The Adolescent

once cried out in fright:

“Liza, dear, why that look?”

“It’s not at you; only don’t gamble . . .”

“Ah, you mean gambling! I won’t, I won’t.”

“You just said, ‘when we’re happy’—so you’re very happy?”

“Terribly, Liza, terribly! My God, it’s already three o’clock, and past! . . . Good-bye, Lizok. Lizochka, dear, tell me: can one keep a woman waiting? Is that permissible?”

“At a rendezvous, you mean?” Liza smiled faintly, with some sort of dead, trembling little smile.

“Give me your hand for luck.”

“For luck? My hand? Not for anything!”

And she quickly walked away. And, above all, she had cried out so seriously. I jumped into my sledge.

Yes, yes, and this “happiness” was the main reason why I, like a blind mole, neither understood nor saw anything except myself then!

Chapter Four

I

NOW I’M EVEN afraid to tell about it. It was all long ago; but now, too, it’s like a mirage for me. How could such a woman arrange a rendezvous with such a vile little brat as I was then?—that’s how it was at first sight! When I left Liza and rushed off, my heart pounding, I thought I’d simply lost my mind; the idea of an appointed rendezvous suddenly seemed to me such a glaring absurdity that it was impossible to believe it. And yet I had no doubts at all, even to this extent: the more glaring the absurdity, the more strongly I believed in it.

That it had already struck three worried me: “If I’ve been granted a rendezvous, how can I be late for the rendezvous?” I thought. Stupid questions also flashed, such as, “Which is better for me now—boldness or timidity?” But it all only flashed, because in my heart there was one main thing, and such as I couldn’t define. What had been said the day before was this: “Tomorrow at three o’clock I’ll be at Tatyana Pavlovna’s”—that was all. But, first, she had always received me alone, in her room, and she could have told me all she liked without moving to Tatyana Pavlovna’s; so why appoint another place at Tatyana Pavlovna’s? And again a question: will Tatyana Pavlovna be at home, or won’t she? If it’s a rendezvous, then it means Tatyana Pavlovna won’t be at home. And how to accomplish that without explaining it all to Tatyana Pavlovna beforehand? Which means that Tatyana Pavlovna is also in on the secret? This thought seemed wild to me and somehow unchaste, almost crude.

And, finally, she might simply have wanted to visit Tatyana Pavlovna and told me yesterday without any purpose, and I imagined all sorts of things. And it had been said so much in passing, carelessly, calmly, and after a rather boring seance, because all the while I had been at her place yesterday, I had been thrown off for some reason: I sat, mumbled, and didn’t know what to say, grew terribly angry and timid, and she was going out somewhere, as it turned out afterwards, and was visibly glad when I got up to leave. All these considerations crowded in my head. I decided, finally, that I would go, ring the bell, the cook would open the door, and I would ask, “Is Tatyana Pavlovna at home?” If she wasn’t, it meant “rendezvous.” But I had no doubts, no doubts!

I ran up the stairs and—on the stairs, in front of the door, all my fear vanished. “Well, come what may,” I thought, “only quickly!” The cook opened the door and, with her vile phlegm, grumbled that Tatyana Pavlovna was not at home. “And is there anyone else waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna?” I was about to ask, but didn’t. “Better see for myself,” and, muttering to the cook that I would wait, I threw off my coat and opened the door . . .

Katerina Nikolaevna was sitting by the window and “waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“She’s not here?” she suddenly asked me, as if with worry and vexation, the moment she saw me. Both her voice and her face corresponded so little with my expectations that I simply got mired on the threshold.

“Who’s not here?” I murmured.

“Tatyana Pavlovna! Didn’t I ask you yesterday to tell her I’d call on her at three o’clock?”

“I . . . I haven’t seen her at all.”

“You forgot?”

I sat down as if crushed. So that’s how it turned out! And, above all, everything was as clear as two times two, and I—I still stubbornly believed.

“I don’t even remember your asking me to tell her. And you didn’t; you simply said you’d be here at three o’clock,” I cut her short impatiently. I wasn’t looking at her.

“Ah!” she suddenly cried. “So, if you forgot to tell her, and yet knew yourself that I would be here, so then what did you come here for?”

I raised my head. There was neither mockery nor wrath in her face, there was only her bright, cheerful smile and some sort of additional mischievousness in her expression—her perpetual expression, however—an almost childlike mischievousness. “There, you see, I’ve caught you out. Well, what are you going to say now?” her whole face all but said.

I didn’t want to answer, and again looked down. The silence lasted for about half a minute.

“Are you just coming from papa?” she suddenly asked.

“I’m just coming from Anna Andreevna, and I wasn’t at Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s at all . . . and you knew that,” I suddenly added.

“Did anything happen to you at Anna Andreevna’s?”

“That is, since I now have such a crazy look? No, I had a crazy look even before Anna Andreevna’s.”

“And you didn’t get smarter at her place?”

“No, I didn’t. Besides, I heard there that you were going to marry Baron Bjoring.”

“Did she tell you that?” she suddenly became interested.