still didn’t understand what it was about.
“Anna Andreevna is also your sister, sir,” he uttered imposingly.
“Don’t you dare speak of that. And generally don’t you dare speak of Anna Andreevna.”
“Don’t be proud, just for one more little minute! Listen: he’ll get the money and provide for everybody,” Stebelkov said weightily, “everybody,
“So you think I’ll take money from him?”
“Aren’t you taking it now?”
“I’m taking my own!”
“What’s your own?”
“This is Versilov’s money; he owes Versilov twenty thousand.”
“Versilov, not you.”
“Versilov’s my father.”
“No, you’re Dolgoruky, not Versilov.”
“That makes no difference!”
Indeed, I was able to reason like that then. I knew it made a difference, I wasn’t so stupid, but I reasoned like that then, again, out of “delicacy.”
“Enough!” I cried. “I understand precisely nothing. And how dared you summon me for such trifles?”
“Can it be you really don’t understand? Are you doing it on purpose or not?” Stebelkov said slowly, staring at me piercingly and with some sort of mistrustful smile.
“By God, I don’t!”
“I say he can provide for everybody,
“You must have lost your mind! What’s this ‘everybody’ you keep trotting out? Is it Versilov he’ll provide for?”
“You’re not the only one in it, nor is Versilov . . . there are others. And Anna Andreevna is as much a sister to you
I stared at him goggle-eyed. Suddenly something like pity for me flashed in his vile gaze:
“You don’t understand, and so much the better! It’s good, it’s very good that you don’t understand. It’s praiseworthy . . . if you really don’t understand.”
I became completely furious:
“Away with you and your trifles, you crazy man!” I cried, seizing my hat.
“They’re not trifles! So it’s a deal? But, you know, you’ll come again.”
“No,” I snapped from the doorway.
“You’ll come, and then . . . then there’ll be a different talk. That will be the main talk. Two thousand, remember!”
II
HE MADE SUCH a filthy and murky impression on me that, going out, I even tried not to think of it and only spat. The idea that the prince could speak with him about me and this money pricked me as if with a pin. “I’ll win and pay him back today,” I thought resolutely.
Stupid and tongue-tied as Stebelkov was, I had seen a blazing scoundrel in all his splendor, and, above all, there certainly was some intrigue here. Only I had no time to go into any intrigues, and that was the main reason for my hen-blindness! I glanced worriedly at my watch, but it wasn’t even two yet; that meant I could still make one visit, otherwise I’d have died of excitement before three o’clock. I drove to see Anna Andreevna Versilov, my sister. I had long ago become close with her at my little old prince’s, precisely during his illness. The thought that I hadn’t seen him for three or four days now nagged at my conscience, but it was precisely Anna Andreevna who helped me out: the prince was extremely taken with her and, to me, even called her his guardian angel. Incidentally, the thought of marrying her to Prince Sergei Petrovich had indeed been born in the old man’s head, and he had even told me of it more than once, in secret, of course. I had conveyed this idea to Versilov, having noticed before that, for all the essential things to which Versilov was so indifferent, nevertheless he was always somehow especially interested when I told him something about my meetings with Anna Andreevna. Versilov had muttered to me then that Anna Andreevna was all too intelligent and, in such a ticklish matter, could do without other people’s advice. Naturally, Stebelkov was right that the old man would give her a dowry, but how could he dare to count on anything here? Today the prince had shouted after him that he wasn’t afraid of him at all. Had Stebelkov indeed talked with him in his study about Anna Andreevna? I can imagine how infuriated I’d have been in his place.
Lately I had even been at Anna Andreevna’s quite often. But here one strange thing always happened: it was always she herself who invited me to come, and she certainly always expected me, but when I entered, she unfailingly made it seem that I had come unexpectedly and unintendedly. I noticed this feature in her, but I became attached to her all the same. She lived with Mme. Fanariotov, her grandmother, as her ward, of course (Versilov gave nothing to provide for them)—but in a far different role from that in which wards are usually described in the houses of aristocratic ladies, for instance, the old countess’s ward in Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades.”20 Anna Andreevna was like a countess herself. She lived completely separately in this house, that is, on the same floor and in the same apartment as the Fanariotovs, but in two separate rooms, so that, for instance, coming and going, I never once met any of the Fanariotovs. She had the right to receive whomever she wanted, and to use her time however she liked. True, she was already going on twenty-three. During the last year, she had almost stopped appearing in society, though Mme. Fanariotov did not stint on expenses for her granddaughter, whom, as I heard, she loved very much. On the contrary, I precisely liked in Anna Andreevna the fact that I always found her in such modest dresses, always busy with something, with a book or handwork. There was something of the nunnery, almost nunlike, in the way she looked, and I liked that. She was not loquacious, but always spoke with weight, and
