The Adolescent

That means they have precise information, I thought, but I didn’t ask any questions. Though I’m not describing my feelings, this whole riddle, despite all my cheerfulness, again suddenly lay its weight like a stone on my heart. We all sat down in the drawing room at the round table, around mama. Oh, how I liked being with her then and looking at her! Mama suddenly asked me to read something from the Gospel. I read a chapter from Luke. She didn’t weep and wasn’t even very sad, but never had her face seemed so full of spiritual meaning. An idea shone in her quiet gaze, but I was simply unable to make out that she was anxiously expecting anything. The conversation never flagged. There were many reminiscences about the deceased; Tatyana Pavlovna told many stories about him that had been quite unknown to me before. And generally, if it were all written down, many curious things would be found. Even Tatyana Pavlovna seemed to have completely changed her usual look; she was very quiet, very tender, and, above all, also very calm, though she talked a lot to distract mama. But one detail I remember only too well: mama was sitting on the sofa, and to the left of the sofa, on a special round table, as if prepared for something, lay an image—an old icon, with no casing, but just with crowns over the heads of the saints, of whom there were two. This icon had belonged to Makar Ivanovich—that I knew, and I also knew that the deceased had never parted with this icon and considered it miracle-working. Tatyana Pavlovna glanced at it several times.

“Listen, Sofya,” she said suddenly, changing the subject, “instead of the icon lying here, wouldn’t it be better to stand it on a table against the wall and light an icon lamp in front of it?”

“No, it’s better the way it is now,” said mama.

“You’re right. Otherwise it would seem too solemn . . .”

I understood nothing then, but the thing was that Makar Ivanovich had long ago bequeathed this icon, verbally, to Andrei Petrovich, and mama was now preparing to give it to him.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon; our conversation went on, and suddenly I noticed as if a slight tremor in mama’s face; she quickly straightened up and began listening, while Tatyana Pavlovna, who was speaking just then, went on with what she was saying, not noticing anything. I turned to the door at once and, a moment later, saw Andrei Petrovich in the doorway. He had come in not from the porch, but by the back stairs, through the kitchen and the corridor, and mama was the only one of us who had heard his footsteps. I will now describe the whole insane scene that followed, gesture by gesture, word by word. It was brief.

First of all, in his face, at least at first glance, I didn’t notice the slightest change. He was dressed as always, that is, almost foppishly. In his hand was a small but expensive bouquet of fresh flowers. He went over and gave it to mama with a smile; she looked at him with timorous perplexity, but then accepted the bouquet, and color suddenly enlivened her pale cheeks slightly, and joy flashed in her eyes.

“I just knew you’d take it that way, Sonya,” he said. As we had all risen when he came in, he went to the table, took Liza’s chair, which stood to mama’s left, and, not noticing that he was occupying someone else’s place, sat down on it. Thus he found himself directly in front of the little table on which the icon lay.

“Greetings to you all. Sonya, I wanted to bring you this bouquet today without fail, for your birthday, and therefore I didn’t appear at the funeral, so as not to come to the dead man with a bouquet; and you didn’t expect me at the funeral, I know. The old man surely won’t be angry over these flowers, because he himself bequeathed us joy, isn’t it so? I think he’s here in the room somewhere.”

Mama looked at him strangely; Tatyana Pavlovna seemed to cringe.

“Who’s here in the room?” she asked.

“The deceased. Never mind. You know that a man who doesn’t fully believe in all these wonders is always the more inclined to prejudices . . . But I’d better speak of the bouquet: how I got it here, I don’t know. Three times on the way I wanted to drop it in the snow and trample it with my feet.”

Mama shuddered.