The Adolescent (33 page)

III

THE PRINCE WAS actually unwell and was sitting at home alone, his head wrapped in a wet towel. He was waiting very much for me; but it was not his head alone that ached, but rather he ached all over morally. Again I’ll state beforehand: all this time lately, and right up to the catastrophe, I was somehow forced to meet nothing but people who were so agitated that they were almost crazy, so that I myself must have been as if involuntarily infected. I confess, I came with bad feelings, and I was very ashamed that I had burst into tears in front of him the day before. And anyway he and Liza had managed to deceive me so skillfully that I couldn’t help seeing myself as a fool. In short, when I went in, there were false strings sounding in my soul. But all that was affected and false quickly dropped away. I must do him justice: as soon as his suspiciousness fell and broke to pieces, he gave himself definitively, displaying features of an almost infantile affection, trustfulness, and love. He kissed me tearfully and at once began talking business . . . Yes, he really needed me very much; there was an extremely great disorder in his words and flow of ideas.

He announced to me quite firmly his intention to marry Liza and as soon as possible. “That she’s not of the nobility, believe me, has never embarrassed me for a moment,” he said to me. “My grandfather was married to a household serf, a singer from a neighboring landowner’s private serf theater. Of course, my family nursed some hopes in my regard, but they’ll have to give in now, and there won’t be any struggle. I want to break, to break with the whole present definitively! Everything will be different, everything will be in a new way! I don’t understand what makes your sister love me; but, of course, without her maybe I wouldn’t be living in the world now. I swear to you from the bottom of my heart that I now look at my meeting her in Luga as at the finger of Providence. I think she loves me for the ‘boundlessness of my fall’ . . . though, can you understand that, Arkady Makarovich?”

“Perfectly!” I said in a highly convinced voice. I was sitting in an armchair by the table, and he was pacing the room.

“I must tell you this whole fact of our meeting without reserve. It began with my soul’s secret, which she alone has learned, because she’s the only one I’ve ventured to entrust it to. And to this day no one else knows it. I found myself in Luga then with despair in my soul and was living at Mrs. Stolbeev’s, I don’t know why, maybe I was seeking the most complete solitude. At that time I had just retired from service in the ———regiment. I had entered that regiment when I came back from abroad, after that meeting abroad with Andrei Petrovich. I had money then, I squandered it in the regiment, lived openhandedly; but my officer comrades didn’t like me, though I tried not to insult anyone. And I confess to you that no one has ever liked me. There was an ensign there, Stepanov or something, I confess to you, an extremely empty, worthless, and even as if downtrodden man, in short, not distinguished by anything. Indisputably honest, however. He began calling on me, I wasn’t ceremonious with him, he spent whole days sitting in the corner of my room, silently but with dignity, though he didn’t bother me at all. Once I told him a certain current anecdote, which I embellished with a lot of nonsense, such as that the colonel’s daughter was not indifferent to me and that the colonel, who was counting on me, would of course do whatever I liked . . . In short, I’ll omit the details, but from all this later came a very complex and vile piece of gossip. It came not from Stepanov, but from my orderly, who had been eavesdropping and remembered everything, because it involved an anecdote compromising to the young lady. When the gossip went around, this orderly, at the officers’ interrogation, pointed the finger at Stepanov, that is, that I had told it to this Stepanov. Stepanov was put in such a position that he simply couldn’t deny having heard it; it was a matter of honor. And since I had lied for two-thirds of the anecdote, the officers were indignant, and the regimental commander, summoning us to him, was forced to have it out. It was here that the question was put to Stepanov in front of everyone: had he or had he not heard it? And the man told the whole truth. Well, sir, what did I do then, I, a thousand-year prince? I denied it and told Stepanov to his face that he was lying, told him politely, that is, in the sense that he had ‘misunderstood’ it, and so on . . . Again, I’ll omit the details, but the advantage of my position was that, since Stepanov frequented me, I could present the matter, not without some probability, so that it would look as if he had connived with my orderly with a view to some advantage. Stepanov only looked at me silently and shrugged. I remember his look and will never forget it. Then he immediately sent in his resignation, but what do you think happened? The officers, all of them at once, to a man, paid him a visit and persuaded him not to resign. Two weeks later I also left the regiment. Nobody drove me out, nobody asked me to leave, I gave family circumstances as a pretext. That was the end of the matter. At first I was perfectly all right and was even angry with them; I lived in Luga, made the acquaintance of Lizaveta Makarovna, but then, a month later, I began looking at my revolver and thinking about death. I look at everything darkly, Arkady Makarovich. I prepared a letter to the regimental commander and my comrades, with a full confession of my lie, restoring Stepanov’s honor. Having written the letter, I posed myself a problem: ‘Send it and live, or send it and die?’ I wouldn’t have been able to resolve this problem. Chance, blind chance, after one quick and strange conversation with Lizaveta Makarovna, suddenly brought us close. Before then she had come to see Mrs. Stolbeev; we met, greeted each other, and even spoke occasionally. I suddenly revealed everything to her. And it was then that she gave me her hand.”

“How did she resolve the problem?”

“I didn’t send the letter. She decided against sending it. She motivated it like this: if I did send the letter, I would, of course, be committing a noble act, enough to wash away all the dirt and even much more, but could I bear it myself? Her opinion was that no one could bear it, because the future would be ruined then, and resurrection into a new life would be impossible. And besides, it would have been one thing if Stepanov had suffered; but he had been vindicated by all the officers without that. In short—a paradox; but she held me back, and I gave myself to her completely.”

“She resolved it in a Jesuitical way, but like a woman!” I cried. “She already loved you then!”

“And with that I was reborn into a new life. I gave myself a promise to remake myself, to change my life, to be worthy of it before myself and before her, and—look what we ended with! It ended with you and me going to the roulette houses, playing faro; I couldn’t stand up to the inheritance, was glad for my career, all these people, the trotters . . . I tormented Liza—a disgrace!”

He rubbed his forehead with his hand and paced the room.

“You and I have been overtaken by the same Russian fate, Arkady Makarovich: you don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what to do. Once a Russian man gets slightly out of the ordinary rut that custom lays down for him—he immediately doesn’t know what to do. In the rut, everything is clear: income, rank, position in the world, equipage, visits, service, wife—but the slightest something, and what am I? A leaf driven by the wind. I don’t know what to do! These two months I’ve stuggled to keep in the rut, I’ve come to love the rut, I’ve been drawn into the rut. You still don’t know all the depths of my fall here: I loved Liza, sincerely loved her, and at the same time had thoughts of Mme. Akhmakov!”

“Is it possible?” I cried in pain. “By the way, Prince, what did you tell me yesterday about Versilov, that he set you on to some sort of meanness against Katerina Nikolaevna?”

“Maybe I exaggerated and am as guilty in my suspiciousness before him as before you. Let’s drop that. What, can you really think that for all this time, ever since Luga, I haven’t been nursing a lofty ideal of life? I swear to you, it never left me and was with me constantly, not losing the least of its beauty in my soul. I remembered the oath I had given Lizaveta Makarovna to be reborn. Andrei Petrovich, speaking here yesterday about nobility, didn’t say anything new to me, I assure you. My ideal was firmly established: a few score acres of land (and only a few score, because I already have almost nothing left of the inheritance); then a complete, the most complete, break with society and career; a house in the country, a family, and myself—a plowman or something of the sort. Oh, in our family it’s nothing new; my father’s brother plowed with his own hands, so did my grandfather. We’re only thousand-year-old princes and as noble as the Rohans,
²⁴
but we’re paupers. And this is what I’d teach my children: ‘Always remember all your life that you are a nobleman, that the sacred blood of Russian princes flows in your veins, but do not be ashamed that your father plowed the earth himself: he did it like a prince.’ I wouldn’t leave them any fortune except for this piece of land, but instead I’d give them a higher education, I’d consider it my duty. Oh, here Liza could help me. Liza, the children, work—oh, how we both dreamed of it all, dreamed of it here, right in these rooms, and what then? At the same time I had thoughts of Mme. Akhmakov, without loving this person at all, and of the possibility of a wealthy society marriage! And only after the news Nashchokin brought yesterday, about this Bjoring, did I decide to go to Anna Andreevna.”

“But didn’t you go to renounce her? That was already an honorable act, I think.”

“You think so?” he stopped in front of me. “No, you still don’t know my nature! Or . . . or there’s something here that I don’t know myself, because here, it must be, there’s not just nature. I love you sincerely, Arkady Makarovich, and, besides that, I’ve been deeply guilty before you for all these two months, and therefore I want you, as Liza’s brother, to know everything: I went to propose to Anna Andreevna, and not to renounce her.”

“Can it be? But Liza said . . .”

“I deceived Liza.”

“I beg your pardon: you made a formal proposal and Anna Andreevna refused you? Is that it? Is that it? The details are extremely important for me, Prince.”

“No, I didn’t make any proposal, but only because I had no time; she let me know beforehand—not directly, of course, but nevertheless in very transparent and clear terms, she ‘delicately’ gave me to understand that the idea was henceforth impossible.”

“That means it’s the same as if you didn’t make the proposal, and your pride hasn’t suffered!”

“How can you possibly reason like that! And the judgment of my own conscience? And Liza, whom I deceived and . . . therefore wanted to abandon? And the vow I made to myself and all the generations of my ancestors—to be reborn and to redeem all my former baseness! I beg you not to tell her about it. Maybe it’s the one thing she’d be unable to forgive me! I’ve been sick since that business yesterday. And the main thing is that it’s all over now, and the last of the Princes Sokolsky will go to hard labor. Poor Liza! I’ve been waiting all day for you, Arkady Makarovich, to reveal to you, as Liza’s brother, something she doesn’t know yet. I am a criminal and a partner in the counterfeiting of shares in the ——sky railroad.”

“What’s this now! Why to hard labor?” I jumped up, looking at him in horror. His face expressed the most deep, dark, and hopeless grief.

“Sit down,” he said, and sat down himself in the facing armchair. “First of all, learn this fact: a little over a year ago, that same summer of Ems, Lydia and Katerina Nikolaevna, and then Paris, precisely at the time when I went to Paris for two months, in Paris, of course, I didn’t have enough money. Just then Stebelkov turned up, whom, incidentally, I had known before. He gave me some money and promised to give more, but for his part also asked me to help him: he had need of an artist, a draftsman, an engraver, a lithographer, and so on, a chemist, and a technician—and all that for certain purposes. About the purposes, even from the first, he spoke quite transparently. And what then? He knew my character—all this only made me laugh. The thing was that since my schooldays I had been acquainted with a certain man, at the present time a Russian émigré, not of Russian origin, however, and living somewhere in Hamburg. In Russia he had already been mixed up once in a story to do with forged documents. It was this man Stebelkov was counting on, but he needed a recommendation, and he turned to me. I gave him two lines and forgot about it at once. Later he met me once more and then again, and I got as much as three thousand from him then. I literally forgot about this whole affair. Here I kept taking money from him on promissory notes and pledges, and he twisted before me like a slave, and suddenly yesterday I find out from him for the first time that I’m a criminal.”

“When yesterday?”

“Yesterday morning, when we were shouting in my study before Nashchokin’s arrival. For the first time, and perfectly clearly now, he dared to bring up Anna Andreevna with me. I raised my hand to strike him, but he suddenly stood up and announced to me that I was solidary with him and that I should remember that I was a partner and as much of a swindler as he—in short, that was the idea, though not in those words.”

“What nonsense, but is this a dream?”

“No, it’s not a dream. He was here today and explained in more detail. These shares have been circulating for a long time, and more are going to be put into circulation, but it seems they’ve already begun to be picked up here and there. Of course, I’m on the sidelines, but ‘all the same, you kindly furnished that letter then, sir’—that’s what Stebelkov told me.”

“But you didn’t know what it was for, or did you?”

“I knew,” the prince replied softly and lowered his eyes. “That is, you see, I knew and didn’t know. I laughed, I found it funny. I didn’t think about anything then, the less so as I had no need at all for counterfeit shares and it wasn’t I who was going to make them. But, all the same, the three thousand he gave me then, he didn’t even set down to my account afterwards, and I allowed that. And, anyway, how do you know, maybe I, too, was a counterfeiter? I couldn’t help knowing—I’m not a child; I knew, but I found it amusing, and so I helped scoundrels and jailbirds . . . and did it for money! Which means that I, too, am a counterfeiter!”