“What did she formulate it with?”
“With nothing, my friend, absolutely nothing; the snuffbox was locked up at once and still tighter, and, above all, notice, I had never allowed even the possibility of such conversations with me, nor had she . . . However, you say yourself that you know her, and therefore you can imagine how such a question suits her . . . You wouldn’t happen to know anything?”
“I’m as puzzled as you are. Some sort of curiosity, or maybe a joke?”
“Oh, on the contrary, a most serious question, and not a question, but almost, so to speak, an inquiry, and evidently for the most extreme and categorical reasons. Won’t you be going there? Mightn’t you find something out? I’d even ask you to, you see . . .”
“But the possibility, above all—the possibility alone of supposing that you love Katerina Nikolaevna! Forgive me, I’m still dumbfounded. I’ve never, never allowed myself to speak with you on this or any similar subject . . .”
“And you’ve done wisely, my dear.”
“Your former intrigues and relations—no, the subject is, of course, impossible between us, and it would even be stupid on my part; but, precisely in this last period, in the last few days, I’ve exclaimed to myself several times: what if you had loved this woman once, even for a moment? Oh, you would never have made such an awful mistake regarding her in your opinion of her as the one that came out afterwards! Of what came out, I do know: of your mutual enmity and your mutual, so to speak, aversion for each other, I do know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard only too well, I heard still in Moscow; but it’s precisely here first of all that the fact of a bitter aversion leaps to the surface, the bitterness of hostility, precisely of
“But I notice, my dear,” something nervous and soulfelt suddenly sounded in his voice, something that went to the heart, which happened terribly rarely with him, “I notice that you yourself speak of it all too ardently. You just said that you call on women . . . of course, for me to question you is somehow . . . on this subject, as you put it . . . But doesn’t ‘that woman’ also figure on the list of your newer friends?”
“That woman . . .” My voice suddenly trembled. “Listen, Andrei Petrovich, listen: that woman is what you said today at the prince’s about ‘living life’—remember? You said that this living life is something so direct and simple, which looks at you so directly, that precisely because of this directness and clarity it’s impossible to believe it could be precisely what we seek so hard all our lives . . . Well, so with such views you met the ideal woman, and in perfection, in the ideal, you recognized—‘all vices’! There you are!”
The reader can judge what a frenzy I was in.
“‘All vices’! Ho, ho! I know that phrase!” exclaimed Versilov. “And if it’s gone so far as telling you such a phrase, shouldn’t you be congratulated for something? It means such intimacy between you that you may even have to be praised for your modesty and secrecy, which a young man is rarely capable of . . .”
A sweet, friendly, affectionate laughter sparkled in his voice . . . there was something inviting and sweet in his words, in his bright face, as far as I could tell at night. He was surprisingly excited. Involuntarily, I sparkled all over.
“Modesty! Secrecy! Oh, no, no!” I exclaimed, blushing and at the same time squeezing his hand, which I had somehow managed to seize and, without noticing it, would not let go of. “No, not for anything! . . . In short, there’s nothing to congratulate me for, and never, never can anything happen here.” I was breathless and flying, and I so wanted to be flying, it felt so good to me. “You know . . . well, let it be so just once, for one little time! You see, my darling, my nice papa—you’ll let me call you papa—it’s impossible, not only for a father and son, but for anyone, to talk with a third person about his relations with a woman, even the purest of them! Even the purer they are, the more forbidden it ought to be. It’s forbidding, it’s coarse, in short—a confidant is impossible! But if there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, then it’s possible to talk, isn’t it?”
“As your heart dictates.”
“An indiscreet, a very indiscreet question. You’ve known women in your life, you’ve had liaisons? . . . I’m asking generally, generally, not in particular!” I was blushing and spluttering with rapture.
“Let’s suppose there were lapses.”
“So here’s an occasion, and you explain it to me, as a more experienced person: a woman, while taking leave of you, suddenly says somehow by chance, looking away, ‘Tomorrow at three o’clock I’ll be at such and such place’ . . . well, say, at Tatyana Pavlovna’s,” I came unhinged and flew off definitively. My heart gave a throb and stopped; I even stopped talking, I couldn’t. He was listening terribly.
“And so the next day I’m at Tatyana Pavlovna’s at three o’clock, I go in and reason like this: ‘If the cook opens the door’—you know her cook?—‘I’ll ask her first off: is Tatyana Pavlovna at home? And if the cook says Tatyana Pavlovna isn’t at home, but some lady visitor’s sitting and waiting—what should I have concluded, tell me, if you . . . In short, if you . . .’”
“Quite simply that you had an appointed rendezvous. But that means it took place? And took place today? Yes?”
“Oh, no, no, no, nothing, nothing! It took place, but it wasn’t that; a rendezvous, but not for that, and I announce it first of all, so as not to be a scoundrel, it happened, but . . .”
“My friend, all this is beginning to become so curious, that I suggest . . .”
“Myself, I used to give a tenner or a twenty-fiver to solicitors. For a dram. Just a few kopecks, it’s a lieutenant soliciting, a former lieutenant asking!” The tall figure of a solicitor, maybe indeed a retired lieutenant, suddenly blocked our way. Most curious of all, he was quite well dressed for his profession, and yet he had his hand out.
III
I PURPOSELY DO not want to omit this most paltry anecdote about the insignificant lieutenant, because I now recall the whole of Versilov not otherwise than with all the minutest circumstantial details of that moment so fateful for him. Fateful, but I didn’t know it!
“If you do not leave us alone, sir, I shall immediately call the police,” Versilov, stopping before the lieutenant, suddenly raised his voice somehow unnaturally. I could never have imagined such wrath from such a philosopher, and for such an insignificant reason. And note that we interrupted the conversation at the moment most interesting for him, as he said himself.
“So you really don’t even have a fifteener?” the lieutenant cried rudely, waving his arm. “On what sort of