The Adolescent

“document,” I simply couldn’t express myself understandably and make a coherent story of it, and by his face I could see only too well that he couldn’t understand me, but that he wanted very much to understand, so that he even risked stopping me with a question, which was dangerous, because as soon as I was interrupted, I at once interrupted the subject and forgot what I was talking about. How long we sat and talked like that I don’t know and can’t even reckon. He suddenly got up and called Alphonsine:

“He needs rest; he may also need a doctor. Do whatever he asks, that is . . . vous comprenez, ma fille? Vous avez de l’argent,⁵⁴ no? Here!” And he took out a ten-rouble note for her. He started whispering to her: “Vous comprenez! Vous comprenez! ” he repeated to her, shaking his finger at her and frowning sternly. I saw that she trembled frightfully before him.

“I’ll be back, and you’d best have a good sleep,” he smiled to me and took his hat.

“Mais vous n’avez pas dormi du tout, Maurice! ” ⁵⁵ Alphonsine cried out pathetically.

“Taisez-vous, je dormirai apres,” ⁵⁶ and he left.

“Sauvee! ” ⁵⁷; she whispered pathetically, pointing after him to me with her hand.

“Monsieur, monsieur! ” she began declaiming at once, assuming a pose in the middle of the room. “Jamais homme ne fut si cruel, si Bismarck, que cet etre, qui regarde une femme comme une salete de hasard. Une femme, qu’est-ce que ca dans notre epoque? ‘Tue-la’—voila le dernier mot de l’Academie francaise!...” ⁵⁸

I goggled my eyes at her; I was seeing double, there seemed to be two Alphonsines in front of me . . . Suddenly I noticed that she was weeping, gave a start, and realized that she had been talking to me for a very long time now, which meant that during that time I had been asleep or unconscious.

“. . . Helas! de quoi m’aurait servi de le decouvrir plutot,” she exclaimed, “et n’aurais-je pas autant gagne a tenir ma honte cachee toute ma vie? Peut-etre, n’est-il pas honnete a une demoiselle de s’expliquer si librement devant monsieur, mais enfin je vous avoue, que s’il m’etait permis de vouloir quelque chose, oh, ce serait de lui plonger au coeur mon couteau, mais en detournant les yeux, de peur que son regard execrable ne fit trembler mon bras et ne glacat mon courage! Il a assassine ce pope russe, monsieur, il lui arracha sa barbe rousse pour la vendre a un artiste en cheveux au pont des Marechaux, tout pres de la Maison de monsieur Andrieux—hautes nouveautes, articles de Paris, linge, chemises, vous savez, n’est-ce pas? . . . Oh, monsieur, quand l’amitie rassemble a table epouse, enfants, soeurs, amis, quand une vive allegresse enflamme mon coeur, je vous le demande, monsieur: est-il bonheur preferable a celui dont tout jouit? Mais il rit, monsieur, ce monstre execrable et inconcevable et si ce n’etait pas par l’entremise de monsieur Andrieux, jamais, oh, jamais je ne serais . . . Mais quoi, monsieur, qu’avez vous, monsieur? ”⁵⁹

She rushed to me: it seems I had a chill, and maybe had also swooned. I can’t express what a painful, morbid impression this half-crazed being made on me. Maybe she imagined that she had been ordered to entertain me; at any rate she never left me for a moment. Maybe she had been on the stage once; she declaimed awfully, fidgeted, talked nonstop, while I had long been silent. All I could understand from her stories was that she was closely connected with some “Maison de M. Andrieux—hautes nouveautes, articles de Paris, etc.” and maybe even came from la Maison de M. Andrieux, but she had somehow been torn forever from M. Andrieux par ce monstre furieux et inconcevable,⁶⁰ and this was what the tragedy consisted in . . . She sobbed, but it seemed to me that it was only as a matter of course and that she wasn’t crying at all; at times I fancied that she was suddenly going to fall apart like a skeleton; she articulated her words in some crushed, cracked voice; the word preferable, for instance, she pronounced prefer-a- able and on the syllable a bleated like a sheep. Coming to my senses once, I saw her making a pirouette in the middle of the room, yet she wasn’t dancing, but this pirouette also had some relation to the story, and she was only doing an impersonation. Suddenly she rushed and opened the small, old, out-of-tune piano that was in the room, started strumming on it and singing . . . It seems that for ten minutes or more I became completely unconscious, fell asleep, but the lapdog squeaked and I came to: full consciousness suddenly returned to me for a moment and lit me up with all its light. I jumped up in horror.

“Lambert, I’m at Lambert’s!” I thought and, seizing my hat, I rushed for my fur coat.

“Ou allez-vous, monsieur? ”⁶¹ cried the keen-eyed Alphonsine.

“I want to get out, I want to leave! Let me go, don’t keep me . . .”

“Oui, monsieur! ” Alphonsine concurred with all her might, and rushed to open the door to the corridor for me herself. “Mais ce n’est pas loin, monsieur, c’est pas loin du tout, ca ne vaut pas la peine de mettre votre chouba, c’est ici pres, monsieur! ”⁶² she exclaimed to the whole corridor. Running out of the room, I turned to the right.

“Par ici, monsieur, c’est par ici! ”⁶³ she exclaimed with all her might, clutching at my coat with her long, bony fingers, and with her other hand pointing me to the left somewhere down the corridor, where I had no wish to go. I tore myself free and ran for the door to the stairs.

“Il s’en va, il s’en va! ”⁶⁴; Alphonsine raced after me, shouting in her cracked voice. “Mais il me tuera, monsieur, il me tuera!”⁶⁵ But I had already run out to the stairs, and though she even raced after me down the stairs, I managed to open the outside door, run out to the street, and jump into the first cab. I gave mama’s address . . .

IV

BUT CONSCIOUSNESS, having flashed for a moment, quickly went out. I still have a slight memory of how I was brought in and taken to mama’s, but there I fell almost at once into complete oblivion. The next day, as I was told later (though this I also remembered myself ), my reason became clear again for a moment. I remembered myself in Versilov’s room on his sofa; I remember the faces of Versilov, mama, Liza around me, remember very well how Versilov spoke to me about Zershchikov, about the prince, showed me some letter, reassured me. They told me later that I kept asking in horror about some Lambert, and kept hearing the barking of some lapdog. But the faint light of consciousness quickly dimmed; by evening of this second day I was already totally delirious. But I’ll forestall events and explain them beforehand.

When I ran out of Zershchikov’s that evening and everything calmed down somewhat there, Zershchikov, having started the game, suddenly announced in a loud voice that a lamentable error had occurred: the lost money, the four hundred roubles, had been found in a pile of other money and the accounts of the bank proved to be perfectly correct. Then the prince, who had remained in the hall, accosted Zershchikov and demanded insistently that he make a public declaration of my innocence and, besides that, offer his apologies in the form of a letter. Zershchikov, for his part, found the demand worthy of respect and gave his word, in front of everybody, to send me