The Adolescent (37 page)

III

EVERY PERSON, WHOEVER he may be, certainly preserves some recollection of something that has happened to him which he regards or is inclined to regard as fantastic, remarkable, out of the ordinary, almost miraculous, whether it’s a dream, a meeting, a divination, a presentiment, or something of the sort. To this day I am inclined to regard this meeting of mine with Lambert as something even prophetic . . . judging at least by the circumstances and consequences of the meeting. It all happened, however, on the one hand at least, in the most natural way: he was simply coming back from one of his nighttime occupations (which one will become clear later) half drunk, and, stopping for a moment by the gate in the lane, saw me. He had been in Petersburg for only a few days then.

The room I found myself in was a small, quite unassumingly furnished example of ordinary Petersburg
chambres garnies
⁵¹
of the middling sort. Lambert himself, however, was excellently and expensively dressed. On the floor lay two suitcases only half unpacked. A corner of the room was partitioned off by a screen, concealing a bed.

“Alphonsine!” cried Lambert.

“Présente! ”
⁵²
a cracked female voice replied in a Parisian accent from behind the screen, and in no more than two minutes out popped Mlle. Alphonsine, hastily dressed in a bed jacket, only just risen—a strange sort of being, tall and lean as a splinter, a young girl, a brunette, with a long waist, a long face, darting eyes, and sunken cheeks—an awfully worn-out creature!

“Quick!” (I’m translating, but he spoke to her in French.) “They must have a samovar going, fetch some boiling water, red wine and sugar, and a glass here, quick, he’s frozen, this is a friend of mine . . . he slept all night in the snow.”

“
Malheureux!
”
⁵³
she cried out, clasping her hands with a theatrical gesture.

“Uh-uh!” Lambert shouted at her as at a little dog, and shook his finger; she stopped gesturing at once and ran to fulfill his order.

He examined and palpated me; he felt my pulse, touched my forehead, my temples.

“Strange,” he muttered, “how you didn’t freeze . . . though you were all covered up in your fur coat, including your head, like sitting in a fur hole . . .”

The hot glass arrived, I gulped it down greedily, and it revived me at once; I started babbling again; I was half-reclining on the sofa in the corner and talking away—I was spluttering as I talked—but of precisely what and how I was speaking, once again I have almost no recollection; there are moments and even whole stretches that I’ve completely forgotten. I repeat: whether he understood anything then from what I was telling, I don’t know; but one thing I realized clearly afterwards—namely, that he managed to understand me well enough to draw the conclusion that he ought not to disregard his meeting with me . . . Later I’ll explain in its place what reckoning he might have made here.

I was not only terribly animated, but at moments, it seems, quite merry. I remember the sun suddenly lighting up the room when the blinds were raised, and the stove crackling when someone lit it—who and how, I don’t remember. I also have the memory of a tiny black dog that Mlle. Alphonsine held in her arms, coquettishly pressing it to her heart. This lapdog somehow diverted me very much, even so much that I stopped talking and twice reached out for it, but Lambert waved his hand, and Alphonsine and her lapdog instantly effaced themselves behind the screen.

He was very silent himself, sat facing me and, leaning strongly towards me, listened without tearing himself away; at times he smiled a long, drawn-out smile, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes, as if making an effort to think and wishing to guess. I’ve kept a clear recollection only of the fact that, when I was telling him about the “document,” I simply couldn’t express myself understandably and make a coherent story of it, and by his face I could see only too well that he couldn’t understand me, but that he wanted very much to understand, so that he even risked stopping me with a question, which was dangerous, because as soon as I was interrupted, I at once interrupted the subject and forgot what I was talking about. How long we sat and talked like that I don’t know and can’t even reckon. He suddenly got up and called Alphonsine:

“He needs rest; he may also need a doctor. Do whatever he asks, that is . . . vous comprenez, ma fille? Vous avez de l’argent,
⁵⁴
no? Here!” And he took out a ten-rouble note for her. He started whispering to her: “
Vous comprenez! Vous comprenez!
” he repeated to her, shaking his finger at her and frowning sternly. I saw that she trembled frightfully before him.

“I’ll be back, and you’d best have a good sleep,” he smiled to me and took his hat.

“Mais vous n’avez pas dormi du tout, Maurice! ”
⁵⁵
Alphonsine cried out pathetically.

“Taisez-vous, je dormirai après,”
⁵⁶
and he left.

“Sauvée! ”
⁵⁷
; she whispered pathetically, pointing after him to me with her hand.

“
Monsieur, monsieur!
” she began declaiming at once, assuming a pose in the middle of the room. “
Jamais homme ne fut si cruel, si
Bismarck, que cet être, qui regarde une femme comme une saleté de hasard. Une femme, qu’est-ce que ça dans notre époque? ‘Tue-la’—voilà le dernier mot de l’Académie française!...”
⁵⁸

I goggled my eyes at her; I was seeing double, there seemed to be two Alphonsines in front of me . . . Suddenly I noticed that she was weeping, gave a start, and realized that she had been talking to me for a very long time now, which meant that during that time I had been asleep or unconscious.

“. . .
Hélas! de quoi m’aurait servi de le découvrir plutôt,
” she exclaimed, “
et n’aurais-je pas autant gagné à tenir ma honte cachée toute
ma vie? Peut-être, n’est-il pas honnête à une demoiselle de s’expliquer si
librement devant monsieur, mais enfin je vous avoue, que s’il m’était
permis de vouloir quelque chose, oh, ce serait de lui plonger au coeur mon
couteau, mais en détournant les yeux, de peur que son regard exécrable
ne fit trembler mon bras et ne glaçât mon courage! Il a assassiné ce pope
russe, monsieur, il lui arracha sa barbe rousse pour la vendre à un artiste
en cheveux au pont des Maréchaux, tout près de la Maison de monsieur
Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles de Paris, linge, chemises, vous
savez, n’est-ce pas? . . . Oh, monsieur, quand l’amitié rassemble à table
épouse, enfants, soeurs, amis, quand une vive allégresse enflamme mon
coeur, je vous le demande, monsieur: est-il bonheur préférable à celui dont
tout jouit? Mais il rit, monsieur, ce monstre exécrable et inconcevable et
si ce n’était pas par l’entremise de monsieur Andrieux, jamais, oh, jamais je ne serais . . . Mais quoi, monsieur, qu’avez vous, monsieur? ”
⁵⁹

She rushed to me: it seems I had a chill, and maybe had also swooned. I can’t express what a painful, morbid impression this half-crazed being made on me. Maybe she imagined that she had been ordered to entertain me; at any rate she never left me for a moment. Maybe she had been on the stage once; she declaimed awfully, fidgeted, talked nonstop, while I had long been silent. All I could understand from her stories was that she was closely connected with some “
Maison de M. Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles de
Paris, etc.” and maybe even came from la Maison de M. Andrieux, but she had somehow been torn forever from M. Andrieux par ce monstre furieux et inconcevable,
⁶⁰
and this was what the tragedy consisted in . . . She sobbed, but it seemed to me that it was only as a matter of course and that she wasn’t crying at all; at times I fancied that she was suddenly going to fall apart like a skeleton; she articulated her words in some crushed, cracked voice; the word
préférable
, for instance, she pronounced
préfér-a-able
and on the syllable
a
bleated like a sheep. Coming to my senses once, I saw her making a pirouette in the middle of the room, yet she wasn’t dancing, but this pirouette also had some relation to the story, and she was only doing an impersonation. Suddenly she rushed and opened the small, old, out-of-tune piano that was in the room, started strumming on it and singing . . . It seems that for ten minutes or more I became completely unconscious, fell asleep, but the lapdog squeaked and I came to: full consciousness suddenly returned to me for a moment and lit me up with all its light. I jumped up in horror.

“Lambert, I’m at Lambert’s!” I thought and, seizing my hat, I rushed for my fur coat.

“Où allez-vous, monsieur? ”
⁶¹
cried the keen-eyed Alphonsine.

“I want to get out, I want to leave! Let me go, don’t keep me . . .”

“
Oui, monsieur!
” Alphonsine concurred with all her might, and rushed to open the door to the corridor for me herself. “Mais ce n’est pas loin, monsieur, c’est pas loin du tout, ça ne vaut pas la peine de mettre votre chouba, c’est ici près, monsieur! ”
⁶²
she exclaimed to the whole corridor. Running out of the room, I turned to the right.

“Par ici, monsieur, c’est par ici! ”
⁶³
she exclaimed with all her might, clutching at my coat with her long, bony fingers, and with her other hand pointing me to the left somewhere down the corridor, where I had no wish to go. I tore myself free and ran for the door to the stairs.

“Il s’en va, il s’en va! ”
⁶⁴
; Alphonsine raced after me, shouting in her cracked voice. “Mais il me tuera, monsieur, il me tuera!”
⁶⁵
But I had already run out to the stairs, and though she even raced after me down the stairs, I managed to open the outside door, run out to the street, and jump into the first cab. I gave mama’s address . . .

IV

BUT CONSCIOUSNESS, having flashed for a moment, quickly went out. I still have a slight memory of how I was brought in and taken to mama’s, but there I fell almost at once into complete oblivion. The next day, as I was told later (though this I also remembered myself ), my reason became clear again for a moment. I remembered myself in Versilov’s room on his sofa; I remember the faces of Versilov, mama, Liza around me, remember very well how Versilov spoke to me about Zershchikov, about the prince, showed me some letter, reassured me. They told me later that I kept asking in horror about some Lambert, and kept hearing the barking of some lapdog. But the faint light of consciousness quickly dimmed; by evening of this second day I was already totally delirious. But I’ll forestall events and explain them beforehand.

When I ran out of Zershchikov’s that evening and everything calmed down somewhat there, Zershchikov, having started the game, suddenly announced in a loud voice that a lamentable error had occurred: the lost money, the four hundred roubles, had been found in a pile of other money and the accounts of the bank proved to be perfectly correct. Then the prince, who had remained in the hall, accosted Zershchikov and demanded insistently that he make a public declaration of my innocence and, besides that, offer his apologies in the form of a letter. Zershchikov, for his part, found the demand worthy of respect and gave his word, in front of everybody, to send me a letter of explanation and apology the next day. The prince gave him Versilov’s address, and indeed the very next day Versilov personally received from Zershchikov a letter in my name and over thirteen hundred roubles that belonged to me and that I had forgotten on the roulette table. Thus ended the affair at Zershchikov’s. This joyful news contributed greatly to my recovery when I regained consciousness.

The prince, on coming back from gambling, wrote two letters that same night, one to me, and the other to his former regiment, where he had had the incident with Ensign Stepanov. He sent both letters the next morning. After which he wrote a report to his superiors, and with this report in hand, early in the morning, he went in person to the commander of his regiment and announced to him that he, “a common criminal, a partner in counterfeiting the ——sky shares, surrenders himself into the hands of justice and asks to be put on trial.” With that he handed over the report, in which it was all explained in writing. He was arrested.

Here is the letter he wrote to me that night, word for word:

Priceless Arkady Makarovich,

Having tried the lackeyish “way out,” I have thereby lost the right to comfort my soul at least somewhat with the thought that I, too, was finally able to venture upon a righteous deed. I am guilty before my fatherland and before my family, and for that, as the last of my family, I am punishing myself. I do not understand how I could have seized upon the base thought of self-preservation and dreamed for some time of buying myself back from them with money. All the same, I myself, before my own conscience, would have remained forever a criminal. Those people, even if they did return the compromising notes to me, would never have left me all my life! What remained then: to live with them, to be one with them all my life—that was the lot that awaited me! I could not accept it, and finally found in myself enough firmness, or maybe just despair, to act as I am acting now.

I have written a letter to my former regiment, to my former comrades, and vindicated Stepanov. In this act there is not and cannot be any redeeming deed: it is all just the dying bequest of tomorrow’s dead man. That is how it must be regarded.

Forgive me for turning away from you in the gambling house; it was because I was not sure of you at that moment. Now that I am a dead man, I can make such confessions . . . from the other world.

Poor Liza! She knows nothing of this decision; may she not curse me, but judge for herself. I cannot justify myself and do not even find words to explain anything to her. Know also, Arkady Makarovich, that yesterday, in the morning, when she came to me for the last time, I revealed my deceit to her and confessed that I had gone to Anna Andreevna with the intention of proposing to her. I could not leave that on my conscience before the last, already taken decision, seeing her love, and so I revealed it to her. She forgave me, forgave me everything, but I did not believe her; it was not forgiveness; in her place I would not be able to forgive.

Remember me.

Your unfortunate last Prince
Sokolsky
.

I lay unconscious for exactly nine days.