The Adolescent полностью

The hot glass arrived, I gulped it down greedily, and it revived me at once; I started babbling again; I was half-reclining on the sofa in the corner and talking away—I was spluttering as I talked—but of precisely what and how I was speaking, once again I have almost no recollection; there are moments and even whole stretches that I’ve completely forgotten. I repeat: whether he understood anything then from what I was telling, I don’t know; but one thing I realized clearly afterwards—namely, that he managed to understand me well enough to draw the conclusion that he ought not to disregard his meeting with me . . . Later I’ll explain in its place what reckoning he might have made here.

I was not only terribly animated, but at moments, it seems, quite merry. I remember the sun suddenly lighting up the room when the blinds were raised, and the stove crackling when someone lit it—who and how, I don’t remember. I also have the memory of a tiny black dog that Mlle. Alphonsine held in her arms, coquettishly pressing it to her heart. This lapdog somehow diverted me very much, even so much that I stopped talking and twice reached out for it, but Lambert waved his hand, and Alphonsine and her lapdog instantly effaced themselves behind the screen.

He was very silent himself, sat facing me and, leaning strongly towards me, listened without tearing himself away; at times he smiled a long, drawn-out smile, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes, as if making an effort to think and wishing to guess. I’ve kept a clear recollection only of the fact that, when I was telling him about the “document,” I simply couldn’t express myself understandably and make a coherent story of it, and by his face I could see only too well that he couldn’t understand me, but that he wanted very much to understand, so that he even risked stopping me with a question, which was dangerous, because as soon as I was interrupted, I at once interrupted the subject and forgot what I was talking about. How long we sat and talked like that I don’t know and can’t even reckon. He suddenly got up and called Alphonsine:

“He needs rest; he may also need a doctor. Do whatever he asks, that is . . . vous comprenez, ma fille? Vous avez de l’argent,⁵⁴ no? Here!” And he took out a ten-rouble note for her. He started whispering to her: “Vous comprenez! Vous comprenez! ” he repeated to her, shaking his finger at her and frowning sternly. I saw that she trembled frightfully before him.

“I’ll be back, and you’d best have a good sleep,” he smiled to me and took his hat.

“Mais vous n’avez pas dormi du tout, Maurice! ” ⁵⁵ Alphonsine cried out pathetically.

“Taisez-vous, je dormirai après,” ⁵⁶ and he left.

“Sauvée! ” ⁵⁷; she whispered pathetically, pointing after him to me with her hand.

“Monsieur, monsieur! ” she began declaiming at once, assuming a pose in the middle of the room. “Jamais homme ne fut si cruel, si Bismarck, que cet être, qui regarde une femme comme une saleté de hasard. Une femme, qu’est-ce que ça dans notre époque? ‘Tue-la’—voilà le dernier mot de l’Académie française!...” ⁵⁸

I goggled my eyes at her; I was seeing double, there seemed to be two Alphonsines in front of me . . . Suddenly I noticed that she was weeping, gave a start, and realized that she had been talking to me for a very long time now, which meant that during that time I had been asleep or unconscious.