The Adolescent

“He asked me to sacrifice my destiny to his happiness, though he didn’t really ask; it was all done quite silently, I merely read it all in his eyes. Ah, my God, what more do you want? Didn’t he go to your mother in Königsberg to ask her permission to marry Mme. Akhmakov’s stepdaughter? That goes very well with the way he chose me yesterday as his representative and confidante.”

She was slightly pale. But her calmness only reinforced her sarcasm. Oh, I forgave her much during that minute when I gradually came to grasp the matter. For a minute I thought it over; she waited in silence.

“You know,” I smiled suddenly, “you conveyed the letter, because for you there was no risk, because there will be no marriage, but what about him? And her, finally? Of course, she’ll turn down his proposal, and then . . . what may happen then? Where is he now, Anna Andreevna?” I cried. “Here every minute is precious, any minute there may be trouble!”

“He’s at home, I told you. In his letter to Katerina Nikolaevna yesterday, which I conveyed, he asked her, in any event, for a meeting at his apartment, today, at exactly seven o’clock in the evening. She gave her promise.”

“She’ll go to his apartment? How is it possible?”

“Why not? The apartment belongs to Nastasya Egorovna; they both could very well meet there as her guests . . .”

“But she’s afraid of him . . . he may kill her!”

Anna Andreevna only smiled.

“Katerina Nikolaevna, despite all her fear, which I’ve noticed in her myself, has always nursed, since former times, a certain reverence and awe for the nobility of Andrei Petrovich’s principles and the loftiness of his mind. She’s trusting herself to him this time so as to have done with him forever. In his letter he gave her his most solemn, most chivalrous word that she had nothing to fear . . . In short, I don’t remember the terms of his letter, but she’s trusting herself . . . so to speak, for the last time . . . and, so to speak, responding with the most heroic feelings. There may be some sort of chivalrous struggle here on both sides.”

“But the double, the double!” I exclaimed. “He really has lost his mind!”

“On giving her word yesterday that she would come to meet him, Katerina Nikolaevna probably didn’t suppose the possibility of such a case.”

I suddenly turned and broke into a run . . . To him, to them, of course! But I came back from the front room for a second.

“Maybe that’s just what you want, that he should kill her!” I cried, and ran out of the house.

Though I was trembling all over as if in a fit, I entered the apartment silently, through the kitchen, and asked in a whisper to have Nastasya Egorovna come out to me; but she came out at once herself and silently fixed me with a terribly questioning look.

“He’s not at home, sir.”

But I explained to her directly and precisely, in a quick whisper, that I knew everything from Anna Andreevna and had just come from her.

“Where are they, Nastasya Egorovna?”

“They’re in the drawing room, sir, where you were sitting two days ago, at the table . . .”

“Let me in there, Nastasya Egorovna!”

“How is that possible, sir?”

“Not there, but the room next to it. Nastasya Egorovna, it may be that Anna Andreevna herself wants it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have told me they were here. They won’t hear me . . . she wants it herself . . .”

“And what if she doesn’t?” Nastasya Egorovna kept her gaze fixed on me.

“Nastasya Egorovna, I remember your Olya . . . let me in.”

Her lips and chin suddenly began to tremble:

“Dear heart, maybe for Olya’s sake . . . for your feeling . . . Don’t abandon Anna Andreevna, dear heart! You won’t abandon her, eh? You won’t?”

“I won’t!”

“Give me your great word, then, that you won’t rush in on them and start shouting, if I put you in there?”

“I swear on my honor, Nastasya Egorovna!”

She took hold of my frock coat, let me into the dark room adjacent to the one they were sitting in, led me barely audibly over the soft rug to the door, placed me just at the lowered portière and, lifting a tiny corner of the portière, showed me both of them.

I stayed and she left. Naturally, I stayed. I realized that I was eavesdropping, eavesdropping on other people’s secrets, but I stayed. How could I not stay—what of the double? Hadn’t he smashed an icon before my eyes?

IV

THEY WERE SITTING opposite each other at the same table at which he and I had drunk wine yesterday to his “resurrection.” I could see their faces very well. She was in a simple black dress, beautiful, and apparently calm, as always. He was speaking, and she was listening to him with extreme and obliging attention. Maybe a certain timidity could be seen in her. He was terribly agitated. I arrived when the conversation had already begun, and therefore understood nothing for a certain time. I remember she suddenly asked:

“And I was the cause?”