The Adolescent (41 page)

III

BUT AT MAKAR Ivanovich’s, quite unexpectedly, I found people—mama and the doctor. Since for some reason I had imagined to myself, going there, that I would certainly find the old man alone, as the day before, I stopped on the threshold in dumb perplexity. Before I had time to frown, Versilov at once came to join them, and after him suddenly Liza as well . . . Everybody, that is, gathered for some reason at Makar Ivanovich’s and “just at the wrong time!”

“I’ve come to inquire about your health,” I said, going straight to Makar Ivanovich.

“Thank you, dear, I was expecting you, I knew you’d come! I thought about you during the night.”

He looked tenderly into my eyes, and it was evident to me that he loved me almost best of all, but I instantly and involuntarily noticed that, though his face was cheerful, the illness had made progress overnight. The doctor had only just examined him quite seriously. I learned afterwards that this doctor (the same young man with whom I had quarreled and who had been treating Makar Ivanovich ever since his arrival) was quite attentive to his patient and—only I can’t speak their medical language—supposed that he had a whole complication of various illnesses. Makar Ivanovich, as I noticed at first glance, had already established the closest friendly relations with him. I instantly disliked that; but anyhow, I, too, of course, was in a bad way at that moment.

“Indeed, Alexander Semyonovich, how is our dear patient today?” Versilov inquired. If I hadn’t been so shaken, I would have been terribly curious, first thing, to follow Versilov’s relations with this old man, which I had already thought about the day before. I was struck most of all now by the extremely soft and pleasant expression on Versilov’s face; there was something perfectly sincere in it. I have already observed, I believe, that Versilov’s face became astonishingly beautiful as soon as he turned the least bit simplehearted.

“We keep on quarreling,” replied the doctor.

“With Makar Ivanovich? I don’t believe it; it’s impossible to quarrel with him.”

“He won’t obey me; he doesn’t sleep at night . . .”

“Stop it now, Alexander Semyonovich, enough grumbling,” laughed Makar Ivanovich. “Well, Andrei Petrovich, dear heart, what have they done with our young lady? Here she’s been clucking and worrying all morning,” he added, pointing to mama.

“Oh, Andrei Petrovich,” mama exclaimed, greatly worried indeed, “tell us quickly, don’t torment us: what did they decide about the poor thing?”

“Our young lady has been sentenced!”

“Oh!” mama cried out.

“Not to Siberia, don’t worry—only to a fifteen-rouble fine. It turned into a comedy!”

He sat down, the doctor sat down, too. They were talking about Tatyana Pavlovna, and I still knew nothing at all about this story. I was sitting to the left of Makar Ivanovich, and Liza sat down opposite me to the right; she evidently had her own special grief today, with which she had come to mama; the expression on her face was anxious and annoyed. At that moment we somehow exchanged glances, and I suddenly thought to myself, “We’re both disgraced, and I must make the first step towards her.” My heart suddenly softened towards her. Versilov meanwhile began telling about the morning’s adventure.

The thing was that Tatyana Pavlovna had gone before the justice of the peace that morning with her cook. The case was trifling in the highest degree; I’ve already mentioned that the spiteful Finn would sometimes keep angrily silent even for whole weeks, not answering a word to her lady’s questions; I’ve also mentioned that Tatyana Pavlovna had a weakness for her, endured everything from her, and absolutely refused to dismiss her once and for all. In my eyes, all these psychological caprices of old maids and old ladies are in the highest degree worthy of contempt, and by no means of attention, and if I venture to mention this incident here, it is solely because later on, in the further course of my story, this cook is destined to play a certain not inconsiderable and fateful role. And so, having lost patience with this stubborn Finn, who hadn’t responded to her for several days already, in the end Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly struck her, which had never happened before. The Finn did not emit the slightest sound even then, but that same day she got in touch with the retired midshipman Ossetrov, who lived on the same back stairway somewhere in a corner below, and who occupied himself with soliciting various sorts of cases, and, naturally, with bringing such cases to court, in his struggle for existence. It ended with Tatyana Pavlovna being summoned to the justice of the peace, and Versilov for some reason had to give testimony at the hearing as a witness.

Versilov recounted it all jokingly and with extraordinary merriment, so that even mama burst out laughing; he impersonated Tatyana Pavlovna, and the midshipman, and the cook. The cook announced to the court right from the start that she wanted a fine in money, “otherwise, if you put the lady in prison, who am I going to cook for?” Tatyana Pavlovna answered the judge’s questions with great haughtiness, not even deigning to justify herself; on the contrary, she concluded with the words, “I beat her and I’ll beat her more,” for which she was immediately fined three roubles for insolent answers in court. The midshipman, a lean and lanky young man, began a long speech in defense of his client, but got shamefully confused and made the whole courtroom laugh. The hearing soon ended, and Tatyana Pavlovna was sentenced to pay the injured Marya fifteen roubles. Without delay, she took out her purse on the spot and started handing her the money. The midshipman turned up at once and reached out his hand, but Tatyana Pavlovna almost struck his hand aside and turned to Marya. “Never mind, ma’am, you needn’t trouble yourself, add it to the accounts, and I’ll pay this one myself.” “See, Marya, what a lanky fellow you picked for yourself !” Tatyana Pavlovna pointed to the midshipman, terribly glad that Marya had finally started to speak. “Lanky he is, ma’am,” Marya replied coyly. “Did you order cutlets with peas for today? I didn’t quite hear earlier, I was hurrying here.” “Oh, no, Marya, with cabbage, and please don’t burn it as you did yesterday.” “I’ll do my best today especially, ma’am. Your hand, please”—and she kissed her mistress’s hand as a sign of reconciliation. In short, she made the whole courtroom merry.

“What a one, really!” Mama shook her head, very pleased both by the news and by Andrei Petrovich’s account, but casting anxious glances at Liza on the sly.

“She’s been a willful young lady from early on,” Makar Ivanovich smiled.

“Bile and idleness,” the doctor retorted.

“Me willful, me bile and idleness?” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly came in, apparently very pleased with herself. “Alexander Semyonovich, you of all people shouldn’t go talking nonsense; you knew when you were ten years old what sort of idle woman I was, and as for my bile, you’ve been treating it for a whole year and can’t cure it, so shame on you. Well, enough of your jeering at me. Thank you, Andrei Petrovich, for taking the trouble to come to court. Well, how are you, Makarushka, it’s you I’ve come to see, not this one” (she pointed at me, but at the same time gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder; I’d never seen her in such a merry state of mind before).

“Well, so?” she concluded, suddenly turning to the doctor and frowning worriedly.

“This one doesn’t want to stay in bed, but sitting up like this only wears him out.”

“I’ll just sit a wee bit with people,” Makar Ivanovich murmured, his face as pleading as a child’s.

“Yes, we love that, we do; we love chatting in a little circle, when people gather round us; I know Makarushka,” said Tatyana Pavlovna.

“And, oh, what a speedy one he is,” the old man smiled again, turning to the doctor. “And you don’t give ear to speech; wait, let me say it. I’ll lie down, dear heart, I’ve heard, but to our minds what it means is, ‘Once you lie down, you may not get up again’—that, my friend, is what’s standing back of me.”

“Well, yes, I just knew it, a popular prejudice: ‘I’ll lie down, yes,’ they say, ‘and for all I know, I won’t get up again’—that’s what people are very often afraid of, and they’d rather spend the time of their illness on their feet than go to the hospital. And you, Makar Ivanovich, are simply yearning, yearning for your dear freedom, for the open road; that’s all your illness; you’re not used to living in the same place for long. Aren’t you what’s known as a wanderer? Well, and with our people vagrancy almost turns into a passion. I’ve noticed it more than once in our people. Our people are mostly vagrants.”

“So Makar is a vagrant, in your opinion?” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up.

“Oh, not in that sense; I was using the word in its general sense. Well, so he’s a religious vagrant, a pious one, but a vagrant all the same. In a good, respectable sense, but a vagrant . . . From a medical point of view, I . . .”

“I assure you,” I suddenly addressed the doctor, “that the vagrants are sooner you and I, and everybody else here, and not this old man, from whom you and I have something to learn, because there are firm things in his life, and we, all of us here, have nothing firm in our lives . . . However, you could hardly understand that.”

It appears I spoke cuttingly, but that’s what I had come for. In fact, I don’t know why I went on sitting there and was as if out of my mind.

“What’s with you?” Tatyana Pavlovna looked at me suspiciously. “So, how did you find him, Makar Ivanovich?” she pointed her finger at me.

“God bless him, a sharp boy,” the old man said with a serious air; but at the word “sharp” almost everybody burst out laughing. I restrained myself somehow; the doctor laughed most of all. It was bad enough that I didn’t know then about their preliminary agreement. Three days earlier, Versilov, the doctor, and Tatyana Pavlovna had agreed to try as hard as they could to distract mama from bad anticipations and apprehensions for Makar Ivanovich, who was far more ill and hopeless than I then suspected. That’s why everybody joked and tried to laugh. Only the doctor was stupid and, naturally, didn’t know how to joke: that’s why it all came out as it did later on. If I had also known about their agreement, I wouldn’t have done what came out. Liza also knew nothing.

I sat and listened with half an ear; they talked and laughed, but in my head was Nastasya Egorovna with her news, and I couldn’t wave her away. I kept picturing her sitting and looking, getting up cautiously and peeking into the other room. Finally they all suddenly laughed. Tatyana Pavlovna, I have no idea on what occasion, had suddenly called the doctor a godless person: “Well, you little doctors, you’re all godless folk! . . .”

“Makar Ivanovich!” the doctor cried out, pretending most stupidly that he was offended and was seeking justice, “am I godless or not?”

“You, godless? No, you’re not godless,” the old man replied sedately, giving him an intent look. “No, thank God!” he shook his head. “You’re a mirthful man.”

“And whoever is mirthful isn’t godless?” the doctor observed ironically.

“That’s a thought—in its own way!” Versilov observed, but not laughing at all.

“It’s a powerful thought!” I exclaimed inadvertently, struck by the idea. The doctor looked around questioningly.

“These learned people, these same professors,” Makar Ivanovich began, lowering his eyes slightly (they had probably been saying something about professors before then), “oh, how afraid of them I was at first: I didn’t dare before them, for I feared the godless man most of all. There’s one soul in me, I thought; if I lose it, there’s no other to find. Well, but then I took heart. ‘So what,’ I thought, ‘they’re not gods, they’re like us, fellow-sufferering men the same as us.’ And I had great curiosity: ‘I must find out what this godlessness is!’ Only later, my friend, this same curiosity also went away.”

He fell silent, though intending to continue with that quiet and sedate smile. There is a simpleheartedness that trusts each and everyone, unsuspecting of mockery. Such people are always limited, for they’re ready to bring out the most precious thing from their hearts before the first comer. But in Makar Ivanovich, it seemed to me, there was something else, and it was something else that moved him to speak, not merely the innocence of simpleheartedness. It was as if a propagandist peeped out of him. I had the pleasure of catching a certain as if sly smile that he directed at the doctor, and maybe at Versilov as well. The conversation was evidently a continuation of their previous arguments during the week; but into it, to my misfortune, there again slipped that same fatal little phrase that had so electrified me the day before, and it led me to an outburst that I regret to this day.

“I might be afraid of the godless man even now,” the old man went on with concentration, “only the thing is, my friend Alexander Semyonovich, that I’ve never once met a godless man, what I’ve met instead is vain men—that’s how they’d better be called. They’re all sorts of people; there’s no telling what people: big and small, stupid and learned, even some of the simplest rank, and it’s all vanity. For they read and talk all their lives, filled with bookish sweetness, but they themselves dwell in perplexity and cannot resolve anything. One is all scattered, no longer noticing himself. Another has turned harder than stone, but dreams wander through his heart. Yet another is unfeeling and light-minded and only wants to laugh out his mockery. Another has merely plucked little flowers from books, and even that by his own opinion; he’s all vanity himself, and there’s no judgment in him. Again I’ll say this: there is much boredom. A small man may be needy, have no crust, nothing to feed his little ones, sleep on prickly straw, and yet his heart is always merry and light; he sins, he’s coarse, but still his heart is light. But the big man drinks too much, eats too much, sits on a heap of gold, yet there’s nothing but anguish in his heart. Some have gone through all learning—and are still anguished. And my thinking is that the more one learns, the more boredom there is. Take just this: they’ve been teaching people ever since the world was made, but where is the good they’ve taught, so that the world might become the most beautiful, mirthful, and joy-filled dwelling place? And I’ll say another thing: they have no seemliness, they don’t even want it; they’ve all perished, and each one only praises his perdition, but doesn’t even think of turning to the one truth; yet to live without God is nothing but torment. And it turns out that what gives light is the very thing we curse, and we don’t know it ourselves. And what’s the point? It’s impossible for a man to exist without bowing down; such a man couldn’t bear himself, and no man could. If he rejects God, he’ll bow down to an idol—a wooden one, or a golden one, or a mental one. They’re all idolaters, not godless, that’s how they ought to be called. Well, but how could there not be godless people as well? There are such as are truly godless, only they’re much more frightening than these others, because they come with God’s name on their lips. I’ve heard of them more than once, but I’ve never met any. There are such, my friend, and I think there must needs be.”