The Adolescent

had remained alive, but even now I don’t let mama see the child. It was merely an episode. My dear, I’ve long been waiting for you to come here. I’ve long been dreaming of how we’d get together here. Do you know how long? For two years now.”

He looked at me sincerely and truthfully, with an unreserved warmth of heart. I seized his hand:

“Why were you so slow, why didn’t you invite me long ago? If you knew what has happened . . . and what wouldn’t have happened if you had called me long ago! . . .”

At that moment the samovar was brought in, and Nastasya Egorovna suddenly brought in the baby, asleep.

“Look at him,” said Versilov. “I love him, and I had him brought now on purpose, so that you could also look at him. Well, take him away again, Nastasya Egorovna. Sit down to the samovar. I’m going to imagine that we’ve lived like this forever and have come together every evening, never parting. Let me look at you; sit like this, so that I can see your face! How I love your face! How I kept imagining your face to myself, as I was waiting for you to come from Moscow! You ask why I didn’t send for you long ago? Wait, maybe now you’ll understand.”

“But can it be only this old man’s death that has loosened your tongue now? It’s strange . . .”

But though I did say that, I still looked at him with love. We talked like two friends in the highest and fullest sense of the word. He had brought me here to explain, to recount, to justify something to me; and yet everything was already explained and justified before any words. Whatever I was to hear from him now, the result had already been achieved, and we both happily knew it and looked at each other that way.

“It’s not exactly this old man’s death,” he replied, “not only his death; there’s something else now that has hit on the same spot . . . May God bless this moment and our life, for a long time to come! Let’s talk, my dear! I keep getting broken up, diverted, I want to talk about one thing and get sidetracked into a thousand other details. That always happens when one’s heart is full . . . But let’s talk; the time has come, and I’ve long been in love with you, my boy . . .”

He leaned back in his armchair and looked me over once more.

“How strange! How strange it is to hear that!” I repeated, drowning in ecstasy.

And then, I remember, in his face there suddenly flashed the usual wrinkle—as if of sadness and mockery together—which I knew so well. He controlled himself and, as if with a certain strain, began.

II

“HERE’S THE THING, Arkady: if I had invited you earlier, what would I have said to you? In this question lies my whole answer.”

“That is, you mean to say that you’re now mama’s husband and my father, while then . . . You wouldn’t have known before what to say about my social position? Is that it?”

“That’s not the only thing I wouldn’t have known what to say about, my dear; there’s much here that I would have had to pass over in silence. There’s even much here that’s ridiculous and humiliating, because it looks like a trick—really, like a most farcical trick. Well, how could we have understood each other before, if I understood myself only today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, exactly two hours before Makar Ivanovich’s death? You look at me with unpleasant perplexity? Don’t worry, I’ll explain the trick; but what I said is quite right: life is all wanderings and perplexities, and suddenly—the resolution, on such-and-such a day, at five o’clock in the afternoon! It’s even offensive, isn’t it? In the still-recent old days I’d have been quite offended.”

I was actually listening in painful perplexity; there was a strong presence of the former Versilovian wrinkle, which I had no wish to encounter that evening, after the words that had been spoken. Suddenly I exclaimed:

“My God! You got something from her . . . at five o’clock today?”

He looked at me intently and was evidently struck by my exclamation, and maybe also by my saying “from her.”

“You’ll learn everything,” he said with a pensive smile, “and, of course, I won’t conceal from you what you need to know, because that’s what I brought you here for; but let’s set it aside for now. You see, my friend, I’ve long known that we have children who brood about their families from childhood on, who are outraged by the unseemliness of their fathers and their surroundings. I noticed these brooders while I was still in school, and concluded then that it was all because they became envious very early on. Note, however, that I myself was one of these brooding children, but . . . excuse me, my dear, I’m surprisingly distracted. I only wanted to say how constantly I’ve been afraid for you here almost all this time. I always imagined you as one of those little beings who are conscious of their giftedness and given over to solitude. Like you, I also never cared for my comrades. Woe to those beings who are left only to their own powers and dreams, and with a passionate, all too premature, and almost vengeful longing for seemliness—precisely ‘vengeful.’ But enough, my dear, I’m digressing again . . . Even before I began to love you, I had already imagined you and your solitary, wild dreams . . . But enough; in fact, I’ve forgotten what I started to say. However, all that still had to be spoken out. But before, before, what could I have said to you? Now I see your gaze upon me and know that it’s my son looking at me; while even yesterday I couldn’t have believed I’d ever be sitting and talking with my boy as I am today.”

He was indeed becoming very distracted, but at the same time was as if touched by something.

“Now I have no need for dreams and reveries, now you are enough for me! I will follow you!” I said, giving myself to him with all my soul.

“Follow me? But my wanderings have just ended, and just today as it happens. You’re too late, my dear. Today is the finale of the last act, and the curtain is coming down. This last act dragged on for a long time. It began very long ago—when I fled abroad for the last time. I abandoned everything then, and know, my dear, that I unmarried your mother then, and told her so myself. You should know that. I explained to her then that I was going away forever, and that she would never see me again. Worst of all, I even forgot to leave her any money then. Nor did I think of you for a minute. I left with the intention of remaining in Europe, my dear, and never coming home. I emigrated.”

“To Herzen?³⁰ To take part in foreign propaganda? You’ve probably taken part in some conspiracy all your life?” I cried, not restraining myself.

“No, my friend, I never took part in any conspiracy. But your eyes are even flashing; I like your exclamations, my dear. No, I simply left then from yearning. From a sudden yearning. This was the yearning of a Russian nobleman—I truly can’t put it any better. A nobleman’s yearning—and nothing more.”

“Serfdom . . . the emancipation of the people?”³¹ I murmured, breathless.