Текст книги "The Eternal Husband and Other Stories"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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But this time he barely took the trouble to undress, threw himself on his bed, and irritably decided not to think about anything, but to fall asleep at all costs “this very minute.” And, strangely, he suddenly fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow; this had not happened to him for almost a month.

He slept for about three hours, but it was a troubled sleep; he dreamed some strange dreams, such as one dreams in fever. They had to do with some crime he had supposedly committed and kept secret, and of which he was unanimously accused by people who were constantly coming into his place from somewhere. A terrible crowd gathered, yet people still kept coming in, so that the door could no longer be closed, but stood wide open. But all interest finally concentrated on one strange man, someone very closely acquainted with him at some time, who had since died, and now for some reason also suddenly came into his room. The most tormenting thing was that Velchaninov did not know who the man was, had forgotten his name and simply could not remember it; he knew only that he had once loved him very much. It was as if all the rest of the people who had come also expected the most important word from this man: either an accusation or a vindication of Velchaninov—and they were all impatient. But he sat motionless at the table, kept silent, and refused to speak. The noise would not subside, his vexation grew stronger, and suddenly Velchaninov, in a rage, struck the man, because he refused to speak, and felt a strange pleasure in it. His heart sank with horror and suffering at his action, yet it was in this sinking that the pleasure consisted. Completely frenzied, he struck a second and a third time, and in some sort of intoxication from fury and fear, which reached the point of madness, but also contained in itself an infinite pleasure, he no longer counted the blows, but struck without stopping. He wanted to destroy all, all of it. Suddenly something happened; everyone shouted terribly and turned expectantly to the door, and at that moment there came three resounding strokes of the bell, with such force as if someone wanted to tear it off the door. Velchaninov woke up, instantly came to his senses, flew out of bed, and rushed to the door; he was absolutely sure that the ringing of the bell had not been a dream and that someone had actually rung for him that minute. “It would be far too unnatural if such a clear, such an actual, tangible ringing were just my dream!”

But, to his surprise, the ringing of the bell also turned out to be a dream. He opened the door and went out to the hall, even peeked onto the stairs—there was decidedly no one. The bell hung motionless. Marveling, but also rejoicing, he went back to the room. As he was lighting the candle, he remembered that the door had only been shut, but not locked with key or hook. Before, too, when he came home, he had often forgotten to lock the door for the night, considering it a matter of no importance. Pelageya had reprimanded him several times for it. He went back to the hall to lock the door, opened it once more and looked out, then closed it just with the hook, but was still too lazy to turn the key. The clock struck two-thirty; it meant he had slept for three hours.

His dream had agitated him so much that he did not want to go back to bed right away and decided to pace the room for some half an hour—“time enough to smoke a cigar.” Having dressed hastily, he went up to the window, raised the thick damask curtain and the white blind behind it. Outside it was already quite light. The bright summer Petersburg nights always produced a nervous irritation in him and lately had only contributed to his insomnia, so that about two weeks ago he had purposely provided his windows with these thick damask curtains, which did not let in any light when completely closed. Having let in the light and forgetting the burning candle on the table, he began pacing back and forth still with some heavy and sick feeling. The impression of the dream still worked. The serious suffering at having raised his hand against this man and beaten him went on.

“And this man doesn’t even exist and never did, it’s all a dream, so what am I whining about?”

With bitterness and as if all his cares converged in this, he began to think that he was decidedly becoming sick, a “sick person.”

It had always been hard for him to admit that he was getting old or feeble, and out of spite, in his bad moments, he exaggerated both the one and the other, on purpose, to taunt himself.

“Old age! I’m getting quite old,” he muttered, pacing, “I’m losing my memory, seeing phantoms, dreams, bells ringing… Devil take it! I know from experience that such dreams have always been a sign of fever in me… I’m sure this whole ‘story’ with this crape is also perhaps a dream. I decidedly thought right yesterday: it’s I, I who keep bothering him, and not he me! I made up a poem out of him, and hid under the table from fear myself. And why do I call him a rascal? He may be quite a decent man. True, his face is disagreeable, though nothing especially unattractive; he’s dressed like everybody else. Only his look is somehow… I’m at it again! about him again! and what the devil do I care about his look? What, can’t I live without this… gallowsbird?”

Among other thoughts that popped into his head, one also wounded him painfully: he suddenly became as if convinced that this gentleman with the crape had once been acquainted with him in a friendly way and now, meeting him, was making fun of him, because he knew some big former secret of his, and saw him now in such humiliating circumstances. Mechanically, he went up to the window to open it and breathe the night air, and—all at once gave a great start: it seemed to him that something unheard-of and extraordinary suddenly occurred before him.

He had not yet had time to open the window, but hastened to slip behind the corner of the window niche and hide himself: on the deserted sidewalk opposite he had suddenly seen, right in front of the house, the gentleman with crape on his hat. The gentleman was standing on the sidewalk facing his windows, but evidently without noticing him, and was examining the house with curiosity, as if trying to figure something out. It seemed he was pondering something and as if making up his mind to do it; he raised his hand and as if put a finger to his forehead. Finally, he made up his mind: he looked furtively around and, on tiptoe, stealthily, began hurriedly to cross the street. That was it: he went to their gate, through the door (which in summer sometimes stayed unbolted till three in the morning). “He’s coming to me,” quickly flashed in Velchaninov, and suddenly, headlong and also on tiptoe, he rushed to the door and—stopped in front of it, stock-still in expectation, lightly resting his twitching right hand on the door hook he had fastened earlier and listening as hard as he could for the rustle of the expected footsteps on the stairs.

His heart was pounding so that he was afraid he might not hear the stranger tiptoeing up the stairs. He did not understand the fact, but he felt everything with some tenfold fullness. As if his earlier dream had merged with reality. Velchaninov was brave by nature. He liked sometimes to carry his fearlessness in the face of danger to the point of a certain swagger—even if no one was watching him, just so as to admire himself. But now there was something else there as well. The recent hypochondriac and insecure whiner was completely transformed; this was now a totally different man. Nervous, inaudible laughter was bursting from his breast. From behind the closed door he could guess the stranger’s every move.

“Ah! there he is coming up, he’s here, he’s looking around; listening down the stairs; barely breathing, sneaking… ah! he’s taken hold of the handle, he’s pulling, trying! he was counting on finding my place unlocked! That means he knows I sometimes forget to lock it! He’s pulling the handle again; what, does he think the hook will pop out? He’s sorry to go away! Sorry to leave with nothing?”

And, indeed, everything must certainly have been happening as he pictured it: someone was indeed standing outside the door and kept gently, inaudibly trying the lock and pulling at the handle and—“so, naturally, had some purpose.” But Velchaninov already had the solution of the problem ready, and, with a sort of ecstasy, was waiting for the right moment, calculating and taking aim; he had an invincible desire to suddenly lift the hook, suddenly fling the door open and find himself face-to-face with the “bogey.” To say, “And what are you doing here, my dear sir?”

And so it happened; seizing the moment, he suddenly lifted the hook, pushed the door, and—nearly bumped into the gentleman with crape on his hat.

III

PAVEL PAVLOVICH TRUSOTSKY

The man as if froze on the spot. The two stood opposite each other on the threshold, and looked fixedly into each other’s eyes. Several moments passed in this way, and suddenly—Velchaninov recognized his visitor!

At the same time, the visitor evidently also guessed that Velchaninov recognized him perfectly: it flashed in his eyes. In one instant his whole face as if melted into the sweetest smile.

“I surely have the pleasure of speaking with Alexei Ivanovich?” he nearly sang out in the tenderest voice, comically unsuited to the circumstances.

“But can it be that you are Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky?” Velchaninov, too, finally managed to say with a puzzled look.

“You and I were acquainted some nine years ago in T–, and—if you will permit me to recall—were friendly acquaintances.”

“Yes, sir… maybe so, sir… but it’s now three o’clock, and you spent a whole ten minutes trying to see if my door was locked or not…”

“Three o’clock!” the visitor cried, taking out his watch and even being ruefully surprised. “Exactly right: three! Excuse me, Alexei Ivanovich, I ought to have realized it when I came in; I’m even ashamed. I’ll stop by and have a talk with you one of these days, but now…”

“Ah, no! if we’re to have a talk, let’s have it right now, please!” Velchaninov recollected himself. “Kindly come this way, across the threshold; to my rooms, sir. You yourself, of course, were intending to come in, and not just to pass by at night to check the locks…”

He was agitated and at the same time as if taken aback, and felt unable to collect himself. He was even ashamed: no mystery, no danger—nothing remained of the whole phantasmagoria; there turned up only the stupid figure of some Pavel Pavlovich. But, nevertheless, he by no means believed it was as simple as that; he had a vague and fearful presentiment of something. Seating the visitor in an armchair, he impatiently sat down on his bed, a step away from the armchair, leaned forward, his palms resting on his knees, and waited irritably for the man to speak. He greedily examined and recalled him. But, strangely, the man was silent and seemed not to understand at all that he was “obliged” to speak immediately; on the contrary, he himself looked at his host with eyes that were as if expecting something. It might have been that he was simply timid, feeling some initial awkwardness, like a mouse in a mousetrap; but Velchaninov got angry.

“What’s with you!” he cried. “I don’t suppose you’re a fantasy or a dream! Have you shown up here to play the dead man? Explain yourself, my dear!”

The visitor stirred, smiled, and began warily: “As far as I can see, you find it, first of all, even striking that I came at such an hour and—under such particular circumstances, sir… So that, remembering all past things and how we parted, sir—I find it strange even now, sir… However, I did not even have any intention of calling on you, and if it has turned out this way, it was—accidentally, sir…”

“How, accidentally! I saw you from the window, running across the street on tiptoe!”

“Ah, you saw!—well, then perhaps you now know more about it all than I do, sir! But I’m only vexing you… Here’s the thing, sir: I came here three weeks ago, on my own business… I am Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, you recognized me yourself, sir. My business is that I’m soliciting to be transferred to another province and to another job, sir, to a post with a considerable promotion… But, anyhow, all that is also not it, sir!… The main thing, if you wish, is that it’s the third week I’ve been hanging around here, and it seems I’ve been putting my business off on purpose—that is, about the transfer, sir—and, really, even if it does come off, for all I know I may forget that it came off, sir, and not move out of your Petersburg in the mood I’m in. I’m hanging around as if I’d lost my purpose, and as if I were even glad I’d lost it—in the mood I’m in, sir…”

“What mood is that?” Velchaninov was frowning.

The visitor raised his eyes to him, raised his hat, and now with firm dignity pointed to the crape.

“Yes—here’s what mood, sir!”

Velchaninov gazed dumbly now at the crape, now into his visitor’s face. Suddenly a blush poured instantly over his cheeks, and he became terribly agitated.

“Not Natalia Vassilievna!”

“Herself, sir. Natalia Vassilievna! This past March… Consumption, and almost suddenly, sir, in some two or three months! And I’ve been left—as you see!”

Having said this, the visitor, with strong emotion, spread his arms to both sides, holding his hat with the crape in his left hand and bowing his bald head very deeply for at least ten seconds.

This look and this gesture suddenly as if refreshed Velchaninov; a mocking and even provocative smile flitted over his lips—but as yet only for a moment: the news of the death of this lady (with whom he had been acquainted so long ago and whom he had so long ago managed to forget)—now made an unexpectedly staggering impression on him.

“How can it be!” he muttered the first words that came to his lips. “And why didn’t you come straight to tell me?”

“I thank you for your sympathy, I see and appreciate it, despite…”

“Despite?”

“Despite so many years of separation, you have now treated my grief and even myself with such perfect sympathy that I naturally feel grateful. That is the only thing I wished to say, sir. And it is not that I doubted my friends, even now I can find the most sincere friends here, sir (take just Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov alone), but my acquaintance with you, Alexei Ivanovich (friendship, perhaps—for I recall it with gratitude)—was nine years ago, sir, you never came back to us; there were no letters on either side…”

The visitor was reciting as if by rote, but all the while he spoke, he looked at the ground, though, of course, he could see everything above as well. But the host, too, had managed to collect himself a little.

With a certain quite strange impression, which was growing more and more, he listened to and observed Pavel Pavlovich, and suddenly, when the man paused—the most motley and unexpected thoughts unexpectedly flooded his head.

“But why did I keep not recognizing you till now?” he cried out, becoming animated. “We ran into each other some five times in the street!”

“Yes, I also remember that; you kept coming toward me, sir—twice, maybe even three times…”

“That is—it was youwho keptcoming toward me, not I toward you!”

Velchaninov got up and suddenly laughed loudly and quite unexpectedly. Pavel Pavlovich paused, looked attentively, but at once began to go on:

“And you didn’t recognize me because, first of all, you might have forgotten, sir, and, finally, I even had smallpox during this time, which left some traces on my face.”

“Smallpox? Why, he did in fact have smallpox! but how on earth did you…”

“Manage that? All sorts of things happen, Alexei Ivanovich; every now and then one manages!”

“Only it’s terribly funny all the same. Well, go on, go on—my dear friend!”

“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir…”

“Wait! Why did you just say ‘manage that’? I was going to put it much more politely. Well, go on, go on!”

For some reason he was feeling merrier and merrier. The staggering impression was replaced by something quite different.

He paced up and down the room with quick steps.

“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir, and as I was coming here to Petersburg I was even intending to look you up without fail, but, I repeat, I’m now in such a state of mind… and so mentally broken since that same month of March…”

“Ah, yes! broken since the month of March… Wait, you don’t smoke?”

“You know, I, while Natalia Vassilievna…”

“Ah, yes, yes; but since the month of March?”

“Maybe a little cigarette.”

“Here’s a cigarette; light up and—go on! go on, I’m terribly…”

And, lighting a cigar, Velchaninov quickly sat down on his bed again. Pavel Pavlovich paused.

“But you yourself, however, are somehow quite agitated—are you well, sir?”

“Ah, to the devil with my health!” Velchaninov suddenly got angry. “Go on!”

The visitor, for his part, seeing the host’s agitation, was growing more pleased and self-confident.

“What’s the point of going on, sir?” he began again. “Imagine to yourself, Alexei Ivanovich, first of all, a man who is crushed—that is, not simply but, so to speak, radically crushed; a man who, after twenty years of marriage, changes his life and hangs about in dusty streets without any suitable purpose, as if in the steppes, all but forgetting himself, and even reveling somewhat in this self-forgetting. After that it’s natural if sometimes, meeting an acquaintance or even a true friend, I may avoid him on purpose, so as not to approach him at such a moment—of self-forgetting, that is. And at another moment, one remembers everything so well and thirsts so much to see at least some witness and partaker of that recent but irretrievable past, and one’s heart starts pounding so, that not only in the daytime but even at night one risks throwing oneself into a friend’s arms, even if one has to wake him up especially for that purpose past three in the morning, sir. I only got the hour wrong, but not the friendship; for at the present moment I’m only too well rewarded, sir. And concerning the hour, really, I thought it wasn’t twelve yet, being in that mood. One drinks one’s own sorrow and is as if intoxicated by it. And not even sorrow, but precisely this novi-condition is what keeps hitting me…”

“What a way to put it, though!” Velchaninov, having suddenly become terribly serious again, observed somehow gloomily.

“Yes, sir, I put it strangely…”

“And you’re… not joking?”

“Joking!” exclaimed Pavel Pavlovich in mournful perplexity, “at the very moment when I announce…”

“Ah, keep quiet about that, I beg you!”

Velchaninov got up and again began pacing the room.

And in this way about five minutes went by. The visitor, too, made as if to get up, but Velchaninov cried out: “Sit, sit!”—and the man at once obediently lowered himself into the armchair.

“How changed you are, though!” Velchaninov began talking again, suddenly stopping in front of him—just as if suddenly struck by the thought. “Terribly changed! Extremely! Quite a different man!”

“No wonder, sir: it’s nine years.”

“No, no, no, it’s not a matter of years! You haven’t changed in appearance, God knows: you’ve changed in something else!”

“Also, maybe, these nine years, sir.”

“Or since the month of March!”

“Heh, heh,” Pavel Pavlovich chuckled slyly, “you’ve got some playful thought… But, if I dare ask—what essentially is this change?”

“What indeed! Before there was such a solid and decent Pavel Pavlovich, such a smarty of a Pavel Pavlovich, and now—a perfect vaurien ²of a Pavel Pavlovich.”

He was in that degree of vexation in which the most restrained people sometimes start saying unnecessary things.

“Vaurien!You think so? And no longer a ‘smarty’? Not a smarty?” Pavel Pavlovich tittered delightedly.

“The devil you’re a ‘smarty’! Now, maybe, you’re thoroughly smart.

“I’m impudent,” Velchaninov went on thinking, “but this rascal is more impudent still. And… and what’s his purpose?”

“Ah, my dearest, ah, my most priceless Alexei Ivanovich!” The visitor suddenly became extremely agitated and started fidgeting in his armchair. “But what’s that to us? We’re not in society now, not in brilliant, high-society company! We’re—two most sincere and ancient former friends, and, so to speak, have come together in the fullest sincerity to mutually recall that precious connection, in which the deceased woman constituted so precious a link in our friendship!”

And he was as if so carried away by the rapture of his feelings that he again bowed his head, as earlier, but now he covered his face with his hat. Velchaninov studied him with loathing and uneasiness.

“And what if he’s simply a buffoon?” flashed in his head. “But n-no, n-no! it seems he’s not drunk—however, maybe he is; his face is red. Though even if he is drunk—it comes out the same. What has he got up his sleeve? What does the rascal want?”

“Remember, remember,” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, uncovering his face little by little and as if getting more and more carried away by his memories, “remember our excursions outside of town, our evenings and evening parties with dances and innocent games at His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s? And our evening readings, just the three of us? And our first acquaintance with you, when you came to me one morning to get information about your lawsuit, and even started shouting, sir, and suddenly Natalia Vassilievna came out and ten minutes later you were already a true friend of our house, for precisely one whole year, sir—just as in The Provincial Lady, Mr. Turgenev’s play…” ³

Velchaninov was pacing slowly, looking at the ground, listening with impatience and loathing, but—listening hard.

“The Provincial Ladynever entered my head,” he interrupted, somewhat at a loss, “and you never spoke in such a squeaky voice before, or in this… not your own style. Why are you doing it?”

“Indeed, I was mostly silent before, sir—that is, I was more silent,” Pavel Pavlovich picked up hastily. “You know, before I preferred to listen when my late wife spoke. You remember how she spoke, with what wit, sir… And concerning The Provincial Ladyand in particular concerning Stupendiev—you’re right there, too, because it was later that we ourselves, I and my priceless late wife, remembering you, sir, in some quiet moments, after you’d already left, compared our first meeting to this theater piece… because there was in fact a resemblance, sir. And particularly concerning Stupendiev…”

“What’s this Stupendiev, devil take it!” Velchaninov shouted and even stamped his foot, being completely put out at the word Stupendiev, owing to a certain uneasy remembrance that flashed in him at this word.

“Stupendievis a role, sir, a theatrical role, the role of ‘the husband’ in the play The Provincial Lady,”Pavel Pavlovich squeaked in the sweetest little voice, “but that belongs to another category of our dear and beautiful memories, already after your departure, when Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov graced us with his friendship, just as you did, sir, and for a whole five years.”

“Bagautov? What’s that? Which Bagautov?” Velchaninov suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

“Bagautov, Stepan Mikhailovich, who graced us with his friendship precisely a year after you and… like you, sir.”

“Ah, my God, but that I know!” Velchaninov cried, finally figuring it out. “Bagautov! but he served with you…”

“He did, he did! at the governor’s! From Petersburg, a most elegant young man of the highest society!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, decidedly enraptured.

“Yes, yes, yes! How could I! And so he, too…”

“And he, too! And he, too!” Pavel Pavlovich, having picked up his host’s imprudent phrase, echoed with the same rapture. “And he, too! It was then that we produced The Provincial Ladyin His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s home theater—Stepan Mikhailovich was ‘the count,’ I was ‘the husband,’ and my late wife was ‘the provincial lady’—only the role of ‘the husband,’ was taken from me at the insistence of my late wife, so I didn’t play ‘the husband,’ being supposedly unable to, sir…”

“No, the devil you’re Stupendiev! You’re Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky first of all, and not Stupendiev!” Velchaninov said rudely, unceremoniously, and all but trembling with vexation. “Only, excuse me, this Bagautov is here in Petersburg; I saw him myself, in the spring! Why don’t you go to him, too?”

“I’ve called on him every blessed day for three weeks now, sir. He won’t receive me! He’s ill, he can’t receive me! And, imagine, I found out from the foremost sources that he really is extremely dangerously ill! Such a friend for six years! Ah, Alexei Ivanovich, I’m telling you and I repeat that in this mood one sometimes wishes simply to fall through the earth, even in reality, sir; and at other moments it seems I could just up and embrace precisely some one of these former, so to speak, witnesses and partakers, and with the sole purpose of weeping—that is, absolutely for no other purpose than weeping!…”

“Well, anyhow, you’ve had enough for today, right?” Velchaninov said sharply.

“More, more than enough!” Pavel Pavlovich rose at once from his place. “It’s four o’clock and, above all, I’ve disturbed you so egoistically…”

“Listen, now: I’ll call on you myself, without fail, and then I do hope… Tell me directly, frankly tell me: you’re not drunk today?”

“Drunk? Not a whit…”

“You didn’t drink before coming, or earlier?”

“You know, Alexei Ivanovich, you’re completely feverish, sir.”

“I’ll call on you by tomorrow, in the morning, before one…”

“And I’ve long been noticing that you’re as if delirious, sir.” Pavel Pavlovich interfered delightedly, pressing the point. “I really am so ashamed that I, in my awkwardness… but I’m leaving, I’m leaving! And you go to bed and sleep!”

“And why didn’t you tell me where you live?” Velchaninov, recollecting himself, shouted after him.

“Didn’t I, sir? In the Pokrovsky Hotel…”

“What Pokrovsky Hotel?”

“Why, right next to the Pokrov church, there in the lane, sir—only I forget which lane, and the number as well, but it’s right next to the Pokrov church…”

“I’ll find it!”

“You’ll be a most welcome guest.”

He was already going out to the stairs.

“Wait!” Velchaninov cried again, “you’re not going to give me the slip?”

“How do you mean, ‘give you the slip’?” Pavel Pavlovich goggled his eyes at him, turning and smiling from the third step.

Instead of an answer, Velchaninov noisily slammed the door, locked it carefully, and put the hook into the eye. Going back to his room, he spat as if he had been befouled by something.

After standing motionlessly for five minutes in the middle of the room, he threw himself down on the bed, without undressing at all, and instantly fell asleep. The forgotten candle burned all the way down on the table.

IV

WIFE, HUSBAND, AND LOVER

He slept very soundly and woke up at exactly half past nine; rose instantly, sat on his bed, and at once began thinking about the death of “that woman.”

Yesterday’s staggering impression from the unexpected news of this death had left him in some bewilderment and even pain. This bewilderment and pain had only been stifled in him for a time yesterday, in Pavel Pavlovich’s presence, by one strange idea. But now, on awakening, all that had happened nine years earlier suddenly stood before him with extreme vividness.

He had loved and been the lover of this woman, the late Natalia Vassilievna, the wife of “this Trusotsky,” when, on his own business (and also on the occasion of a lawsuit about an inheritance), he had spent a whole year in T–, though the business itself had not called for such long-term presence; the real reason had been this liaison. This liaison and love had possessed him so strongly that he had been as if the slave of Natalia Vassilievna and, indeed, would have ventured at once upon anything even of the most monstrous and senseless sort if it had been demanded only by the merest caprice of this woman. Never, either before or afterward, had anything similar happened to him. At the end of the year, when parting was already imminent, Velchaninov had been in such despair as the fatal hour drew near—in despair, despite the fact that the parting was supposed to be for the shortest time—that he suggested to Natalia Vassilievna that he carry her off, take her away from her husband, drop everything, and go abroad with him forever. Only the mockery and firm persistence of this lady (who at first fully approved of the project, but probably only out of boredom or else to make fun of it) could have stopped him and forced him to leave alone. And what then? Two months had not passed since their parting, and he, in Petersburg, was already asking himself that question which remained forever unresolved for him: did he really love this woman, or had it all been only a certain “bedevilment”? And it was not at all out of light-mindedness or under the influence of a new passion starting in him that the question was born in him: for those first two months in Petersburg he was in some sort of frenzy and was unlikely to notice any woman, though he at once took up with his former society and had occasion to see hundreds of women. Nevertheless, he knew very well that if he found himself at once back in T–, he would immediately fall again under all the oppressive charm of this woman, despite all the questions that had been born in him. Even five years later he was still of the same conviction. But five years later he had already admitted it to himself with indignation and even remembered “that woman” herself with hatred. He was ashamed of his T–year; he could not understand how such a “stupid” passion had even been possible for him, Velchaninov! All memories of this passion turned to disgrace for him; he blushed to the point of tears and suffered remorse. True, after another few years, he managed to calm himself down somewhat; he tried to forget it all—and nearly succeeded. And now all at once, nine years later, it all suddenly and strangely rose up again before him after yesterday’s news about Natalia Vassilievna’s death.