“My friend, all this is beginning to become so curious, that I suggest . . .”
“Myself, I used to give a tenner or a twenty-fiver to solicitors. For a dram. Just a few kopecks, it’s a lieutenant soliciting, a former lieutenant asking!” The tall figure of a solicitor, maybe indeed a retired lieutenant, suddenly blocked our way. Most curious of all, he was quite well dressed for his profession, and yet he had his hand out.
III
I PURPOSELY DO not want to omit this most paltry anecdote about the insignificant lieutenant, because I now recall the whole of Versilov not otherwise than with all the minutest circumstantial details of that moment so fateful for him. Fateful, but I didn’t know it!
“If you do not leave us alone, sir, I shall immediately call the police,” Versilov, stopping before the lieutenant, suddenly raised his voice somehow unnaturally. I could never have imagined such wrath from such a philosopher, and for such an insignificant reason. And note that we interrupted the conversation at the moment most interesting for him, as he said himself.
“So you really don’t even have a fifteener?” the lieutenant cried rudely, waving his arm. “On what sort of canaille can you find a fifteener nowadays? Rabble! Scoundrels! He’s all in beaver, yet he makes a state problem out of a fifteener!”
“Police!” shouted Versilov.
But there was no need to shout; a policeman was standing just at the corner and had heard the lieutenant’s abuse himself.
“I ask you to be a witness to the insult, and you I ask to kindly come to the police station,” said Versilov.
“E-eh, it’s all the same to me, you’ll prove decidedly nothing! Your intelligence least of all!”
“Don’t let go of him, officer, and take us there,” Versilov concluded insistently.
“Must we go to the police station? Devil take him!” I whispered to him.
“Absolutely, my dear. This presumptuousness in our streets is beginning to be tiresomely outrageous, and if each of us did his duty, it would be useful for all. C’est comique, mais c’est ce que nous ferons.”40
For about a hundred steps the lieutenant was very hot-tempered, spirited, and brave. He assured us that “this was impossible,” that it was all “ ’cause of a fifteener,” and so on, and so forth. But he finally started whispering something to the policeman. The policeman, a sensible fellow and clearly an enemy of street nervousness, seemed to be on his side, but only in a certain sense. To his questions, he murmured in a half-whisper that “it’s impossible now,” that “the thing’s under way,” and that “if, for instance, you were to apologize, and the gentleman would agree to accept your apology, then maybe . . .”
“Well, li-i-isten he-e-re, my dear sir, so, where are we going? I ask you, where are we trying to get to and what’s so clever about it?” the lieutenant cried loudly. “If a man unlucky in his misfortunes agrees to offer an apology . . . if, finally, you need his humiliation . . . Devil take it, we’re not in a drawing room, we’re in the street! For the street, this is apology enough . . .”
Versilov stopped and suddenly rocked with laughter; I even thought for a moment that he had gone ahead with this whole story for the fun of it, but that wasn’t so.
“I pardon you completely, Mr. Lieutenant, and I assure you that you have abilities. Act this way in a drawing room, and soon it will be quite enough for the drawing room as well, but meanwhile here’s forty kopecks for you, have a drink and a bite to eat. Pardon me for the trouble, officer, I’d reward you, too, for your labors, but you’re all on such a noble footing now . . . My dear,” he turned to me, “there’s an eatery here, in fact a terrible cesspool, but one can have tea there, and I’d suggest to you . . . here it is now, come on.”
I repeat, I had never seen him in such excitement, though his face was cheerful and shone with light; but I noticed that when he was taking the two twenty-kopeck pieces from his purse to give to the lieutenant, his hands shook and his fingers wouldn’t obey at all, so that he finally asked me to take them out and give them to the man. I can’t forget that.
He brought me to a little tavern on the canal, in the basement. The customers were few. A hoarse little organ was playing out of tune, it smelled of dirty napkins; we sat down in the corner.
