“Well, well, don’t frown. I won’t embroider on it. Only watch out that nothing bad happens, understand? You’re a smart girl; I’d be sorry for you. Well, enough, I don’t even want to look at you all! Go! Good-bye!”
“I’ll still come to see you off, grandmother,” said Polina.
“No need to; don’t bother me, I’m sick of you all.”
Polina kissed grandmother’s hand, but she pulled her hand away and kissed Polina on the cheek.
As she passed me, Polina glanced at me quickly and at once turned away.
“Well, good-bye to you, too, Alexei Ivanovich! It’s only an hour till the train. And you’re tired of me, I think. Here, take these fifty gold pieces.”
“I humbly thank you, grandmother, I’m ashamed to…”
“Well, well!” cried grandmother, but so energetically and menacingly that I didn’t dare refuse and accepted.
“In Moscow, when you’re running around without a job, come to me; I’ll recommend you to someone. Well, out with you!”
I went to my room and lay down on the bed. I think I lay for half an hour on my back, my hands thrust behind my head. The catastrophe had broken out, there was something to think about. I decided imperatively to talk with Polina tomorrow. Ah! the little Frenchman? So then it’s true! What could there be to it, though? Polina and des Grieux! Lord, what a juxtaposition!
All this was simply unbelievable. I suddenly jumped up, beside myself, to go looking for Mr. Astley at once and make him speak at all costs. Here, too, of course, he knows more than I do. Mr. Astley? There’s another riddle for me!
But suddenly there came a knock at my door. I looked—Potapych.
“Alexei Ivanovich, my dear: the mistress, she’s calling.”
“What is it? Is she leaving or something? It’s still twenty minutes till the train.”
“She’s restless, my dear, can barely sit still. ‘Quick, quick!’—meaning you, my dear; for Christ’s sake, don’t delay.”
I raced downstairs at once. Grandmother had already been rolled out to the corridor. She had the wallet in her hands.
“Alexei Ivanovich, lead the way, come on!…”
“Where to, grandmother?”
“It may kill me, but I’ll win back what I lost! Well, march, no questions! They play till midnight there, don’t they?”
I was dumbfounded, reflected, but made up my mind at once.
“As you will, Antonida Vassilyevna, but I won’t go.”
“Why not? What’s this now? Are you all moonstruck or something?”
“As you will, but afterwards I’d reproach myself; I don’t want to! I don’t want either to witness it or to participate in it; spare me, Antonida Vassilyevna. Here are your fifty friedrichs d’or back; good-bye!” And, placing the roll of friedrichs d’or right there on a little table next to grandmother’s chair, I bowed and left.
“What rubbish!” grandmother cried after me. “Don’t come then, if you please, I’ll find the way myself! Potapych, come with me! Well, pick me up, get going.”
I didn’t find Mr. Astley and went back home. Late, past midnight, I learned from Potapych how grandmother’s day had ended. She had lost everything I had exchanged for her earlier, that is, another ten thousand roubles, by our reckoning. That same little Pole to whom she had given two friedrichs d’or had attached himself to her and guided her play the whole time. First, before the little Pole, she had made Potapych stake for her, but soon chased him away; it was then that the little Pole popped up. As luck would have it, he understood Russian and could even chatter in a mixture of three languages, so that they somehow managed to understand each other. Grandmother scolded him mercilessly all the time, and though he constantly “laid himself out at my lady’s feet,” he was “no comparison with you, Alexei Ivanovich,” Potapych recounted. “She treated you
CHAPTER XIII
IT’S ALMOST A WHOLE month now since I’ve touched these notes of mine, begun under the effect of strong though disorderly impressions. The catastrophe, the approach of which I anticipated then, did come, but a hundred times more drastically and unexpectedly than I had thought. It was all something strange, ugly, and even tragic, at any rate for me. Certain things happened to me that were almost miraculous; so at least I look at them to this day—though from another point of view, and especially judging by the whirl I was then spinning in, they were at most only somewhat out of the ordinary. But most miraculous of all for me was the way I regarded these events. To this day I don’t understand myself! And it all flew away like a dream—even my passion, and yet it really was strong and true, but…where has it gone now? Indeed, the thought occasionally flits through my head: “Didn’t I go out of my mind then and spend the whole time sitting in a madhouse somewhere, and maybe I’m sitting there now—so that for me it was all a
I collected and reread my pages. (Who knows, maybe so as to convince myself that I hadn’t written them in the madhouse?) Now I’m all alone. Autumn is coming, the leaves are turning yellow. I’m sitting in this dreary little town (oh, how dreary little German towns are!), and instead of thinking over the next step, I live under the influence of feelings just past, under the influence of fresh memories, under the influence of all this recent whirl, which drew me into that turbulence then, and threw me out of it again somewhere. It still seems to me at times that I’m spinning in the same whirl, and that the storm is about to rush upon me, snatch me up with its wing in passing, and I will again break out of all order and sense of measure, and spin, spin, spin…
However, maybe I’ll settle somehow and stop spinning, if I give myself as precise an account as possible of all that happened this month. I’m drawn to my pen again; and sometimes there’s nothing at all to do in the evenings. Strangely, in order to occupy myself with at least something, I go to the mangy local library and take out the novels of Paul de Kock{11} (in German translation!), which I can barely stand, but I read them and—marvel at myself: it’s as if I’m afraid to spoil the charm of what has only just passed by a serious book or some serious occupation. As if this ugly dream and all the impressions it left behind are so dear to me that I’m even afraid to touch it with something new, lest it vanish in smoke! Is it so dear to me, or what? Yes, of course it is; maybe I’ll remember it even forty years later…
And so, I set about writing. However, all this can now be told partially and more briefly: the impressions are not at all the same…
First, to finish with grandmother. The next day she definitively lost everything. That’s how it had to happen: once that kind of person starts out on this path, then, like sliding down a snowy hill on a sled, it all goes faster and faster. She played all day, until eight o’clock in the evening; I wasn’t present when she played and know it only from hearsay.
Potapych attended her at the vauxhall the whole day. The little Poles who guided grandmother changed several times that day. She started by chasing away the previous day’s little Pole, whose hair she had pulled, and taking another one, but he turned out to be almost worse. Having chased that one away and taken back the first one, who hadn’t left and poked about during the whole time of his banishment right there behind her chair, thrusting his head in every moment—she finally fell into decided despair. The second chased-away little Pole also refused to leave; one stationed himself to her right, the other to her left. They quarreled and abused each other all the time over stakes and strategy, called each other
