“Tatyana Pavlovna just said everything I needed to know and never could understand before: that you didn’t send me to be a cobbler, consequently I should be grateful. I fail to understand why I’m not grateful even now, when I’ve been brought to reason. Or is it your proud blood speaking, Andrei Petrovich?”
“Probably not. And, besides, you must agree that all your outbursts downstairs, instead of falling on me, as you meant, only tyrannized and tormented her. Yet it seems it’s not for you to judge her. And how is she guilty before you? Explain to me also, by the way, my friend: why was it and with what purpose that you spread it around in school, and in high school, and all your life, and in front of every first comer, as I’ve heard, that you are illegitimate? I’ve heard that you did it with a sort of special eagerness. And yet it’s all nonsense and vile slander: you are legitimate, a Dolgoruky, the son of Makar Ivanych Dolgoruky, a respectable man, remarkable for his intelligence and character. And if you have received higher education, that is in fact owing to your former master, Versilov, but what of it? Above all, by proclaiming your illegitimacy, which in itself is a slander, you thereby revealed your mother’s secret and, out of some sort of false pride, dragged your mother to judgment before the first scum to come along. My friend, that is very ignoble, the more so as your mother is not personally guilty of anything: hers is the purest character, and if she is not Mrs. Versilov, it is solely because she is still married.”
“Enough, I agree with you completely, and I believe so much in your intelligence that I fully hope you will stop this already too-lengthy scolding of me. You have such a love of measure; and yet everything has its measure, even your sudden love of my mother. This will be better: since you’ve ventured to come to me and sit here for a quarter or half an hour (I still don’t know what for; well, let’s suppose it’s for my mother’s peace of mind)—and, moreover, you talk to me with such eagerness, in spite of what happened downstairs, it would be better if you told me about my father—this Makar Ivanovich, the wanderer.42 I’d like to hear about him precisely from you; I’ve long meant to ask you. Since we’re parting, and maybe for a long time, I’d also like very much to get an answer from you to this question: how is it possible that in this whole twenty years you could have no effect on my mother’s prejudices, and now also my sister’s, enough to dispel with your civilizing influence the surrounding darkness of her original milieu? Oh, I’m not talking about her purity! Even without that she has always been infinitely superior to you morally, forgive me, but . . . this is merely an infinitely superior corpse. Only Versilov lives, and all the rest around him, and everything connected with him, vegetates under the unfailing condition that it has the honor of nourishing him with its forces, its living juices. But wasn’t she alive once? Wasn’t there something you loved in her? Wasn’t she a woman once?”
“My friend, if you like, she never was,” he answered me, twisting at once into that former manner he had had with me, which I remembered so well, and which infuriated me so much; that is, he was apparently the most sincere simpleheartedness, but look—and everything in him was just the deepest mockery, so that sometimes I couldn’t figure out his face at all, “she never was! A Russian woman can never be a woman.”
“And a Polish woman, a French woman, can be? Or an Italian, a passionate Italian woman, there’s what’s capable of captivating a civilized Russian man of a higher milieu like Versilov?”
“Well, who would have expected to run into a Slavophile?”43 Versilov laughed.
I remember his story word for word; he even began talking with great eagerness and obvious pleasure. It was all too clear to me that he had by no means come to me for a chat, and not at all so as to calm my mother, but probably with other goals in mind.
II
“ALL THESE TWENTY years, your mother and I have lived in complete silence,” he began his palaver (affected and unnatural in the highest degree), “and all that has been between us has taken place in silence. The main quality of our twenty-year-long liaison has been—speechlessness. I don’t think we even quarreled once. True, I often went away and left her alone, but in the end I always came back. Nous revenons toujours,22 that’s a fundamental quality of men; it’s owing to their magnanimity. If the matter of marriage depended on women alone, no marriage would stay together. Humility, meekness, lowliness, and at the same time firmness, strength, real strength—that is your mother’s character. Note that she’s the best of all the women I’ve met in the world. And that there is strength in her—that I can testify to; I’ve seen how that strength nourishes her. Where it’s a matter, I wouldn’t say of convictions, there can be no proper convictions here, but of what they consider convictions, which, to their minds, also means sacred, there even torture would be to no avail. Well, but you can judge for yourself: do I look like a torturer? That’s why I preferred to be silent about almost everything, not only because it’s easier, and, I confess, I don’t regret it. In this way everything went over by itself, broadly and humanely, so that I don’t even ascribe to myself any praise for it. I’ll say, by the way, in parenthesis, that for some reason I suspect she never believed in my humaneness, and therefore always trembled; but while trembling, at the same time she never yielded to any culture. They somehow know how to do it, and there’s something here that we don’t understand, and generally they know better than we how to manage their own affairs. They can go on living in their own way in situations that are most unnatural for them, and remain completely themselves in situations that are most not their own. We can’t do that.”
“They who? I don’t quite understand you.”
“The people, my friend, I’m speaking of the people. They have demonstrated this great, vital force and historical breadth both morally and politically. But to return to what we were saying, I’ll observe about your mother that she’s not always silent; your mother occasionally says things, but says them in such a way that you see straight off that you’ve only wasted your time talking, even if you’ve spent five years beforehand gradually preparing her. Besides, her objections are quite unexpected. Note once again that I don’t consider her a fool at all; on the contrary, there’s a certain kind of intelligence here, and even a most remarkable intelligence; however, maybe you won’t believe me about her intelligence . . .”
“Why not? I only don’t believe that you really believe in her intelligence yourself, and are not pretending.”
“Oh? You consider me such a chameleon? My friend, I allow you a bit too much . . . as a spoiled son . . . but let it remain so for this time.”
“Tell me about my father—the truth, if you can.”
“Concerning Makar Ivanovich? Makar Ivanovich is, as you already know, a household serf, who had, so to speak, a desire for a certain glory . . .”
“I’ll bet that at this moment you envy him for something!”
“On the contrary, my friend, on the contrary, and, if you wish, I’m very glad to see you in such whimsical spirits; I swear that precisely now I am in a highly repentant humor, and precisely now, at this moment, and maybe for the thousandth time, I impotently regret all that happened twenty years ago. Besides, as God is my witness, it all happened quite inadvertently . . . well, and afterwards, as far as it was in my power, also humanely; at least so far as I then understood the endeavor of humaneness. Oh, we were all boiling over then with the zeal to do good, to serve civic goals, high ideas; we condemned ranks, our inherited rights, estates, and even moneylenders, at least some of us did . . . I swear to you. We weren’t many, but we spoke well and, I assure you, we sometimes even acted well.”
“That was when you wept on his shoulder?”
“My friend, I agree with you in everything beforehand; by the way, you heard about the shoulder from me, which means that at this moment you are making wicked use of my own simpleheartedness and trustfulness; but you must agree that that shoulder really wasn’t as bad as it seems at first sight, especially for that time; we were only beginning then. I was faking, of co
urse, but I didn’t know I was faking. Don’t you ever fake, for instance, in practical cases?”
“Just now, downstairs, I waxed a little sentimental, and felt very ashamed, as I was coming up here, at the thought that you might think I was faking. It’s true that on some occasions, though your feelings are sincere, you sometimes pretend; but downstairs just now it was all natural.”
“That’s precisely it; you’ve defined it very happily in a single phrase: ‘though your feelings are sincere, all the same you pretend.’ Well, that’s exactly how it was with me: though I was pretending, I wept quite sincerely. I won’t dispute that Makar Ivanovich might have taken that shoulder as an added mockery, if he had been more clever; but his honesty then stood in the way of his perspicacity. Only I don’t know whether he pitied me then or not; I remember I very much wanted that.”
“You know,” I interrupted him, “you’re mocking now, too, as you say that. And generally all the time, whenever you spoke to me during this whole month, you did it mockingly. Why did you always do that when you spoke to me?”
“You think so?” he replied meekly. “You’re very suspicious. However, if I do laugh, it’s not at you, or at least not at you alone, rest assured. But I’m not laughing now, and back then—in short, I did all I could then, and, believe me, not for my own benefit. We, that is, the beautiful people, as opposed to the common folk, did not know at all how to act for our own benefit then; on the contrary, we always mucked things up for ourselves as much as possible, and I confess, among us then we considered that some sort of ‘higher benefit of our own’—in a higher sense, naturally. The present generation of advanced people is much more grasping than we were. At that time, even before the sin, I explained everything to Makar Ivanovich with extraordinary directness. I now agree that much of it didn’t need to be explained at all, still less with such directness; to say nothing of humaneness, it would simply have been more polite. But try restraining yourself when you’re dancing away, and want to perform a nice little step! And maybe such are the demands of the beautiful and the lofty44 in reality, all my life I’ve been unable to resolve that. However, it’s too profound a theme for our superficial conversation, but I swear to you that I sometimes die of shame when I remember it. I offered him three thousand roubles then, and, I remember, he said nothing, I alone did the talking. Imagine, I fancied he was afraid of me, that is, of my serf-owning rights, and, I remember, I tried as hard as I could to encourage him; I persuaded him not to be afraid of anything and to voice all his wishes, and even with all possible criticism. As a guarantee, I gave him my word that if he didn’t accept my conditions, that is, the three thousand, freedom (for him and his wife, naturally), and that he should go off on a journey any which way (without his wife, naturally)—he should tell me so directly, and I would at once grant him his freedom, let him have his wife, reward them both with the same three thousand, I believe, and it would not be they who would go off any which way, but I myself would go away to Italy for three years, all alone. Mon ami, I wouldn’t have taken Mlle. Sapozhkov to Italy, I assure you; I was extremely pure at that time. And what then? This Makar understood excellently well that I would do just what I said; but he went on saying nothing, and only when I was about to fall down before him a third time, he drew back, waved his arm, and went out even somewhat unceremoniously, I assure you, which even surprised me then. I saw myself for a moment in the mirror then, and cannot forget it. In general, when they don’t say anything, it’s worst of all, and he was a gloomy character, and, I confess, not only did I not trust him, when I summoned him to my study, but I was even terribly afraid: there are characters in that milieu, and terribly many of them, who contain in themselves, so to speak, the incarnation of unrespectability, and that is something one fears more than a beating. Sic. And what a risk, what a risk I took! What if he had shouted for the whole yard to hear, howled, this provincial Uriah45—well, how would it have been then for me, an undersized David, and what could I have done? That was why I resorted to the three thousand first, it was instinctive, but, fortunately, I was mistaken; this Makar Ivanovich was something quite different . . .”
“Tell me, was there a sin? You said you sent for the husband even before the sin?”
“That depends, you see, on how you understand . . .”
“Meaning there was. You just said you were mistaken about him, that he was something different. What was different?”
“Precisely what, I don’t know even now. But it was something else, and, you know, even quite respectable; I conclude that because by the end I felt three times more ashamed in his presence. The very next day he agreed to go on a journey, without a word—naturally, not forgetting any of the rewards I had offered.”
“He took the money?”
“What else! You know, my friend, on this point he even quite surprised me. Naturally, I didn’t happen to have three thousand in my pocket at the time, but I got hold of seven hundred roubles and handed them to him to start with. And what then? He requested the remaining two thousand three hundred from me, just to be sure, in the form of a promissory note in the name of some merchant. Two years later he used this letter to request the money from me through the court, and with interest, so that he surprised me again, the more so as he literally went about collecting money for building a church of God, and since then he’s been wandering for twenty years. I don’t understand why a wanderer needs so much money for himself . . . money’s such a worldly thing . . . At that moment, of course, I offered it sincerely and, so to speak, with an initial fervor, but later, when so much time had passed, I naturally might have thought better of it . . . and I hoped he would at least spare me . . . or, so to speak, spare us, her and me, would at least wait. However, he didn’t even wait . . .”
(I’ll make a necessary nota bene here: if my mother should happen to outlive Mr. Versilov, she would be left literally without a kopeck in her old age, if it weren’t for that three thousand of Makar Ivanovich’s, which had long been doubled by interest, and which he left to her in its entirety, to a rouble, last year in his will. He had divined Versilov even then.)
“You once said that Makar Ivanovich came to visit you several times, and always stayed in my mother’s apartment?”
“Yes, my friend, and I confess, at first I was terribly afraid of those visits. In all this period, in twenty years, he came only six or seven times, and on the first occasions, if I was at home, I hid myself. I didn’t even understand at first what it meant and why he came. But then, owing to certain considerations, it seemed to me that it was not at all that stupid on his part. Then, by chance, I decided out of curiosity to go and look at him, and, I assure you, my impression was most original. This was his third or fourth visit, precisely at the time when I was about to become an arbiter of the peace and when, naturally, I was setting out with all my strength to study Russia. I even heard a great many new things from him. Besides, I met in him precisely what I had never expected to meet: a sort of good humor, an evenness of character, and, most surprisingly, all but mirth. Not the slightest allusion to that (tu comprends23), and, in the highest degree, an ability to talk sense and to talk excellently well, that is, without that stupid homegrown profundity, which, I confess, I cannot stand, despite all my democratism, and without all those strained Russicisms in which ‘real Russian people’ speak in novels or on stage. With all that, extremely little about religion, unless you brought it up yourself, and even quite nice stories of their own sort about monasteries and monastery life, if you yourself became curious. And above all—deference, that modest deference, precisely the deference that is necessary for the highest equality, moreover, without which, in my opinion, one cannot attain to superiority. Precisely here, through the lack of the least arrogance, one attains to the highest respectability, and there appears a person who undoubtedly respects himself, and precisely whatever the situation he finds himself in, and whatever his destiny happens to be. This ability to respect oneself in one’s own situation—is extremely
rare in the world, at least as rare as a true sense of one’s own dignity . . . You’ll see for yourself, once you’ve lived. But what struck me most afterwards, precisely afterwards, and not at the beginning” (Versilov added), “was that this Makar was of extremely stately appearance and, I assure you, was extremely handsome. True, he was old, but Dark-faced, tall, and straight,46
simple and grave; I even marveled at how my poor Sofya could have preferred me then; he was fifty then, but was still such a fine fellow, and I was such a whirligig beside him. However, I remember he was already unpardonably gray then, which meant he was just as gray when he married her . . . That might have had an influence.”
This Versilov had the most scoundrelly high-toned manner: having said (when it was impossible not to) several quite clever and beautiful things, suddenly to end on purpose with some stupidity like this surmise about Makar Ivanovich’s gray hair and its influence on my mother. He did it on purpose, probably not knowing why himself, from a stupid society habit. To listen to him—it seemed he was speaking very seriously, and yet within himself he was faking or laughing.
III
I DON’T UNDERSTAND why I was suddenly overcome then by terrible anger. Generally, I recall some of my outbursts in those minutes with great displeasure. I suddenly got up from my chair.
“You know what,” I said, “you say you came mainly so that my mother would think we’ve made peace. Enough time has passed for her to think that; would you kindly leave me alone?”
He blushed slightly and got up from his place.
“My dear, you are extremely unceremonious with me. However, good-bye; love can’t be forced. I’ll allow myself only one question: do you really want to leave the prince?”
“Aha! I just knew you had special goals . . .”
“That is, you suspect I came to persuade you to stay with the prince, because I stand to profit from it myself. But, my friend, you don’t think I also invited you from Moscow with some sort of profit in mind, do you? Oh, how suspicious you are! On the contrary, I wished for your own good in everything. And even now, when my means have improved so much, I wish that, at least occasionally, you would allow your mother and me to help you.”
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