But for the moment I was silent and even decided not to think about anything! I kept peeking into their faces, trying to guess everything I needed by them. It was evident that they did not wish to ask questions or show curiosity either, but talked to me about completely irrelevant things. I liked that and at the same time it upset me; I won’t explain this contradiction. I saw Liza more rarely than mama, though she came to see me every day and even twice a day. From bits of their conversation and from the whole look of them I concluded that Liza had accumulated an awful lot of cares, and that she was even frequently away from home because of her affairs. For me it was as if the mere idea of the possibility of “her own affairs” already contained something offensive; however, these were all just sick, purely physiological feelings, which are not worth describing. Tatyana Pavlovna also came to see me almost daily, and though she wasn’t gentle with me at all, at least she didn’t abuse me as before, which vexed me in the extreme, so that I simply said to her, “Tatyana Pavlovna, when you’re not abusing me, you’re a great bore.” “Well, then I won’t come to see you,” she snapped, and left. And I was glad to have chased at least one of them away.
Most of all I tormented mama and got very irritated with her. I suddenly had a terrible appetite, and I grumbled a lot that the food came late (but it never came late). Mama didn’t know how to please me. Once she brought me soup and, as usual, began to feed me herself, but I kept grumbling while I ate. And suddenly I became vexed that I was grumbling: “She’s maybe the only one I love, and it’s her that I torment.” But my anger wouldn’t subside, and I suddenly burst into tears from anger, and she, poor dear, thought I was weeping from tenderness, leaned over, and started kissing me. I restrained myself and somehow endured it and actually hated her in that second. But I always loved mama, loved her then, too, and didn’t really hate her, but it was what always happens: the one you love most is the first one you insult.
The only one I did hate in those first days was the doctor. This doctor was a young man with a presumptuous air, who spoke sharply and even impolitely. As if all those people in science, just yesterday and suddenly, had found out something special, whereas nothing special had happened yesterday; but “the middle” and “the street ” are always that way. I endured for a long time, but in the end suddenly burst out and declared to him, before all our people, that he needn’t drag himself here, that I’d get well without him, that he, though he had the look of a realist, was filled with nothing but prejudice and didn’t understand that medicine had never yet cured anyone; that finally, in all probability, he was grossly uneducated, “like all our present-day engineers and specialists, who have lately started turning up their noses at us.” The doctor was very offended (proving what he was by that alone), yet he continued to visit. I finally announced to Versilov that if the doctor did not stop coming, I’d tell him something ten times more unpleasant. Versilov only observed that it was impossible to say anything even twice more unpleasant than what had been said, let alone ten times. I was glad he had noticed that.
What a man, though! I’m speaking of Versilov. He, he alone, was the cause of it all—and yet he was the only one I wasn’t angry with then. It wasn’t only his manner with me that won me over. I think we felt mutually then that we owed each other many explanations . . . and that, precisely for that reason, it would be best never to explain. It is extremely agreeable, on such occasions in life, to run into an intelligent person! I have already mentioned in the second part of my story, running ahead, that he gave me a very brief and clear account of the arrested prince’s letter to me, about Zershchikov, about his explanation in my favor, and so on. Since I had decided to be silent, I put to him, with all possible dryness, only two or three very brief questions; he answered them clearly and precisely, but entirely without superfluous words and, what was best of all, without superfluous feelings. I was afraid of superfluous feelings then.
