve noticed it more than once in them, our peasants are tramps before everything.”

  “Then Makar is a tramp according to you?” Tatyana Pavlovna caught him up.

  “Oh, I did not mean that, I used the word in a general sense. Well yes, a religious tramp, though he is a holy man, yet he is a tramp. In a good respectful sense, but a tramp. . . . I speak from the medical point of view. . . .”

  “I assure you,” I addressed the doctor suddenly: “that you and I and all the rest here are more like tramps than this old man from whom you and I ought to learn, too, because he has a firm footing
in life, while we all of us have no firm standpoint at all. . . . But how should you understand that, though!”

  I spoke very cuttingly, it seemed, but I had come in feeling upset. I don’t know why I went on sitting there, and felt as though I were beside myself.

  “What are you saying?” said Tatyana Pavlovna, looking at me suspiciously. “How did you find him, Makar Ivanovitch?” she asked, pointing her finger at me.

  “God bless him, he’s a sharp one,” said the old man, with a serious air, but at the words “sharp one” almost every one laughed. I controlled myself somehow; the doctor laughed more than anyone. It was rather unlucky that I did not know at the time of a previous compact between them. Versilov, the doctor, and Tatyana Pavlovna had agreed three days before to do all they could to distract mother from brooding and apprehension on account of Makar Ivanovitch, whose illness was far more dangerous and hopeless than I had any suspicion of then. That’s why they were all making jokes, and trying to laugh. Only the doctor was stupid, and did not know how to make jokes naturally: that was the cause of all that followed. If I had known of their agreement at that time, I should not have done what I did. Liza knew nothing either.

  I sat listening with half my mind; they talked and laughed and all the time my head was full of Darya Onisimovna, and her news, and I could not shake off the thought of her; I kept picturing how she had sat and looked, and had cautiously got up, and peeped into the next room. At last they all suddenly laughed. Tatyana Pavlovna, I don’t in the least know why, called the doctor an infidel: “Why, all you doctors are infidels!”

  “Makar Ivanovitch!” said the doctor, very stupidly pretending to be offended and to be appealing to him as an umpire, “am I an infidel?”

  “You an infidel? No you are not an infidel,” the old man answered sedately, looking at him instantly. “No, thank God!” he said, shaking his head: “you are a merry-hearted man.”

  “And if a man’s merry-hearted, he’s not an infidel?” the doctor observed ironically.

  “That’s in its own way an idea,” observed Versilov; he was not laughing, however.