The Adolescent

As I talked, the prince’s face changed from playful to very sad.

“Mon pauvre enfant! ⁴ I’ve always been convinced that there were a great many unhappy days in your childhood.”

“Please don’t worry.”

“But you were alone, you told me so yourself, though there was this Lambert. The way you described it: the canary, the confirmation with tears on each other’s breasts, and then, after a year or so, he speaks of his mother and this abbot . . . O, mon cher, this children question of our time is simply frightful: while these little golden heads, with their curls and innocence, in their earliest childhood, flutter before you and look at you with their bright laughter and bright little eyes—they’re like God’s angels or lovely little birds; but later . . . but later it so happens that it would be better for them not to grow up at all!”

“How unnerved you are, Prince! As if you had children yourself. You don’t have children and never will.”

“Tiens!”⁵ His face changed instantly. “In fact, Alexandra Petrovna—the day before yesterday, heh, heh!—Alexandra Petrovna Sinitsky—I think you must have met her here about three weeks ago—imagine, suddenly, the day before yesterday, to my cheerful remark that if I marry now, at least I can rest assured that I won’t have children—suddenly she says to me, and even with a sort of spite, ‘On the contrary, you precisely will, such a one as you will unfailingly have children, even in the very first year, you’ll see.’ Heh, heh! And everybody imagined for some reason that I’d suddenly get married; but, though it’s spiteful, you must agree it’s witty.”

“Witty, but offensive.”

“Well, cher enfant, one cannot be offended by just anybody. What I appreciate most of all in people is wittiness, which is evidently disappearing, and what Alexandra Petrovna is going to say—who can take that into account!”

“What, what did you say?” I latched on. “Not by just anybody . . . precisely so! Not everybody’s worth paying attention to—an excellent rule! That is precisely what I need. I’ll write it down. You occasionally say the nicest things, Prince.”

He beamed all over.

“N’est-ce pas?⁶ Cher enfant, true wit is disappearing more and more. Eh, mais . . . C’est moi qui connais les femmes.⁷ Believe me, every woman’s life, whatever she may preach, is an eternal search for someone to submit to . . . a thirst for submission, so to speak. And note—without a single exception.”

“Perfectly true, splendid!” I cried in delight. At another time we would have launched at once into philosophical reflections on the subject, for a whole hour, but it was as if something suddenly bit me, and I blushed all over. I imagined that, by praising his bons mots, I was sucking up to him on account of the money, and that he would be sure to think of that when I began to ask. I mention it now on purpose.

“Prince, I humbly request that you pay me right now the fifty roubles you owe me for this month,” I blurted out all at once, irritated to the point of rudeness.

I remember (just as I remember that whole morning in minute detail) that a scene then took place between us that was most vile in its real truth. At first he didn’t understand me, looked for a long time and did not understand what money I was talking about. It was only natural that he never imagined I should receive a salary—and what for? True, he started assuring me later that he had forgotten, and, when he grasped it, he instantly started taking out the fifty roubles, but he became hurried and even turned red. Seeing how things were, I stood up and declared sharply that I could not accept the money now, that I had obviously been told of the salary either mistakenly or deceitfully, so that I would not reject the post, and that I now understood only too well that I had no reason to be paid, because there wasn’t any work. The prince became frightened and started assuring me that I had worked terribly much, and that I would have still more work, and that fifty roubles was so insignificant that he, on the contrary, would increase it, because it was his duty, and that he himself had negotiated with Tatyana Pavlovna, but had “unpardonably forgotten all about it.” I flared up and announced definitively that it would be mean of me to receive a salary for scandalous stories of how I had accompanied two trains to the institutes, that I had not been hired to amuse him, but to occupy myself with business, but since there was no business, it must be terminated, etc., etc. I couldn’t even have imagined that it was possible to be as frightened as he was after these words of mine. Naturally, the end was that I stopped objecting, and he did stick me with the fifty roubles: to this day I blush to recall that I accepted it! Things always end in meanness in this world, and, worst of all, he almost managed to convince me then that I had unquestionably earned it, and I had the foolishness to believe it, and with that it was somehow decidedly impossible not to take it.

“Cher, cher enfant! ” he exclaimed, kissing and embracing me (I confess, I myself was about to weep, devil knows why, though I instantly restrained myself, and even now, as I write, color comes to my face). “Dear friend, you’re now like one of my own; in this month you’ve become like a piece of my own heart! In ‘society’ there is only ‘society’ and nothing more; Katerina Nikolaevna” (his daughter) “is a brilliant woman, and I’m proud of it, but she often offends me, my dear, very, very often . . . Well, and these girls (elles sont charmantes⁸) and their mothers, who come on birthdays—they only bring their embroidery, but they don’t know how to say anything. I’ve accumulated sixty pillows with their embroidery, all dogs and deer. I love them very much, but with you I’m almost as if with my own—and not with a son, but a brother, and I especially like it when you object; you’re literary, you’ve read, you know how to admire . . .”

“I’ve read nothing and am not literary at all. I’ve read whatever happened along, but in the past two years I haven’t read at all and don’t intend to.”

“Why not?”

“I have other goals.”

“Cher . . . it’s a pity to say at the end of your life, as I do, je sais tout, mais je ne sais rien de bon.⁹ I decidedly do not know why I’ve lived in the world! But . . . I owe you so much . . . and I even wanted . . .”

He broke off somehow suddenly, went limp, and became pensive. After a shock (and with him the shocks could come every other minute, God knows why), he usually seemed to lose his good sense for a while and be unable to control himself; however, he would soon put himself to rights, so it was all harmless. We sat for a minute. His lower lip, which was very thick, hung down . . . Most of all, I was surprised that he had suddenly mentioned his daughter, and with such candor. Of course, I ascribed it to his being upset.

“Cher enfant, you’re not angry that I address you familiarly, are you?” suddenly escaped him.