strength.”
“Listen, that must be terribly right!” I cried out again. “Only I wish I could understand . . .”
“Here the reason is clear: they choose God so as not to bow down before people—naturally, not knowing themselves how it comes about in them: to bow down before God is not so offensive. They become extremely ardent believers—or, to put it more correctly, they ardently desire to believe; but they take the desire for belief itself. In the end they very often become disappointed. As for Mr. Versilov, I think there are also extremely sincere traits of character in him. And generally he interests me.”
“ Vasin!” I cried out, “you make me so glad! I’m not surprised at your intelligence, I’m surprised that you, a man so pure and so immeasurably far above me—that you can walk with me and speak so simply and politely, as if nothing had happened!”
Vasin smiled.
“You praise me too much, and all that happened there was that you’re too fond of abstract conversation. You were probably silent for a very long time before this.”
“I was silent for three years, I’ve been preparing to speak for three years . . . To you, naturally, I couldn’t have seemed a fool, because you are extremely intelligent yourself, though it would be impossible to behave more stupidly than I did—but a scoundrel!”
“A scoundrel?”
“Yes, undoubtedly! Tell me, don’t you secretly despise me for saying that I was Versilov’s illegitimate son . . . and boasting that I was the son of a serf ?”
“You torment yourself too much. If you find that you spoke badly, you need only not speak that way the next time; you still have fifty years ahead of you.”
“Oh, I know I should be very silent with people. The meanest of all debauches is to throw yourself on people’s necks; I just said it to them, and here I am throwing myself on yours! But there’s a difference, isn’t there? If you’ve understood that difference, if you were capable of understanding it, I’ll bless this moment!”
Vasin smiled again.
“Come and see me, if you want to,” he said. “I have work now and am busy, but you’ll give me pleasure.”
“I concluded earlier, from your physiognomy, that you were all too firm and uncommunicative.”
“That may very well be so. I knew your sister, Lizaveta Makarovna, last year in Luga . . . Kraft has stopped and seems to be waiting for you; he has to turn there.”
I firmly shook Vasin’s hand and ran to join Kraft, who had gone ahead of us while I was talking with Vasin. We silently went as far as his quarters; I did not want to speak to him yet, and could not. One of the strongest traits of Kraft’s character was his delicacy.
Chapter Four
I
KRAFT USED TO be in government service somewhere, and along with that had also helped the late Andronikov (for a remuneration from him) to conduct some private affairs, which the latter had always engaged in on top of his government work. For me the important thing was that Kraft, owing to his particular closeness to Andronikov, might be informed of much that so interested me. But I knew from Marya Ivanovna, the wife of Nikolai Semyonovich, with whom I lived for so many years while I was in school—and who was the niece, the ward, and the favorite of Andronikov—that Kraft had even been “charged” with delivering something to me. I had been waiting for him that whole month.
He lived in a small two-room apartment, completely separate, and at the present moment, having only just returned, was even without a servant. The suitcase, though unpacked, had not been put away; things were strewn over chairs, and laid out on the table in front of the sofa were a valise, a traveling strongbox, a revolver, and so on. Coming in, Kraft was extremely pensive, as if he had totally forgotten about me; he may not even have noticed that I hadn’t spoken to him on the way. He at once began looking for something, but, glancing into the mirror in passing, he stopped and studied his face closely for a whole minute. Though I noticed this peculiarity (and later recalled it very well), I was sad and very confused. I couldn’t concentrate. There was a moment when I suddenly wanted to up and leave and thus abandon all these matters forever. And what were all these matters essentially? Weren’t they simply self-inflicted cares? I was beginning to despair that I was maybe spending my energy on unworthy trifles out of mere sentimentality, while I had an energetic task before me. And meanwhile my incapacity for serious business was obviously showing itself, in view of what had happened at Dergachev’s.
“Kraft, will you go to them again?” I suddenly asked him. He slowly turned to me, as if he hadn’t quite understood me. I sat down on a chair.
“Forgive them!” Kraft said suddenly.
To me, of course, this seemed like mockery; but, looking at him attentively, I saw such a strange and even astonishing ingenuousness in his face, that I was even astonished at how seriously he had asked me to “forgive” them. He moved a chair and sat down beside me.
“I myself know that I’m maybe a rag-bag of all the vanities and nothing more,” I began, “but I don’t ask forgiveness.”
“And there’s no one to ask,” he said softly and seriously. He spoke softly and very slowly all the time.
“Let me be guilty before myself . . . I like being guilty before myself . . . Kraft, forgive me for babbling here with you. Tell me, can it be that you’re also in that circle? That’s what I wanted to ask.”
“They’re no more stupid than others, nor more intelligent; they’re crazy, like everybody.”
“So everybody’s crazy?” I turned to him with involuntary curiosity.
“Among the better sort of people now, everybody’s crazy. Only mediocrity and giftlessness are having a heyday . . . However, that’s all not worth . . .”
As he spoke, he somehow stared into space, began phrases and broke them off. Especially striking was a sort of despondency in his voice.
“Can it be that Vasin’s with them? Vasin has a mind, Vasin has a moral idea!” I cried.
