The Adolescent

Well, naturally, Lambert had been there, but then he had come twice more and “looked the rooms all over,” saying he might rent them. Nastasya Egorovna had come several times, God alone knew why. “She was also very curious,” the landlord added, but I didn’t gratify him, I didn’t ask what she was curious about. In general, I didn’t ask any questions, it was he who spoke, and I pretended to be rummaging in my suitcase (in which there was almost nothing left). But the most vexing thing was that he also decided to play mysterious and, noticing that I refrained from asking questions, also thought it his duty to become more clipped, almost enigmatic.

“The young lady was also here,” he added, looking at me strangely.

“What young lady?”

“Anna Andreevna. She came twice; got acquainted with my wife. Very nice person, very agreeable. Such an acquaintance one can appreciate only too well, Arkady Makarovich . . .” And, having brought that out, he even took a step towards me: so much did he want me to understand something.

“Twice, really?” I was surprised.

“The second time she came with her brother.”

“Meaning with Lambert,” occurred to me involuntarily.

“No, sir, not with Mr. Lambert,” he guessed at once, as if jumping into my soul with his eyes, “but with her brother, the real one, the young Mr. Versilov. A kammerjunker,¹⁸ it seems?”

I was very embarrassed; he looked on, smiling terribly affectionately.

“Ah, there was someone else here asking for you—that mamzelle, the Frenchwoman, Mamzelle Alphonsine de Verdaigne. Ah, how well she sings, and she also declaims beautifully in verse! She was on her way in secret to see Prince Nikolai Ivanovich then, in Tsarskoe, to sell him a little dog, she said, a rarity, black, no bigger than your fist . . .”

I begged him to leave me alone, excusing myself with a headache. He instantly satisfied me, not even finishing the phrase, and not only without the least touchiness, but almost with pleasure, waving his hand mysteriously and as if saying, “I understand, sir, I understand,” and though he didn’t say it, instead he left the room on tiptoe, he gave himself that pleasure. There are very vexatious people in this world.

I sat alone, thinking things over for about an hour and a half—not thinking things over, however, but just brooding. Though I was confused, I was not in the least surprised. I even expected something more, some still greater wonders. “Maybe they’ve already performed them by now,” I thought. I had been firmly and long convinced, still at home, that their machine was wound up and running at full speed. “It’s only me they lack, that’s what,” I thought again, with a sort of irritable and agreeable smugness. That they were waiting for me with all their might—and setting something up to happen in my apartment—was clear as day. “Can it be the old prince’s wedding? The beaters are all after him. Only will I allow it, gentlemen, that’s the thing,” I concluded again with haughty satisfaction.

“Once I start, I’ll immediately get drawn into the whirlpool again, like a chip of wood. Am I free now, this minute, or am I no longer free? Going back to mama tonight, can I still say to myself, as in all these past days, ‘I am on my own’?”

That was the essence of my questions or, better, of the throbbings of my heart, during that hour and a half that I spent then in the corner on the bed, my elbows resting on my knees, my head propped in my hands. But I knew, I already knew even then, that all these questions were complete nonsense, and I was drawn only by her—her and her alone! At last I’ve said it straight out and written it with pen on paper, for even now, as I write, a year later, I still don’t know how to call my feeling of that time by its name!

Oh, I felt sorry for Liza, and there was a most unhypocritical pain in my heart! Just by itself this feeling of pain for her might, it seems, have restrained and effaced, at least for a time, the carnivorousness in me (again I mention that word). But I was drawn by boundless curiosity and a sort of fear, and some other feeling as well—I don’t know which; but I know, and already knew then, that it was not good. Maybe I yearned to fall at her feet, or maybe I wanted to give her over to every torment and “quickly, quickly” prove something to her. No pain and no compassion for Liza could stop me now. Well, could I get up and go home . . . to Makar Ivanovich?

“But is it really impossible simply to go to them, find out everything from them, and suddenly go away from them forever, passing unharmed by the wonders and monsters?”

At three o’clock, catching myself and realizing that I was almost late, I quickly went out, caught a cab, and flew to Anna Andreevna.

Chapter Five

I