The Adolescent полностью

By the way, everything I’ve been describing so far, with such apparently unnecessary detail, all leads to the future and will be needed there. It will all echo in its own place: I’ve been unable to avoid it; and if it’s boring, I beg you not to read it.

Versilov’s daughter was quite a different sort of person. Tall, even slightly lean; an elongated and remarkably pale face, but black, fluffy hair; big, dark eyes, a profound gaze; small and red lips, a fresh mouth. The first woman whose gait did not fill me with loathing; however, she was thin and lean. The expression of her face was not entirely kind, but imposing; twenty-two years old. Hardly a single external feature resembling Versilov, and yet, by some miracle, an extraordinary resemblance to him in her facial expression. I don’t know if she was good-looking; that’s a matter of taste. Both women were dressed very modestly, so it’s not worth describing. I expected to be offended at once by some look or gesture from Miss Versilov, and I prepared myself; for her brother had offended me in Moscow, at our very first confrontation in life. She couldn’t have known me by my face, but she had certainly heard that I visited the prince. Everything the prince proposed or did aroused interest and was an event among that whole heap of his relations and “expectant ones”—the more so his sudden partiality for me. I knew positively that the prince was very interested in the fate of Anna Andreevna and was seeking a fiancé for her. But it was more difficult to find a fiancé for Miss Versilov than for the ones who embroidered on canvas.

And so, contrary to all expectation, Miss Versilov, having shaken the prince’s hand and exchanged some cheerful social phrases with him, looked at me with extraordinary curiosity and, seeing that I was also looking at her, suddenly bowed to me with a smile. True, she had just walked in and her bow was in greeting, but her smile was so kind that it was obviously deliberate. And I recall that I experienced an extraordinarily pleasant feeling.

“And this . . . this is my dear and young friend Arkady Andreevich Dol . . .”—the prince murmured, noticing that she had bowed to me, while I was still sitting—and suddenly broke off: perhaps he became embarrassed that he was introducing me to her (that is, essentially, a brother to a sister). The pillow also gave me a bow; but I suddenly flew into a stupid rage and jumped up from my seat: a surge of affected pride, completely senseless, all from self-love!

“Excuse me, Prince, I am not Arkady Andreevich, but Arkady Makarovich,” I cut off cuttingly, quite forgetting that I ought to have responded to the ladies’ bows. Devil take that indecent moment!

“Mais . . . tiens! ” the prince cried out, striking himself on the forehead with his finger.

“Where did you study?” I heard beside me the silly and drawn-out question of the pillow, who had come over to me.

“In a high school in Moscow.”

“Ah! So I heard. And do they teach well there?”

“Very well.”

I went on standing, and spoke like a soldier reporting.

The girl’s questions were indisputably unresourceful, but, nevertheless, she did manage to cover up my stupid escapade and to ease the embarrassment of the prince, who listened at the same time with a merry smile to something Miss Versilov was merrily whispering to him—evidently not about me. A question, though: why should this girl, a total stranger to me, volunteer to cover up my stupid escapade and all the rest? At the same time, it was impossible to imagine that she had addressed me just like that; there was an intention here. She looked at me all too curiously, as if she also wanted me to take as much notice of her as possible. I figured it all out afterwards and was not mistaken.

“What, today?” the prince cried suddenly, leaping up from his place.

“So you didn’t know?” Miss Versilov was surprised. “Olympe! The prince didn’t know that Katerina Nikolaevna would be here today. We came to see her, we thought she took the morning train and had long been at home. We only just met her on the porch; she came straight from the station and told us to go to you, and that she would come presently . . . Here she is!”

The side door opened and—that woman appeared!

I already knew her face from an astonishing portrait that hung in the prince’s office; I had studied that portrait all month. In her presence, I spent some three minutes in the office and not for one second did I tear my eyes from her face. But if I hadn’t known the portrait and had been asked, after those three minutes, “What is she like?”—I wouldn’t have been able to answer, because everything became clouded in me.