The Adolescent

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “I don’t like you, Versilov.”

  “And it’s even ‘Versilov.’ By the way, I regret very much that I couldn’t pass this name on to you, for in fact my whole fault consists only in that, if it is a fault, isn’t that so? But, once again, I couldn’t marry a married woman, judge for yourself.”

  “That’s probably why you wanted to marry an unmarried one?”

  A slight spasm passed over his face.

  “You mean Ems. Listen, Arkady, you allowed yourself that outburst downstairs, pointing the finger at me in front of your mother. Know, then, that precisely here you went widest of the mark. You know exactly nothing of the story of the late Lydia Akhmakov. Nor do you know how much your mother herself participated, yes, even though she wasn’t there with me; and if I ever saw a good woman, it was then, as I looked at your mother. But enough, this is all still a mystery, and you—you say who knows what and in somebody else’s voice.”

  “The prince said precisely today that you were an amateur of unfledged girls.”

  “The prince said that?”

  “Yes. Listen, do you want me to tell you exactly why you came to me now? I’ve been sitting all this while asking myself what was the secret of this visit, and now, it seems, I’ve finally guessed it.”

  He was already on his way out, but he stopped and turned his head to me in expectation.

  “Earlier I let slip in passing that Touchard’s letter to Tatyana Pavlovna got in with Andronikov’s papers and wound up, after his death, with Marya Ivanovna in Moscow. I saw something suddenly twitch in your face, and only now did I guess why, when something just twitched in your face again in exactly the same way: it occurred to you then, downstairs, that if one of Andronikov’s letters had already wound up with Marya Ivanovna, why shouldn’t another do the same? And Andronikov might have left some highly important letters, eh? Isn’t that so?”

  “And I came to you wanting to make you blab about something?”

  “You know it yourself.”

  He turned very pale.

  “You didn’t figure that out on your own; there’s a woman’s influence here. And how much hatred there is in your words—in your coarse guess!”

  “A woman’s? And I saw that woman just today! Maybe you want to have me stay with the prince precisely in order to spy on her?”

  “Anyhow, I see you’ll go extremely far on your new road. Mightn’t this be ‘your idea’? Go on, my friend, you have unquestionable ability along the sleuthing line. Given talent, one must perfect it.”

  He paused to catch his breath.

  “Beware, Versilov, don’t make me your enemy!”

  “My friend, in such cases no one speaks his last thoughts, but keeps them to himself. And now give me some light, I beg you. You may be my enemy, but not so much, probably, as to wish me to break my neck. Tiens, mon ami,24 imagine,” he continued, going down, “all this month I’ve been taking you for a good soul. You want so much to live and thirst so much to live, that it seems if you were given three lives, it wouldn’t be enough for you; it’s written on your face. Well, and such men are most often good souls. And see how mistaken I’ve been!”

  IV

  I CAN’T EXPRESS how my heart was wrung when I was left alone: as if I had cut off a piece of my own living flesh! Why I had suddenly gotten so angry, and why I had offended him like that—so intensely and deliberately—I couldn’t tell now, of course, or then either. And how pale he had turned! And what, then? Maybe that paleness was an expression of the most sincere and pure feelings and the deepest grief, and not of anger and offense. It always seemed to me that there were moments when he loved me very much. Why, why should I not believe that now, the more so as so much has now been completely explained?

  But maybe indeed I grew angry all at once and drove him out because of the sudden guess that he had come to me hoping to find out whether any more of Andronikov’s letters had been left to Marya Ivanovna? That he must have been looking for those letters and was looking for them—that I knew. But who knows, maybe then, precisely at that moment, I was terribly mistaken! And who knows, maybe it was I, by that very mistake, who prompted him afterwards in the thought of Marya Ivanovna and the possibility of her having letters?

  And, finally, again a strange thing: again he had repeated word for word my own thought (about three lives), which I had told to Kraft earlier that day and, above all, in my own words. The coincidence of words was once again chance, but all the same how well he knows the essence of my character: what insight, what perception! But if he understands one thing so well, why doesn’t he understand another at all? And can it be that he wasn’t faking, but was indeed unable to guess that what I needed was not Versilovian nobility, that it was not my birth that I couldn’t forgive him, but that all my life I’ve needed Versilov himself, the whole man, the father, and that this thought has already entered my blood? Can it be that such a subtle man can be so dull and crude? And if not, then why does he enrage me, why does he pretend?

  Chapter Eight

  I

  THE NEXT MORNING I tried to get up as early as possible. Ordinarily we got up at around eight o’clock, that is, my mother, my sister, and I; Versilov indulged himself till half-past nine. Precisely at half-past eight my mother would bring me coffee. But this time, not waiting for coffee, I slipped out of the house at exactly eight o’clock. The evening before, I had made up a general plan of action for this whole day. In this plan, despite my passionate resolve to set about fulfilling it at once, I sensed that there was a great deal that was unstable and uncertain at the most important points; that was why almost all night I had been as if in half-sleep, delirious, had an awful lot of dreams, and hardly a moment of proper sleep. Nevertheless I got up brisker and fresher than ever. I especially did not want to meet my mother. I couldn’t talk to her otherwise than on a certain subject, and I was afraid to distract myself from the goals I had set myself by some new and unexpected impression.

  The morning was cold, and a damp, milky fog lay upon everything. I don’t know why, but I always like the busy early morning in Petersburg, despite its extremely nasty look, and all these egoistic and ever-pensive folk, hurrying about their business around eight in the morning, have some special attraction for me. I especially like, as I hurry on my way, either to ask somebody something businesslike, or to have somebody ask me something: both question and answer are always brief, clear, sensible, given without stopping, and are almost always friendly, and the readiness to respond is greatest at that hour. The Petersburger becomes less communicative in the middle of the day or towards evening, and is ready to abuse or deride at the least opportunity; it’s quite different in the early morning, before work, at the most sober and serious time. I’ve noticed that.

  I was again heading for the Petersburg side. Since I absolutely had to be back on the Fontanka by twelve to see Vasin (who could most often be found at home at twelve), I hurried and didn’t stop, in spite of a great urge to have coffee somewhere. Besides, I also had absolutely to catch Efim Zverev at home; I was going to him again and in fact almost came too late; he was finishing his coffee and getting ready to go out.

  “What brings you so often?” he met me without getting up from his place.

  “I’m about to explain that.”

  Any early morning, a Petersburg one included, has a sobering effect on man’s nature. Some flaming night’s dream even evaporates completely with the coming of morning’s light and cold, and I myself have happened of a morning to recall some of my night’s only just-passed reveries, and sometimes also acts, with reproach and shame. However, I’ll observe in passing that I consider the Petersburg morning, seemingly the most prosaic on the whole earth, to be all but the most fantastic in the world. That is my personal view, or, better to say, impression, but I’ll stand up for it. On such a Petersburg morning, foul, damp, and foggy, the wild dream of some Pushkinian Hermann from the “Queen of Spades” (a colossal character, an extraordinary, perfectly Petersburgian type—a type
from the Petersburg period!)47—it seems to me, should grow still stronger. A hundred times, in the midst of this fog, a strange but importunate reverie has come to me: “And if this fog breaks up and lifts, won’t this whole foul, slimy city go with it, rise up with the fog and vanish like smoke, and leave only the former Finnish swamp, and in the middle, perhaps, for the beauty of it, a bronze horseman on a hot-breathed, overridden steed?”48 In short, I can’t convey my impressions, because it’s all finally fantasy, poetry, and therefore rubbish. Nevetheless, one totally meaningless question has often come to me and comes to me now: “Here they all are rushing and throwing themselves about, and who knows, maybe it’s all somebody’s dream, and there’s not a single true, genuine person here, not a single real act? The somebody whose dream it is will suddenly wake up—and everything will suddenly vanish.” But I’m getting carried away.

  I’ll say beforehand: there are projects and dreams in every life so seemingly eccentric that at first sight they might unmistakably be taken for madness. It was with one of these fantasies that I went that morning to Zverev—to Zverev, because I had no one else in Petersburg to whom I could turn this time. And yet Efim was precisely the last person to whom, if I had had a choice, I would have turned with such a suggestion. When I sat down facing him, it even seemed to me myself that I, the incarnation of fever and delirium, was sitting down facing the incarnation of the golden mean and prose. But on my side was an idea and a right feeling, while on his there was only the practical conclusion that it’s never done that way. In short, I explained to him, briefly and clearly, that apart from him I had absolutely no one in Petersburg whom I could send, in view of an urgent matter of honor, to act as a second; that he was an old comrade and therefore did not even have the right to refuse, and that I wanted to challenge the lieutenant of the guards, Prince Sokolsky, on the grounds that, a little more than a year ago, in Ems, he had given my father, Versilov, a slap in the face. I’ll note, at the same time, that Efim knew even in great detail all my family circumstances, my relations with Versilov, and almost all that I myself knew of Versilov’s history; I had told it to him myself at various times, except, of course, for certain secrets. He sat and listened, as he usually did, ruffled up like a sparrow in a cage, silent and serious, puffy-faced, with his disheveled flaxen hair. A motionless, mocking smile never left his lips. This smile was the nastier in that it was involuntary and not at all deliberate; it was evident that he really and truly considered himself at that moment vastly superior to me in intelligence and character. I also suspected that, besides that, he also despised me for yesterday’s scene at Dergachev’s; that was as it should have been: Efim was the crowd, Efim was the street, and that always bows down only to success.

  “And Versilov doesn’t know of it?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what right do you have to interfere in his affairs? That’s the first thing. And, second, what do you want to prove by it?”

  I knew the objections and at once explained to him that it was not at all as stupid as he supposed. First, it would be proved to the insolent prince that there were still people of our estate who understood honor, and, second, Versilov would be shamed and learn a lesson. And, third, and most important, even if Versilov, owing to certain convictions of his own, was right not to have challenged the prince and to have decided to bear with the slap, he would at least see that there was a being who was able to feel his offense so strongly that he took it as his own, and was ready even to lay down his life for his interests . . . in spite of the fact that he had parted with him forever . . .

  “Wait, don’t shout, my aunt doesn’t like it. Tell me, is it the same Prince Sokolsky that Versilov is in litigation with over an inheritance? In that case, it will be a totally new and original way of winning in court—by killing your opponents in a duel.”

  I explained to him en toutes lettres25 that he was simply stupid and insolent, and that if his mocking smile spread wider and wider, that only proved his smugness and ordinariness, that he couldn’t really suppose that the thought of the litigation had not been in my head right from the very start, but had deigned to visit only his much-thinking head. Then I told him that the litigation had already been won, and besides, that it had been conducted not against Prince Sokolsky, but against the Princes Sokolsky, so that if one prince was killed, the others would remain, but that the challenge would undoubtedly have to be put off till after the period of appeal (though the princes would not appeal), solely for the sake of decency. Once the period was over, the duel would follow; but I had come now because the duel would not be at once, but I had to secure a second, because I didn’t have one, I didn’t know anybody, so as to find one at least by the time I needed him, if he, Efim, refused. That’s why I came, I said.

  “Well, come back and talk then, there’s no point rolling ten miles for nothing.”

  He got up and took his cap.

  “And you’ll go then?”

  “Naturally not.”

  “Why?”

  “I won’t go for this reason alone, that if I agree now to go then, you’ll spend the whole period of appeal dragging yourself to me every day. And the main thing is that it’s all nonsense, and that’s that. Why should I ruin my career because of you? The prince would up and ask me, ‘Who sent you?’ ‘Dolgoruky.’ ‘And what has Dolgoruky got to do with Versilov?’ So then I should explain your genealogy to him? He’ll just laugh!”

  “Then give him one in the mug!”

  “Well, that’s all fairy tales.”

  “Afraid? You’re so tall; you were the strongest one in high school.”

  “Afraid, of course I’m afraid. The prince won’t fight, because they only fight with equals.”

  “I’m also a gentleman by development, I have the right, I’m equal . . . on the contrary, it’s he who’s unequal.”

  “No, you’re little.”

  “Why little?”

  “You’re just little; we’re both little, but he’s big.”

  “You’re a fool! By law I could have gotten married a year ago.”

  “So go and get married, and even so you’re a pipsqueak; you’re still growing!”

  I realized, of course, that he had decided to jeer at me. Undoubtedly this whole stupid anecdote could have gone untold, and it would be even better if it died unknown; besides, it’s disgusting in its pettiness and uselessness, though it had quite serious consequences.

  But to punish myself still more, I’ll tell it in full. Having perceived that Efim was jeering at me, I allowed myself to give him a shove on the shoulder with my right hand, or, better to say, with my right fist. He then took me by the shoulders, turned me face to the field, and—really proved to me that he was indeed the strongest one in our high school.

  II

  THE READER, OF COURSE, will think that I was in a terrible mood going out of Efim’s, and yet he will be mistaken. I realized only too well that it was childish, a schoolboy incident, but the seriousness of the matter remained intact. I had my coffee only on Vassilievsky Island, purposely skipping my yesterday’s tavern on the Petersburg side; both the tavern and the nightingale had become doubly hateful to me. A strange quality: I’m capable of hating places and objects as if they were people. On the other hand, there are also several happy places in Petersburg, that is, places where, for some reason, I was happy—and I cherish those places and purposely don’t visit them for as long as possible, so that later, when I’m quite alone and unhappy, I can go there to grieve and recall. Over coffee I did full justice to Efim and his common sense. Yes, he was more practical than I, but hardly more realistic. Realism that is limited to the end of one’s nose is more dangerous than the most insane fantasticality, because it’s blind. But in doing justice to Efim (who at that moment probably thought I was going down the street cursing him), I still did not yield anything of my convictions, as I haven’t up till now. I’ve seen people who, at the first bucket of cold water, renounce not only their actions, but
even their idea, and begin to laugh at something they considered sacred only an hour before. Oh, how easily it’s done with them! Grant that Efim, even in the essence of the matter, was more right than I, and I was stupider than all that’s stupid and merely clowning, but still, in the very depth of the matter, there lay a point, standing upon which I, too, was right, there was something correct on my side, too, and, above all, something that they could never understand.

  I wound up at Vasin’s, on the Fontanka by the Semyonovsky Bridge, almost exactly at twelve o’clock, but I didn’t find him at home. He had his work on Vassilievsky, and came home strictly at certain hours, among others almost always before twelve. Since, besides that, it was some holiday, I had supposed I would be sure to find him; not finding him, I settled down to wait, despite the fact that I had come to see him for the first time.

  I reasoned like this: the matter of the letter about the inheritance was a matter of conscience, and I, in choosing Vasin as a judge, was thereby showing him the whole depth of my respect, which, of course, should be flattering to him. Naturally, I was truly concerned about this letter and really convinced of the necessity for arbitration; but I suspect, nevertheless, that even then I could have wriggled out of the difficulty without any outside help. And, above all, I knew it myself; to wit: I had only to hand the letter over to Versilov personally, and he could do whatever he wanted; that was the solution. And to make myself the supreme judge and arbiter in a matter like this was even quite wrong. In removing myself by handing the letter over, and that precisely silently, I would profit at once by that very thing, putting myself in a higher position than Versilov, for by renouncing all profit from the inheritance, so far as it concerned me (because, being Versilov’s son, I would, of course, have something coming to me, if not now, then later), I would forever preserve for myself a superior moral view of Versilov’s future action. And, again, no one could reproach me for ruining the princes, because the document had no decisive legal significance. All this I thought over and figured out completely, while sitting in Vasin’s empty room, and it even entered my head that I had come to see Vasin so desirous of his advice about what to do, with the sole purpose of letting him see what a highly noble and umercenary man I was, and thus taking revenge on him for my humiliation before him yesterday.