The Adolescent полностью

“In her place, out of pride alone, I wouldn’t have opposed it!”

“For my part, I absolutely refuse to judge in such a matter,” Vasin concluded.

Indeed, Vasin, for all his intelligence, may have had no notion of women, so that a whole cycle of ideas and phenomena remained unknown to him. I fell silent. Vasin was working temporarily in a joint-stock company, and I knew that he brought work home. To my insistent question, he confessed that he had work then, too, some accounts, and I warmly begged him not to stand on ceremony with me. That seemed to afford him pleasure; but before sitting down with his papers, he began to make a bed for me on the sofa. First of all he tried to yield me his bed, but when I didn’t accept, that also seemed to please him. He obtained a pillow and a blanket from the landlady. Vasin was extremely polite and amiable, but it was somehow hard for me to see him going to such trouble on my account. I had liked it better when once, about three weeks ago, I had chanced to spend the night on the Petersburg side, at Efim’s. I remember him concocting a bed for me, also on a sofa and in secret from his aunt, supposing for some reason that she would get angry on learning that his comrades came to spend the night. We laughed a lot, spread out a shirt instead of a sheet, and folded an overcoat for a pillow. I remember Zverev, when he had finished work, giving the sofa a loving flick and saying to me:

“Vous dormirez comme un petit roi.”²⁹

Both his stupid gaiety and the French phrase, which suited him like a saddle on a cow, had the result that I slept with extreme pleasure then at this buffoon’s place. As for Vasin, I was extremely glad when he finally sat down to work, his back turned to me. I sprawled on the sofa and, looking at his back, thought long and about much.

III

AND THERE WAS plenty to think about. My soul was very troubled, and there was nothing whole in it; but some sensations stood out very definitely, though no one of them drew me fully to itself, owing to their abundance. Everything flashed somehow without connection or sequence, and I remember that I myself had no wish to stop at anything or introduce any sequence. Even the idea of Kraft moved imperceptibly into the background. What excited me most of all was my own situation, that here I had already “broken away,” and my suitcase was with me, and I wasn’t at home, and was beginning everything entirely anew. Just as if up to now all my intentions and preparations had been a joke, and only “now, suddenly and, above all, unexpectedly, everything had begun in reality.” This idea heartened me and, however troubled my soul was about many things, cheered me up. But . . . but there were other sensations as well; one of them especially wanted to distinguish itself from the others and take possession of my soul, and, strangely, this sensation also heartened me, as if summoning me to something terribly gay. It began, however, with fear: I had been afraid for a long while, since that very moment earlier when, in my fervor and taken unawares, I had told Mme. Akhmakov too much about the document. “Yes, I said too much,” I thought, “and perhaps they’ll guess something . . . that’s bad! Naturally, they won’t leave me in peace if they begin to suspect, but . . . let them! Perhaps they won’t even find me—I’ll hide! But what if they really start running after me . . .” And then I began to recall down to the last detail and with growing pleasure how I had stood before Katerina Nikolaevna and how her bold but terribly astonished eyes had looked straight at me. And I had gone out leaving her in that astonishment, I recalled; “her eyes are not quite black, however . . . only her eyelashes are very black, that’s what makes her eyes, too, look so dark . . .”

And suddenly, I remember, it became terribly loathsome for me to recall . . . and I was vexed and sickened, both at them and at myself. I reproached myself for something and tried to think about other things. “Why is it that I don’t feel the least indignation at Versilov for the story with the woman next door?” suddenly came into my head. For my part, I was firmly convinced that his role here had been amorous and that he had come in order to have some fun, but that in itself did not make me indignant. It even seemed to me that he couldn’t be imagined otherwise, and though I really was glad that he had been disgraced, I didn’t blame him. That was not important for me. What was important for me was that he had looked at me so angrily when I came in with the woman, looked at me as he never had before. “He finally looked at me seriously!” I thought, and my heart stood still. Oh, if I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have been so glad of his hatred!