The Adolescent

I ate dinner, even ate too much, so as to have the right to stay as long as possible, and sat there, I think, for some four hours. I won’t describe my sadness and feverish impatience; it was as if everything in me was shaking and trembling. The barrel organ, the customers—oh, all that anguish left an imprint on my soul, maybe for my whole life! I won’t describe the thoughts that arose in my head like a cloud of dry leaves in autumn after a gust of wind; it really was something like that, and, I confess, I felt at times as if reason was beginning to betray me.

But what tormented me to the point of pain (in passing, naturally, on the side, past the main torment), was one nagging, venomous impression—as nagging as a venomous autumn fly, which you give no thought to, but which circles around you, pestering you, and suddenly gives you a very painful bite. It was just a memory, a certain event, of which I had not yet told anyone in the world. Here’s what it was, for this, too, has to be told somewhere or other.

IV

WHEN IT WAS decided in Moscow that I would go to Petersburg, I was given to know through Nikolai Semyonovich that I should expect money to be sent for the trip. Who the money would come from, I didn’t ask; I knew it was from Versilov, and since I dreamed day and night then, with a leaping heart and high-flown plans, about my meeting with Versilov, I completely stopped speaking of him aloud, even with Marya Ivanovna. Remember, however, that I had my own money for the trip; but I decided to wait anyway; incidentally, I assumed the money would come by post.

Suddenly one day Nikolai Semyonovich came home and informed me (briefly, as usual, and without smearing it around) that I should go to Miasnitskaya Street the next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, to the home and apartment of Prince V——sky, and that there the kammerjunker Versilov, Andrei Petrovich’s son, who had come from Petersburg and was staying with his lycée comrade, Prince V——sky, would hand me the sum sent for my moving expenses. It seemed quite a simple matter: Andrei Petrovich might very well charge his son with this errand instead of sending it by post; but this news crushed me and alarmed me somehow unnaturally. There was no doubt that Versilov wanted to bring me together with his son, my brother; thus the intentions and feelings of the man I dreamed of were clearly outlined; but an enormous question presented itself to me: how would and how should I behave myself in this quite unexpected meeting, and would my own dignity not suffer in some way?

The next day, at exactly eleven o’clock, I came to Prince V——sky’s apartment—bachelor’s quarters, but, as I could guess, magnificently furnished, with liveried lackeys. I stopped in the front hall. From the inner rooms came the sounds of loud talk and laughter: besides the visiting kammerjunker, the prince had other guests. I told the lackey to announce me, evidently in rather proud terms: at least, on going to announce me, he looked at me strangely, as it seemed to me, and even not as respectfully as he should have. To my surprise, he took a very long time announcing me, some five minutes, and meanwhile the same laughter and the same sounds of talk came from inside.

I, naturally, stood while I waited, knowing very well that for me, as “just as much a gentleman,” it was unfitting and impossible to sit in the front hall where there were lackeys. I myself, of my own will, without a special invitation, would not have set foot in the reception room for anything, out of pride—out of refined pride, maybe, but so it had to be. To my surprise, the remaining lackeys (two) dared to sit down in my presence. I turned away so as not to notice it, but nevertheless I began trembling all over, and suddenly, turning and stepping towards one of the lackeys, I ordered him to go “at once” and announce me again. In spite of my stern gaze and my extreme agitation, the lackey looked at me lazily, without getting up, and the other one answered for him:

“You’ve been announced, don’t worry!”

I decided to wait only one minute more, or possibly even less than a minute, and then—leave without fail. The main thing was that I was dressed quite decently; my suit and overcoat were new, after all, and my linen was perfectly fresh, Marya Ivanovna had purposely seen to that for the occasion. But about these lackeys I learned for certain much later, and already in Petersburg, that they had learned the day before, through the servant who came with Versilov, that “so-and-so would be coming, the natural brother and a student.” That I now know for certain.

A minute passed. It’s a strange feeling, when you’re making up your mind and can’t make it up: “To leave or not, to leave or not?” I repeated every second, almost in a cold fit. Suddenly the servant who had gone to announce me reappeared. In his hand, between finger and thumb, dangled four red banknotes, forty roubles.