The Adolescent

Thus, worried and with increasing anxiety in her soul, Anna Andreevna was almost unable to divert the old man; and meanwhile his worry had grown to threatening proportions. He asked strange and fearful questions, started casting suspicious glances even at her, and several times began to weep. Young Versilov hadn’t stayed long then. After he left, Anna Andreevna finally brought Pyotr Ippolitovich, in whom she placed such hopes, but the man was not found pleasing at all, and even provoked disgust. In general, the prince for some reason looked at Pyotr Ippolitovich with ever-growing mistrust and suspicion. And the landlord, as if on purpose, again started his talk about spiritism and some tricks he himself had supposedly seen performed, namely, how some itinerant charlatan had supposedly cut people’s heads off before the whole public, so that the blood flowed and everyone could see it, and then put them back onto the necks, and they supposedly grew on again, also before the whole public, and all this had supposedly taken place in the year fifty-nine. The prince was so frightened, and at the same time became so indignant for some reason, that Anna Andreevna was forced to remove the narrator immediately. Fortunately, dinner arrived, ordered specially the day before somewhere in the neighborhood (through Lambert and Alphonsinka) from a remarkable French chef, who was without a post and was seeking to place himself in an aristocratic house or club. Dinner with champagne diverted the old man extremely; he ate a great deal and was very jocular. After dinner, of course, he felt heavy and wanted to sleep, and as he always slept after dinner, Anna Andreevna prepared a bed for him. As he was falling asleep, he kept kissing her hands, said that she was his paradise, his hope, his houri, his “golden flower”—in short, he went off into the most Oriental expressions. At last he fell asleep, and it was just then that I returned.

Anna Andreevna hurriedly came into my room, pressed her hands together before me, and said, “no longer for her own sake, but for the prince’s,” that she “begs me not to leave, and to go to him when he wakes up. Without you, he’ll perish, he’ll have a nervous breakdown; I’m afraid he won’t last till nighttime . . .” She added that she herself absolutely had to be absent, “maybe even for two hours,” which meant that she was “leaving the prince to me alone.” I warmly gave her my word that I’d stay till evening, and that when he woke up, I’d do all I could to divert him.

“And I will do my duty!” she concluded energetically.

She left. I’ll add, running ahead, that she herself went looking for Lambert; this was her last hope. On top of that, she visited her brother and her Fanariotov family; it’s clear what state of mind she must have come back in.

The prince woke up about an hour after she left. I heard him groan through the wall and ran to him at once. I found him sitting on his bed in a dressing gown, but so frightened by the solitude, by the light of the single lamp, and by the strange room, that when I came in he gave a start, jumped up, and cried out. I rushed to him, and when he made out that it was I, he began to embrace me with tears of joy.

“And they told me you had moved somewhere, to another apartment, that you got frightened and ran away.”

“Who could have told you that?”

“Who could? You see, I may have thought it up myself, or maybe someone told me. Imagine, I just had a dream: in comes an old man with a beard and with an icon, an icon that’s split in two, and he suddenly says, ‘That’s how your life will be split!’”

“Ah, my God, you must have heard from someone that Versilov broke an icon yesterday?”

“N’est-ce pas? I heard, I heard! I heard it this morning from Nastasya Egorovna. She moved my trunk and my little dog over here.”

“Well, and so you dreamed of it.”

“Well, it makes no difference. And imagine, this old man kept shaking his finger at me. Where is Anna Andreevna?”

“She’ll be back presently.”

“From where? Has she also gone?” he exclaimed with pain.

“No, no, she’ll be back presently, and she asked me to sit with you.”

“Oui, to come here. And so our Andrei Petrovich has gone off his head—‘so inadvertently and so swiftly!’⁴³

I always predicted to him that he’d end up that way. My friend, wait . . .”

He suddenly seized me by the frock coat with his hand and pulled me towards him.

“Today,” he began to whisper, “the landlord suddenly brought me photographs, vile photographs of women, all naked women in various Oriental guises, and began showing them to me through a glass . . . You see, I praised them reluctantly, but that’s just how they brought vile women to that unfortunate man, to make it easier to get him drunk . . .”

“You keep on about von Sohn, but enough, Prince! The landlord is a fool and nothing more!”

“A fool and nothing more! C’est mon opinion! ¹¹¹ My friend, save me from this place if you can!” he suddenly pressed his hands together before me.