The Adolescent (15 page)

“That’s very nice, of course, if it really will be funny,” he observed, peering at me keenly. “You turned a bit crude, my friend, wherever it was that you grew up, but, anyhow, you’re still decent enough. He’s quite nice today, Tatyana Pavlovna, and it’s an excellent thing that you’re finally untying that bag.”

But Tatyana Pavlovna was frowning; she didn’t even turn at his words and went on untying the bag and putting the treats on plates that had been brought. Mother also sat in complete bewilderment, of course, understanding and sensing that things were turning out wrong with us. My sister again touched my elbow.

III

“I SIMPLY WANT to tell you all,” I began with the most casual air, “about how a certain father met his own dear son for the first time; this took place precisely ‘where he grew up’ . . .”

“But, my friend, won’t this be . . . boring? You know: tous les genres . . .”
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“Don’t frown, Andrei Petrovich, it’s not at all what you think. I precisely want everyone to laugh.”

“Then may God hear you, my dear. I know you love us all and . . . you won’t want to upset our evening,” he murmured somehow affectedly, negligently.

“Here, too, of course, you’ve guessed by my face that I love you?”

“Yes, partly by your face.”

“Well, and I’ve long guessed by Tatyana Pavlovna’s face that she’s in love with me. Don’t look at me so ferociously, Tatyana Pavlovna, it’s better to laugh! Better to laugh!”

She suddenly turned quickly to me and peered at me piercingly for half a minute.

“You watch out!” She shook her finger at me, but so seriously that it could no longer refer to my stupid joke, but was a warning about something else: “Does he intend to start something?”

“So, Andrei Petrovich, you really don’t remember how you and I met for the first time in our lives?”

“By God, I’ve forgotten, my friend, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I only remember that it was somehow very long ago and took place somewhere . . .”

“Mama, do you remember visiting the village where I grew up, I think it was before I was six or seven, and above all, did you really come to that village once, or did I only imagine, as in a dream, that I saw you there for the first time? I’ve long wanted to ask you, but I kept putting it off. Now the time has come.”

“Why, yes, Arkashenka, yes! I visited Varvara Stepanovna there three times; the first time I came when you were only one year old, the second when you were already going on four, and then when you were just turning six.”

“Well, there, I’ve been wanting to ask you about it all month.”

Mother simply glowed from the quick rush of memories, and she asked me with feeling:

“Arkashenka, do you really remember me from then?”

“I don’t remember and don’t know anything, only something of your face has remained in my heart all my life, and, besides that, the knowledge remained that you were my mother. I see that village now as in a dream, I even forget my nanny. I have a drop of recollection of Varvara Stepanovna, only because she eternally had her cheek bound from toothache. I also remember huge trees near the house, lindens, I think, then strong sunlight sometimes coming through the open windows, a front garden with flowers, a path, and you, mama, I remember clearly only at one moment, when you took me to communion in the church there, and lifted me up to receive the gifts and kiss the chalice; that was in summer, and a dove flew across under the cupola, from window to window . . .”

“Lord! That’s just how it all was,” my mother clasped her hands, “and I remember that little dove as if it were now. You gave a start just at the chalice and cried, ‘A dove, a little dove!’”

“Your face, or something of it, its expression, remained so well in my memory that five years later, in Moscow, I recognized you at once, though no one told me then that you were my mother. And when I first met Andrei Petrovich, I was taken from the Andronikovs; before that, I had quietly and cheerfully vegetated with them for five years on end. I remember their government apartment in detail, and all those ladies and girls, who have all now aged so much here, and the house full of everything, and Andronikov himself, how he himself brought all the provisions from town in bags—fowl, perch, and suckling pig—and at table ladled out the soup for us, in place of his wife, who was too uppish, and the whole table always laughed at that, and he first of all. The young ladies there taught me French, but most of all I loved Krylov’s fables,
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learned many of them by heart, and recited one to Andronikov each day, going straight to his tiny study, whether he was busy or not. Well, so it was through a fable that you and I became acquainted, Andrei Petrovich . . . I see you’re beginning to remember.”

“I remember a thing or two, my dear, namely, that you recited something to me then . . . a fable, I believe, or a passage from Woe from Wit?
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What a memory you have, though!”

“Memory! What else! I’ve remembered only this all my life.”

“Well, well, my dear, you even liven me up.”

He even smiled, and right after him my mother and sister began to smile. Trustfulness was returning; but Tatyana Pavlovna, having arranged the treats on the table and sat down in the corner, went on piercing me with her nasty gaze.

“It so happened,” I went on, “that suddenly, one bright morning, a friend of my childhood appeared, Tatyana Pavlovna, who always appeared unexpectedly in my life, as in the theater, and took me in a carriage, and brought me to a grand house, to a magnificent apartment. You were then staying with Mme. Fanariotov, Andrei Petrovich, in her empty house, which she had once bought from you; she was abroad at the time. I had always worn short jackets; here suddenly I was dressed in a pretty blue frock coat and excellent linen. Tatyana Pavlovna fussed over me all that day and brought me many things; and I kept walking through the empty rooms, looking at myself in all the mirrors. In this way, at around ten o’clock the next morning, wandering about the apartment, I suddenly walked, quite by chance, into your study. I’d already seen you the day before, when I was brought there, but only fleetingly, on the stairs. You were coming down the stairs to get into a carriage and go somewhere; you had arrived in Moscow alone then, after an extremely long absence, and for a short time, so that you were snapped up by everybody and almost didn’t live at home. Meeting me and Tatyana Pavlovna, you only drew out a long ‘Ah!’—and didn’t even stop.”

“He describes it with particular love,” observed Versilov, turning to Tatyana Pavlovna; she turned away and didn’t answer.

“I can see you then as if it were now, flourishing and handsome. It’s surprising how you’ve managed to age and lose your good looks in these nine years—forgive my frankness; however, back then you were already around thirty-seven, but I even gazed at you in wonder: you had such astonishing hair, almost perfectly black, with a lustrous shine, and not a trace of gray; moustache and side-whiskers of a jeweler’s finish—there’s no other way to put it; your face was matte pale, not the sickly pale that it is now, but like the face of your daughter Anna Andreevna, whom I had the honor of meeting today; burning dark eyes and gleaming teeth, especially when you laughed. You precisely burst out laughing as you looked me over when I came in; I had little discernment then, only my heart rejoiced at your smile. That morning you were in a dark blue velvet jacket, on your neck a scarf of bright Solferino crimson over a magnificent shirt with Alençon lace, standing in front of a mirror with a notebook in your hand and rehearsing, declaiming Chatsky’s last monologue, and especially his last cry:

‘My carriage, my carriage!’”

“Ah, my God,” cried Versilov, “but he’s right! Despite the shortness of my stay in Moscow, I had undertaken then to play Chatsky in Alexandra Petrovna Vitovtov’s home theater, because Zhileiko was sick!”
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“Had you really forgotten?” laughed Tatyana Pavlovna.

“He’s reminded me! And I confess, those few days in Moscow were perhaps the best moment of my whole life! We were all still so young then . . . and everyone was so ardently expectant . . . In Moscow then I unexpectedly met so many . . . But go on, my dear, you did very well this time to recall it in such detail . . .”

“I stood, looked at you, and suddenly cried, ‘Ah, how good, the real Chatsky!’ You suddenly turned to me and asked, ‘So you already know Chatsky?’—and sat down on the sofa and turned to your coffee in the most charming mood—I could have kissed you. Then I told you that at Andronikov’s everybody read a lot, and the young ladies knew many poems by heart and played scenes from Woe from Wit among themselves, and that last week we all read A Hunter’s Sketches
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aloud together, and that I loved Krylov’s fables most of all and knew them by heart. You told me to recite something by heart, and I recited ‘The Fussy Bride’ for you: ‘A maiden-bride was thinking on a suitor.’”

“Precisely, precisely, now I remember everything,” Versilov cried again, “but, my friend, I remember you clearly, too: you were such a nice boy then, even a nimble boy, and, I swear to you, you’ve also lost a bit in these nine years.”

Here everybody, even Tatyana Pavlovna herself, burst out laughing. Clearly, Andrei Petrovich was joking and had “paid” me in my own coin for my barb about his having aged. Everybody cheered up; and it had indeed been well put.

“As I recited, you were smiling, but before I reached the middle, you stopped me, rang the bell, and, when the servant came in, told him to send for Tatyana Pavlovna, who came running with such a cheerful look that, though I had seen her the day before, I almost didn’t recognize her now. In front of Tatyana Pavlovna, I began ‘The Fussy Bride’ again and finished brilliantly, even Tatyana Pavlovna smiled, and you, Andrei Petrovich, you even shouted ‘Bravo!’ and observed warmly that if I had recited ‘The Grasshopper and the Ant,’ it wouldn’t have been so surprising, that any sensible boy my age could read it sensibly, but that this fable:

A maiden-bride was thinking on a suitor.
In that there’s yet no sin . . .

‘Just listen to how he articulates: “In that there’s yet no sin”!’ In short, you were delighted. Here you suddenly began speaking to Tatyana Pavlovna in French, and she instantly frowned and began to object to you, even very vehemently; but since it was impossible to contradict Andrei Petrovich if he suddenly wanted something, Tatyana Pavlovna hurried me off to her rooms; there my face and hands were washed again, my shirt was changed, my hair was pomaded and even curled. Then towards evening Tatyana Pavlovna herself got dressed up quite magnificently, even more so than I could have expected, and took me with her in a carriage. I found myself in a theater for the first time in my life, at an amateur performance at Mme. Vitovtov’s: candles, chandeliers, ladies, military men, generals, young ladies, a curtain, rows of chairs—I had never seen anything like it before. Tatyana Pavlovna took a most modest seat in one of the back rows and sat me down beside her. Naturally, there were other children like me there, but I no longer looked at anything and waited with a fainting heart for the performance. When you came out, Andrei Petrovich, I was rapturous, rapturous to the point of tears—why, over what, I don’t understand myself. Why tears of rapture?—that’s what I’ve found so wild, remembering it all these nine years! I followed the comedy with bated breath; of course, the only thing I understood about it was that
she
was unfaithful to
him
, that stupid people not worth his little finger laughed at him. When he declaimed at the ball, I understood that he was humiliated and insulted, that he was reproaching all these pathetic people, but that he was great, great! Of course, my preparation at the Andronikovs’ contributed to my understanding, but—so did your acting, Andrei Petrovich! I was seeing the stage for the first time! In the final scene, when Chatsky cries, ‘My carriage, my carriage!’ (and you cried it remarkably well), I tore from my seat and, together with the whole audience, which burst into applause, I clapped and shouted ‘Bravo!’ with all my might! I vividly remember at that same moment a furious pinch from Tatyana Pavlovna piercing me from behind, ‘below the lower back,’ but I paid no attention! Naturally, right after
Woe from Wit
, Tatyana Pavlovna brought me home: ‘You can’t stay for the dancing, and it’s only because of you that I can’t stay,’ you, Tatyana Pavlovna, hissed at me all the way in the carriage. All night I was delirious, and the next day at ten o’clock I was already standing by your study, but the study was closed. You had people with you, you were busy with them; then you suddenly drove off for the whole day, till late at night—and so I didn’t see you! What it was that I wanted to tell you then—I’ve forgotten, of course, and didn’t know then, but I had a burning desire to see you as soon as possible. But the next morning, by eight o’clock, you were so good as to leave for Serpukhov: you had just sold your Tula estate in order to pay off your creditors, but you were still left holding a handsome sum, that was why you had come to Moscow, which you couldn’t visit before then for fear of creditors; and there was only this one boor from Serpukhov, alone of all your creditors, who refused to take half the debt instead of the whole. Tatyana Pavlovna wouldn’t even respond to my questions: ‘It’s nothing to you, and the day after tomorrow I’ll be taking you to boarding school; get ready, gather your notebooks, put your books in order, and get into the habit of packing your own trunk, you’re not to grow up into a do-nothing, sir!’ and this and that—oh, how you drummed away at me for those three days, Tatyana Pavlovna! It ended with my being taken to Touchard’s boarding school, in love with you and innocent, Andrei Petrovich, and it may have been the stupidest incident, this whole encounter with you, but, would you believe it, six months later I wanted to run away from Touchard’s to you!”

“You’ve told it beautifully and reminded me so vividly of everything, ” Versilov pronounced distinctly, “but what chiefly strikes me in your account is the wealth of certain strange details, about my debts, for instance. To say nothing of a certain impropriety in these details, I don’t understand how you could even have gotten hold of them.”

“Details? How I got hold of them? But, I repeat, the only thing I’ve done is get hold of details about you all these nine years.”

“A strange confession and a strange pastime!”

He turned, half reclined in his armchair, and even yawned slightly—whether on purpose or not, I don’t know.

“So, then, shall I go on with how I wanted to run away to you from Touchard’s?”

“Forbid him, Andrei Petrovich, suppress him, and throw him out,” Tatyana Pavlovna snapped.