'You did it on purpose!' I said, indignantly seizing him by the arm.
'By God, I had no idea,' he cowered, immediately starting to lie and pretend to be miserable, 'the verses were just brought, and I thought as a merry joke...'
'You never thought any such thing. Can you possibly find that giftless trash a merry joke?'
'Yes, sir, I do.'
'You're simply lying, and it wasn't just brought to you. You wrote it yourself, together with Lebyadkin, maybe yesterday, to cause a scandal. The last line is certainly yours, and the part about the beadle as well. Why did he come out in a tailcoat? It means you were preparing to have him read, if he hadn't gotten drunk?'
Liputin looked at me coldly and caustically.
'What business is it of yours?' he asked suddenly, with a strange calm.
'What? You're wearing one of these bows, too... Where is Pyotr Stepanovich?'
'I don't know, somewhere around. Why?'
'Because I see through it now. This is simply a conspiracy against Yulia Mikhailovna, to disgrace the day...'
Liputin again looked askance at me.
'And what is that to you?' he grinned, shrugged, and walked off.
I felt as if stricken. All my suspicions were justified. And I had still hoped I was mistaken! What was I to do? I thought of discussing it with Stepan Trofimovich, but he was standing in front of the mirror, trying on various smiles, and constantly consulting a piece of paper on which he had made some notes. He was to go on right after Karmazinov and was no longer in any condition to talk with me. Should I run to Yulia Mikhailovna? But it was too soon for her: she needed a much harsher lesson to cure her of the conviction of her 'surround-edness' and the general 'fanatical devotion.' She would not believe me and would regard me as a dreamer. And how could she be of help? 'Eh,' I thought, 'really, what business is it of mine? I'll take the bow off and go home,
But I had to go and listen to Karmazinov. Taking a last look around backstage, I noticed that there were quite a few outsiders, and even women, darting about, coming and going. This 'backstage' was quite a narrow space, totally screened off from the public by a curtain and connected through a corridor in back with other rooms. Here our readers waited their turns. But I was particularly struck at that moment by the lecturer who was to follow Stepan Trofimovich. He, too, was some sort of professor (even now I do not know exactly what he was), who had voluntarily retired from some institution after some student incident and had turned up in our town for one reason or another just a few days earlier. He, too, had been recommended to Yulia Mikhailovna, and she had received him with reverence. I know now that he had visited her only on one evening prior to the reading, had spent the whole evening in silence, had smiled ambiguously at the jokes and tone of the company that surrounded Yulia Mikhailovna, and had made an unpleasant impression on everyone by his air—arrogant and at the same time touchy to the point of timorousness. It was Yulia Mikhailovna herself who had recruited him to read. Now he was pacing from corner to corner and, like Stepan Trofimovich, was whispering to himself as well, but looking at the ground, not in the mirror. He did not try on any smiles, though he smiled frequently and carnivorously. Clearly it was not possible to talk with him, either. He was short, looked about forty, was bald front and back, had a grayish little beard, and dressed decently. But most interesting was that at each turn he raised his right fist high, shook it in the air above his head, and suddenly brought it down as if crushing some adversary to dust. He repeated this trick every moment. It gave me an eerie feeling. I ran quickly to listen to Karmazinov.
III
Again something wrong was hovering in the hall. I declare beforehand: I bow down to the greatness of genius; but why is it that at the end of their illustrious years these gentlemen geniuses of ours sometimes act just like little boys? So what if he is Karmazinov and comes out with all the bearing of five court chamberlains? Is it possible to hold a public like ours for an entire hour with one article? Generally, I have observed that at a light, public literary reading, even the biggest genius cannot occupy the public with himself for more than twenty minutes with impunity. True, the entrance of the great genius was met with the utmost respect. Even the sternest old men expressed approval and curiosity, and the ladies even a certain rapture. The applause, however, was a bit brief, somehow not general, disconcerted. Yet there was not a single escapade from the back rows until Mr. Karmazinov actually began to speak, and even then it was nothing so especially bad, just a misunderstanding, as it were. I have already mentioned that his voice was rather shrill, even somewhat feminine, and with a genuine, highborn, aristocratic lisp besides. He had uttered no more than a few words when someone suddenly permitted himself to laugh loudly— probably some inexperienced little fool, who had never seen anything of the world and, besides, was naturally given to laughter. But there was nothing in the least demonstrative in it; on the contrary, the fool was hissed and he obliterated himself. But then Mr. Karmazinov, mincing and preening, announced that 'he had flatly refused to read at first' (much he needed to announce that!). 'There are lines,' he said, 'which so sing themselves from a man's heart as cannot be told,[169] and such a sacred thing simply cannot be laid before the public' (why was he laying it, then?); 'but as he had been prevailed upon, so he was laying it, and as he was, moreover, putting down his pen forever, and had sworn never to write again for anything, then, so be it, he had written this last thing; and as he had sworn never, for anything in the world, to read anything in public, then, so be it, he would read this last article to the public,' etc., etc., all in the same vein. But all this would still have been nothing, and who does not know what authors' prefaces are like? Though I will note that, given the scanty education of our public and the irritability of the back rows, all this might have had an influence. So, would it not have been better to read a little tale, a tiny story, of the sort he once used to write—that is, polished, mincing, but occasionally witty? That would have saved everything. But no, sir, nothing doing! An oration commenced![170] God, what wasn't in it! I will say positively that even a metropolitan public would have been reduced to stupor, not only ours. Imagine some thirty printed pages of the most mincing and useless babble; what's more, the gentleman was reading somehow superciliously, ruefully, as if for a favor, so that it even came out offensive to our public. The theme... But, who could make out the theme? It was some sort of account of some sort of impressions, some sort of recollections. But of what? But what about? No matter how furrowed our provincial brows were through the first half of the reading, they could get none of it, so that they listened through the second half only out of courtesy. True, much was said about love, about the genius's love for some person, but I confess it came out rather awkwardly. The short, fattish little figure of the writer of genius somehow did not go very well, in my opinion, with the story of his first kiss... And, which again was offensive, these kisses occurred somehow not as with the rest of mankind. Here the inevitable furze is growing all around (it is inevitably furze or some such plant, which has to be looked up in botany). At the same time there is inevitably some violet hue in the sky which, of course, no mortal has ever noticed—that is, everyone has seen it, but failed to notice it, 'while I,' he says, 'I looked and am now describing it to you fools as a most ordinary thing.' The tree under which the interesting couple sits is inevitably of some orange color. They are sitting somewhere in Germany. Suddenly they see Pompey or Cassius on the eve of battle,[171] and both are pierced by the chill of ecstasy. Some mermaid peeps in the bushes. Gluck begins playing a fiddle among the reeds.[172] The piece he plays is named
