Текст книги "The Adolescent"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“It’s precisely as you say!” I suddenly turned to him, breaking the ice and suddenly beginning to speak. “It’s precisely necessary to put one feeling in the place of another, so as to replace it. Four years ago, in Moscow, a certain general . . . You see, gentlemen, I didn’t know him, but . . . Maybe he, indeed, could not inspire respect on his own . . . And besides, the fact itself might seem unreasonable, but . . . However, you see, his child died, that is, as a matter of fact, two girls, one after the other, of scarlet fever . . . Well, he was suddenly so crushed that he was sad all the time, so sad that he went around and you couldn’t even look at him—and he ended by dying in about half a year. That he died of it is a fact! What, then, could have resurrected him? Answer: a feeling of equal strength! Those two girls should have been dug up from the grave and given to him—that’s all, or something of the sort. So he died. And meanwhile you could have presented him with beautiful deductions: that life is fleeting, that everyone is mortal; presented him with calendar statistics, 17how many children die of scarlet fever . . . He was retired . . .”
I stopped, breathless, and looked around.
“That’s not it at all,” someone said.
“The fact you cite, though not of the same kind as the given case, still resembles it and clarifies the matter,” Vasin turned to me.
IV
HERE I MUST confess why I was delighted with Vasin’s argument about the “idea-feeling,” and along with that I must confess to an infernal shame. Yes, I was scared to go to Dergachev’s, though not for the reason Efim supposed. I was scared because I had already been afraid of them in Moscow. I knew that they (that is, they or others of their sort—it makes no difference) were dialecticians and would perhaps demolish “my idea.” I was firmly convinced in myself that I would not betray or tell my idea to them; but they (that is, again, they or their sort) might tell me something on their own that would make me disappointed in my idea, even without my mentioning it to them. There were questions in “my idea” that I hadn’t resolved yet, but I didn’t want anyone to resolve them except me. In the last two years I had even stopped reading books, afraid of coming across some passage that would not be in favor of the “idea,” that might shake me. And suddenly Vasin resolves the problem at a stroke and sets me at peace in the highest sense. Indeed, what was I afraid of, and what could they do to me with no matter what dialectics? Perhaps I was the only one there who understood what Vasin said about the “idea-feeling”! It’s not enough to refute a beautiful idea, one must replace it with something equally beautiful; otherwise, in my heart, unwilling to part with my feeling for anything, I will refute the refutation, even by force, whatever they may say. And what could they give me instead? And therefore I should have been braver, I was obliged to be more courageous. Delighted with Vasin, I felt shame, felt myself an unworthy child!
This resulted in yet another shame. Not the vile little urge to boast of my intelligence that had made me break the ice there and start talking, but also a desire to “throw myself on their necks.” This desire to throw myself on people’s necks so that they recognize me as good and start embracing me or something like that (swinishness, in short), I consider the most loathsome of all my shames, and I had suspected it in myself for a very long time—namely, ever since the corner I had kept myself in for so many years, though I don’t regret it. I knew that I had to be gloomier among people. What comforted me, after each such disgrace, was simply that the “idea” was with me all the same, in secret as always, and that I hadn’t betrayed it to them. With a sinking feeling, I sometimes imagined that once I had spoken my idea to someone, I would suddenly have nothing left, so that I’d become like everybody else, and might even abandon the idea; and so I preserved and cherished it and trembled at the thought of babbling. And then at Dergachev’s, almost with the first encounter, I had been unable to hold out, I hadn’t betrayed anything, of course, but I had babbled inadmissibly; the result was disgrace. A nasty recollection! No, it’s impossible for me to live with people; I think so even now; I say it for forty years to come. My idea is—my corner.
V
AS SOON AS VASIN praised me, I suddenly felt an irrepressible urge to speak.
“In my opinion, each of us has the right to have his own feelings . . . if it’s from conviction . . . so that no one should reproach him for them,” I addressed Vasin. Though I spoke glibly, it was as if it wasn’t me, but as if somebody else’s tongue was moving in my mouth.
“Re-e-eally, sir?” a voice picked up at once, drawling ironically, the same that had interrupted Dergachev and had shouted to Kraft that he was a German.
Considering him a total nonentity, I turned to the teacher, as if it was he who had shouted.
“My conviction is that I cannot judge anyone,” I trembled, already knowing that I was going to fly off.
“Why such secrecy?” the nonentity’s voice rang out again.
“Each of us has his idea,” I looked point-blank at the teacher, who, on the contrary, was silent and studied me with a smile.
“Do you?” shouted the nonentity.
“It’s too long to tell . . . But part of my idea is precisely that I should be left in peace. As long as I’ve got two roubles, I want to live alone, not depending on anybody (don’t worry, I know the objections), and not doing anything—even for that great future of mankind for which Mr. Kraft has been invited to work. Personal freedom, I mean my own, sir, is foremost, and I do not want to know anything beyond that.”
My mistake was that I got angry.
“That is, you preach the placidity of a sated cow?”
“Let it be so. There’s no insult in a cow. I don’t owe anyone anything, I pay society money in the form of fiscal impositions, so that I won’t be robbed, beaten, or killed, and no one dares to demand anything more from me. I personally may have other ideas, and would like to serve mankind, and will, and maybe even ten times more than all the preachers, but I only want it to be so that no one dares to demandit of me, or forces me, like Mr. Kraft; my full freedom, even if I don’t lift a finger. And to run around throwing yourself on other people’s necks out of love for mankind, and burn with tears of tenderness—that is merely a fashion. And why should I necessarily love my neighbor or your future mankind, which I’ll never see, which will not know about me, and which in its turn will rot without leaving any trace or remembrance (time means nothing here), when the earth in its turn will become an icy stone and fly through airless space together with an infinite multitude of identical icy stones, that is, more meaningless than anything one can possibly imagine! There’s your teaching! Tell me, why should I necessarily be noble, especially if it all lasts no more than a minute?”
“B-bah!” shouted the voice.
I had fired all this off nervously and spitefully, snapping all the ropes. I knew I was falling into a pit, but I hurried for fear of objections. I sensed only too well that I was pouring as if through a sieve, incoherently, and skipping ten thoughts to get to the eleventh, but I was in a hurry to convince and reconquer them. This was so important for me! I’d been preparing for three years! But, remarkably, they suddenly fell silent, said absolutely nothing, and listened. I went on addressing the teacher:
“Precisely, sir. A certain extremely intelligent man said, among other things, that there is nothing more difficult than to answer the question, ‘Why must one necessarily be noble?’ You see, sir, there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world: naïve scoundrels, that is, those who are convinced that their meanness is the highest nobility; ashamed scoundrels, that is, those who are ashamed of their meanness, but fully intend to go through with it anyway; and, finally, sheer scoundrels, purebred scoundrels. With your permission, sir: I had a friend, Lambert, who at the age of sixteen said to me that when he was rich, his greatest pleasure would be to feed dogs bread and meat, while the children of the poor were dying of hunger, and when they had no wood for their stoves, he would buy a whole lumberyard, stack it up in a field, and burn it there, and give not a stick to the poor. Those were his feelings! Tell me, what answer should I give this purebred scoundrel when he asks, ‘Why should I necessarily be noble?’ And especially now, in our time, which you have so refashioned. Because it has never been worse than it is now. Things are not at all clear in our society, gentlemen. I mean, you deny God, you deny great deeds, what sort of deaf, blind, dull torpor can make me act this way, if it’s more profitable for me otherwise? You say, ‘A reasonable attitude towards mankind is also to my profit’; but what if I find all these reasonablenesses unreasonable, all these barracks and phalansteries? 18What the devil do I care about them, or about the future, when I live only once in this world? Allow me to know my own profit myself: it’s more amusing. What do I care what happens to this mankind of yours in a thousand years, if, by your code, I get no love for it, no future life, no recognition of my great deed? No, sir, in that case I shall live for myself in the most impolite fashion, and they can all go to blazes!”
“An excellent wish!”
“However, I’m always ready to join in.”
“Even better!” (This was still that same voice.)
The rest went on being silent, they went on peering at me and studying me; but tittering gradually began to come from different ends of the room, still quiet, but they all tittered right in my face. Only Vasin and Kraft did not titter. The one with the black side-whiskers also grinned; he looked at me point-blank and listened.
“Gentlemen,” I was trembling all over, “I won’t tell you my idea for anything, but, on the contrary, I will ask you from your own point of view—don’t think it’s mine, because it may be that I love mankind a thousand times more than all of you taken together! Tell me—and you absolutely must answer me now, you are duty bound, because you’re laughing—tell me, how will you entice me to follow you? Tell me, how will you prove to me that with you it will be better? Where are you going to put the protest of my person in your barracks? I have long wished to meet you, gentlemen! You will have barracks, communal apartments, stricte necessaire, 18atheism, and communal wives without children—that’s your finale, I know it, sirs. And for all that, for that small share of middling profit that your reasonableness secures for me, for a crust and some warmth, you take my whole person in exchange! With your permission, sir: say my wife is taken away; are you going to subdue my person so that I won’t smash my rival’s head in? You’ll say that I myself will become more reasonable then; but what will the wife of such a reasonable husband say, if she has the slightest respect for herself? No, it’s unnatural, sirs; shame on you!”
“And you’re what—a specialist in the ladies’ line?” the gleeful voice of the nonentity rang out.
For a moment I had the thought of throwing myself at him and pounding him with my fists. He was a shortish fellow, red-haired and freckled . . . but, anyhow, devil take his looks!
“Don’t worry, I’ve never yet known a woman,” I said curtly, addressing him for the first time.
“Precious information, which might have been given more politely, in view of the ladies!”
But they all suddenly began stirring densely; they all started taking their hats and preparing to leave—not on account of me, of course, but because the time had come; but this silent treatment of me crushed me with shame. I also jumped to my feet.
“Allow me, however, to know your name, you did keep looking at me,” the teacher suddenly stepped towards me with the meanest smile.
“Dolgoruky.”
“Prince Dolgoruky?”
“No, simply Dolgoruky, the son of the former serf Makar Dolgoruky and the illegitimate son of my former master, Mr. Versilov. Don’t worry, gentlemen, I’m not saying it so that you’ll throw yourselves on my neck and we’ll all start lowing like calves from tenderness!”
A loud and most unceremonious burst of laughter came at once, so that the baby who had fallen asleep behind the door woke up and squealed. I was trembling with fury. They all shook hands with Dergachev and left, paying no attention to me.
“Let’s go,” Kraft nudged me.
I went up to Dergachev, squeezed his hand as hard as I could, and shook it several times, also as hard as I could.
“I apologize for the constant insults from Kudriumov” (that was the red-haired one), Dergachev said to me.
I followed Kraft out. I wasn’t ashamed of anything.
VI
OF COURSE, BETWEEN me as I am now and me as I was then there is an infinite difference.
Continuing to be “not ashamed of anything,” I caught up with Vasin while still on the stairs, having left Kraft behind as second-rate, and with the most natural air, as if nothing had happened, asked:
“It seems you know my father—that is, I mean to say, Versilov?”
“We’re not, in fact, acquainted,” Vasin answered at once (and without a whit of that offensive, refined politeness assumed by delicate people when speaking with someone who has just disgraced himself ), “but I know him slightly; I’ve met him and listened to him.”
“If you’ve listened to him, then, of course, you know him, because you are—you! What do you think of him? Forgive the hasty question, but I need to know. Precisely what youwould think, your ownproper opinion is necessary.”
“You’re asking a lot of me. It seems to me that the man is capable of placing enormous demands on himself and, perhaps, of fulfilling them—but he renders no account to anyone.”
“That’s right, that’s very right, he’s a very proud man! But is he a pure man? Listen, what do you think of his Catholicism? However, I forgot that you may not know . . .”
If I hadn’t been so excited, I naturally would not have fired off such questions, and so pointlessly, at a man I had never spoken with, but had only heard about. It surprised me that Vasin seemed not to notice my madness.
“I’ve also heard something about that, but I don’t know how correct it might be,” he answered as calmly and evenly as before.
“Not a bit! It’s not true about him! Do you really think he can believe in God?”
“He’s a very proud man, as you just said yourself, and many very proud people like to believe in God, especially those who are somewhat contemptuous of people. In many strong people there seems to be a sort of natural need—to find someone or something to bow down to. It’s sometimes very hard for a strong man to bear his own strength.”
“Listen, that must be terribly right!” I cried out again. “Only I wish I could understand . . .”
“Here the reason is clear: they choose God so as not to bow down before people—naturally, not knowing themselves how it comes about in them: to bow down before God is not so offensive. They become extremely ardent believers—or, to put it more correctly, they ardently desire to believe; but they take the desire for belief itself. In the end they very often become disappointed. As for Mr. Versilov, I think there are also extremely sincere traits of character in him. And generally he interests me.”
“ Vasin!” I cried out, “you make me so glad! I’m not surprised at your intelligence, I’m surprised that you, a man so pure and so immeasurably far above me—that you can walk with me and speak so simply and politely, as if nothing had happened!”
Vasin smiled.
“You praise me too much, and all that happened there was that you’re too fond of abstract conversation. You were probably silent for a very long time before this.”
“I was silent for three years, I’ve been preparing to speak for three years . . . To you, naturally, I couldn’t have seemed a fool, because you are extremely intelligent yourself, though it would be impossible to behave more stupidly than I did—but a scoundrel!”
“A scoundrel?”
“Yes, undoubtedly! Tell me, don’t you secretly despise me for saying that I was Versilov’s illegitimate son . . . and boasting that I was the son of a serf ?”
“You torment yourself too much. If you find that you spoke badly, you need only not speak that way the next time; you still have fifty years ahead of you.”
“Oh, I know I should be very silent with people. The meanest of all debauches is to throw yourself on people’s necks; I just said it to them, and here I am throwing myself on yours! But there’s a difference, isn’t there? If you’ve understood that difference, if you were capable of understanding it, I’ll bless this moment!”
Vasin smiled again.
“Come and see me, if you want to,” he said. “I have work now and am busy, but you’ll give me pleasure.”
“I concluded earlier, from your physiognomy, that you were all too firm and uncommunicative.”
“That may very well be so. I knew your sister, Lizaveta Makarovna, last year in Luga . . . Kraft has stopped and seems to be waiting for you; he has to turn there.”
I firmly shook Vasin’s hand and ran to join Kraft, who had gone ahead of us while I was talking with Vasin. We silently went as far as his quarters; I did not want to speak to him yet, and could not. One of the strongest traits of Kraft’s character was his delicacy.
Chapter Four
I
KRAFT USED TO be in government service somewhere, and along with that had also helped the late Andronikov (for a remuneration from him) to conduct some private affairs, which the latter had always engaged in on top of his government work. For me the important thing was that Kraft, owing to his particular closeness to Andronikov, might be informed of much that so interested me. But I knew from Marya Ivanovna, the wife of Nikolai Semyonovich, with whom I lived for so many years while I was in school—and who was the niece, the ward, and the favorite of Andronikov—that Kraft had even been “charged” with delivering something to me. I had been waiting for him that whole month.
He lived in a small two-room apartment, completely separate, and at the present moment, having only just returned, was even without a servant. The suitcase, though unpacked, had not been put away; things were strewn over chairs, and laid out on the table in front of the sofa were a valise, a traveling strongbox, a revolver, and so on. Coming in, Kraft was extremely pensive, as if he had totally forgotten about me; he may not even have noticed that I hadn’t spoken to him on the way. He at once began looking for something, but, glancing into the mirror in passing, he stopped and studied his face closely for a whole minute. Though I noticed this peculiarity (and later recalled it very well), I was sad and very confused. I couldn’t concentrate. There was a moment when I suddenly wanted to up and leave and thus abandon all these matters forever. And what were all these matters essentially? Weren’t they simply self-inflicted cares? I was beginning to despair that I was maybe spending my energy on unworthy trifles out of mere sentimentality, while I had an energetic task before me. And meanwhile my incapacity for serious business was obviously showing itself, in view of what had happened at Dergachev’s.
“Kraft, will you go to them again?” I suddenly asked him. He slowly turned to me, as if he hadn’t quite understood me. I sat down on a chair.
“Forgive them!” Kraft said suddenly.
To me, of course, this seemed like mockery; but, looking at him attentively, I saw such a strange and even astonishing ingenuousness in his face, that I was even astonished at how seriously he had asked me to “forgive” them. He moved a chair and sat down beside me.
“I myself know that I’m maybe a rag-bag of all the vanities and nothing more,” I began, “but I don’t ask forgiveness.”
“And there’s no one to ask,” he said softly and seriously. He spoke softly and very slowly all the time.
“Let me be guilty before myself . . . I like being guilty before myself . . . Kraft, forgive me for babbling here with you. Tell me, can it be that you’re also in that circle? That’s what I wanted to ask.”
“They’re no more stupid than others, nor more intelligent; they’re crazy, like everybody.”
“So everybody’s crazy?” I turned to him with involuntary curiosity.
“Among the better sort of people now, everybody’s crazy. Only mediocrity and giftlessness are having a heyday . . . However, that’s all not worth . . .”
As he spoke, he somehow stared into space, began phrases and broke them off. Especially striking was a sort of despondency in his voice.
“Can it be that Vasin’s with them? Vasin has a mind, Vasin has a moral idea!” I cried.
“There aren’t any moral ideas now; suddenly not one can be found, and, above all, it looks as if there never were any.”
“Before there weren’t?”
“Better drop that,” he said with obvious fatigue.
I was touched by his woeful seriousness. Ashamed of my egoism, I started to fall into his tone.
“The present time,” he began himself, after a couple of minutes of silence and still staring somewhere into space, “the present time is a time of the golden mean and insensibility, a passion for ignorance, idleness, an inability to act, and a need to have everything ready-made. No one ponders; rarely does anyone live his way into an idea.”
He broke off again and was silent for a little while. I listened.
“Now they’re deforesting Russia, exhausting her soil, turning it into steppe, and preparing it for the Kalmyks. 19If a man of hope were to appear and plant a tree, everyone would laugh: ‘Do you think you’ll live so long?’ On the other hand, those who desire the good talk about what will be in a thousand years. The binding idea has disappeared completely. Everyone lives as if in a flophouse, and tomorrow it’s up and out of Russia; everyone lives only so far as there’s enough for him . . .”
“Excuse me, Kraft, you said, ‘They’re concerned about what will be in a thousand years.’ Well, but your despair . . . about the fate of Russia . . . isn’t it the same sort of concern?”
“That . . . that is the most urgent question there is!” he said irritably and quickly got up from his place.
“Ah, yes! I forgot!” he said suddenly in a completely different voice, looking at me in bewilderment. “I invited you on business, and meanwhile . . . For God’s sake, forgive me.”
It was as if he suddenly came out of some sort of dream, almost embarrassed; he took a letter from a briefcase that lay on the table and gave it to me.
“That is what I was to deliver to you. It is a document having a certain importance,” he began with attentiveness and with a most businesslike air.
Long afterwards I was struck when I remembered this ability of his (at such a time for him!) to treat another’s business with such heartfelt attentiveness, to tell of it so calmly and firmly.
“This is a letter of that same Stolbeev, following whose death a case arose between Versilov and the Princes Sokolsky over his will. That case is now being decided in court and will surely be decided in Versilov’s favor; the law is with him. Meanwhile, in this letter, a personal one, written two years ago, the testator himself sets forth his actual will, or, more correctly, his wish, and sets it forth rather in the princes’ favor than in Versilov’s. At least the points that the Princes Sokolsky base themselves on in disputing the will gain much strength from this letter. Versilov’s opponents would give a lot for this document, which, however, has no decisive legal significance. Alexei Nikanorovich (Andronikov), who was handling Versilov’s case, kept this letter and, not long before his death, gave it to me, charging me to ‘stow it away’—perhaps fearing for his papers in anticipation of his death. I have no wish now to judge Alexei Nikanorovich’s intentions in this matter, and, I confess, after his death I was painfully undecided about what to do with this document, especially in view of the impending decision of the court case. But Marya Ivanovna, in whom Alexei Nikanorovich seems to have confided very much while he lived, brought me out of this difficulty: three weeks ago she wrote to me very resolutely that I should give the document precisely to you, and that this would also seem(her expression) to coincide with Andronikov’s will. So here is the document, and I’m very glad that I can finally deliver it.”
“Listen,” I said, puzzled by such unexpected news, “what am I going to do now with this letter? How am I to act?”
“That’s as you will.”
“Impossible, I’m terribly unfree, you must admit! Versilov has been waiting so for this inheritance . . . and, you know, he’ll die without this help—and suddenly there exists such a document!”
“It exists only here in this room.”
“Can it be so?” I looked at him attentively.
“If you yourself can’t find how to act in this case, what advice can I give you?”
“But I can’t turn it over to Prince Sokolsky either; I’ll kill all Versilov’s hopes and, besides that, come out as a traitor before him . . . On the other hand, by giving it to Versilov, I’ll reduce innocent people to poverty, and still put Versilov in an impossible position: either to renounce the inheritance or to become a thief.”
“You greatly exaggerate the significance of the matter.”
“Tell me one thing. Does this document have a decisive, definitive character?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m not much of a jurist. The lawyer for the opposing side would, of course, know how to put this document to use and derive all possible benefit from it; but Alexei Nikanorovich found positively that this letter, if presented, would have no great legal significance, so that Versilov’s case could be won anyway. This document sooner represents, so to speak, a matter of conscience . . .”
“But that’s the most important thing of all,” I interrupted, “that’s precisely why Versilov will be in an impossible position.”
“He can destroy the document, however, and then, on the contrary, he’ll deliver himself from any danger.”
“Do you have special grounds for supposing that of him, Kraft? That’s what I want to know, it’s for that that I’m here!”
“I think anyone in his place would do the same.”
“And you yourself would do the same?”
“I’m not getting an inheritance, and therefore don’t know about myself.”
“Well, all right,” I said, putting the letter in my pocket. “The matter’s finished for now. Listen, Kraft. Marya Ivanovna, who, I assure you, has revealed a lot to me, told me that you and you alone could tell the truth about what happened in Ems a year and a half ago between Versilov and the Akhmakovs. I’ve been waiting for you like a sun that would light up everything for me. You don’t know my position, Kraft. I beseech you to tell me the whole truth. I precisely want to know what kind of man heis, and now—now I need it more than ever!”
“I’m surprised that Marya Ivanovna didn’t tell you everything herself; she could have heard all about it from the late Andronikov and, naturally, has heard and knows maybe more than I do.”
“Andronikov himself was unclear about the matter, that’s precisely what Marya Ivanovna says. It seems nobody can clear it up. The devil would break a leg here! I know, though, that you were in Ems yourself then . . .”
“I didn’t witness all of it, but what I know I’ll willingly tell you, if you like—only will that satisfy you?”
II
I WON’T QUOTE his story word for word, but will give only the brief essence of it.
A year and a half ago, Versilov, having become a friend of the Akhmakovs’ house through old Prince Sokolsky (they were all abroad then, in Ems), made a strong impression, first, on Akhmakov himself, a general and not yet an old man, but who, in the space of three years of marriage, had lost all the rich dowry of his wife, Katerina Nikolaevna, at cards, and had already had a stroke from his intemperate life. He had recovered from it and was convalescing abroad, but was living in Ems for the sake of his daughter from his first marriage. She was a sickly girl of about seventeen, who suffered from a weak chest, and was said to be extremely beautiful, but at the same time also fantastical. She had no dowry; hopes were placed, as usual, in the old prince. Katerina Nikolaevna was said to be a good stepmother. But the girl, for some reason, became especially attached to Versilov. He was then preaching “something passionate,” in Kraft’s expression, some new life, “was in a religious mood in the loftiest sense”—in the strange, and perhaps also mocking, expression of Andronikov, which was reported to me. But, remarkably, everyone soon took a dislike to him. The general was even afraid of him. Kraft in no way denies the rumor that Versilov somehow managed to instill it into the sick husband’s mind that Katerina Nikolaevna was not indifferent to the young Prince Sokolsky (who had then absented himself from Ems to Paris). And he did it not directly, but, “as was his wont”—by slander, hints, and various meanderings, “at which he was a great master,” as Kraft put it. Generally, I will say that Kraft considered him, and wished to consider him, sooner a crook and a born intriguer than a man indeed imbued with anything lofty or at least original. I knew even apart from Kraft that Versilov, who first exercised an extraordinary influence on Katerina Nikolaevna, gradually went so far as to break with her. What the whole game consisted of, I could not get from Kraft, but everyone confirmed the mutual hatred that arose between them after their friendship. Then a strange circumstance occurred: Katerina Nikolaevna’s sickly stepdaughter apparently fell in love with Versilov, or was struck by something in him, or was inflamed by his talk, or I have no idea what else; but it is known that for some time Versilov spent almost every day near this girl. It ended with the girl suddenly announcing to her father that she wished to marry Versilov. That this actually happened, everyone confirms—Kraft and Andronikov and Marya Ivanovna—and once even Tatyana Pavlovna let something slip about it in my presence. It was also affirmed that Versilov himself not only wished but even insisted on marrying the girl, and that this concord of two dissimilar beings, an old one and a young one, was mutual. But the father was frightened at the thought; to the extent that he was turning away from Katerina Nikolaevna, whom he had formerly loved very much, he had begun almost to idolize his daughter, especially after his stroke. But the most violent opponent of the possibility of such a marriage was Katerina Nikolaevna herself. There took place an extreme number of some sort of secret, extremely unpleasant family confrontations, arguments, grievances, in short, all kinds of nastiness. The father finally began to give in, seeing the persistence of his daughter, who was in love with and “fanaticized” by Versilov—Kraft’s expression. But Katerina Nikolaevna continued to rebel with implacable hatred. And here begins the tangle that no one understands. Here, however, is Kraft’s direct conjecture, based on the given facts, but still only a conjecture.
