“It would be very nice for me, mama, if you addressed me informally.”
“Ah . . . well, all right, then, I will,” my mother hastened to say. “I—I didn’t always . . . well, from now on I’ll know.”
She blushed all over. Decidedly her face could be extremely attractive on occasion . . . She had a simplehearted face, but not at all simpleminded, slightly pale, anemic. Her cheeks were very gaunt, even hollow, and little wrinkles were beginning to accumulate on her forehead, but there were none around her eyes yet, and her eyes, rather big and wide open, always shone with a gentle and quiet light, which had attracted me to her from the very first day. I also liked it that there was nothing sad or pinched in her face; on the contrary, its expression would even have been gay, if she hadn’t been so frequently alarmed, sometimes for no reason, getting frightened and jumping up sometimes over nothing at all, or listening fearfully to some new conversation, until she was reassured that all was still well. With her, “all was well” meant precisely that “all was as before.” If only nothing changed, if only nothing new happened, even something fortunate! . . . One might think she had somehow been frightened in childhood. Besides her eyes, I liked the elongated shape of her face, and, I believe, if her cheekbones had only been a little less wide, she might have been considered a beauty, not only in her youth, but even now as well. Now she was no more than thirty-nine years old, but her dark blond hair was already strongly streaked with gray.
Tatyana Pavlovna looked at her with decided indignation.
“Before such a whelp? To tremble like that before him! You’re a funny one, Sofya; you make me angry, that’s what!”
“Ah, Tatyana Pavlovna, why are you like this with him now! Or maybe you’re joking, eh?” my mother added, noticing something like a smile on Tatyana Pavlovna’s face. Indeed, Tatyana Pavlovna’s abuse was sometimes impossible to take seriously, but she smiled (if she did smile), of course, only at my mother, because she loved her kindness terribly and had undoubtedly noticed how happy she was just then at my submissiveness.
“I, of course, can’t help feeling it, if you yourself fall upon people, Tatyana Pavlovna, and precisely now, when I came in and said, ‘Hello, mama,’ which is something I’ve never done before,” I finally found it necessary to point out to her.
“Just imagine,” she boiled up at once, “he considers it a great deed? Should we go down on our knees to you or something, because you’ve been polite for once in your life? And as if that’s politeness! Why do you look off into the corner when you come in? As if I don’t know how you storm and rage at her! You might greet me as well, I swaddled you, I’m your godmother.”
Naturally, I disdained to reply. Just then my sister came in, and I quickly turned to her:
“Liza, I saw Vasin today, and he asked me about you. You’re acquainted?”
“Yes, we met in Luga last year,” she answered quite simply, sitting down next to me and looking at me affectionately. I don’t know why, but I thought she’d just turn bright red when I told her about Vasin. My sister was a blonde, a light blonde; her hair was quite unlike her mother’s and her father’s, but her eyes and the shape of her face were almost like her mother’s. Her nose was very straight, small, regular; however, there was another peculiarity—small freckles on her face, something my mother didn’t have at all. Of Versilov there was very little, perhaps only her slender waist, her tall stature, and something lovely in her gait. And not the least resemblance to me; two opposite poles.
“I knew himself for three months,” Liza added.
“You’re saying himself about Vasin, Liza? You ought to say him, and not himself. Excuse me, sister, for correcting you, but it distresses me that your education seems to have been quite neglected.”
“It’s mean on your part to make such observations in front of your mother,” Tatyana Pavlovna flared up, “and you’re wrong, it hasn’t been neglected.”
“I’m not saying anything about my mother,” I put in sharply. “You should know, mama, that I look upon Liza as a second you; you’ve made of her the same loveliness of kindness and character as you surely were yourself, and are now, to this day, and will be eternally . . . What I meant was external polish, all that society stupidity, which is nevertheless indispensable. I’m only indignant that Versilov, if he heard you say himself instead of him about Vasin, probably wouldn’t correct you at all—he’s so haughty and indifferent with us. That’s what infuriates me!”
“He’s a bear cub himself, and here he’s teaching us about polish. Don’t you dare, sir, to say ‘Versilov’ in front of your mother, or in my presence either—I won’t stand for it!” Tatyana Pavlovna flashed fire.
“Mama, I received my salary today, fifty roubles, here, take it please!”
I went over and gave her the money; she became alarmed at once.
“Ah, I don’t know how I can take it!” she said, as if afraid to touch the money. I didn’t understand.
“For pity’s sake, mama, if you both regard me as a son and a brother in the family, then . . .”
“Ah, I’m guilty before you, Arkady; I should confess certain things to you, but I’m so afraid of you . . .”
She said it with a timid and ingratiating smile; again I didn’t understand and interrupted her:
“By the way, do you know, mama, that the case between Andrei Petrovich and the Sokolskys was decided today in court?”
“Ah, I know!” she exclaimed, pressing her hands together fearfully in front of her (her gesture).
“Today?” Tatyana Pavlovna gave a great start. “But it can’t be, he would have told us. Did he tell you?” she turned to my mother.
“Ah, no, not that it was today, he didn’t tell me about that. I’ve been so afraid all week. Even if he loses, I’d pray only so as to have it off our shoulders and be as we were before.”
“So he didn’t tell you either, mama!” I exclaimed. “What a fellow! There’s an example of his indifference and haughtiness; what did I just tell you?”
“Decided how, how was it decided? And who told you?” Tatyana Pavlovna flung herself about. “Speak!”
“But here’s the man himself! Maybe he’ll tell us,” I announced, hearing his footsteps in the corridor, and quickly sat down near Liza.
“Brother, for God’s sake, spare mama, be patient with Andrei Petrovich . . .” my sister whispered to me.
“I will, I will, I came back with that in mind.” I pressed her hand.
Liza looked at me very mistrustfully, and she was right.
II
HE CAME IN very pleased with himself, so pleased that he didn’t find it necessary to conceal his state of mind. And in general he had become accustomed, lately, to opening himself up before us without the least ceremony, and not only to the bad in him, but even to the ridiculous, something everyone is afraid of; yet he was fully aware that we would understand everything to the last little jot. In the past year, by Tatyana Pavlovna’s observation, he had gone very much to seed in his dress; his clothes were always decent, but old and without refinement. It’s true that he was prepared to wear the same linen for two days, which even made mother upset; they considered it a sacrifice, and this whole group of devoted women looked upon it as outright heroism. The hats he wore were always soft, wide-brimmed, black; when he took his hat off in the doorway, the whole shock of his very thick but much-graying hair just sprang up on his head. I always liked looking at his hair when he took his hat off.
“Hello. Everybody’s gathered, even including him? I could hear his voice in the front hall—denouncing me, it seems?”
One of the signs that he was in a merry mood was that he began sharpening his wit on me. I didn’t reply, naturally. Lukerya came in with a whole bag of purchases and put it on the table.
“Victory, Tatyana Pavlovna! The suit is won, and, of course, the princes won’t decide to appeal. The case is mine! I at once found where to borrow a thousand roubles. Sofya, put your work down, don’t strain your eyes. Just hom
e from work, Liza?”
“Yes, papa,” Liza replied with an affectionate look. She called him father; I wouldn’t submit to that for anything.
“Tired?”
“Yes.”
“Leave work, don’t go tomorrow; and drop it completely.”
“It’s worse for me that way, papa.”
“I ask you to . . . I dislike it terribly when women work, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“How can they be without work? As if a woman shouldn’t work! . . .”
“I know, I know, that’s all splendid and right, and I agree beforehand; but—I mean hand work mainly. Imagine, it seems to be one of my morbid, or, better, one of my incorrect impressions from childhood. In the vague memories from when I was five or six years old, I most often remember—with disgust, of course—a conclave of clever women at a round table, stern and severe, scissors, fabrics, patterns, and a fashion plate. They all divine and opine, shaking their heads slowly and gravely, measuring and calculating, as they prepare for the cutting out. All those affectionate faces, which love me so much, suddenly become unapproachable. If I should start acting up, I’d be taken away at once. Even my poor nanny, who holds me with one hand and doesn’t respond to my crying and pulling, is mesmerized, gazing and listening as if to a bird of paradise. It’s that sternness of clever faces and gravity before the start of cutting out that I find it painful to picture, for some reason, even now. You, Tatyana Pavlovna, are terribly fond of cutting out! Aristocratic as it may be, I still much prefer a woman who doesn’t work at all. Don’t take it to your own account, Sofya . . . Not that you could! A woman is a great power even without that. However, you know that, too, Sonya. What’s your opinion, Arkady Makarovich? You probably protest?”
“No, not really,” I replied. “It’s particularly well put, that a woman is a great power, though I don’t know why you connect it with work. And that one can’t help working when one has no money—you know yourself.”
“But now it’s enough,” he turned to my mother, who was beaming all over (when he addressed me, she gave a start), “at least for right now, I don’t want to see any hand work, I ask for my own sake. You, Arkady, as a youth of our time, are surely a bit of a socialist. Well, would you believe it, my friend, those who have the greatest love of idleness are from the eternally laboring people!”
“Maybe not idleness, but rest.”
“No, precisely idleness, total do-nothingness, that’s the ideal! I knew one eternally laboring man, though not from the people; he was a rather developed man and able to generalize. All his life, maybe every day, he dreamed passionately and sweetly of the most total idleness, carrying his ideal to the absolute—to the boundless independence, to the eternal freedom of dreaming and idle contemplation. It went on like that till he broke down completely at work. He couldn’t mend; he died in the hospital. I’m sometimes seriously ready to conclude that the notion of the delights of labor was thought up by idle people, of the virtuous sort, naturally. It’s one of those ‘Geneva ideas’ from the end of the last century.33 Tatyana Pavlovna, two days ago I cut out an advertisement from the newspaper. Here it is.” He took a scrap of paper from his waistcoat pocket. “It’s from one of those endless students, who know classical languages and mathematics and are ready to relocate, live in a garret, or anywhere. Now listen: ‘Female teacher prepares for all institutions of learning’ (for all, listen to that) ‘and gives lessons in arithmetic’—just one line, but a classic! Prepares for institutions of learning—of course, that also means in arithmetic? No, she mentions arithmetic separately. This—this is pure starvation, this is the ultimate degree of need. The touching thing here is precisely this lack of skill: obviously she never prepared herself to be a teacher, and is hardly able to teach anything. But it’s either drown herself, or drag her last rouble to the newspaper and advertise that she prepares for all institutions of learning and, on top of that, gives lessons in arithmetic. Per tutto mondo e in altri siti.”20
“Ah, Andrei Petrovich, she must be helped! Where does she live?” exclaimed Tatyana Pavlovna.
“Oh, there are lots of them!” He put the address in his pocket. “This bag is full of all sorts of treats—for you, Liza, and for you, Tatyana Pavlovna; Sofya and I don’t like sweets. You, too, if you please, young man. I bought it all myself at Eliseevs’ and Ballet’s.34 For too long we’ve been ‘sitting hungry,’ as Lukerya says.” (N.B. None of us ever sat hungry.) “There are grapes, bonbons, duchesse pears, and a strawberry tart; I even bought some excellent liqueur; also nuts. It’s curious, Tatyana Pavlovna, ever since childhood I’ve loved nuts, you know, the simplest kinds. Liza takes after me: she also likes to crack nuts like a squirrel. But there’s nothing lovelier, Tatyana Pavlovna, than chancing sometimes, among your childhood memories, to imagine yourself momentarily in the woods, in the bushes, when you were gathering nuts . . . The days are almost autumnal, but clear, sometimes so fresh, you hide in the thicket, you wander off into the forest, there’s a smell of leaves . . . Do I see something sympathetic in your look, Arkady Makarovich?”
“The first years of my childhood were also spent in the country.”
“Why, no, I believe you were living in Moscow . . . if I’m not mistaken.”
“He was living with the Andronikovs in Moscow when you came that time; but before then he lived with your late aunt, Varvara Stepanovna, in the country,” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up.
“Sofya, here’s the money, put it away. They promised to give me five thousand one of these days.”
“So there’s no more hope for the princes?” asked Tatyana Pavlovna.
“None whatsoever, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“I’ve always sympathized with you, Andrei Petrovich, and all of yours, and have been a friend of your house; but, though the princes are strangers to me, by God, I feel sorry for them. Don’t be angry, Andrei Petrovich.”
“I have no intention of sharing, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“Of course, you know my thinking, Andrei Petrovich. They would have stopped the litigation if you had offered to go halves with them at the very beginning; now, of course, it’s too late. However, I won’t venture to judge . . . I say it because the deceased certainly wouldn’t have cut them out of his will.”
“Not only wouldn’t have cut them out, he’d certainly have left everything to them and cut out just me alone, if he’d been able to do it and had known how to write a will properly; but now the law is with me—and it’s finished. I cannot and do not want to share, Tatyana Pavlovna, and the matter ends there.”
He uttered this even with anger, which he rarely allowed himself. Tatyana Pavlovna quieted down. Mother lowered her eyes somehow sadly: Versilov knew that she approved of Tatyana Pavlovna’s opinion.
“It’s the slap in Ems!” I thought to myself. The document procured by Kraft, which I had in my pocket, would fare badly if it fell into his hands. I suddenly felt that it was all still hanging on my neck; this thought, in connection with all the rest, of course, had an irritating effect on me.
“Arkady, I wish you’d dress better, my friend; you’re not dressed badly, but in view of things to come, there’s a good Frenchman I might recommend to you, a most conscientious man, and with taste.”
“I beg you never to make me such offers,” I suddenly ripped out.
“Why’s that?”
“I, of course, do not find it humiliating, but we are not in such agreement; on the contrary, we even disagree, because one day, tomorrow, I’ll stop going to the prince’s, seeing not the least work to do there . . .”
“But the fact that you go there, that you sit with him—is already work!”
“Such notions are humiliating.”
“I don’t understand; however, if you’re so ticklish, don’t take money from him, just go there. You’ll upset him terribly; he’s already stuck on you, you can be sure . . . However, as you wish . . .”
He was obviously displeased.
“You tell me not to ask for money, but thanks to
you I did a mean thing today. You didn’t warn me, and today I demanded my month’s salary from him.”
“So you’ve already taken care of it; and, I’ll confess, I thought you’d never begin to ask. How adroit you’ve all now become, though! There are no young people these days, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
He was terribly irritated; I also became terribly angry.
“I ought to have settled accounts with you . . . it was you who made me do it—now I don’t know how to be.”
“By the way, Sophie, give Arkady back his sixty roubles immediately; and you, my friend, don’t be angry at the hasty reckoning. I can guess from your face that you have some enterprise in mind, and that you’re in need of . . . working capital . . . or something like that.”
“I don’t know what my face expresses, but I never expected of mama that she would tell you about that money, since I asked her not to.” I looked at my mother, flashing my eyes. I can’t even express how offended I was.
“Arkasha, darling, forgive me, for God’s sake, there was no way I couldn’t tell him . . .”
“My friend, don’t hold it against her that she revealed your secrets,” he turned to me. “Besides, she did it with good intentions—a mother simply wanted to boast of her son’s feelings. But believe me, I’d have guessed that you’re a capitalist even without that. All your secrets are written on your honest face. He has ‘his idea,’ Tatyana Pavlovna, I told you so.”
“Let’s forget my honest face,” I went on ripping out. “I know you often see through things, though in other cases no further than a chicken’s nose—and your perceptive abilities have surprised me. Well, yes, I do have my ‘idea.’ The fact that you put it that way is, of course, accidental, but I’m not afraid to admit it: I have an ‘idea.’ I’m not afraid and not ashamed.”
“Above all, don’t be ashamed.”
“But all the same I won’t ever reveal it to you.”
“That is, you won’t deign to reveal it. No need, my friend, I know the essence of your idea even so; in any case, it’s this: ‘To the desert I withdraw . . .’35 Tatyana Pavlovna! I think he wants . . . to become Rothschild, or something like that, and withdraw into his grandeur. Naturally, he will magnanimously grant you and me a pension—or maybe he won’t grant me one—but in any case, that will be the last we see of him. He’s like a new moon—it no sooner appears than it sets.”
The Adolescent Page 15