Текст книги "The Adolescent"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“Mockingly,” Versilov put in cautiously.

“Mockingly, sir, that is, slightly mockingly, with this kindly Russian smile, you know; well, the person, of course, takes it with vexation, you know: ‘You in the beard, what are you waiting here for? Who are you?’

“‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I’m just looking at this little stone, Your Highness.’ Precisely, I believe, ‘Your Highness’—it was all but Prince Suvorov of Italy, a descendant of the generalissimo ⁷. . . Though, no, not Suvorov, and it’s a pity I’ve forgotten precisely who, only you know, though he’s a highness, he’s such a pure Russian man, this Russian type, a patriot, a developed Russian heart, so he guessed it: ‘What are you going to do,’ he says, ‘take the stone away? What are you grinning at?’ ‘More at the Englishmen, Your Highness, the price they’re asking is way out of proportion, sir, because the Russian purse is fat, and they’ve got nothing to eat at home. Allot me a hundred little roubles, Your Highness, and by tomorrow night we’ll remove this little stone.’ Well, can you imagine such an offer? The Englishmen, of course, want to eat him up; Montferrand laughs; only this highness prince, he’s a Russian heart: ‘Give him a hundred roubles!’ he says. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you’ll really take it away?’ ‘By tomorrow night it’ll be to your satisfaction, Your Highness.’ ‘And how will you do it?’ ‘That—no offense to Your Highness—is our secret, sir,’ he says, and you know, in such Russian language. This was liked: ‘Eh, give him everything he asks for!’ Well, so they left him there; and what do you think he did?”

The landlord paused and began looking at us with a sweet gaze.

“I don’t know,” Versilov smiled. I was frowning deeply.

“Here’s what he did, sir,” the landlord said with such triumph as if he had done it himself. “He hired some peasants with spades, simple Russian ones, and started digging a hole right by the stone, at the very edge; they dug all night, made an enormous hole, exactly the size of the stone, only a couple of inches deeper, and when they were done, he told them to gradually and carefully dig the ground from under the stone. Well, naturally, when they dug away under it, the stone had no support, and the balance got tipsy; and once the balance got tipsy, they pushed the stone from the other side with their hands, with a hurrah, Russian-style: the stone plopped right into the hole! They straight away shoveled the dirt back over it, tamped it down with a tamper, paved it over—smooth, the stone vanished!”

“Fancy that!” said Versilov.

“I mean, people, people come running, untold numbers of them; those Englishmen, who had guessed long ago, stand there angry. Montferrand arrives: This is a peasant job, he says, it’s too simple, he says. But that’s the whole trick, that it’s simple, and it didn’t occur to you fools! And I’ll tell you, that superior, that state personage, he just gasped, hugged him, kissed him: ‘And where might the likes of you be from?’ ‘Yaroslavl province, Your Highness, myself I’m a tailor by trade, but in summer I come to the capital to sell fruit, sir.’ Well, it reached the authorities; the authorities ordered a medal hung on him; he went around like that with the medal on his neck, and later they say he drank himself up; you know, a Russian man, can’t help himself! That’s why the foreigners prey on us to this day, yes, sir, so there, sir!”

“Yes, of course, the Russian mind . . .” Versilov began.

But here, fortunately for him, the storyteller was summoned by his ailing wife, and he ran off, otherwise I couldn’t have stood it. Versilov was laughing.

“My dear, he entertained me for a whole hour before you came. That stone . . . that’s everything there is of the most patriotically indecent among such stories, but how interrupt him? You saw him, he was melting with pleasure. And besides, the stone, it seems, is still standing there, unless I’m mistaken, and isn’t buried in a hole at all . . .”

“Ah, my God!” I cried, “but that’s true. How did he dare! . . .”

“What’s with you? No, come now, it seems you’re quite indignant. And he actually got it confused: I heard some such story about a stone back in the time of my childhood, only, naturally, it wasn’t the same and wasn’t about that stone. Good heavens, ‘it reached the authorities.’ His whole soul sang at that moment when it ‘reached the authorities.’ In this sorry milieu, it’s impossible to do without such anecdotes. They have a host of them—above all from their lack of restraint. They haven’t studied anything, they don’t know anything precisely, well, and besides cards and promotions, they want to talk about something generally human, poetic . . . What is he, who is he, this Pyotr Ippolitovich?”

“The poorest of beings, and also unfortunate.”

“Well, so you see, maybe he doesn’t even play cards! I repeat, while telling this rubbish, he satisfies his love for his neighbor: you see, he wanted to make us happy as well. The feeling of patriotism is also satisfied; for instance, they also have an anecdote that the English offered Zavyalov ⁸a million only so that he wouldn’t stamp his brand on his products . . .”

“Ah, my God, I’ve heard that anecdote.”

“Who hasn’t heard it, and he knows perfectly well, as he tells it, that you’ve certainly heard it already, but still he tells it, deliberately imagining that you haven’t. It seems the vision of the Swedish king ⁹has become outdated with them; but in my youth they repeated it with gusto, and in a mysterious whisper, as well as the one about somebody at the beginning of the century supposedly kneeling before the senators in the Senate. ¹⁰There were also many anecdotes about Commandant Bashutsky ¹¹and how the monument was taken away. They’re terribly fond of anecdotes about the court; for instance, the stories about Chernyshov, ¹²a minister in the previous reign, how as a seventy-year-old man he made himself up so that he looked like a thirty-year-old, so much so that the late sovereign was astonished at his receptions . . .”

“I’ve heard that, too.”

“Who hasn’t? All these anecdotes are the height of indecency, but you should know that this type of the indecent is much deeper and more widespread than we think. Even in our most decent society, you meet with the wish to lie with the purpose of making your neighbor happy, for we all suffer from this unrestraint of the heart. Only with us the stories are of a different kind; what they tell about America alone is something awful, and that’s even statesmen! I confess, I myself belong to this indecent type and have suffered from it all my life . . .”

“I’ve told the story about Chernyshov several times myself.”

“Have you really?”

“There’s another tenant here besides me, a clerk, also pockmarked, and already old, but he’s a terribly prosaic man, and as soon as Pyotr Ippolitovich starts talking, he immediately sets about confusing and contradicting him. And he’s driven him to such a state that Pyotr Ippolitovich serves him like a slave and humors him, only so as he listens.”

“That’s already another type of the indecent, and maybe even more loathsome than the first. The first is all rapture! ‘Just let me tell you a lie—you’ll see how well it comes out.’ The second is all spleen and prose: ‘I won’t let you lie—when, where, in what year?’ In short, he has no heart. My friend, always let a man lie a little—it’s innocent. Even let him lie a lot. First, it will show your delicacy, and second, you’ll also be allowed to lie in return—two enormous profits at once. Que diable! ³⁴one must love one’s neighbor! But it’s time I left. You’ve settled in quite nicely,” he added, getting up from his chair. “I’ll tell Sofya Andreevna and your sister that I called and found you in good health. Good-bye, my dear.”

What, could that be all? No, this was by no means what I needed; I was waiting for something else, the main thing, though I understood perfectly well that it couldn’t be otherwise. I began showing him to the stairs with a candle; the landlord also jumped over, but, in secret from Versilov, I seized his arm with all my strength and shoved him away fiercely. He looked at me in amazement, but effaced himself at once.

“These stairs . . .” Versilov mumbled, drawing out the words, evidently so as to say something, and evidently for fear I might say something, “these stairs—I’m not used to them, and you’re on the third floor, but, anyhow, I’ll find my way now . . . Don’t trouble yourself, my dear, you’ll catch cold.”

But I didn’t leave. We were going down the second flight of stairs.

“I’ve been waiting for you all these three days,” escaped me suddenly, as if of itself; I was breathless.

“Thank you, my dear.”

“I knew you wouldn’t fail to come.”

“And I knew you knew I wouldn’t fail to come. Thank you, my dear.”

He fell silent. We had already reached the front door, and I was still walking behind him. He opened the door; the wind burst in at once and blew out my candle. Here I suddenly seized him by the hand; it was completely dark. He gave a start, but said nothing. I bent to his hand and suddenly began kissing it greedily, several times, many times.

“My dear boy, what makes you love me so much?” he said, but now in a quite different voice. His voice trembled, and something quite new rang in it, as if it was not he who was speaking.

I wanted to answer something but couldn’t, and ran upstairs. He waited without moving from the spot, and only when I reached my apartment did I hear the street door downstairs open and slam shut noisily. I slipped into my room past the landlord, who for some reason turned up there again, fastened the latch, and, without lighting a candle, threw myself onto the bed, face to the pillow, and—wept, wept. It was the first time I had wept since Touchard’s! Sobs burst from me with such force, and I was so happy . . . but why describe it!

I’ve written this down now without being ashamed, because maybe it was all good, despite all its absurdity.

III

BUT, OH, DID he get it from me for that! I became a terrible despot. Needless to say, we never mentioned this scene afterwards. On the contrary, we met three days later as if nothing had happened—what’s more, I was almost rude that second evening, and he was also as if dry. It happened at my place again; for some reason I still wouldn’t go to him myself, despite my desire to see my mother.

We talked all this time, that is, for these two whole months, only about the most abstract subjects. And that surprises me: all we did was talk about abstract subjects—the generally human and most necessary ones, of course, but not concerned in the least with the essential. Yet much, very much, of the essential needed to be defined and clarified, even urgently so, but of those things we didn’t speak. I even said nothing about mother and Liza and . . . well, and finally about myself, about my whole story. Whether that was all from shame, or from some sort of youthful stupidity—I don’t know. I suppose it was from stupidity, because shame could still have been surmounted. And I despotized him terribly and more than once even drove it as far as insolence, and even against my own heart: it was all done somehow of itself, uncontrollably, I couldn’t control myself. His tone was of a subtle mockery, as before, though always extremely affectionate despite all. It also struck me that he much preferred coming to me himself, so that in the end I began to see mama terribly seldom, once a week, not more, especially in the most recent time, when I got into quite a whirl. He would come in the evening, sit in my room and chat; he was also very fond of chatting with the landlord; this last infuriated me in such a man as he. The thought also came to me: can it be that he has no one to go to except me? But I knew for certain that he had acquaintances; lately he had even renewed many former connections in high society circles, which he had abandoned during that last year; but it seems he wasn’t especially tempted by them, and many were renewed only officially, while he preferred coming to me. It sometimes touched me very much that, on coming in of an evening, he seemed to grow timid almost every time as he opened the door, and in the first moment always peeked into my eyes with a strange anxiousness, as if to say, “Won’t I be bothering you? Tell me and I’ll go away.” He even said it sometimes. Once, for instance, precisely in the most recent time, he came in when I was already fully dressed in a suit I had just received from the tailor and was about to go to “Prince Seryozha,” so as to set off with him where I had to go (I’ll explain where later). But he came in and sat down, probably not noticing that I was about to leave; there were moments when he was overcome by an extremely strange absentmindedness. As if on purpose, he began talking about the landlord. I blew up:

“Eh, devil take the landlord!”

“Ah, my dear,” he suddenly got up from his place, “it seems you’re about to go out, and I’m bothering you . . . Forgive me, please.”

And he humbly hastened to leave. This humility towards me from such a man, from such a worldly and independent man, who had so much of his own, at once resurrected in my heart all my tenderness for him and all my trust in him. But if he loved me so, why didn’t he stop me then in the time of my disgrace? A word from him then—and maybe I would have held back. However, maybe not. But he did see this foppishness, this fanfaronade, this Matvei (once I even wanted to give him a ride in my sledge, but he wouldn’t get in, and it even happened several times that he didn’t want to get in), he did see that I was throwing money around—and not a word, not a word, not even out of curiosity! That astonishes me to this day, even now. And I, naturally, was not the least bit ceremonious with him then and let everything show, though, of course, also without a word of explanation. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t speak.

However, two or three times it was as if we did also start speaking about the essential. I asked him once, at the beginning, soon after he renounced the inheritance, how he was going to live now.

“Somehow, my friend,” he said with extraordinary calm.

Now I know that even Tatyana Pavlovna’s tiny capital of about five thousand was half spent on Versilov in these last two years.

Another time we somehow began talking about mama:

“My friend,” he suddenly said sadly, “I often said to Sofya Andreevna at the beginning of our union—at the beginning, and the middle, and the end as well, however: ‘My dear, I’m tormenting you, and I’ll torment you thoroughly, and I’m not sorry, as long as you’re before me; but if you should die, I know I’d do myself in with punishment.’”

However, I remember he was especially open that evening:

“If only I were a weak-tempered nonentity and suffered from the awareness of it! But no, I know that I’m infinitely strong, and what do you think my strength is? Precisely this spontaneous power of getting along with anything, which is so characteristic of all intelligent people of our generation. Nothing can destroy me, nothing can exterminate me, nothing can astonish me. I’m as tenacious as a yard dog. I can feel in the most comfortable way two contrary feelings at the same time—and that, of course, not by my own will. But nonetheless I know it’s dishonest, mainly because it’s all too reasonable. I’ve lived to be nearly fifty, and so far I don’t know whether it’s good that I’ve done so, or bad. Of course, I love life, and that follows directly from things, but for a man like me, to love life is base. Lately something new has begun, and the Krafts don’t survive, they shoot themselves. But it’s clear that the Krafts are stupid; well, and we’re intelligent—so it’s impossible to draw any analogy here, and the question still remains open. And can it be only for such as we that the earth stands? Yes, in all likelihood; but that is too cheerless an idea. However . . . however, the question still remains open.”

He spoke with sadness, and even so I didn’t know whether he was sincere or not. There was always some wrinkle in him that he wouldn’t drop for anything.

IV

I SHOWERED HIM with questions then, I threw myself on him like a hungry man on bread. He always answered me readily and straightforwardly, but in the final end he always brought it down to the most general aphorisms, so that, in essence, nothing could be drawn from it. And yet all these questions had troubled me all my life, and, I confess frankly, while still in Moscow, I postponed their resolution precisely until our meeting in Petersburg. I even told it to him directly, and he didn’t laugh at me—on the contrary, I remember, he shook my hand. On general politics and social questions, I could extract almost nothing from him, and it was these questions that troubled me most, in view of my “idea.” Of the likes of Dergachev, I once tore the observation from him “that they were beneath any criticism,” but at the same time he added strangely that he “reserved for himself the right not to attach any importance to his opinion.” Of how the contemporary states and world would end and what would bring about a renewal of the social world, he kept silent for terribly long, but one day I finally tortured a few words out of him:

“I think it will all come about somehow in an extremely ordinary way,” he said once. “Quite simply, all the states, despite all balancing of budgets and ‘absence of deficits,’ un beau matin ³⁵will become utterly confused, and each and every one of them will refuse to pay up, so that each and every one of them will be renewed in a general bankruptcy. Meanwhile, all the conservative elements of the whole world will be opposed to that, for it will be they who are the shareholders and creditors, and they will not want to allow the bankruptcy. Then, of course, there will begin a general oxidation, so to speak; the Yid will arrive in quantity, and a kingdom of Yids will begin; but all those who never had any shares, and generally never had anything, that is, all the beggars, naturally will not want to participate in the oxidation . . . A struggle will begin, and after seventy-seven defeats, the beggars will annihilate the shareholders, take their shares from them, and sit in their place—as shareholders, of course. And maybe they’ll say something new, or maybe not. Most likely they’ll also go bankrupt. Beyond that, my friend, I can’t predict anything in the destinies that will change the face of this world. However, look in the Apocalypse . . .”

“But can it all be so material? Can the present-day world end only because of finances?”

“Oh, naturally, I’ve taken only one little corner of the picture, but that corner is connected with everything by, so to speak, indissoluble bonds.”

“What, then, is to be done?”

“Ah, my God, don’t be in a hurry; it won’t all come so soon. Generally, it’s best to do nothing; at least your conscience is at peace, since you haven’t taken part in anything.”

“Eh, come on, talk business. I want to know precisely what I’m to do and how I’m to live.”

“What are you to do, my dear? Be honest, never lie, don’t covet your neighbor’s house, in short, read the ten commandments: everything’s written there for all time.”

“Come on, come on, that’s all so old, and besides—it’s just words, and I need action.”

“Well, if you’re quite overcome with boredom, try loving someone, or something, or even simply becoming attached to something.”

“You just laugh! And besides, what am I alone to do with your ten commandments?”

“But if you fulfill them, despite all your questions and doubts, you’ll be a great man.”

“Unknown to anyone.”

“Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest.” ¹³

“No, you’re decidedly laughing!”

“Well, if you take it so much to heart, then it would be best to try and specialize quickly, take up construction or law; then you’ll be occupied with real and serious business, and you can settle down and forget about trifles.”

I said nothing—well, what could I get from that? And yet after each such conversation, I was more troubled than before. Besides, I saw clearly that there was always as if some mystery left in him; it was this that drew me to him more and more.

“Listen,” I interrupted him one day, “I always suspected that you were saying all this just so, from spite and out of suffering, but secretly, within yourself, it’s you who are a fanatic of some higher idea and are only hiding it or ashamed to admit it.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Listen, there’s nothing higher than being useful. Tell me, how can I be of greatest use at this given moment? I know you can’t decide that; but I’m only seeking your opinion: you tell me, and I’ll go and do as you tell me, I swear to you! Well, what is the great thought?”

“Well, to turn stones into bread—there’s a great thought.” ¹⁴

“The greatest? No, truly, you’ve pointed out a whole path; tell me, then: is it the greatest?”

“A very great one, my friend, a very great one, but not the greatest; great, but secondary, and only great in the given moment. Man eats and doesn’t remember it; on the contrary, he’ll say at once: ‘Well, so I’ve eaten, and now what do I do?’ The question remains eternally open.”

“You once talked about ‘Geneva ideas.’ I didn’t understand—what are ‘Geneva ideas’?”

“Geneva ideas—it’s virtue without Christ, my friend, today’s ideas, or, better to say, the idea of the whole of today’s civilization. ¹⁵In short, it’s—one of those long stories that are very boring to begin, and it would be much better if we talked about other things, and still better if we were silent about other things.”

“All you want to do is be silent!”

“My friend, remember that to be silent is good, safe, and beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”

“Of course. Silence is always beautiful, and a silent person is always more beautiful than one who talks.”

“But to talk as you and I do is, of course, the same as being silent. Devil take that sort of beauty, and furthermore, devil take that sort of profit!”

“My dear,” he said to me suddenly, in a somewhat changed tone, even with feeling and with a sort of special insistence, “my dear, I by no means want to seduce you with any sort of bourgeois virtue instead of your ideals, nor do I insist that ‘happiness is better than heroism’; on the contrary, heroism is higher than any happiness, and the capacity for it alone already constitutes happiness. So that’s settled between us. I respect you precisely for being able, in our soured time, to cultivate some sort of ‘idea of your own’ in your soul (don’t worry, I remember it very well). But all the same it’s impossible not to think about measure, too, because now you precisely want a resounding life, to set something on fire, to smash something, to rise higher than all Russia, to sweep over like a storm cloud and leave everyone in fear and admiration, and disappear into the North American States. Surely there’s something of that kind in your soul, and that’s why I consider it necessary to warn you, because I’ve sincerely come to love you, my dear.”

What could I get from that as well? Here there was only a worry about me, about my material fate; it spoke for the father, with his prosaic though kindly feelings; but was that what I needed, in view of the ideas for which every honest father should send his son even to his death, as the ancient Horatius sent his sons for the idea of Rome? ¹⁶

I often pestered him with religion, but here the fog was thickest of all. To the question, What am I to do in this sense? he replied in the stupidest way, as to a little boy: “You must believe in God, my dear.”

“Well, and what if I don’t believe in all that?” I once cried in irritation.

“Splendid, my dear.”

“How, splendid?”

“A most excellent sign, my friend; even the most trustworthy, because our Russian atheist, if only he’s a true atheist and has a bit of intelligence, is the best man in the whole world and always inclined to treat God nicely, because he’s unfailingly kind, and he’s kind because he’s immeasurably pleased that he’s an atheist. Our atheists are respectable people and trustworthy in the highest degree, the support, so to speak, of the fatherland . . .”

That, of course, was something, but not what I wanted; only once did he speak his mind, only so strangely that he surprised me most of all then, especially in view of all these Catholicisms and chains I had heard about in connection with him.

“My dear,” he said to me once, not at home, but one time in the street, after a long conversation; I was seeing him off. “My friend, to love people as they are is impossible. And yet one must. And therefore do good to them, clenching your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes (this last is necessary). Endure evil from them, not getting angry with them if possible, ‘remembering that you, too, are a human being.’ Naturally, you’re in a position to be severe with them, if it’s been granted you to be a little bit smarter than the average. People are mean by nature and love to love out of fear; don’t give in to such love and don’t cease to despise it. Somewhere in the Koran, Allah bids the prophet to look upon the ‘recalcitrant’ as mice, to do good to them and pass by—somewhat arrogant, but right. Know how to despise them even when they’re good, for most often it’s just here that they’re nasty. Oh, my dear, I’m judging by myself in saying that! He who is only a little bit better than stupid cannot live and not despise himself—whether he’s honest or dishonest makes no difference. To love one’s neighbor and not despise him is impossible. In my opinion, man is created with a physical inability to love his neighbor. There’s some mistake in words here, from the very beginning, and ‘love for mankind’ should be understood as just for that mankind which you yourself have created in your soul (in other words, you’ve created your own self and the love for yourself ), and which therefore will never exist in reality.”

“Never exist?”

“My friend, I agree that this would be rather stupid, but here the blame isn’t mine; and since I wasn’t consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.”

“How can they call you a Christian after that,” I cried, “a monk with chains, a preacher? I don’t understand!”

“But who calls me that?”

I told him; he listened very attentively, but stopped the conversation.

I simply can’t remember what occasioned this conversation, which was so memorable for me; but he even became irritated, which almost never happened with him. He had spoken passionately and without mockery, as if he weren’t saying it to me. But once again I didn’t believe him: could he really speak seriously about such things with the likes of me?

Chapter Two

I

ON THAT MORNING, the fifteenth of November, I precisely found him with “Prince Seryozha.” It was I who brought him together with the prince, but they had enough points of contact even without me (I’m speaking of those former stories abroad and so on). Besides that, the prince had given his word to allot him at least one-third of the inheritance, which would certainly come to about twenty thousand. To me, I remember, it was terribly strange then that he allotted him only a third and not a whole half; but I said nothing. The prince gave this promise then on his own; Versilov had no part in it, never mentioned it by half a little word; the prince himself popped up with it, and Versilov only allowed it silently and never once recalled it afterwards, never even showed by a look that he remembered anything at all about the promise. I’ll note incidentally that the prince was decidedly charmed by him at first, especially by his talk, he even went into raptures and several times spoke of it to me. Sometimes, alone with me, he exclaimed about himself, almost in despair, that he was “so uneducated, that he was on such a false path! . . .” Oh, we were still such friends then! . . . I kept trying then to instill only good things about the prince into Versilov, I defended his failings, though I saw them myself; but Versilov kept silent or smiled.

“If he does have failings, he has at least as many virtues as failings!” I once exclaimed, alone with Versilov.

“God, how you flatter him,” he laughed.

“How do you mean, flatter?” I didn’t understand at first.

“As many virtues! Why, then his relics will be revealed, ¹⁷if he has as many virtues as he has failings!”

But, of course, this was not an opinion. Generally he somehow avoided speaking about the prince then, as he generally did about all essentials; but about the prince especially. I already suspected even then that he went to see the prince without me as well, and that they had special relations, but I allowed for that. I also wasn’t jealous that he talked with him as if more seriously than with me, more positively, so to speak, and was less given to mockery; but I was so happy then that it even pleased me. I also excused it by the fact that the prince was slightly limited, and therefore liked precision in words, and even didn’t understand certain witticisms at all. And then, recently, he somehow began to emancipate himself. His feelings towards Versilov began to change, as it were. The sensitive Versilov noticed it. I’ll also say beforehand that at that time the prince changed towards me as well, even all too visibly; there remained only some dead forms of our original, almost ardent friendship. Yet I still kept going to see him; I could hardly not go, however, having been drawn into all that. Oh, how unskillful I was then, and can it be that stupidity of heart alone can drive a person to such incompetence and humiliation? I took money from him and thought that it was nothing, that it was even right. Not so, however; I knew even then that it was wrong, but—I simply gave it little thought. It wasn’t for money that I went to see him, though I needed money terribly. I knew that I didn’t go there because of money, but I realized that I came every day to take money. But I was in a whirl and, besides all that, something else was in my soul then—was singing in my soul!