Текст книги "The Adolescent"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“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 . . .’ ³⁵Tatyana 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.”

I shuddered inside. Of course, it was all chance: he knew nothing and wasn’t speaking of that at all, though he did mention Rothschild. But how could he have defined my feelings so accurately: to break with them and withdraw? He had guessed it all and wanted to dirty the tragedy of the fact beforehand with his cynicism. There was no doubt that he was terribly irritated.

“Mama, forgive me my outburst, the more so as it’s impossible to hide anything from Andrei Petrovich anyway!” I laughed in-sincerely, trying to move it all towards joking at least for a moment.

“The best thing, my dear, is that you laughed. It’s hard to imagine how much every person gains by that, even in appearance. I’m speaking in the most serious way. You know, Tatyana Pavlovna, he always looks as if he has something so important on his mind that he’s even ashamed of this circumstance himself.”

“I beg you seriously to be more restrained, Andrei Petrovich.”

“You’re right, my friend; but it needs to be spoken out once and for all, so that we don’t keep touching on it later. You came to us from Moscow in order to rebel at once—that’s what we know so far about the purpose of your coming. Of the fact that you came in order to astonish us with something—of that I naturally make no mention. Then, you’ve been with us and snorting at us for a whole month—yet you’re obviously an intelligent man and in that quality might have left such snorting to those who have no other way of taking revenge on people for their nonentity. You always close yourself up, whereas your honest air and red cheeks testify directly that you could look everyone in the eyes with perfect innocence. He’s a hypochondriac, Tatyana Pavlovna; I don’t understand, why are they all hypochondriacs now?”

“If you didn’t even know where I grew up—how could you know what makes a man a hypochondriac?”

“There’s the solution: you’re offended that I could forget where you grew up!”

“Not at all! Don’t ascribe stupidities to me. Mama, Andrei Petrovich just praised me for laughing, so let’s laugh—why sit like this! Shall I tell you funny stories about myself? The more so as Andrei Petrovich knows nothing of my adventures?”

It was all smoldering in me. I knew we’d never sit together again like now, and that, having left this house, I would never come back, and therefore, on the eve of all that, I couldn’t restrain myself. He himself had challenged me to such a finish.

“That’s very nice, of course, if it really will be funny,” he observed, peering at me keenly. “You turned a bit crude, my friend, wherever it was that you grew up, but, anyhow, you’re still decent enough. He’s quite nice today, Tatyana Pavlovna, and it’s an excellent thing that you’re finally untying that bag.”

But Tatyana Pavlovna was frowning; she didn’t even turn at his words and went on untying the bag and putting the treats on plates that had been brought. Mother also sat in complete bewilderment, of course, understanding and sensing that things were turning out wrong with us. My sister again touched my elbow.

III

“I SIMPLY WANT to tell you all,” I began with the most casual air, “about how a certain father met his own dear son for the first time; this took place precisely ‘where he grew up’ . . .”

“But, my friend, won’t this be . . . boring? You know: tous les genres . . .” ^{21 36}

“Don’t frown, Andrei Petrovich, it’s not at all what you think. I precisely want everyone to laugh.”

“Then may God hear you, my dear. I know you love us all and . . . you won’t want to upset our evening,” he murmured somehow affectedly, negligently.

“Here, too, of course, you’ve guessed by my face that I love you?”

“Yes, partly by your face.”

“Well, and I’ve long guessed by Tatyana Pavlovna’s face that she’s in love with me. Don’t look at me so ferociously, Tatyana Pavlovna, it’s better to laugh! Better to laugh!”

She suddenly turned quickly to me and peered at me piercingly for half a minute.

“You watch out!” She shook her finger at me, but so seriously that it could no longer refer to my stupid joke, but was a warning about something else: “Does he intend to start something?”

“So, Andrei Petrovich, you really don’t remember how you and I met for the first time in our lives?”

“By God, I’ve forgotten, my friend, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I only remember that it was somehow very long ago and took place somewhere . . .”

“Mama, do you remember visiting the village where I grew up, I think it was before I was six or seven, and above all, did you really come to that village once, or did I only imagine, as in a dream, that I saw you there for the first time? I’ve long wanted to ask you, but I kept putting it off. Now the time has come.”

“Why, yes, Arkashenka, yes! I visited Varvara Stepanovna there three times; the first time I came when you were only one year old, the second when you were already going on four, and then when you were just turning six.”

“Well, there, I’ve been wanting to ask you about it all month.”

Mother simply glowed from the quick rush of memories, and she asked me with feeling:

“Arkashenka, do you really remember me from then?”

“I don’t remember and don’t know anything, only something of your face has remained in my heart all my life, and, besides that, the knowledge remained that you were my mother. I see that village now as in a dream, I even forget my nanny. I have a drop of recollection of Varvara Stepanovna, only because she eternally had her cheek bound from toothache. I also remember huge trees near the house, lindens, I think, then strong sunlight sometimes coming through the open windows, a front garden with flowers, a path, and you, mama, I remember clearly only at one moment, when you took me to communion in the church there, and lifted me up to receive the gifts and kiss the chalice; that was in summer, and a dove flew across under the cupola, from window to window . . .”

“Lord! That’s just how it all was,” my mother clasped her hands, “and I remember that little dove as if it were now. You gave a start just at the chalice and cried, ‘A dove, a little dove!’”

“Your face, or something of it, its expression, remained so well in my memory that five years later, in Moscow, I recognized you at once, though no one told me then that you were my mother. And when I first met Andrei Petrovich, I was taken from the Andronikovs; before that, I had quietly and cheerfully vegetated with them for five years on end. I remember their government apartment in detail, and all those ladies and girls, who have all now aged so much here, and the house full of everything, and Andronikov himself, how he himself brought all the provisions from town in bags—fowl, perch, and suckling pig—and at table ladled out the soup for us, in place of his wife, who was too uppish, and the whole table always laughed at that, and he first of all. The young ladies there taught me French, but most of all I loved Krylov’s fables, ³⁷learned many of them by heart, and recited one to Andronikov each day, going straight to his tiny study, whether he was busy or not. Well, so it was through a fable that you and I became acquainted, Andrei Petrovich . . . I see you’re beginning to remember.”

“I remember a thing or two, my dear, namely, that you recited something to me then . . . a fable, I believe, or a passage from Woe from Wit? ³⁸What a memory you have, though!”

“Memory! What else! I’ve remembered only this all my life.”

“Well, well, my dear, you even liven me up.”

He even smiled, and right after him my mother and sister began to smile. Trustfulness was returning; but Tatyana Pavlovna, having arranged the treats on the table and sat down in the corner, went on piercing me with her nasty gaze.

“It so happened,” I went on, “that suddenly, one bright morning, a friend of my childhood appeared, Tatyana Pavlovna, who always appeared unexpectedly in my life, as in the theater, and took me in a carriage, and brought me to a grand house, to a magnificent apartment. You were then staying with Mme. Fanariotov, Andrei Petrovich, in her empty house, which she had once bought from you; she was abroad at the time. I had always worn short jackets; here suddenly I was dressed in a pretty blue frock coat and excellent linen. Tatyana Pavlovna fussed over me all that day and brought me many things; and I kept walking through the empty rooms, looking at myself in all the mirrors. In this way, at around ten o’clock the next morning, wandering about the apartment, I suddenly walked, quite by chance, into your study. I’d already seen you the day before, when I was brought there, but only fleetingly, on the stairs. You were coming down the stairs to get into a carriage and go somewhere; you had arrived in Moscow alone then, after an extremely long absence, and for a short time, so that you were snapped up by everybody and almost didn’t live at home. Meeting me and Tatyana Pavlovna, you only drew out a long ‘Ah!’—and didn’t even stop.”

“He describes it with particular love,” observed Versilov, turning to Tatyana Pavlovna; she turned away and didn’t answer.

“I can see you then as if it were now, flourishing and handsome. It’s surprising how you’ve managed to age and lose your good looks in these nine years—forgive my frankness; however, back then you were already around thirty-seven, but I even gazed at you in wonder: you had such astonishing hair, almost perfectly black, with a lustrous shine, and not a trace of gray; moustache and side-whiskers of a jeweler’s finish—there’s no other way to put it; your face was matte pale, not the sickly pale that it is now, but like the face of your daughter Anna Andreevna, whom I had the honor of meeting today; burning dark eyes and gleaming teeth, especially when you laughed. You precisely burst out laughing as you looked me over when I came in; I had little discernment then, only my heart rejoiced at your smile. That morning you were in a dark blue velvet jacket, on your neck a scarf of bright Solferino crimson over a magnificent shirt with Alençon lace, standing in front of a mirror with a notebook in your hand and rehearsing, declaiming Chatsky’s last monologue, and especially his last cry:

‘My carriage, my carriage!’”

“Ah, my God,” cried Versilov, “but he’s right! Despite the shortness of my stay in Moscow, I had undertaken then to play Chatsky in Alexandra Petrovna Vitovtov’s home theater, because Zhileiko was sick!” ³⁹

“Had you really forgotten?” laughed Tatyana Pavlovna.

“He’s reminded me! And I confess, those few days in Moscow were perhaps the best moment of my whole life! We were all still so young then . . . and everyone was so ardently expectant . . . In Moscow then I unexpectedly met so many . . . But go on, my dear, you did very well this time to recall it in such detail . . .”

“I stood, looked at you, and suddenly cried, ‘Ah, how good, the real Chatsky!’ You suddenly turned to me and asked, ‘So you already know Chatsky?’—and sat down on the sofa and turned to your coffee in the most charming mood—I could have kissed you. Then I told you that at Andronikov’s everybody read a lot, and the young ladies knew many poems by heart and played scenes from Woe from Wit among themselves, and that last week we all read A Hunter’s Sketches ⁴⁰aloud together, and that I loved Krylov’s fables most of all and knew them by heart. You told me to recite something by heart, and I recited ‘The Fussy Bride’ for you: ‘A maiden-bride was thinking on a suitor.’”

“Precisely, precisely, now I remember everything,” Versilov cried again, “but, my friend, I remember you clearly, too: you were such a nice boy then, even a nimble boy, and, I swear to you, you’ve also lost a bit in these nine years.”

Here everybody, even Tatyana Pavlovna herself, burst out laughing. Clearly, Andrei Petrovich was joking and had “paid” me in my own coin for my barb about his having aged. Everybody cheered up; and it had indeed been well put.

“As I recited, you were smiling, but before I reached the middle, you stopped me, rang the bell, and, when the servant came in, told him to send for Tatyana Pavlovna, who came running with such a cheerful look that, though I had seen her the day before, I almost didn’t recognize her now. In front of Tatyana Pavlovna, I began ‘The Fussy Bride’ again and finished brilliantly, even Tatyana Pavlovna smiled, and you, Andrei Petrovich, you even shouted ‘Bravo!’ and observed warmly that if I had recited ‘The Grasshopper and the Ant,’ it wouldn’t have been so surprising, that any sensible boy my age could read it sensibly, but that this fable:

A maiden-bride was thinking on a suitor.

In that there’s yet no sin . . .

‘Just listen to how he articulates: “In that there’s yet no sin”!’ In short, you were delighted. Here you suddenly began speaking to Tatyana Pavlovna in French, and she instantly frowned and began to object to you, even very vehemently; but since it was impossible to contradict Andrei Petrovich if he suddenly wanted something, Tatyana Pavlovna hurried me off to her rooms; there my face and hands were washed again, my shirt was changed, my hair was pomaded and even curled. Then towards evening Tatyana Pavlovna herself got dressed up quite magnificently, even more so than I could have expected, and took me with her in a carriage. I found myself in a theater for the first time in my life, at an amateur performance at Mme. Vitovtov’s: candles, chandeliers, ladies, military men, generals, young ladies, a curtain, rows of chairs—I had never seen anything like it before. Tatyana Pavlovna took a most modest seat in one of the back rows and sat me down beside her. Naturally, there were other children like me there, but I no longer looked at anything and waited with a fainting heart for the performance. When you came out, Andrei Petrovich, I was rapturous, rapturous to the point of tears—why, over what, I don’t understand myself. Why tears of rapture?—that’s what I’ve found so wild, remembering it all these nine years! I followed the comedy with bated breath; of course, the only thing I understood about it was that shewas unfaithful to him, that stupid people not worth his little finger laughed at him. When he declaimed at the ball, I understood that he was humiliated and insulted, that he was reproaching all these pathetic people, but that he was great, great! Of course, my preparation at the Andronikovs’ contributed to my understanding, but—so did your acting, Andrei Petrovich! I was seeing the stage for the first time! In the final scene, when Chatsky cries, ‘My carriage, my carriage!’ (and you cried it remarkably well), I tore from my seat and, together with the whole audience, which burst into applause, I clapped and shouted ‘Bravo!’ with all my might! I vividly remember at that same moment a furious pinch from Tatyana Pavlovna piercing me from behind, ‘below the lower back,’ but I paid no attention! Naturally, right after Woe from Wit, Tatyana Pavlovna brought me home: ‘You can’t stay for the dancing, and it’s only because of you that I can’t stay,’ you, Tatyana Pavlovna, hissed at me all the way in the carriage. All night I was delirious, and the next day at ten o’clock I was already standing by your study, but the study was closed. You had people with you, you were busy with them; then you suddenly drove off for the whole day, till late at night—and so I didn’t see you! What it was that I wanted to tell you then—I’ve forgotten, of course, and didn’t know then, but I had a burning desire to see you as soon as possible. But the next morning, by eight o’clock, you were so good as to leave for Serpukhov: you had just sold your Tula estate in order to pay off your creditors, but you were still left holding a handsome sum, that was why you had come to Moscow, which you couldn’t visit before then for fear of creditors; and there was only this one boor from Serpukhov, alone of all your creditors, who refused to take half the debt instead of the whole. Tatyana Pavlovna wouldn’t even respond to my questions: ‘It’s nothing to you, and the day after tomorrow I’ll be taking you to boarding school; get ready, gather your notebooks, put your books in order, and get into the habit of packing your own trunk, you’re not to grow up into a do-nothing, sir!’ and this and that—oh, how you drummed away at me for those three days, Tatyana Pavlovna! It ended with my being taken to Touchard’s boarding school, in love with you and innocent, Andrei Petrovich, and it may have been the stupidest incident, this whole encounter with you, but, would you believe it, six months later I wanted to run away from Touchard’s to you!”

“You’ve told it beautifully and reminded me so vividly of everything, ” Versilov pronounced distinctly, “but what chiefly strikes me in your account is the wealth of certain strange details, about my debts, for instance. To say nothing of a certain impropriety in these details, I don’t understand how you could even have gotten hold of them.”

“Details? How I got hold of them? But, I repeat, the only thing I’ve done is get hold of details about you all these nine years.”

“A strange confession and a strange pastime!”

He turned, half reclined in his armchair, and even yawned slightly—whether on purpose or not, I don’t know.

“So, then, shall I go on with how I wanted to run away to you from Touchard’s?”

“Forbid him, Andrei Petrovich, suppress him, and throw him out,” Tatyana Pavlovna snapped.

“Impossible, Tatyana Pavlovna,” Versilov answered her imposingly. “Arkady obviously has something in mind, and therefore we absolutely must allow him to finish. Well, and let him! He’ll tell it and get it off his chest, and for him the main thing is to get it off his chest. Begin your new story, my dear—that is, I’m only calling it new; don’t worry, I know the ending.”

IV

“I RAN AWAY, that is, I wanted to run away to you, very simply. Tatyana Pavlovna, you remember how Touchard wrote you a letter two weeks after I was installed there, don’t you? Marya Ivanovna showed me the letter later, it also wound up among the late Andronikov’s papers. Touchard suddenly thought he had asked too little money, and in his letter announced to you ‘with dignity’ that, in his institution, princes and senators’ children were educated, and that he considered it beneath his institution to keep a pupil with such an origin as mine, unless he was paid extra.”

“ Mon cher, you might . . .”

“Oh, never mind, never mind,” I interrupted, “I’ll tell only a little about Touchard. You replied to him from the provinces, Tatyana Pavlovna, two weeks later, and sharply refused. I remember him then, all purple, coming into our classroom. He was a very short and very stocky little Frenchman of about forty-five, and indeed of Parisian origin, from cobblers, of course, but from time immemorial he had held a government post in Moscow as a teacher of French, and even had some rank, which he was extremely proud of—a profoundly uneducated man. We, his pupils, were only six in number; among us there was indeed some nephew of a Moscow senator, and we all lived there in a completely family situation, more under the supervision of his wife, a very affected lady, the daughter of some Russian official. During those two weeks I put on airs terribly in front of my comrades, boasting of my dark blue frock coat and my papa, Andrei Petrovich, and their questions—why was I Dolgoruky and not Versilov—didn’t embarrass me in the least, precisely because I didn’t know why myself.”

“Andrei Petrovich!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna in an almost threatening voice. My mother, on the contrary, could not tear her eyes from me, and obviously wanted me to continue.

“ Ce Touchard. . . indeed, I recall him now, was small and fidgety,” Versilov said through his teeth, “but he was recommended to me then from the best side . . .”

“ Ce Touchardcame in holding the letter, went over to our big oak table, at which all six of us were grinding away at something, seized me firmly by the shoulder, raised me from my chair, and told me to pick up my notebooks.

“‘Your place is not here, but there.’ He pointed to a tiny room to the left of the front hall, in which stood a simple table, a wicker chair, and an oilcloth sofa—exactly as I have now in my little room upstairs. I went there with astonishment and greatly intimidated; never before had I been treated rudely. Half an hour later, when Touchard left the classroom, I began exchanging glances and laughter with my comrades; they, of course, were laughing at me, but I didn’t guess that and thought we were laughing because we were having fun. Here Touchard fell on me all at once, seized me by the forelock, and started pulling.

“‘You dare not sit together with noble children, you’re of mean origin and the same as a lackey!’

“And he hit me painfully on my plump red cheek. He liked that at once and hit me a second and a third time. I wept and sobbed, I was terribly astonished. For a whole hour I sat, covering my face with my hands, and wept and wept. Something had taken place that I could in no way understand. I don’t understand how someone like Touchard, a foreigner, who was not a wicked man, who even rejoiced at the emancipation of the Russian peasants, could beat such a stupid child as I. However, I was only astonished, not insulted; I was still unable to be insulted. It seemed to me that I had done some mischief, but when I improved, I’d be forgiven, and we’d all suddenly become merry again, go and play in the yard, and have the best possible life.”

“My friend, if I’d only known . . .” Versilov drawled with the careless smile of a somewhat weary man. “What a scoundrel this Touchard was, though! However, I still haven’t lost hope that you’ll somehow gather your strength and finally forgive us for it all, and again we’ll have the best possible life.”

He decidedly yawned.

“But I’m not accusing anybody, not at all, and, believe me, I’m not complaining about Touchard!” I cried, somewhat thrown off. “And he beat me only for two months or so. I remember I kept wanting to disarm him in some way, rushed to kiss his hands, and kissed them and kept weeping and weeping. My comrades laughed at me and despised me, because Touchard started using me as a servant, ordered me to hold his clothes while he dressed. Here my lackey character was instinctively of use to me. I tried as hard as I could to cater to him, and wasn’t insulted in the least, because I understood none of it yet, and I’m even astonished to this day that I was so stupid then as not to understand how unequal I was to them all. True, my comrades had already explained a lot to me—it was a good schooling. Touchard ended by preferring to kick me from behind with his knee, rather than slap my face; and six months later he even began to be gentle with me at times; only now and then, but once a month for certain, he would give me a beating, so that I wouldn’t forget myself. Soon I was also seated together with the other children and allowed to play with them, but not once in two and a half years did Touchard forget the difference in our social position, and he still went on using me as a servant, though not too much—I think precisely as a reminder to me.

“As for my running away, that is, my wanting to run away, that was five months after those first two months. And generally all my life I’ve been slow to make decisions. When I went to bed and covered myself with the blanket, I at once began dreaming of you, Andrei Petrovich, of you alone; I don’t know at all why it worked out that way. I even saw you in my sleep. Above all, I dreamed passionately that you would suddenly walk in, and I’d rush to you, and you would take me out of that place and bring me to your house, to that study, and we’d go to the theater again, well, and so on. Above all, we wouldn’t part—that was above all! And when I had to wake up in the morning, then suddenly the boys’ mockery and scorn would begin. One of them would begin straight off by beating me and making me bring him his boots; he would abuse me in the nastiest terms, especially trying to explain my origin to me, to the delight of all the listeners. And when Touchard himself suddenly appeared, something unbearable started in my soul. I felt that I’d never be forgiven here—oh, I was gradually beginning to understand precisely what would not be forgiven and precisely where my fault lay! And so I finally resolved to run away. I dreamed of it terribly for a whole two months, and finally decided; it was September then. I waited till all my comrades went away for the weekend, and meanwhile, on the sly, I carefully tied myself up a little bundle of the most necessary things. I had two roubles. I was going to wait till it got dark. ‘I’ll creep down the stairs,’ I thought, ‘and go out, and then go on.’ Where? I knew that Andronikov had already been transferred to Petersburg, so I decided to find Mme. Fanariotov’s house on the Arbat. ‘I’ll spend the night walking or sitting somewhere, and in the morning I’ll ask somebody in the courtyard: where is Andrei Petrovich now, and if not in Moscow, then in what city or country? They’ll surely tell me, I’ll leave, and then in another place somewhere I’ll ask somebody which gate to take in order to go to such and such city, and so I’ll go out, and go on, go on. I’ll keep on going; I’ll spend the nights somewhere under the bushes, and I’ll eat nothing but bread, and for two roubles I’ll have enough bread for a very long time.’ On Saturday, however, I didn’t manage to run away; I had to wait for the next day, Sunday, and, as if on purpose, Touchard and his wife went somewhere on Sunday; Agafya and I were the only ones left in the whole house. I waited for night in terrible anguish, I remember, sitting in our classroom by the window and looking at the dusty street with its little wooden houses and the rare passersby. Touchard lived on the outskirts, and the city gate could be seen from the windows: is that the one? I kept imagining. The setting sun was so red, the sky was so cold, and a sharp wind, just like today, blew the sand about. It finally became completely dark. I stood in front of an icon and began to pray, only quickly, quickly, I was in a hurry; I seized my little bundle and tiptoed down the creaky stairs, terribly afraid that Agafya would hear me from the kitchen. The door was locked, I opened it, and suddenly—dark, dark night stood black before me like an endless and dangerous unknown, and the wind tore at my visored cap. I went out; from across the pavement came the hoarse, drunken bellowing of an abusive passerby; I stood, looked, and quietly turned back, quietly went upstairs, quietly undressed, put down my bundle, and lay facedown, without tears and without thoughts, and it was from that very moment, Andrei Petrovich, that I began to think! From that very moment, when I realized that, besides being a lackey, I was also a coward, my real and correct development began!”

“And at this very moment I see through you once and for all!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly jumped up from her place, and even so unexpectedly that I was quite unprepared for it. “Not only were you a lackey then, you’re a lackey now, you have a lackey soul! What would it have cost Andrei Petrovich to send you to be a cobbler? He’d even have done a good deed, teaching you a craft! Who would ask or demand that he do any more for you? Your father, Makar Ivanych, did not so much ask as almost demand that you, his children, not be taken from the lower estates. No, you don’t appreciate that he got you as far as the university, and that through him you acquired rights. ⁴¹The boys teased him, you see, and so he swore to take revenge on mankind . . . Scum that you are!”

I confess, I was astounded by this outburst. I stood up and stared for some time, not knowing what to say.

“Why, Tatyana Pavlovna has indeed told me something new,” I finally turned firmly to Versilov. “I’m indeed so much of a lackey that I can in no way be satisfied merely with the fact that Versilov did not send me to be a cobbler; even ‘rights’ didn’t appease me, but give me, say, the whole of Versilov, give me my father . . . that’s what I was demanding—am I not a lackey? Mama, it has been on my conscience for eight years, how you came alone to Touchard’s to visit me, and how I received you then, but there’s no time for that now, Tatyana Pavlovna won’t let me tell it. Till tomorrow, mama, maybe you and I can still see each other. Tatyana Pavlovna! Well, what if I’m once again a lackey to such a degree that I cannot even allow a man whose wife is still living to marry yet another wife? And that’s nearly what happened with Andrei Petrovich in Ems! Mama, if you don’t want to stay with a husband who might marry another woman tomorrow, remember that you have a son, who promises to be a respectful son forever—remember, and let’s go, only with the understanding that it’s ‘either him or me.’ Do you want to? I’m not asking for an answer now; I know it’s impossible to answer such questions straight off . . .”