The Adolescent

“Tatyana Pavlovna, you mean you don’t expect Andrei Petrovich either today or tomorrow? I’m alarmed . . .”

“Quiet. Much it matters that you’re alarmed. Speak—what was it you didn’t finish saying when you told about yesterday’s balderdash?”

I found no need to conceal it, and, almost annoyed with Versilov, told her all about Katerina Nikolaevna’s letter to him yesterday, and about the effect of the letter, that is, his resurrection into a new life. To my surprise, the fact of the letter didn’t surprise her in the least, and I guessed that she already knew about it.

“You’re not lying?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, now,” she smiled venomously, as if pondering, “resurrected! Just what he’d do! Is it true that he kissed the portrait?”

“It’s true, Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“Did he kiss it with feeling, without pretending?”

“Pretending? Does he ever pretend? Shame on you, Tatyana Pavlovna; you have a coarse soul, a woman’s soul.”

I said it heatedly, but it was as if she didn’t hear me. She again seemed to be figuring something out, despite the intense cold on the stairway. I was wearing a fur coat, but she was wearing only a dress.

“I’d entrust you with an errand, but the trouble is you’re very stupid,” she said with contempt and as if with vexation. “Listen, go to Anna Andreevna’s and see what’s happening there . . . Ah, no, don’t go; a dolt is a dolt! Leave, be off, don’t stand there like a post!”

“I’m just not going to go to Anna Andreevna’s! And Anna Andreevna sent for me herself.”

“Herself? Sent Nastasya Egorovna?” she quickly turned to me. She was on the point of leaving and had even opened the door, but she slammed it shut again.

“I won’t go to Anna Andreevna’s for anything!” I repeated with spiteful glee. “I won’t go, because you just called me a dolt, while I’ve never been so perspicacious as today. I can see all your doings as if on the palm of my hand; and even so I won’t go to Anna Andreevna’s!”

“I just knew it!” she exclaimed, but, again, not in response to my words, but continuing to think her own thoughts. “They’ll ensnare her completely now, and tighten the deadly noose!”

“Anna Andreevna?”

“Fool!”

“Whom do you mean, then? Not Katerina Nikolaevna? What deadly noose?” I was terribly frightened. Some vague but terrible idea passed through my soul. Tatyana Pavlovna looked at me piercingly.

“And what are you doing in it?” she asked suddenly. “What’s your part? I did hear something about you—oh, watch out!”

“Listen, Tatyana Pavlovna, I’ll tell you a terrible secret, only not now, I have no time now, but tomorrow, when we’re alone, but in return tell me the whole truth now, and what this is about the deadly noose . . . because I’m trembling all over . . .”

“I spit on your trembling!” she exclaimed. “What secret do you want to tell me tomorrow? Can it really be that you know something?” she fixed me with her questioning gaze. “Didn’t you swear to her yourself that you had burned Kraft’s letter?”

“Tatyana Pavlovna, I repeat, don’t torment me,” I went on with my own thing, ignoring her question in turn, because I was beside myself, “watch out, Tatyana Pavlovna, what you hide from me may lead to something worse . . . why, yesterday he was in full, in the fullest resurrection!”

“Eh, away with you, buffoon! You must be in love like a sparrow yourself—father and son with the same object! Pah, outrageous creatures!”

She disappeared, slamming the door in indignation. Infuriated by the impudent, shameless cynicism of her very last words—a cynicism that only a woman is capable of—I rushed off, deeply offended. But I won’t describe my vague sensations, as I’ve already promised; I will continue with just the facts, which will now resolve everything. Naturally, I ran over to his place for a moment, and again heard from the nanny that he hadn’t been there.

“And he won’t come at all?”

“God knows.”

III

FACTS, FACTS!...But does the reader understand anything? I myself remember how these same facts weighed on me then and kept me from comprehending anything, so that by the end of that day my head was totally thrown off. And therefore I’ll run ahead for two or three words!