The Adolescent

convulsive impatience of a whole new program of life; I dreamed of destroying gradually, through methodical effort, this constant fear she had of me in her soul, of explaining her own worth to her and everything in which she was even superior to me. Oh, I knew only too well then that I always began to love your mother as soon as we parted, and always cooled towards her when we came together again; but here it wasn’t that, this time it wasn’t that.”

I was surprised. “And she?” the question flashed in me.

“Well, and how was your meeting with mama then?” I asked warily.

“Then? But I didn’t meet her then at all. She barely got as far as Konigsberg then, and she stayed there, while I was on the Rhine. I didn’t go to her, but told her to stay and wait. We saw each other much later, oh, a long time later, when I went to ask her permission to marry . . .”

II

HERE I’LL CONVEY the essence of the matter, that is, only what I myself could take in; and he also began telling me things incoherently. His speech suddenly became ten times more incoherent and disorderly, just as he reached this point.

He met Katerina Nikolaevna suddenly, precisely when he was expecting mama, at the most impatient moment of expectation. They were all on the Rhine then, at the waters, all taking the cure. Katerina Nikolaevna’s husband was almost dying by then, or at least he had already been sentenced to death by the doctors. From the first meeting she struck him as with some sort of sorcery. It was a fatum.⁹⁵ It’s remarkable that, writing it down and recalling it now, I don’t remember him once using the word “love” or saying he was “in love” in his account then. The word fatum I do remember.

And it certainly was a fatum. He did not want it, “did not want to love.” I don’t know whether I can convey it clearly; only his whole soul was indignant precisely at the fact that this could have happened to him. All that was free in him was annihilated at once in the face of this meeting, and the man was forever fettered to a woman who wanted nothing at all to do with him. He had no wish for this slavery of passion. I will say straight out now: Katerina Nikolaevna is a rare type of society woman—a type which maybe doesn’t exist in that circle. It is the type of the simple and straightforward woman in the highest degree. I’ve heard, that is, I know for certain, that this was what made her irresistible in society when she appeared in it (she often withdrew from it completely). Versilov, naturally, did not believe then, on first meeting her, that she was that way, but believed precisely the opposite, that is, that she was a dissembler and a Jesuit. Skipping ahead, I will quote here her own opinion of him: she maintained that he couldn’t think of her in any other way, “because an idealist, when he runs his head into reality, is always inclined, before anybody else, to assume all sorts of vileness.” I don’t know whether that is true of idealists in general, but of him, of course, it was fully true. Here, perhaps, I’ll set down my own opinion as well, which flashed through my mind as I listened to him then: it occurred to me that he loved mama with a more humane and generally human love, so to speak, than the simple love with which one loves women in general, and, as soon as he met a woman whom he loved with that simple love, he immediately refused that love—most likely because he was unaccustomed to it. However, maybe this is a wrong thought; of course, I didn’t say it to him. It would have been indelicate; and I swear, he was in such a state that he almost had to be spared: he was agitated; at some points of his story he suddenly just broke off and was silent for several minutes, pacing the room with an angry face.

She soon penetrated his secret then. Oh, maybe she also flirted with him on purpose. Even the most shining women are mean on such occasions; that is their irrepressible instinct. It ended with an embittered break between them, and it seems he wanted to kill her; he frightened her and maybe would have killed her; “but it all suddenly turned to hatred.” A strange period ensued. He suddenly came up with the strange thought of tormenting himself with discipline, “the same sort that monks exercise. Gradually and by methodical practice, you overcome your will, beginning with the most ridiculous and petty things, and ending by overcoming your will entirely and becoming free.” He added that among monks this is a serious matter, because it has been raised to the level of a science through a thousand years of experience. But the most remarkable thing was that he came up with this idea of “discipline” then, not at all in order to get rid of Katerina Nikolaevna, but in the fullest certainty that he not only did not love her anymore, but even hated her in the highest degree. He believed in his hatred of her to such an extent that he even suddenly thought of falling in love with and marrying her stepdaughter, who had been deceived by the prince, persuaded himself completely of this new love, and got the poor idiot girl to fall in love with him irresistibly, making her completely happy by this love during the last months of her life. Why, instead of her, he didn’t remember then about mama, who was waiting for him all the while in Konigsberg, remained unclear to me . . . On the contrary, he suddenly and entirely forgot about mama, didn’t even send her money to live on, so that it was Tatyana Pavlovna who saved her then. Suddenly, however, he went to mama to “ask her permission” to marry that girl, under the pretext that “such a bride isn’t a woman.” Oh, maybe this is all merely the portrait of a “bookish man,” as Katerina Nikolaevna said of him afterwards; however, why is it that these “paper people” (if it’s true that they are paper) are able to suffer in such a real way and reach the point of such tragedies? Though then, that evening, I thought somewhat differently, and was shaken by a certain thought:

“All your development, all your soul came to you through suffering and through your whole life’s struggle—while all her perfection came to her gratis. There’s inequality here . . . Women are outrageous in that,” I said, not at all to ingratiate myself with him, but with fervor and even with indignation.

“Perfection. Her perfection? Why, there’s no perfection in her!” he said suddenly, all but astonished at my words. “She’s a most ordinary woman, she’s even a trashy woman . . . But she’s obliged to have every perfection!”

“Why obliged?”

“Because, having such power, she’s obliged to have every perfection!” he cried spitefully.

“The saddest thing is that you’re so tormented even now!” suddenly escaped me involuntarily.

“Now? Tormented?” he repeated my words again, stopping before me as if in some perplexity. And then suddenly a quiet, long, thoughtful smile lit up his face, and he raised his finger before him as if reflecting. Then, recovering completely, he snatched an unsealed letter from the table and flung it down before me.

“Here, read it! You absolutely must know everything . . . and why did you let me rummage around so much in that old rubbish! . . . I’ve only defiled and embittered my heart! . . .”

I’m unable to express my astonishment. It was a letter from her to him, written that day, received at around five o’clock in the afternoon. I read it almost trembling with excitement. It wasn’t long, but was written so directly and candidly that, as I read it, it was as if I could see her before me and hear her words. Truthfully in the highest degree (and therefore almost touchingly), she confessed to him her fear and then simply entreated him “to leave her in peace.” In conclusion, she informed him that she was now positively going to marry Bjoring. Until that occasion, she had never written to him.

And here is what I understood then from his explanations:

As soon as he read this letter earlier, he suddenly sensed a most unexpected phenomenon in himself: for the