and go to bed. Arkady, fetch the doctor!”
“But no . . . but no, why are you fussing so?” he said softly, looking around at us all with an intent gaze. Then he suddenly put both elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.
“I’m frightening you, but I tell you what, my friends: indulge me a little, sit down again and be more calm, all of you—at least for one minute! Sonya, that’s not at all what I came here to talk about; I came to tell you something, but quite different. Good-bye, Sonya, I’m setting out on my wanderings again, as I’ve set out from you several times already . . . Well, of course, someday I’ll come back to you, in this sense you’re inevitable. To whom am I to come when it’s all over? Believe me, Sonya, I’ve come to you now as to an angel, and not at all as to an enemy: what sort of enemy, what sort of enemy are you to me! Don’t think it’s in order to break this icon, because, do you know, Sonya, I still want to break it . . .”
When Tatyana Pavlovna had cried before then, “Let the icon alone!”—she had snatched the image out of his hands and was holding it herself. Suddenly, at his last words, he quickly jumped up, instantly snatched the icon out of Tatyana’s hands, and, swinging ferociously, smashed it with all his might against the corner of the tile stove. The icon split exactly into two pieces . . . He suddenly turned to us, and his pale face suddenly turned all red, almost purple, and every feature of his face trembled and twitched:
“Don’t take it as an allegory, Sonya, it’s not Makar’s inheritance I’ve broken, I only did it in order to break . . . And even so I’ll come back to you, my last angel! But, anyhow, why not take it as an allegory; it certainly must have been! . . .”
And he suddenly hurried out of the room, again through the kitchen (where he had left his fur coat and hat). I won’t describe in detail what happened with mama: scared to death, she stood with her hands raised and clasped above her and suddenly called out after him:
“Andrei Petrovich, come back at least to say good-bye, dear!”
“He’ll come, Sofya, he’ll come! Don’t worry!” Tatyana cried, trembling all over in a terrible fit of anger, ferocious anger. “You heard, he himself promised to come back! Let the madcap run loose for one last time. He’ll get old, and who indeed will nurse him then, when he’s broken down, except you, his old nurse? He says it straight out himself, without shame . . .”
As for us, Liza was in a faint. I was about to run after him, but then I rushed to mama. I put my arms around her and held her in my embrace. Lukerya came running with a glass of water for Liza. But mama soon recovered; she sank onto the sofa, covered her face with her hands, and wept.
“But no, but no . . . catch up with him!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly cried out with all her might, as if coming to her senses. “Go . . . go . . . catch up with him, don’t let him get a step ahead of you—go, go!” She was pulling me away from mama with all her might. “Ah, I’ll run myself !”
“Arkasha, ah, run after him quickly!” mama suddenly cried as well.
I ran out headlong, also through the kitchen and the yard, but he was nowhere to be seen. Far down the sidewalk I made out the black figures of passersby in the darkness; I started running after them and, catching up with them, looked each one in the face as I ran past. In this way I ran as far as the intersection.
“You don’t get angry with madmen,” suddenly flashed in my head, “but Tatyana was ferociously angry with him, which means he’s not mad at all . . .” Oh, I kept thinking that it was an
III
HE DIDN’T TURN up anywhere, however, and there was no point in running to his place; it was hard to imagine that he had just simply gone home. Suddenly a thought began to gleam before me, and I rushed headlong to Anna Andreevna’s.
Anna Andreevna had already returned, and I was admitted at once. I went in, controlling myself as far as I could. Without sitting down, I told her directly about the scene that had just taken place, that is, precisely about the “double.” I will never forget nor forgive her the greedy but mercilessly calm and self-assured curiosity with which she listened to me, also without sitting down.
“Where is he? Maybe you know?” I concluded insistently. “Tatyana Pavlovna sent me to you yesterday . . .”
“I sent for you yesterday. Yesterday he was in Tsarskoe, and he was here as well. And now,” she glanced at the clock, “now it’s seven o’clock . . . That means he’s probably at home.”
“I see you know everything—so speak, speak!” I cried.
“I know a good deal, but I don’t know everything. Of course, there’s no need to conceal it from you . . .” She measured me with a strange look, smiling and as if reflecting. “Yesterday morning, in response to Katerina Nikolaevna’s letter, he made her a formal proposal of marriage.”
“That’s not true!” I goggled my eyes.
“The letter went through my hands; I myself took it to her, unopened. This time he acted ‘chivalrously’ and concealed nothing from me.”
“Anna Andreevna, I don’t understand anything!”
“Of course, it’s hard to understand, but it’s like a gambler who throws his last gold coin on the table and has a revolver ready in his pocket—that’s the meaning of his proposal. The chances are nine out of ten that she won’t accept his proposal; but it means that he’s counting on that one-tenth chance, and, I confess, that’s very curious, in my opinion, though . . . though there might also be frenzy in it, that same ‘double,’ as you said so well just now.”
“And you laugh? And how can I believe that the letter was conveyed through you? Aren’t you her father’s fiancee? Spare me, Anna Andreevna!”
“He asked me to sacrifice my destiny to his happiness, though he didn’t really ask; it was all done quite silently, I merely read it all in his eyes. Ah, my God, what more do you want? Didn’t he go to your mother in Konigsberg to ask her permission to marry Mme. Akhmakov’s stepdaughter? That goes very well with the way he chose me yesterday as his representative and confidante.”
She was slightly pale. But her calmness only reinforced her sarcasm. Oh, I forgave her much during that minute when I gradually came to grasp the matter. For a minute I thought it over; she waited in silence.
