listen: Baron Bjoring was in great doubt on receiving your letter, because it testified to the madhouse. And, of course, means could have been found at once to . . . calm you down. But, owing to certain special considerations, you were granted indulgence, and inquiries were made about you. It turned out that, though you belonged to good society and had once served in the guards, you have been excluded from society, and your reputation is more than dubious. However, even despite that, I have come here to ascertain personally, and here, on top of everything else, you allow yourself to play with words and yourself assert that you are subject to fits. Enough! Baron Bjoring’s position and his reputation cannot indulge you in this affair . . . In short, dear sir, I am authorized to announce to you that if this is followed by a repetition or merely by anything resembling the previous action, means will immediately be found to pacify you, quite quick and reliable ones, I can assure you. We do not live in the forest, but in a well-organized state!”
“Are you so sure of that, my good Baron R.?”
“Devil take it,” the baron suddenly stood up, “you tempt me too much to prove to you right now that I am hardly your ‘good Baron R.’”
“Ah, once again I warn you,” Versilov also got up, “that my wife and daughter are not far from here . . . and therefore I would beg you not to speak so loudly, because your shouts may reach them.”
“Your wife . . . the devil . . . If I sat and talked with you now, it was solely with the aim of clarifying this vile affair,” the baron went on with the same wrath and not lowering his voice in the least. “Enough!” he cried out furiously. “You are not only excluded from the circle of decent people, but you are a maniac, a real crazy maniac, and so you have been attested! You are not worthy of indulgence, and I announce to you that this very day measures will be taken regarding you, and you will be invited to one such place, where they will know how to restore your reason . . . and they will remove you from town!”
With big and rapid strides he left the room. Versilov didn’t see him off. He stood, gazed at me distractedly, and seemed not to notice me; suddenly he smiled, shook his hair, and, taking his hat, also started towards the door. I seized him by the arm.
“Ah, yes, you’re here, too? You . . . heard?” he stopped in front of me.
“How could you have done it? How could you so distort, so disgrace! . . . With such perfidy!”
He gazed intently, but his smile extended more and more and decidedly turned to laughter.
“But I’ve been disgraced . . . in front of her! In front of her! I was derided in her eyes, and he . . . shoved me!” I cried, beside myself.
“Really? Ah, poor boy, I’m so sorry for you . . . So they . . . de-ri-ded you there!”
“You’re laughing, you’re laughing at me! You think it’s funny!”
He quickly tore his arm from my hand, put his hat on, and laughing, laughing with genuine laughter now, left the apartment. Why should I go after him? What for? I had understood everything and—lost everything in a single moment! Suddenly I saw mama; she had come down from upstairs and was timidly looking around.
“He’s gone?”
I silently embraced her, and she me, tightly, tightly, pressing herself against me.
“Mama, my own, can you possibly stay here? Let’s go now, I’ll protect you, I’ll work for you like at hard labor, for you and for Liza . . . Let’s leave them all, all, and go away. We’ll be by ourselves. Mama, do you remember how you came to see me at Touchard’s and how I refused to recognize you?”
“I remember, my own, all my life I’ve been guilty before you, I gave birth to you, but I didn’t know you.”
“He’s the guilty one, mama, it’s he who is guilty of everything; he never loved us.”
“No, he did love us.”
“Let’s go, mama.”
“How can I go away from him, is he happy, do you think?”
“Where’s Liza?”
“Lying down. She came back and felt unwell; I fear for her. What, are they very angry with him there? What will they do with him now? Where did he go? What was this officer threatening here?”
“Nothing will happen to him, mama, nothing will ever happen to him, and nothing can, he’s that kind of man! Here’s Tatyana Pavlovna, ask her, if you don’t believe me, here she is.” (Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly came into the room.) “Good-bye, mama. I’ll come back to you right away, and when I do, I’ll ask you the same thing again . . .”
I ran off; I couldn’t see anybody at all, not only Tatyana Pavlovna, and mama tormented me. I wanted to be alone, alone.
V
BUT BEFORE I reached the end of the street, I felt that I couldn’t walk around senselessly bumping into these alien, indifferent people; but what to do with myself? Who needs me and—what do I need now? Mechanically, I trudged to Prince Sergei Petrovich’s, without thinking of him at all. He wasn’t home. I told Pyotr (his man) that I’d wait in the study (as I had done many times). His study was a big, very high room, cluttered with furniture. I wandered into the darkest corner, sat down on the sofa, and, placing my elbows on the table, propped my head in both hands. Yes, that was the question: “What do I need now?” And if I could have formulated the question then, the last thing I could have done was answer it.
But I was no longer able either to think or to ask properly. I’ve already made known above that by the end of those days I was “crushed by events”; I sat there now and everything was spinning like chaos in my mind. “Yes, I failed to see everything in him and perceived nothing,” I fancied at moments. “He laughed in my face just now: it wasn’t at me; it’s all Bjoring here, and not me. Two days ago, over dinner, he already knew everything and was gloomy. He picked up my stupid confession in the tavern and distorted all that concerned any truth, only what did he need the truth for? He doesn’t believe half a word of what he wrote to her. He only needed to insult her, to insult her senselessly, not even knowing what for, snatching at a pretext, and I gave him a pretext . . . The act of a rabid dog! Does he want to kill Bjoring now, or what? Why? His heart knows why! And I know nothing of what’s in his heart . . . No, no, even now I don’t know. Can he love her with so much passion? Or hate her with so much passion? I don’t know, but does he know himself? What was that I said to mama, that ‘nothing can happen to him’? What did I mean to say by that? Have I lost him or not?
