The Adolescent

“I wanted to terribly. Pity me, Sonya, and my poor head. But I wanted to, because it’s too beautiful. Of anything in the world, what is more beautiful than a flower? I was carrying it, and here there was snow and frost. Our frost and flowers—what a contrast! However, that’s not what I’m getting at: I wanted to crush it because it was beautiful. Sonya, I’m going to disappear again now, but I’ll come back very soon, because it seems I’ll be afraid. I’ll be afraid—and who will cure me of my fear, where will I get hold of an angel like Sonya? . . . What’s this icon you have here? Ah, it’s the old man’s, I remember. It came to him from his family, his forefathers; he never parted with it all his life; I know, I remember, he bequeathed it to me; I remember very well . . . and it seems it’s an Old Believers’ icon³⁹ . . . let me look at it.”

He took the icon in his hand, brought it to a candle, and studied it intently, but after holding it for just a few seconds, he set it down on the table in front of him. I wondered, but he uttered all these strange speeches so unexpectedly that I could make no sense of them yet. All I remember is that a morbid fear was coming into my heart. Mama’s fear was changing to perplexity and compassion; before all, she saw just an unhappy man in him; it happened that formerly as well he had sometimes spoken almost as strangely as now. Liza suddenly became very pale for some reason and strangely nodded her head towards him to me. But Tatyana Pavlovna was the most frightened of all.

“What’s wrong with you, dearest Andrei Petrovich?” she spoke cautiously.

“I really don’t know what’s wrong with me, my dear Tatyana Pavlovna. Don’t worry, I still remember that you are Tatyana Pavlovna and that you are dear. However, I’ve dropped in just for a minute; I’d like to say something nice to Sonya, and I’m looking for the right word, though my heart is filled with words which I’m unable to utter; truly, they’re all somehow such strange words. You know, it seems to me as if I’m divided in two,” he looked us all over with a terribly serious face and with the most sincere communicativeness. “Truly, mentally divided in two, and I’m terribly afraid of that. Just as if your double were standing next to you; you yourself are intelligent and reasonable, but that one absolutely wants to do something senseless next to you, and sometimes something very amusing, and you suddenly notice that it’s you who want to do this amusing thing, and, God knows why, that is, somehow unwillingly you want it, resisting with all your might, you want it. I once knew a doctor who suddenly started whistling in church at his father’s funeral. Truly, I was afraid to come to the funeral today, because for some reason the absolute conviction came into my head that I would suddenly start whistling or guffawing, like that unfortunate doctor, who ended rather badly . . . And, truly, I don’t know why I keep remembering that doctor today—so much so that there’s no getting rid of him. You know, Sonya, here I’ve picked up this icon again” (he had picked it up and was turning it in his hands), “and you know, I want terribly much to smash it against the stove now, this second, on this very corner. I’m sure it will split at once into two halves—no more, no less.”

Above all, he said all this without any air of pretense or even of some sort of prank; he spoke quite simply, but that was the more terrible; and it seemed he really was terribly afraid of something; I suddenly noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.

“Andrei Petrovich!” mama cried, clasping her hands.

“Let it alone, let the icon alone, Andrei Petrovich, put it down!” Tatyana Pavlovna jumped up. “Get undressed and go to bed. Arkady, fetch the doctor!”

“But no . . . but no, why are you fussing so?” he said softly, looking around at us all with an intent gaze. Then he suddenly put both elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.

“I’m frightening you, but I tell you what, my friends: indulge me a little, sit down again and be more calm, all of you—at least for one minute! Sonya, that’s not at all what I came here to talk about; I came to tell you something, but quite different. Good-bye, Sonya, I’m setting out on my wanderings again, as I’ve set out from you several times already . . . Well, of course, someday I’ll come back to you, in this sense you’re inevitable. To whom am I to come when it’s all over? Believe me, Sonya, I’ve come to you now as to an angel, and not at all as to an enemy: what sort of enemy, what sort of enemy are you to me! Don’t think it’s in order to break this icon, because, do you know, Sonya, I still want to break it . . .”