“You’re very cheerful today, and that’s very pleasant,” said Anna Andreevna, articulating the words imposingly and distinctly. Her voice was a dense and sonorous contralto, but she always spoke calmly and softly, always lowering her long lashes slightly, and with a smile barely flitting over her pale face.
“Liza knows how unpleasant I am when I’m not cheerful,” I replied cheerfully.
“Maybe Anna Andreevna knows about that, too,” the mischievous Liza needled me. The dear! If only I had known what was in her heart then!
“What are you doing now?” asked Anna Andreevna. (I’ll note that she had precisely even asked me to call on her today.)
“I’m now sitting here and asking myself: why is it always more pleasant for me to find you over a book than over handwork? No, really, handwork doesn’t suit you for some reason. In that sense I take after Andrei Petrovich.”
“You still haven’t made up your mind to enter the university?”
“I’m only too grateful that you haven’t forgotten our conversations; that means you think of me occasionally; but . . . I haven’t formed my idea yet concerning the university, and besides I have goals of my own.”
“That is, he has his secret,” observed Liza.
“Drop your jokes, Liza. A certain intelligent man said the other day that, with all this progressive movement of ours in the last twenty years, we’ve proved first of all that we’re filthily uneducated. Here, of course, he was also speaking of our university men.”
“Well, surely papa said that; you repeat his thoughts terribly often,” observed Liza.
“Liza, it’s as if you don’t believe I have a mind of my own.”
“In our time it’s useful to listen to the words of intelligent people and remember them,” Anna Andreevna defended me a little.
“Precisely, Anna Andreevna,” I picked up hotly. “Whoever doesn’t think about Russia’s present moment is not a citizen! Maybe I look at Russia from a strange viewpoint: we lived through the Tartar invasion, then through two centuries of slavery,21 and that, certainly, because both the one and the other were to our liking. Now we’ve been given freedom, and we have to endure freedom. Will we be able to? Will freedom prove as much to our taste? That’s the question.”
Liza glanced quickly at Anna Andreevna, who looked down at once and began searching for something around her; I saw that Liza was trying as hard as she could to control herself, but somehow accidentally our eyes suddenly met, and she burst out laughing. I flared up:
“Liza, you’re inconceivable!”
“Forgive me!” she said suddenly, ceasing to laugh and almost with sadness. “I’ve got God knows what in my head . . .”
And it was as if tears suddenly trembled in her voice. I felt terribly ashamed; I took her hand and kissed it hard.
“You’re very kind,” Anna Andreevna observed to me softly, seeing me kiss Liza’s hand.
“I’m glad most of all, Liza, that I find you laughing this time,” I said. “Would you believe it, Anna Andreevna, these past few days she met me each time with some strange look, and in this look there was as if a question: ‘So, have you found anything out? Is everything going well?’ Really, there’s something like that with her.”
Anna Andreevna gave her a slow and keen look. Liza dropped her eyes. I could see very well, however, that the two were much better and more closely acquainted than I’d have supposed when I came in earlier. The thought pleased me.
“You just said I was kind; you won’t believe how the whole of me changes for the better with you, and how pleasant it is for me to be with you, Anna Andreevna,” I said with feeling.
“And I’m very glad you say that to me precisely now,” she replied meaningly. I must say that she never talked to me about my disorderly life and of the abyss I had plunged into, though I knew she not only knew about it all, but even made inquiries indirectly. So that now it was like a first hint, and—my heart turned to her still more.
“How’s our invalid?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s much better. He’s walking, and he went for a ride yesterday and today. But didn’t you go to see him today either? He’s waiting so much for you.”
“I’m guilty towards him, but you visit him now and have fully replaced me. He’s a great traitor and has exchanged me for you.”
She made a very serious face, very possibly because my joke was trivial.
“I was at Prince Sergei Petrovich’s today,” I began to mutter, “and I . . . By the way, Liza, did you go to see Darya Onisimovna today?”
“Yes, I did,” she answered somehow curtly, not raising her head. “It seems you go to see the sick prince every day?” she asked somehow suddenly, maybe in order to say something.
“Yes, I go to see him, only I don’t get there,” I smiled. “I go in and turn left.”
“Even the prince has noticed that you go to see Katerina Nikolaevna very often. He mentioned it yesterday and laughed,” said Anna Andreevna.
“At what? What did he laugh at?”
