me to speak myself out with Tatyana there, she allowed Tatyana, she knew that Tatyana was sitting and eavesdropping (because she couldn’t help eavesdropping), she knew that she was laughing at me—it’s terrible, terrible! But . . . but what if it was impossible to avoid? What could she have done in her position today, and how can she be blamed for it? No, I myself lied to her about Kraft, I deceived her, because it was also impossible to avoid it, and I lied involuntarily, innocently. My God,” I suddenly exclaimed, blushing painfully, “and I, what have I just done myself? Haven’t I just dragged her before the same Tatyana, haven’t I just told everything to Versilov? Though—what’s the matter with me?—there’s a difference here. Here it was only about the document; essentially, I just told Versilov about the document, because there was nothing more to tell about, and there couldn’t be. Wasn’t I the first to inform him and cry that ‘there couldn’t be’? He’s a man of understanding. Hm . . . But what hatred there is in his heart for this woman, though, even now! And what a drama must have taken place between them then and from what? Of course, from self-love!
Yes, this last thought escaped me then, and I didn’t even notice it. It was such thoughts that raced through my head then one after another, and I was straightforward with myself then: I wasn’t being sly, I wasn’t deceiving myself; and if there was something I didn’t comprehend then at that moment, it was just because I didn’t have brains enough, and not from Jesuitism with myself.
I returned home in a terribly excited and, I don’t know why, a terribly merry state of mind, though a very unclear one. But I was afraid to analyze and tried with all my might to divert myself. I went to my landlady at once; indeed, a terrible falling out was under way between her and her husband. She was a very consumptive clerk’s wife, maybe even a kind one, but, like all consumptives, extremely capricious. I at once began to make peace between them, went to see the tenant, a very coarse, pockmarked fool, an extremely vain clerk who served in a bank, Chervyakov, whom I myself disliked very much, but with whom, anyhow, I got along well, because I often had the baseness to join him in teasing Pyotr Ippolitovich. I at once persuaded him not to move out, and he himself would not have ventured to actually move out. In the end I reassured the landlady definitively and, on top of that, managed to straighten the pillow under her head excellently. “Pyotr Ippolitovich can never manage like that,” she concluded maliciously. Then I busied myself with her mustard plasters in the kitchen, and with my own hands prepared two superb plasters for her. Poor Pyotr Ippolitovich only looked at me with envy, but I didn’t let him touch them and was rewarded literally by tears of gratitude from her. And then, I remember, I suddenly got bored with it all, and I suddenly realized that I was by no means looking after the sick woman out of the goodness of my heart, but just so, for some reason, for something else entirely.
I waited nervously for Matvei. That evening I decided to try my luck for the last time and . . . and, apart from luck, I felt a terrible need to gamble; otherwise it would have been unbearable. If I hadn’t had to go anywhere, maybe I wouldn’t have held out and would have gone to her. Matvei was to come soon, but suddenly the door opened and an unexpected visitor came in—Darya Onisimovna. I winced and was surprised. She knew my lodgings because she had come once on an errand from mama. I sat her down and began looking at her questioningly. She said nothing, but only looked me straight in the eye and smiled submissively.
“Have you come from Liza?” it occurred to me to ask.
“No, just so, sir.”
I warned her that I would be leaving presently; again she answered that she had come “just so” and would leave presently herself. For some reason I suddenly felt sorry for her. I’ll note that she had seen much sympathy from us all, from mama and especially from Tatyana Pavlovna, but once she was placed with Mrs. Stolbeev, we all somehow began to forget her, except perhaps for Liza, who often visited her. She herself, it seems, was the cause of that, because she had a capacity for withdrawing and effacing herself, despite all her submissive and ingratiating smiles. Personally I very much disliked those smiles, and the fact that she always obviously falsified her face, and I even thought once that she had not grieved long over her Olya. But this time for some reason I felt sorry for her.
And then suddenly, without saying a word, she bent forward, looked down, and, suddenly thrusting out both arms, put them around my waist and leaned her face against my knees. She seized my hand, I almost thought she was going to kiss it, but she pressed it to her eyes, and a flood of hot tears poured over it. She was all shaking with sobs, but she wept quietly. My heart was wrung, despite the fact that I was also as if vexed. But she embraced me with complete trust, not afraid in the least that I would get angry, despite the fact that she had smiled at me so timorously and servilely just before. I began asking her to calm down.
“Dear heart, darling, I don’t know what to do with myself. When it gets dark, I can’t stand it; when it gets dark, I can’t stand it any more, I’m drawn outside, into the darkness. What draws me, mainly, is a dream. There’s this dream born in my mind, that just as I step out, I’ll meet her in the street. I walk and it’s as if I see her. That is, it’s somebody else walking, but I walk behind on purpose and think: isn’t it her, there now, I think, isn’t that my Olya? And I think and think. I get stupefied in the end, only knocking into people, it’s sickening. Knocking about like I’m drunk, and people abuse me. I keep it to myself, I don’t go to anyone. Or if I do, it’s more sickening. I was passing by your place and thought, ‘Why don’t I drop in; he’s the kindest of them all, and he was there then.’ Dear heart, forgive a useless woman; I’ll leave now and go away . . .”
She suddenly got up and began to hurry. Just then Matvei arrived; I put her into the sledge and took her home to Mrs. Stolbeev’s apartment on the way.
II
MOST RECENTLY I had started going to play roulette at Zershchikov’s. Before that I had gone to three houses, always with the prince, who had “introduced” me in those places. In one of those houses the game was predominantly faro, and they played for very significant money. But I didn’t like it there; I saw it was only good there if you had big money, and besides, it was frequented by too many insolent people and “thundering” youth from high society. That was what the prince liked; he liked to gamble, but he also liked to hobnob with those rakehells. I noticed on those evenings that, though he sometimes came in with me, he somehow distanced himself from me during the evening and didn’t introduce me to any of “his people.” I looked around like a perfect savage, sometimes even so much so that I happened to attract attention. At the gambling table I sometimes even had to speak with one or another of them; but once, the next day, right there in those rooms, I tried to greet one little sir with whom I had not only talked but even laughed the day before, sitting next to him, and I had even guessed two cards for him, and what then?—he didn’t recognize me at all. Worse than that: he looked at me as if with sham perplexity and walked past smiling. Thus I soon dropped the place and got into the habit of going to a certain cesspool—I don’t know what else to call it. It was a roulette house, rather insignificant, paltry, kept by a certain kept woman, though she never appeared in the room herself. It was a terribly unbuttoned place, and though officers frequented it, and rich merchants, everything came out a bit dirtily, which many, however, found attractive. Besides, I often had luck there. But I dropped that place, too, after a certain repulsive incident that occurred at the height of a game and ended in a fight between two players, and started going to Zershchikov’s, where, again, I was introduced by the prince. The owner was a retired cavalry staff-captain, and the tone at his evenings was quite tolerable, military, ticklishly irritable in observing the forms of honor, clipped and businesslike. Jokers and big carousers, for instance, didn’t show up there. Besides, the faro bank was hardly a joking matter. They played faro and roulette. Up to that evening, the fifteenth of November, I had gone there twice in all, and Zershchikov, it seemed, already knew my face; but I didn’t have any acquaintances yet. As if on purpose, the prince and Darzan showed up that evening only at around midnight, returning from the faro of those society rakehells that I had dropped. Thus, on that evening I was like a stranger in an alien crowd.
