suppressed the thought, but could not suppress the impression and trembled at the mere recollection. That win had stung my heart. Could it be I was a born gambler? At least it was certain that I had the qualities of a gambler. Even now, as I’m writing all this, I like at moments to think about gambling! It sometimes happens that I spend whole hours sitting silently, making gambling calculations in my mind and dreaming of how it will all go, how I’ll stake and win. Yes, there are many different “qualities” in me, and my soul is restless.
At ten o’clock I intended to set off for Stebelkov’s, and that on foot. I sent Matvei home as soon as he appeared. While having my coffee, I tried to collect my thoughts. For some reason I was pleased; instantly looking into myself, I realized that I was mainly pleased with the fact that “today I would be in the home of Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.” But this day of my life was fateful and unexpected and began at once with a surprise.
At exactly ten o’clock my door was flung open and in flew—Tatyana Pavlovna. I might have expected anything but that woman’s appearance, and I jumped up before her in fright. Her face was ferocious, her gestures disordered, and, if asked, she might not have been able to say herself why she had rushed in on me. I’ll say beforehand: she had just received an extraordinary piece of news which had crushed her, and was under the very first impression of it. And the news touched me as well. However, she spent just half a minute with me, or say a whole minute, but not more. She just fastened on to me.
“So that’s how you are!” she stood in front of me, all thrust forward. “Ah, you puppy! What have you done? Or don’t you know yet? He’s having his coffee! Ah, you babbler, ah, you windmill, ah, you paper lover . . . the likes of you ought to be birched, birched, birched!”
“Tatyana Pavlovna, what’s happened? What’s wrong? Mama? . . .”
“You’ll find out!” she cried menacingly and rushed from the room—that was all I saw of her. Of course, I would have chased after her, but I was stopped by a thought, or not a thought, but some dark anxiety: I had a presentiment that “paper lover” was the chief phrase in her shouting. Of course, I would have guessed nothing on my own, but I quickly left, in order to finish the sooner with Stebelkov and go to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s. “The key to everything is there!” I thought instinctively.
It was astonishing how, but Stebelkov already knew everything about Anna Andreevna, and even in detail; I won’t describe his conversation and gestures, but he was in rapture, in an ecstasy of rapture, from the “artistry of the deed.”
“There’s a person, sir! No, sir, there’s quite a person!” he exclaimed. “No, sir, that’s not our way; we just sit here and nothing more, but she wanted to drink water from a true source—and she did. It’s . . . it’s an ancient statue! It’s an ancient statue of Minerva, sir, only she walks around and wears modern dress!”
I asked him to get down to business. The whole business, as I fully anticipated, consisted merely in inducing and persuading the prince to go and ask for ultimate aid from Prince Nikolai Ivanovich. “Otherwise it may be very, very bad for him, and not by my will; is that so or not?”
He peeked into my eyes, but didn’t seem to suppose that I knew anything more than I had the day before. And he couldn’t have supposed anything: needless to say, I didn’t betray by a word or a hint that I knew “about the shares.” We didn’t talk long, he at once began promising me money, “and a considerable amount, sir, a considerable amount, only help to make the prince go. It’s an urgent matter, very urgent, there’s the force of it, that it’s all too urgent!”
I didn’t want to argue and wrangle with him like the day before, and I got up to go, letting drop to him in any case that I’d “try.” But he suddenly astonished me inexpressibly: I was already going to the door when, putting his arm affectionately around my waist, he unexpectedly began telling me . . . the most incomprehensible things.
I’ll omit the details and not recount the whole thread of the conversation, so as not to be tiresome. The gist of it was that he made me a proposition “to acquaint him with Mr. Dergachev, since you do go there”!
I instantly became quiet, trying as hard as I could not to betray myself by some gesture. I replied at once, however, that I was a complete stranger there, and if I had been there, it was only once by chance.
“But if you were
I asked him directly, but very coolly, what he needed it for. And to this day I cannot understand how such a degree of naivete was possible in a seemingly “practical” and not stupid man, as Vasin defined him. He explained to me quite directly that at Dergachev’s, as he suspected, “most likely something forbidden, strictly forbidden, is going on, and so, having investigated, I might make myself a little profit from it.” And, smiling, he winked at me with his left eye.
I answered precisely nothing in the affirmative, but pretended I was thinking it over and “promised to think,” after which I quickly left. Things were getting complicated: I flew to Vasin’s and just caught him at home.
“Ah, and you, too!” he said mysteriously on seeing me.
Not picking up his phrase, I went straight to the point and told him. He was visibly struck, though he didn’t lose his equanimity. He asked me to repeat it all in detail.
“Might it not well be that you misunderstood?”
“No, I understood correctly, the meaning was perfectly straightforward.”
“In any case I’m extremely grateful to you,” he added sincerely. “Yes, indeed, if that’s how it all was, then he supposed you wouldn’t be able to hold out against a certain sum.”
“And besides, he knew my situation all too well: I’ve been gambling, I’ve behaved badly, Vasin.”
“I heard about that.”
“The most puzzling thing of all for me is that he knows about you, that you go there, too,” I risked asking.
“He knows only too well,” Vasin replied quite simply, “that I have nothing to do with them. And all these young people are mostly babblers—and nothing more. You, however, may remember that better than anyone.”
It seemed to me as if he was not trusting me with something.
“In any case I’m extremely grateful to you.”
“I’ve heard that Mr. Stebelkov’s affairs are somewhat in disorder,” I made another attempt to ask. “At least I’ve heard about some shares . . .”
“What shares have you heard about?”
