The Adolescent (26 page)

III

HE WAS STILL the same, dressed in the same foppish clothes, thrust his chest out in the same way, looked with the same stupid gaze, had the same fancy about his own slyness, and was greatly pleased with himself. This time, as he came in, he looked around somehow strangely; there was something peculiarly cautious and keen in his gaze, as if he wanted to guess something from our physiognomies. However, he instantly calmed down, and a selfconfident smile shone on his lips, that “ingratiatingly insolent ” smile, which I still found unutterably vile.

I had long known that he tormented the prince greatly. He had already come once or twice while I was there. I . . . I also had had one contact with him that past month, but this time, for a certain reason, I was slightly surprised at his coming.

“One moment,” the prince said to him without greeting him, and, turning his back to us, began taking the necessary papers and accounts out of his desk. As for me, I was decidedly offended by the prince’s last words; the allusion to Versilov being dishonorable was so clear (and so astonishing!) that it was impossible to let it go without a radical explanation. But this was impossible in front of Stebelkov. I sprawled on the sofa again and opened a book that was lying in front of me.

“Belinsky, part two!
¹⁸
That’s something new; you wish to enlighten yourself ?” I called out to the prince—very affectedly, it seems.

He was very busy and hurried, but he suddenly turned at my words.

“Leave that book alone, I beg you,” he said sharply.

This was going beyond the limits, and above all—in front of Stebelkov! As if on purpose, Stebelkov grinned slyly and disgustingly, and nodded furtively to me towards the prince. I turned away from the stupid fellow.

“Don’t be angry, Prince; I yield you up to the most important person, and efface myself for the time being . . .”

I decided to be casual.

“Is that me—the most important person?” Stebelkov picked up, merrily pointing his finger at himself.

“Yes, you; the most important person is you, and you know it yourself.”

“No, sir, excuse me. There’s a second person everywhere in the world. I am a second person. There’s a first person, and there’s a second person. The first person acts, and the second person takes. Which means the second person comes out as the first person, and the first person as the second person. Is that so or not?”

“It may be so, only as usual I don’t understand you.”

“Excuse me. There was a revolution in France and everybody was executed. Napoleon came and took everything. The revolution is the first person, and Napoleon the second person. But it turned out that Napoleon became the first person, and the revolution became the second person. Is that so or not?”

I’ll note, incidentally, that in his speaking to me about the French Revolution, I saw something of his earlier slyness, which amused me greatly: he still continued to regard me as some sort of revolutionary, and each time he met me, he found it necessary to speak about something of that sort.

“Let’s go,” said the prince, and they both went out to the other room. Left alone, I decided definitively to give him back his three hundred roubles as soon as Stebelkov left. I had extreme need of this money, but I decided.

They stayed there for about ten minutes quite unheard, and suddenly began talking loudly. They both began talking, but the prince suddenly started to shout, as if in strong irritation, reaching the point of fury. He could sometimes be very hot-tempered, so that even I let it pass. But at that moment a footman came in to announce someone; I pointed him to their room, and everything instantly quieted down there. The prince quickly came out with a preoccupied face, but smiling; the footman rushed off, and half a minute later the prince’s visitor came in.

This was an important visitor, with aiguillettes and a coronet, a gentleman of no more than thirty, of a high-society and rather stern appearance. I warn the reader that Prince Sergei Petrovich did not yet belong in any real sense to Petersburg high society, despite all his passionate desire (I knew about the desire), and so he must have terribly appreciated such a call. This acquaintance, as I was informed, had only just begun, after great efforts on the prince’s part; the guest was now returning a visit, but unfortunately he had caught the host unawares. I saw with what suffering and what a lost look the prince turned for an instant to Stebelkov; but Stebelkov endured his gaze as if nothing was wrong and, without the slightest thought of effacing himself, casually sat down on the sofa and began ruffling his hair with his hand, probably as a token of independence. He even made some sort of important face—in short, he was decidedly impossible. As for me, I was certainly able to behave myself by then and, of course, would not have disgraced anyone, but what was my amazement when I caught that same lost, pitiful, and spiteful gaze of the prince on myself as well: it meant he was ashamed of us both and put me on a par with Stebelkov. This idea drove me to fury; I sprawled still more and began flipping through the book with such an air as if nothing concerned me. Stebelkov, on the contrary, goggled his eyes, leaned forward, and began listening to their conversation, probably supposing that this was both polite and amiable. The guest glanced once or twice at Stebelkov—and also at me, incidentally.

They began talking of family news; this gentleman had once known the prince’s mother, who belonged to a well-known family. As far as I could conclude, the guest, despite his amiability and seeming ingenuousness of tone, was very stiff and, of course, valued himself enough to consider his visit a great honor even for whoever it might be. If the prince had been alone—that is, without us—I’m sure he would have been more dignified and resourceful; now, though, something peculiarly tremulous in his smile, maybe much too amiable, and some strange distractedness betrayed him.

They had not yet been sitting for five minutes when suddenly another guest was announced and, as if on purpose, also of a compromising sort. I knew this one well and had heard a lot about him, though he didn’t know me at all. He was still a very young man, though already about twenty-three years old, charmingly dressed, of a good family, and a handsome fellow himself, but—unquestionably of bad society. A year ago he had still been serving in one of the most distinguished horse-guard regiments, but he had been forced to retire, and everyone knew the reasons why. His relations even published in the newspapers that they were not answerable for his debts, but he continued his carousing even now, obtaining money at ten percent a month, gambling terribly in the gambling houses, and squandering all he had on a notorious Frenchwoman. The thing was that about a week earlier he had managed to win some twelve thousand in one evening, and he was triumphant. He was on a friendly footing with the prince; they often gambled together as partners; but the prince even gave a start on seeing him, I noticed it from where I sat: this boy was as if in his own home everywhere, spoke loudly and gaily, was unembarrassed by anything, and said whatever came to his mind, and naturally it would never have come into his head that our host was trembling so before his guest on account of his company.

He came in, interrupting their conversation, and at once began telling about yesterday’s gambling, even before he sat down.

“I believe you were also there,” he turned at the third phrase to the important guest, taking him for one of his circle, but, seeing better immediately, he cried, “Ah, forgive me, but I took you also for someone from yesterday!”

“Alexei Vladimirovich Darzan, Ippolit Alexandrovich Nashchokin,” the prince hastily introduced them. The boy could, after all, be presented: the family name was good and well-known, but he hadn’t introduced us earlier, and we went on sitting in our corners. I decidedly did not want to turn my head to them; but Stebelkov, at the sight of the young man, began to grin joyfully and obviously threatened to start talking. I was even beginning to find it all amusing.

“I met you often last year at Countess Verigin’s,” said Darzan.

“I remember you, but then, I believe, you were in uniform,” Nashchokin replied benignly.

“Yes, in uniform, but thanks to . . . Ah, Stebelkov, so you’re here? What brings him here? It’s precisely thanks to these fine sirs that I’m no longer in uniform,” he pointed straight at Stebelkov and burst out laughing. Stebelkov, too, laughed joyfully, probably taking it as a compliment. The prince blushed and hastily turned to Nashchokin with some question, while Darzan went over to Stebelkov and began talking to him very vehemently about something, but now in a low voice.

“It seems you became very well acquainted with Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov abroad?” the guest asked the prince.

“Oh, yes, I knew . . .”

“It seems there will be some news here soon. They say she’s going to marry Baron Bjoring.”

“That’s right!” cried Darzan.

“You . . . know it for certain?” the prince asked Nashchokin, visibly agitated and uttering his question with particular emphasis.

“I was told so; it seems people are already talking about it; however, I don’t know for certain.”

“Oh, it’s certain!” Darzan went over to them. “Dubasov told me yesterday; he’s always the first to know such news. And the prince ought to know . . .”

Nashchokin paused for Darzan and again addressed the prince:

“She rarely appears in society now.”

“Her father has been sick this last month,” the prince observed somehow drily.

“She seems to be an adventurous lady!” Darzan blurted out suddenly.

I raised my head and straightened up.

“I have the pleasure of knowing Katerina Nikolaevna personally and take upon myself the duty of assuring you that all the scandalous rumors are nothing but lies and infamy . . . and have been invented by those . . . who circled around but didn’t succeed.”

Having broken off so stupidly, I fell silent, still looking at them all with a flushed face and sitting bolt upright. They all turned to me, but suddenly Stebelkov tittered; Darzan was struck at first, but then grinned.

“Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky,” the prince indicated me to Darzan.

“Ah, believe me,
Prince
,” Darzan addressed me frankly and goodnaturedly, “I’m not speaking for myself; if there was any gossip, it wasn’t I who spread it.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean you!” I answered quickly, but Stebelkov had already burst into inadmissible laughter, and that precisely, as became clear later, because Darzan had called me “prince.” My infernal last name mucked things up here as well. Even now I blush at the thought that I—from shame, of course—did not dare at that moment to pick up this stupidity and declare aloud that I was simply Dolgoruky. It was the first time in my life that this had happened. Darzan gazed in perplexity at me and at the laughing Stebelkov.

“Ah, yes! Who was that pretty thing I just met on your stairs, sharp-eyed and fair-haired?” he suddenly asked the prince.

“I really don’t know,” the latter answered quickly, blushing.

“Then who would know?” Darzan laughed.

“Though it . . . it might have been . . .” the prince somehow faltered.

“It . . . but it was precisely his sister, Lizaveta Makarovna!” Stebelkov suddenly pointed at me. “Because I also met her earlier . . .”

“Ah, indeed!” the prince picked up, but this time with an extremely solid and serious expression on his face. “It must have been Lizaveta Makarovna, a close friend of Anna Fyodorovna Stolbeev, whose apartment I’m now living in. She must have come calling today on Darya Onisimovna, who is also a good friend of Anna Fyodorovna’s and in charge of the house in her absence . . .”

That was all exactly how it was. This Darya Onisimovna was the mother of poor Olya, whose story I have already told and whom Tatyana Pavlovna finally sheltered with Mrs. Stolbeev. I knew perfectly well that Liza used to visit Mrs. Stolbeev and later occasionally visited poor Darya Onisimovna, whom they all came to love very much; but suddenly, after this, incidentally, extremely sensible statement from the prince, and especially after Stebelkov’s stupid outburst, or maybe because I had just been called “prince,” suddenly, owing to all that, I blushed all over. Fortunately, just then Nashchokin got up to leave; he offered his hand to Darzan as well. The moment Stebelkov and I were left alone, he suddenly started nodding to me towards Darzan, who was standing in the doorway with his back to us. I shook my fist at Stebelkov.

A minute later Darzan also left, having arranged with the prince to meet the next day without fail at some place they had already settled on—a gambling house, naturally. On his way out he shouted something to Stebelkov and bowed slightly to me. As soon as he went out, Stebelkov jumped up from his place and stood in the middle of the room with a raised finger:

“Last week that little squire pulled off the following stunt: he gave a promissory note and falsified Averyanov’s name on it. And the nice little note still exists in that guise, only one doesn’t do such things! It’s criminal. Eight thousand.”

“And surely it’s you who have this note?” I glanced at him ferociously.

“I have a bank, sir, I have a
mont-de-piété
,
³⁶
not promissory notes. Have you heard of such a
mont-de-piété
in Paris? Bread and charity for the poor. I have a
mont-de-piété
. . .”

The prince stopped him rudely and spitefully:

“What are you doing here? Why did you stay?”

“Ah!” Stebelkov quickly began nodding with his eyes. “And that? What about that?”

“No, no, no, not that,” the prince shouted and stamped his foot, “I told you!”

“Ah, well, if so . . . then so . . . Only it’s not so . . .”

He turned sharply and, inclining his head and rounding his back, suddenly left. The prince called after him when he was already in the doorway:

“Be it known to you, sir, that I am not afraid of you in the least!”

He was highly vexed, made as if to sit down, but, having glanced at me, did not. It was as if his glance was also saying to me, “Why are you also sticking around?”