“That’s not true!” I goggled my eyes.
“The letter went through my hands; I myself took it to her, unopened. This time he acted ‘chivalrously’ and concealed nothing from me.”
“Anna Andreevna, I don’t understand anything!”
“Of course, it’s hard to understand, but it’s like a gambler who throws his last gold coin on the table and has a revolver ready in his pocket—that’s the meaning of his proposal. The chances are nine out of ten that she won’t accept his proposal; but it means that he’s counting on that one-tenth chance, and, I confess, that’s very curious, in my opinion, though . . . though there might also be frenzy in it, that same ‘double,’ as you said so well just now.”
“And you laugh? And how can I believe that the letter was conveyed through you? Aren’t you her father’s fiancée? Spare me, Anna Andreevna!”
“He asked me to sacrifice my destiny to his happiness, though he didn’t really ask; it was all done quite silently, I merely read it all in his eyes. Ah, my God, what more do you want? Didn’t he go to your mother in Königsberg to ask her permission to marry Mme. Akhmakov’s stepdaughter? That goes very well with the way he chose me yesterday as his representative and confidante.”
She was slightly pale. But her calmness only reinforced her sarcasm. Oh, I forgave her much during that minute when I gradually came to grasp the matter. For a minute I thought it over; she waited in silence.
“You know,” I smiled suddenly, “you conveyed the letter, because for you there was no risk, because there will be no marriage, but what about him? And her, finally? Of course, she’ll turn down his proposal, and then . . . what may happen then? Where is he now, Anna Andreevna?” I cried. “Here every minute is precious, any minute there may be trouble!”
“He’s at home, I told you. In his letter to Katerina Nikolaevna yesterday, which I conveyed, he asked her, in any event, for a meeting at his apartment, today, at exactly seven o’clock in the evening. She gave her promise.”
“She’ll go to his apartment? How is it possible?”
“Why not? The apartment belongs to Nastasya Egorovna; they both could very well meet there as her guests . . .”
“But she’s afraid of him . . . he may kill her!”
Anna Andreevna only smiled.
“Katerina Nikolaevna, despite all her fear, which I’ve noticed in her myself, has always nursed, since former times, a certain reverence and awe for the nobility of Andrei Petrovich’s principles and the loftiness of his mind. She’s trusting herself to him this time so as to have done with him forever. In his letter he gave her his most solemn, most chivalrous word that she had nothing to fear . . . In short, I don’t remember the terms of his letter, but she’s trusting herself . . . so to speak, for the last time . . . and, so to speak, responding with the most heroic feelings. There may be some sort of chivalrous struggle here on both sides.”
“But the double, the double!” I exclaimed. “He really has lost his mind!”
“On giving her word yesterday that she would come to meet him, Katerina Nikolaevna probably didn’t suppose the possibility of such a case.”
I suddenly turned and broke into a run . . . To him, to them, of course! But I came back from the front room for a second.
“Maybe that’s just what you want, that he should kill her!” I cried, and ran out of the house.
Though I was trembling all over as if in a fit, I entered the apartment silently, through the kitchen, and asked in a whisper to have Nastasya Egorovna come out to me; but she came out at once herself and silently fixed me with a terribly questioning look.
“He’s not at home, sir.”
But I explained to her directly and precisely, in a quick whisper, that I knew everything from Anna Andreevna and had just come from her.
“Where are they, Nastasya Egorovna?”
“They’re in the drawing room, sir, where you were sitting two days ago, at the table . . .”
“Let me in there, Nastasya Egorovna!”
“How is that possible, sir?”
“Not there, but the room next to it. Nastasya Egorovna, it may be that Anna Andreevna herself wants it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have told me they were here. They won’t hear me . . . she wants it herself . . .”
“And what if she doesn’t?” Nastasya Egorovna kept her gaze fixed on me.
“Nastasya Egorovna, I remember your Olya . . . let me in.”
Her lips and chin suddenly began to tremble:
“Dear heart, maybe for Olya’s sake . . . for your feeling . . . Don’t abandon Anna Andreevna, dear heart! You won’t abandon her, eh? You won’t?”
“I won’t!”
“Give me your great word, then, that you won’t rush in on them and start shouting, if I put you in there?”
“I swear on my honor, Nastasya Egorovna!”
She took hold of my frock coat, let me into the dark room adjacent to the one they were sitting in, led me barely audibly over the soft rug to the door, placed me just at the lowered portière and, lifting a tiny corner of the portière, showed me both of them.
I stayed and she left. Naturally, I stayed. I realized that I was eavesdropping, eavesdropping on other people’s secrets, but I stayed. How could I not stay—what of the double? Hadn’t he smashed an icon before my eyes?
IV
THEY WERE SITTING opposite each other at the same table at which he and I had drunk wine yesterday to his “resurrection.” I could see their faces very well. She was in a simple black dress, beautiful, and apparently calm, as always. He was speaking, and she was listening to him with extreme and obliging attention. Maybe a certain timidity could be seen in her. He was terribly agitated. I arrived when the conversation had already begun, and therefore understood nothing for a certain time. I remember she suddenly asked:
“And I was the cause?”
“No, it was I who was the cause,” he replied, “and you were only blamelessly to blame. Do you know that one can be blamelessly to blame? That is the most unpardonable blame, and it almost always gets punished,” he added, laughing strangely. “And I really thought for a moment that I had quite forgotten you, and I quite laughed at my stupid passion . . . but you know that. And, anyhow, what do I care about the man you’re about to marry? I proposed to you yesterday, forgive me for that, it was absurd, and yet there was no alternative . . . what could I have done except that absurdity? I don’t know . . .”
He laughed perplexedly at these words, suddenly raising his eyes to her; till that time he had spoken as if looking away. If I had been in her place, I would have been frightened by that laughter, I could feel it. He suddenly got up from his chair.
“Tell me, how could you have agreed to come here?” he asked suddenly, as if remembering the main thing. “My invitation and my whole letter were absurd . . . Wait, I may still guess how it happened that you agreed to come, but—why have you come?—that’s the question. Can it be that you came only out of fear?”
“I came to see you,” she said, studying him with timid wariness. They were both silent for half a minute. Versilov lowered himself onto the chair again and began in a meek but deeply moved, almost trembling voice:
“I haven’t seen you for a terribly long time, Katerina Nikolaevna, so long that I almost considered it impossible ever to be sitting beside you as I am now, looking into your face and listening to your voice . . . For two years we haven’t seen each other, for two years we haven’t talked. I didn’t think I’d ever be talking to you. Well, so be it, what’s past is past, and what there is now will vanish tomorrow like smoke—so be it! I accept, because once again there’s no alternative, but don’t just go away now for nothing,” he suddenly added almost beseechingly, “since you’ve done me the charity of coming, don’t go away for nothing: answer me one question!”
“What question?”
“You and I will never see each other again and—what is it to you? Tell me the truth once and for all, to the one question intelligent pe
ople never ask: did you ever love me, or was I . . . mistaken?”
She blushed.
“I did love you,” she said.
I was just waiting for her to say that—oh, the truthful one, oh, the sincere one, oh, the honest one!
“And now?” he continued.
“Now I don’t.”
“And you laugh?”
“No, I just smiled inadvertently, because I knew you’d ask, ‘And now?’ And I smiled because . . . because when you guess something, you always smile . . .”
It was even strange. I had never yet seen her so wary, even almost timid, and so abashed. He was devouring her with his eyes.
“I know you don’t love me . . . and—you don’t love me at all?”
“Maybe I don’t love you at all. I don’t love you,” she added firmly, not smiling now and not blushing. “Yes, I did love you, but not for long. I very soon stopped loving you then . . .”
“I know, I know, you saw it wasn’t what you wanted, but . . . what do you want? Explain it to me once more . . .”
“Did I already explain it to you sometime? What I want? But I’m a most ordinary woman; I’m a calm woman, I like . . . I like merry people.”
“Merry?”
“You see, I don’t even know how to speak with you. It seems to me that if you could love me less, then I could come to love you,” she again smiled timidly. The fullest sincerity flashed in her reply, and could she possibly not have understood that her reply was the most definitive formula of their relations, which explained and resolved everything? Oh, how he must have understood that! But he looked at her and smiled strangely.
“Is Bjoring merry?” he went on asking.
“Oh, he shouldn’t trouble you at all,” she answered with a certain haste. “I’m marrying him only because with him it will be calmest for me. My soul will remain entirely my own.”
“They say you’ve again come to like society, the world?”
“Not society. I know that in our society there’s the same disorder as everywhere; but the external forms are still beautiful, so that if one lives only so as to pass by, it’s better here than anywhere else.”
“I’ve begun hearing the word ‘disorder’ quite often. Were you also frightened then by my disorder, the chains, the ideas, the stupidities?”
“No, it wasn’t quite that . . .”
“Then what was it? For God’s sake, say it all straight out.”
“Well, I’ll tell you straight out, because I consider you of the greatest intelligence . . . I always thought there was something ridiculous in you.”
Having said that, she suddenly blushed, as if realizing that she had done something extremely imprudent.
“I can forgive you a great deal for telling me that,” he said strangely.
“I didn’t finish,” she hurried on, turning more red. “It’s I who am ridiculous . . . for talking to you like a fool.”
“No, you’re not ridiculous, you’re merely a depraved society woman!” He turned terribly pale. “I also didn’t finish earlier, when I asked you why you came. Would you like me to finish? There exists a certain letter, a document, and you are terribly afraid of it, because your father, with that letter in his hands, might curse you while he lives and legally deprive you of your inheritance in his will. You are afraid of that letter, and you have come for that letter,” he spoke nearly trembling all over, and his teeth even almost chattering. She listened to him with a wistful and pained expression on her face.
“I know that you can cause me considerable unpleasantness,” she said, as if warding off his words, “but I’ve come not so much to persuade you not to persecute me, as to see you yourself. I’ve even wished very much to meet you for a long time now, I myself . . . But I find you the same as you were before,” she suddenly added, as if carried away by a particular and decisive thought and even by some strange and sudden feeling.
“And you hoped to see me different? This—after that letter of mine about your depravity? Tell me, did you come here without any fear?”
“I came because I once loved you; but, you know, I beg you, please, don’t threaten me with anything while we’re together now, don’t remind me of my bad thoughts and feelings. If you could talk to me about something else, I’d be very glad. Let there be threats afterwards, but something different now . . . I truly came to see and hear you for a moment. Well, but if you can’t, then kill me straight out, only don’t threaten me and don’t torture yourself before me,” she concluded, looking at him in strange expectation, as if she really supposed he might kill her. He got up from his chair again and, looking at her with an ardent gaze, said firmly:
“You will leave here without the slightest offense.”
“Ah, yes, your word of honor!” she smiled.
“No, not only because I gave my word of honor in the letter, but because I want to and shall think about you all night . . .”
“To torment yourself ?”
“I always imagine you when I’m alone. All I do is talk to you. I go into slums and dens and, as a contrast, you appear before me at once. But you always laugh at me, as now . . .” he said as if beside himself.
“Never, never have I laughed at you!” she exclaimed in a deeply moved voice and as if with the greatest compassion showing on her face. “If I came, I tried as hard as I could to do it so as not to hurt you in any way,” she suddenly added. “I came here to tell you that I almost love you . . . Forgive me, I may not have said it right,” she added hastily.
He laughed.
“What makes you unable to pretend? What makes you such a simpleton, what makes you unlike everyone else . . . Well, how can you say to a man you’re driving away, ‘I almost love you’?”
“I just didn’t know how to put it,” she hurried on, “I didn’t say it right; it’s because I’ve always been abashed in your presence and have never known how to speak, ever since our first meeting. And if I used the wrong words when I said I ‘almost love you,’ in my thought it was almost so—that’s why I said it, though I love you with that . . . well, that general love with which one loves everyone and which there’s no shame in confessing . . .”
He listened silently, not taking his ardent gaze off her.
“I, of course, offend you,” he went on as if beside himself. “This must indeed be what they call passion . . . I know one thing, that with you I’m finished; without you also. It’s all the same with you or without you, wherever you are, you’re always with me. I also know that I can hate you very much, more than I love you . . . However, I’ve long ceased thinking of anything—it’s all the same to me. I’m only sorry that I love a woman like you . . .”
His voice faltered; he went on as if breathless:
“What’s the matter? You find what I’m saying wild?” He smiled a pale smile. “I think that, if only it would attract you, I could stand on one leg on a pillar somewhere for thirty years . . . I see you pity me, your face says, ‘I’d love you if I could, but I can’t . . .’ Yes? Never mind, I have no pride. I’m ready, like a beggar, to take any charity from you—any . . . do you hear? . . . What pride can a beggar have?”
She got up and went over to him.
“My friend!” she said, touching his shoulder with her hand and with inexpressible feeling in her face. “I cannot listen to such words! I’ll think of you all my life as of the most precious of men, as of the greatest of hearts, as of something sacred out of all that I can respect and love. Andrei Petrovich, understand my words: there’s something I came for now, dear man, dear before and now! I’ll never forget how you shook my mind during our first meetings. Let’s part as friends, and you will be my most serious and most dear thought in all my life!”
“‘Let’s part and then I’ll love you,’ I’ll love you, only let’s part. Listen,” he said, quite pale, “give me more charity: don’t love me, don’t live with me, let’s never see each other; I’ll be your slave, if you call me, I’ll vanish instantly if you don’t want to see or hear me
, only . . . only don’t marry anyone! ”
My heart was wrung painfully when I heard such words. This naïvely humiliating request was the more pathetic, it pierced the heart the more strongly, for being so naked and impossible. Yes, of course, he was asking for charity! Well, but could he think she’d agree? And yet he stooped to the attempt: he attempted to ask! This last degree of dispiritedness was unbearable to see. All the features of her face suddenly twisted as if with pain; but before she had time to say a word, he suddenly came to his senses:
“I’ll exterminate you!” he said suddenly in a strange, distorted voice, not his own.
But her answer was also strange, also in an unexpected voice, not at all her own:
“If I were to give you charity,” she suddenly said firmly, “you’d revenge yourself on me for it afterwards still worse than you’re threatening now, because you’d never forget that you stood before me as such a beggar . . . I cannot listen to threats from you!” she concluded almost with indignation, looking at him all but in defiance.
“‘Threats from you,’ that is, from such a beggar! I was joking,” he said softly, smiling. “I won’t do anything to you, don’t be afraid, go now . . . and I’ll do all I can to send you that document—only go, go! I wrote you a stupid letter, and you responded to the stupid letter and came—we’re quits. Go this way,” he pointed to the door (she was about to pass through the room where I was standing behind the portière).
“Forgive me if you can,” she stopped in the doorway.
“Well, what if we meet as quite good friends someday and remember this scene with bright laughter?” he said suddenly; but all the features of his face trembled, as in a man overcome by a fit.
“Oh, God grant it!” she cried, pressing her hands together before her, but peering timorously into his face and as if trying to guess what he meant to say.
“Go. Much sense there is in the two of us, but you . . . Oh, you’re my kind of person! I wrote a crazy letter, and you agreed to come and say that you ‘almost love me.’ No, you and I—we’re people of the same madness! Always be mad like that, don’t change, and we’ll meet as friends—that I predict to you, I swear it to you!”
The Adolescent Page 65
