The Adolescent

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 inner boredom . . . to go into various cesspools like this one. These furnishings, this stuttering aria from Lucia,22 these waiters in costumes that are Russian to the point of indecency, this stench of tobacco, these shouts from the billiard room—all this is so banal and prosaic that it borders almost on the fantastic. Well, so what, my dear? This son of Mars stopped us at the most interesting place, it seems . . . But here’s our tea; I like the tea here . . . Imagine, Pyotr Ippolitovich has now suddenly started assuring that other lodger, the pockmarked one, that in the last century a committee of jurists was especially appointed in the English Parliament to examine the whole trial of Christ before the high priest and Pilate,23 solely in order to find out how it would go now, by our laws, and that it was all done with all solemnity, with lawyers, prosecutors, and the rest . . . well, and that the jury had to hand down a guilty verdict . . . Amazing—eh, what? That fool of a lodger started arguing, got angry, quarreled, and announced that he was moving out the next day . . . the landlady bursts into tears, because she’s losing money . . . Mais passons.41 Sometimes they have nightingales in these taverns. Do you know the old Moscow anecdote à la Pyotr Ippolitovich? A nightingale is singing in a Moscow tavern. A merchant comes in, the ‘out o’ me way’ type: ‘How much is the nightingale?’ ‘A hundred roubles.’ ‘Roast it and serve it.’ They roasted it and served it. ‘Cut me ten kopecks’ worth.’ I once told it to Pyotr Ippolitovich, but he didn’t believe it and even got indignant . . .”

  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 beginning, and it took me maybe about an hour. And how else could it be? I had been longing to talk all the while. I began from our very first meeting, at the prince’s that time, on her arrival from Moscow; then I told how it all went on gradually. I didn’t leave anything out, and I couldn’t have: he led me on himself, guessed, prompted me. At moments it seemed to me that something fantastic was happening, that he had been sitting somewhere or standing behind the door, each time, for all those two months: he knew beforehand my every gesture, my every feeling. I took a boundless pleasure in making this confession to him, because I saw in him such heartfelt gentleness, such deep psychological subtlety, such an astonishing ability to guess from a quarter of a word. He listened tenderly, like a woman. Above all, he managed to make it so that I wasn’t ashamed of anything; at times he suddenly stopped me at some detail; he often stopped me and repeated nervously, “Don’t forget the small things, above all, don’t forget the small things—the smaller the trace, the more important it sometimes is.” And he interrupted me several times in the same way. Oh, naturally, I began haughtily in the beginning, haughtily towards her, but I quickly came down to the truth. I told him sincerely that I was ready to throw myself down and kiss the place on the floor where her foot had stood. The most beautiful, the brightest thing of all was that he understood in the highest degree that she “could suffer from fear over the document” and at the same time remain a pure and irreproachable being, as she had revealed herself to me that same day. He understood in the highest degree the word “student.” But as I was finishing, I noticed that, through his kind smile, something all too impatient began to flash in his eyes, something as if distracted and sharp. When I came to the “document,” I thought to myself, “Shall I tell him the real truth or not?”—and I didn’t, despite all my rapture. I note it here to remember it all my life. I explained the matter to him in the same way I had to her, that is, by Kraft. His eyes lit up. A strange wrinkle flitted across his forehead, a very dark wrinkle.

  “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 disconnected; he was becoming more and more distracted. If he had been more in control of himself then, as he had been up to that moment, he wouldn’t have asked me that question about the document; if he did, it was probably because he was in a frenzy himself. However, I say it only now; but at that time it took me a while to perceive the change that had taken place in him. I still went on flying, and there was the same music in my soul. But the story was over; I looked at him.

  “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 dinner.”

  “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.”

  “But . . . Tatyana Pavlovna didn’t tell you I was there?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me you were there . . . Otherwise I’d have known and wouldn’t be asking you about it.”

  “Listen, this is very important . . .”

  “Yes . . . depending on one’s point of view; and you’ve even turned pale, my dear; but, anyhow, what’s so important?”

  “I’ve been laughed at like a child!”

  “She was simply ‘afraid of your ardor,’ as she put it to you herself—well, and so she enlisted Tatyana Pavlovna.”

  “But, my God, what a trick it was! Listen, she let me say all that with a third person there, with Tatyana Pavlovna there—who, consequently, heard everything I said! It’s . . . it’s even terrible to imagine!”

  “C’est selon, mon cher! 42 And besides, you yourself mentioned earlier the ‘breadth’ of view of women in general, and exclaimed, ‘Long live breadth!’”

  “If I were Othello and you Iago, you couldn’t ha
ve done it better . . . however, I’m laughing! There can’t be any Othello, because there are no such relations. And how not laugh! So be it! I still believe in what is infinitely higher than I am, and I haven’t lost my ideal! . . . If it’s a joke on her part, I forgive her. A joke on the pathetic adolescent—so be it! I didn’t get myself up as anything, and the student—the student was and remains anyway, no matter what, he was in her soul, he exists and will go on existing! Enough! Listen, what do you think: shall I go to her now, to learn the whole truth, or not?”

  I said, “I’m laughing,” but there were tears in my eyes.

  “Why not? Go, my friend, if you want to.”

  “It’s as if I’ve dirtied my soul by telling you all this. Don’t be angry, dear heart, but it’s impossible to tell a third person about a woman, I repeat, about a woman. No confidant will understand; not even an angel will understand. If you respect a woman, don’t take a confidant; if you respect yourself, don’t take a confidant! I don’t respect myself now. Good-bye; I can’t forgive myself . . .”

  “Come, my dear, you’re exaggerating. You say yourself ‘there was nothing.’”

  We went out to the canal and began saying good-bye.

  “Will you never kiss me from the heart, as a child, as a son kisses his father?” he said to me with a strange tremor in his voice. I kissed him warmly.

  “My dear . . . always be as pure of heart as you are now.”

  I had never kissed him before in my life, I could never have imagined he would want me to.

  Chapter Six

  I

  “GO, OF COURSE!” I decided, hurrying home. “Go at once. Quite possibly I’ll find her at home alone—alone or with someone, it makes no difference—I can call her away. She’ll receive me; she’ll be surprised, but she’ll receive me. And if she doesn’t, I’ll insist that she receive me, I’ll send to tell her it’s extremely necessary. She’ll think it’s something about the document and receive me. And I’ll find out all about Tatyana. And then . . . and then what? If I’m wrong, I’ll make it up to her, and if I’m right, and she’s to blame, then it’s all over! In any case—it’s all over! What can I lose? I can’t lose anything. Go! Go!”

  And then—I’ll never forget it and I remember it with pride—I didn’t go! No one will ever know it, it will just die, but it’s enough that I know it and that at such a moment I was capable of the noblest impulse! “This is a temptation, and I’ll pass it by,” I decided finally, thinking better of it. “They frightened me with a fact, but I didn’t believe it and didn’t lose faith in her purity! And why go, why ask? Why should she believe so unfailingly in me as I did in her, believe in my ‘purity,’ not be afraid of my ‘ardor,’ not enlist Tatyana? I haven’t deserved it yet in her eyes. Let her not, let her not know that I do deserve it, that I don’t yield to ‘temptations,’ that I don’t believe wicked calumnies about her; but I myself know it and will respect myself for it. Respect my feeling. Oh, yes, she allowed me to speak myself out with Tatyana there, she allowed Tatyana, she knew that Tatyana was sitting and eavesdropping (because she couldn’t help eavesdropping), she knew that she was laughing at me—it’s terrible, terrible! But . . . but what if it was impossible to avoid? What could she have done in her position today, and how can she be blamed for it? No, I myself lied to her about Kraft, I deceived her, because it was also impossible to avoid it, and I lied involuntarily, innocently. My God,” I suddenly exclaimed, blushing painfully, “and I, what have I just done myself? Haven’t I just dragged her before the same Tatyana, haven’t I just told everything to Versilov? Though—what’s the matter with me?—there’s a difference here. Here it was only about the document; essentially, I just told Versilov about the document, because there was nothing more to tell about, and there couldn’t be. Wasn’t I the first to inform him and cry that ‘there couldn’t be’? He’s a man of understanding. Hm . . . But what hatred there is in his heart for this woman, though, even now! And what a drama must have taken place between them then and from what? Of course, from self-love! Versilov can’t be capable of any other feeling except boundless self-love! ”

  Yes, this last thought escaped me then, and I didn’t even notice it. It was such thoughts that raced through my head then one after another, and I was straightforward with myself then: I wasn’t being sly, I wasn’t deceiving myself; and if there was something I didn’t comprehend then at that moment, it was just because I didn’t have brains enough, and not from Jesuitism with myself.

  I returned home in a terribly excited and, I don’t know why, a terribly merry state of mind, though a very unclear one. But I was afraid to analyze and tried with all my might to divert myself. I went to my landlady at once; indeed, a terrible falling out was under way between her and her husband. She was a very consumptive clerk’s wife, maybe even a kind one, but, like all consumptives, extremely capricious. I at once began to make peace between them, went to see the tenant, a very coarse, pockmarked fool, an extremely vain clerk who served in a bank, Chervyakov, whom I myself disliked very much, but with whom, anyhow, I got along well, because I often had the baseness to join him in teasing Pyotr Ippolitovich. I at once persuaded him not to move out, and he himself would not have ventured to actually move out. In the end I reassured the landlady definitively and, on top of that, managed to straighten the pillow under her head excellently. “Pyotr Ippolitovich can never manage like that,” she concluded maliciously. Then I busied myself with her mustard plasters in the kitchen, and with my own hands prepared two superb plasters for her. Poor Pyotr Ippolitovich only looked at me with envy, but I didn’t let him touch them and was rewarded literally by tears of gratitude from her. And then, I remember, I suddenly got bored with it all, and I suddenly realized that I was by no means looking after the sick woman out of the goodness of my heart, but just so, for some reason, for something else entirely.

  I waited nervously for Matvei. That evening I decided to try my luck for the last time and . . . and, apart from luck, I felt a terrible need to gamble; otherwise it would have been unbearable. If I hadn’t had to go anywhere, maybe I wouldn’t have held out and would have gone to her. Matvei was to come soon, but suddenly the door opened and an unexpected visitor came in—Darya Onisimovna. I winced and was surprised. She knew my lodgings because she had come once on an errand from mama. I sat her down and began looking at her questioningly. She said nothing, but only looked me straight in the eye and smiled submissively.

  “Have you come from Liza?” it occurred to me to ask.

  “No, just so, sir.”

  I warned her that I would be leaving presently; again she answered that she had come “just so” and would leave presently herself. For some reason I suddenly felt sorry for her. I’ll note that she had seen much sympathy from us all, from mama and especially from Tatyana Pavlovna, but once she was placed with Mrs. Stolbeev, we all somehow began to forget her, except perhaps for Liza, who often visited her. She herself, it seems, was the cause of that, because she had a capacity for withdrawing and effacing herself, despite all her submissive and ingratiating smiles. Personally I very much disliked those smiles, and the fact that she always obviously falsified her face, and I even thought once that she had not grieved long over her Olya. But this time for some reason I felt sorry for her.

  And then suddenly, without saying a word, she bent forward, looked down, and, suddenly thrusting out both arms, put them around my waist and leaned her face against my knees. She seized my hand, I almost thought she was going to kiss it, but she pressed it to her eyes, and a flood of hot tears poured over it. She was all shaking with sobs, but she wept quietly. My heart was wrung, despite the fact that I was also as if vexed. But she embraced me with complete trust, not afraid in the least that I would get angry, despite the fact that she had smiled at me so timorously and servilely just before. I began asking her to calm down.

  “Dear heart, darling, I don’t know what to do with myself. When it gets dark, I can’t stand it; when it gets dark, I can’t stand
it any more, I’m drawn outside, into the darkness. What draws me, mainly, is a dream. There’s this dream born in my mind, that just as I step out, I’ll meet her in the street. I walk and it’s as if I see her. That is, it’s somebody else walking, but I walk behind on purpose and think: isn’t it her, there now, I think, isn’t that my Olya? And I think and think. I get stupefied in the end, only knocking into people, it’s sickening. Knocking about like I’m drunk, and people abuse me. I keep it to myself, I don’t go to anyone. Or if I do, it’s more sickening. I was passing by your place and thought, ‘Why don’t I drop in; he’s the kindest of them all, and he was there then.’ Dear heart, forgive a useless woman; I’ll leave now and go away . . .”

  She suddenly got up and began to hurry. Just then Matvei arrived; I put her into the sledge and took her home to Mrs. Stolbeev’s apartment on the way.

  II

  MOST RECENTLY I had started going to play roulette at Zershchikov’s. Before that I had gone to three houses, always with the prince, who had “introduced” me in those places. In one of those houses the game was predominantly faro, and they played for very significant money. But I didn’t like it there; I saw it was only good there if you had big money, and besides, it was frequented by too many insolent people and “thundering” youth from high society. That was what the prince liked; he liked to gamble, but he also liked to hobnob with those rakehells. I noticed on those evenings that, though he sometimes came in with me, he somehow distanced himself from me during the evening and didn’t introduce me to any of “his people.” I looked around like a perfect savage, sometimes even so much so that I happened to attract attention. At the gambling table I sometimes even had to speak with one or another of them; but once, the next day, right there in those rooms, I tried to greet one little sir with whom I had not only talked but even laughed the day before, sitting next to him, and I had even guessed two cards for him, and what then?—he didn’t recognize me at all. Worse than that: he looked at me as if with sham perplexity and walked past smiling. Thus I soon dropped the place and got into the habit of going to a certain cesspool—I don’t know what else to call it. It was a roulette house, rather insignificant, paltry, kept by a certain kept woman, though she never appeared in the room herself. It was a terribly unbuttoned place, and though officers frequented it, and rich merchants, everything came out a bit dirtily, which many, however, found attractive. Besides, I often had luck there. But I dropped that place, too, after a certain repulsive incident that occurred at the height of a game and ended in a fight between two players, and started going to Zershchikov’s, where, again, I was introduced by the prince. The owner was a retired cavalry staff-captain, and the tone at his evenings was quite tolerable, military, ticklishly irritable in observing the forms of honor, clipped and businesslike. Jokers and big carousers, for instance, didn’t show up there. Besides, the faro bank was hardly a joking matter. They played faro and roulette. Up to that evening, the fifteenth of November, I had gone there twice in all, and Zershchikov, it seemed, already knew my face; but I didn’t have any acquaintances yet. As if on purpose, the prince and Darzan showed up that evening only at around midnight, returning from the faro of those society rakehells that I had dropped. Thus, on that evening I was like a stranger in an alien crowd.