The Adolescent (8 page)

I

PRECISELY, WHO COULD CARE? The highest consideration absorbed all trifles, and one powerful feeling satisfied me for everything. I went out in a sort of rapture. Stepping into the street, I was ready to start singing. As if on purpose, it was a lovely morning, sun, passersby, noise, movement, joy, the crowd. But hadn’t this woman insulted me? From whom would I have borne such a look and such an insolent smile without an immediate protest, even the stupidest—it makes no difference—on my part? Note that she was coming just so as to insult me the sooner, without ever having seen me: in her eyes, I was “Versilov’s agent,” and she was convinced even then and for a long time afterwards that Versilov held her entire fate in his hands and had the means to ruin her at once, if he wished to, by means of a certain document; she suspected as much at least. This was a duel to the death. And here—I was not insulted! There was an insult, but I didn’t feel it! Far from it! I was even glad; having come to hate her, I even felt I was beginning to love her. “I don’t know, can a spider hate the fly it has picked out and wants to catch? Sweet little fly! It seems to me that one loves one’s victim; at least one may. You see, I love my enemy: I find it terribly pleasing, for instance, that she’s so beautiful. I find it terribly pleasing, madam, that you are so haughty and majestic; if you were a bit meeker, the satisfaction wouldn’t be so great. You spat upon me, but I’m triumphant; if you were actually to spit in my face with real spit, I really might not get angry, because you are my victim—
mine
, and not
his
. What a fascinating thought! No, the secret awareness of power is unbearably more enjoyable than manifest domination. If I were worth a hundred million, I think I’d precisely enjoy going around in my old clothes, so as to be taken for the measliest of men, who all but begs for alms, and be pushed around and despised; for me, the consciousness alone would be enough.”

That was how I would have translated my thoughts and my joy at that time, and much of what I felt. I will add only that here, in what I’ve just written, it has come out more light-minded: in reality, I was more profound and modest. Maybe even now I’m more modest in myself than in my words and deeds. God grant it!

Maybe I’ve done a very bad thing in sitting down to write; there is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words. Your thought, even a bad one, while it is with you, is always more profound, but in words it is more ridiculous and dishonorable. Versilov told me that the complete opposite happens only with the worst people. They just lie, it’s easy for them; while I’m trying to write the whole truth, which is terribly hard!

II

ON THIS NINETEENTH day of the month, I took one more “step.”

For the first time since my arrival, I had money in my pocket, because my sixty roubles, which I had saved up over two years, I had given to my mother, as I mentioned above; but several days earlier I had resolved that, on the day I got my salary, I would make a “test ” I had long been dreaming of. Just the day before, I had cut out an address from a newspaper—an announcement by “the bailiff of the St. Petersburg Civil Court,” and so on and so forth, that “on the nineteenth of September instant, at twelve noon, in the Kazan quarter, such-and-such precinct, etc., etc., at house number whatever, the sale of the movable property of Mrs. Lebrecht will take place,” and that “the description, value, and property itself can be seen on the day of the sale,” etc., etc.

It was just past one o’clock. I hurried on foot to the address. It was over two years since I’d taken a cab—I gave my word (otherwise I wouldn’t have saved sixty roubles). I never went to auctions, I couldn’t
afford
it yet; and though my present “step” was only
tentative
, even this step I had resolved to resort to only when I had finished school, when I had broken with everyone, when I had shrunk into my shell and become completely free. True, I was still far from being in a “shell” and far from being free; but I resolved to take the step only as a test—just so, in order to see, almost to dream a little, as it were, and then perhaps not to come for a long time, until it was a serious beginning. For everyone else it was only a small, stupid little auction, but for me it was the first log for the ship in which Columbus went to discover America. Those were my feelings at the time.

Reaching the place, I went into the courtyard indicated on the announcement, and entered Mrs. Lebrecht’s apartment. The apartment consisted of a front hall and four not very big, not very highceilinged rooms. In the first room beyond the hall there was a crowd of up to thirty people, of whom half were buyers and the rest, judging by their looks, were either curious, or amateurs, or sent from Mrs. Lebrecht; there were both merchants and Jews, who had their eye on the gold things, and there were several people dressed “properly.” Even the physiognomies of some of these gentlemen are imprinted on my memory. In the room to the right, in the open doorway, a table had been placed squarely between the doorposts, so that it was impossible to enter that room: the objects being perquisitioned and sold were there. To the left was another room, but the doors to it were closed, though they kept opening every moment by a little crack, through which someone could be seen peeking out—it must have been one of Mrs. Lebrecht’s numerous family, who naturally felt very ashamed at the moment. At the table between the doors, facing the public, Mr. Bailiff sat on a chair, wearing a badge, and carried out the sale of the objects. I found the business almost half over already; as soon as I entered, I made my way through the crowd to the table. Bronze candlesticks were being sold. I began to look.

I looked and at once began to think: what can I buy here? And what was I going to do right now with bronze candlesticks, and would I achieve my goal, and was this how things were done, and would my calculation succeed? And wasn’t my calculation childish? I thought of all this and waited. It was the same sort of sensation as at the gambling table, at the moment when you haven’t played a card yet, but have come over with the intention of playing: “I’ll play if I want, and I’ll leave if I want—it’s my choice.” Your heart isn’t pounding yet, but somehow hesitates and thrills slightly—a sensation not without pleasure. But indecision quickly begins to weigh you down, and you somehow turn blind: you reach out, you take a card, but mechanically, almost against your will, as if someone else was guiding your hand; finally you make up your mind and play—here the sensation is quite different, tremendous. I’m writing not about the auction, but only about myself: who else would have a pounding heart at an auction?

There were some who got excited, there were some who kept silent and bided their time, there were some who bought and regretted it. I felt no pity at all for a gentleman who, by mistake, having misheard, bought a nickel silver pitcher instead of a silver one, for five roubles instead of two; I even began to feel rather merry. The bailiff varied the objects: after the candlesticks came earrings, after the earrings, an embroidered morocco pillow, followed by a box—probably for the sake of diversity or in line with the buyers’ demands. I didn’t even hold out for ten minutes, was tending towards the pillow, then towards the box, but each time I stopped at the decisive moment: the objects seemed quite impossible to me. Finally, an album turned up in the bailiff’s hands.

“A family album, bound in red morocco, worn, with drawings in watercolor and ink, in a carved ivory case with silver clasps—the starting price is two roubles!”

I went up: the object looked refined, but there was a flaw in one place in the ivory carving. I was the only one who went up, everybody was silent; there were no competitors. I could have unfastened the clasps and taken the album out of the case to examine it, but I didn’t exercise my right and only waved a trembling hand, as if to say: “It makes no difference.”

“Two roubles, five kopecks,” I said, again, I believe, with chattering teeth.

It fell to me. I took out the money at once, paid, snatched the album, and went into a corner of the room; there I took it out of the case and feverishly, hurriedly, began to examine it: excepting the case, it was the trashiest thing in the world—a little album the size of small-format letter paper, thin, with worn gilt edges—exactly the kind that girls used to start keeping in the old days, as soon as they left the institute. Temples on hills, cupids, a pond with swans floating on it, were drawn in watercolors and ink; there were verses:

I am setting out for far away,
I am leaving Moscow for many a day,
To all my dear ones I say good-bye,
By stagecoach to the Crimee I fly.

(They’ve been preserved in my memory!) I decided that I had “failed”; if there was anything nobody needed, this was precisely it.

“Never mind,” I decided, “you always lose on the first card; it’s even a good omen.”

I was decidedly cheerful.

“Ah, I’m too late! It’s yours? Did you acquire it?” I suddenly heard beside me the voice of a gentleman in a dark blue coat, well dressed and of an imposing air. He was too late.

“I’m too late. Ah, what a pity! How much?”

“Two roubles, five kopecks.”

“Ah, what a pity! Won’t you let me have it?”

“Let’s step out,” I whispered to him, my heart skipping a beat.

We went out to the stairway.

“I’ll let you have it for ten roubles,” I said, feeling a chill in my spine.

“Ten roubles! Good heavens, how can you!”

“As you wish.”

He stared wide-eyed at me; I was well dressed, in no way resembled a Jew or a retailer.

“Merciful heavens, it’s a trashy old album, who needs it? The case is in fact quite worthless, you won’t sell it to anybody.”

“You want to buy it.”

“But mine is a special case, I found out only yesterday,
I’m
the only one like that! Good heavens, how can you!”

“I should have asked twenty-five roubles; but since there was a risk that you’d let it go, I asked only ten so as to be sure. I won’t go down even a kopeck.”

I turned and walked away.

“Take four roubles,” he overtook me in the courtyard, “or make it five.”

I said nothing and walked on.

“All right, here!” He took out ten roubles, and I gave him the album.

“But you must agree it’s dishonest! Two roubles and ten—eh?”

“Why dishonest? It’s the market!”

“What kind of market is this?” (He was angry.)

“Where there’s demand, there’s the market. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have been able to sell it for forty kopecks.”

Though I wasn’t laughing out loud and looked serious, I did laugh my head off inwardly, not really with delight, but I don’t know why myself, slightly out of breath.

“Listen,” I murmured quite irrepressibly, but amiably and loving him terribly, “listen: when James Rothschild,
¹³
the late one, in Paris, the one who left seventeen hundred million francs” (the man nodded), “while still a young man, when he chanced to learn a few hours ahead of everybody else about the murder of the Duke of Berry, he rushed off at once to inform the right people, and with that one trick, in one instant, made several million—that’s the way to do it!”

“So you’re Rothschild, are you?” he shouted at me indignantly, as at a fool.

I quickly left the house. One step—and I’d made seven roubles, ninety-five kopecks! The step was meaningless, child’s play, I agree, but even so it coincided with my thought and couldn’t help stirring me extremely deeply . . . However, there’s no point in describing feelings. The ten-rouble bill was in my waistcoat pocket, I stuck two fingers in to feel it—and walked along that way, without taking my hand out. Having gone about a hundred steps down the street, I took it out to look at it, looked, and wanted to kiss it. A carriage suddenly clattered at the porch of a house; the doorkeeper opened the door, and a lady came out of the house to get into the carriage, magnificent, young, beautiful, rich, in silk and velvet, with a fivefoot train. Suddenly a pretty little pocketbook dropped from her hand and fell on the ground; she got in; the valet bent down to pick up the little thing, but I ran over quickly, picked it up, and handed it to the lady, tipping my hat. (It was a top hat, I was dressed like a young gentleman, not so badly.) With restraint, but smiling most pleasantly, the lady said to me, “
Merci
,
m’sieu
.” The carriage clattered off. I kissed the ten-rouble bill.

III

THAT SAME DAY I had to see Efim Zverev, one of my former high-school comrades, who had dropped out of school and enrolled in some specialized higher institute in Petersburg. He himself is not worth describing, and in fact I wasn’t friends with him; but I had looked him up in Petersburg; he could (owing to various circumstances that are also not worth talking about) tell me the address of a certain Kraft, a man I needed very much, once he came back from Vilno. Zverev expected him precisely that day or the next, and had informed me of it two days before. I had to walk to the Petersburg side, but I wasn’t tired at all.

I found Zverev (who was also about nineteen years old) in the courtyard of his aunt’s house, where he was living temporarily. He had just had dinner and was walking around the courtyard on stilts; he informed me at once that Kraft had arrived the day before and stopped off at his former apartment, also there on the Petersburg side, and that he wished to see me himself as soon as possible, to inform me immediately of something necessary.

“He’s going away again,” Efim added.

Since in my present circumstances it was of capital importance for me to see Kraft, I asked Efim to take me at once to his apartment, which turned out to be two steps away in a lane. But Zverev declared that he had met Kraft an hour before and that he had gone to see Dergachev.
¹⁴

“So let’s go to Dergachev’s, why do you keep making excuses—are you scared?”

Indeed, Kraft might spend a long time at Dergachev’s, and then where was I to wait for him? I wasn’t scared of going to Dergachev’s, but I didn’t want to, though this was already the third time Efim tried to drag me there. And this “scared” he always pronounced with the nastiest smile on my score. It wasn’t a matter of being scared, I declare beforehand, and if I was afraid, it was of something quite different. This time I decided to go; it was also just two steps away. As we went, I asked Efim whether he still intended to run away to America.

“I may wait a little,” he answered with a slight laugh.

I didn’t much like him, I even didn’t like him at all. His hair was very blond, he had a full, much too white face, even indecently white, to the point of infantility, and he was even taller than I, but you wouldn’t have taken him for more than seventeen years old. I had nothing to talk about with him.

“And what’s there? Always a crowd?” I asked for the sake of solidity.

“But why do you keep getting scared?” he laughed again.

“Go to the devil!” I got angry.

“Not a crowd at all. Only acquaintances come, and all our people, rest assured.”

“But what the devil business is it of mine whether they’re all your people or not? Am I one of your people? Why should they go and trust me?”

“I’m bringing you, and that’s enough. They’ve even heard about you. Kraft can also speak for you.”

“Listen, will Vasin be there?”

“I don’t know.”

“If he is, nudge me as soon as we go in and point to Vasin—as soon as we go in, you hear?”

I had heard a lot about Vasin and had long been interested.

Dergachev lived in a little wing in the courtyard of a wooden house that belonged to a merchant’s widow, but the whole wing was at his disposal. There were three good rooms in all. The four windows all had their blinds lowered. He was a technician and had a job in Petersburg; I had heard in passing that he had been offered a profitable private post in the provinces and that he was about to set off.

As soon as we went into the tiny front hall, we heard voices; there seemed to be a heated argument and someone shouted: “
Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat
.”
^17
15

I was actually somewhat worried. Of course, I wasn’t used to company, even whatever it might be. In high school I had addressed all my comrades informally, but I was comrades with almost none of them; I had made myself a corner and lived in my corner. But that was not what troubled me. In any case, I had promised myself not to get into any arguments and to say only what was most necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me; above all—don’t argue.

In the room, which was even much too small, there were some seven people, ten including the women. Dergachev was twentyfive years old, and he was married. His wife had a sister and another female relation; they also lived at Dergachev’s. The room was furnished haphazardly, though sufficiently, and was even clean. On the wall hung a lithographic portrait, but a very cheap one, and in the corner an icon without a casing, but with a lighted icon lamp. Dergachev came over to me, shook hands, and invited me to sit down.

“Sit down, they’re all our people here.”

“Be so kind,” a young woman added at once. She was rather pretty, very modestly dressed, and having bowed slightly to me, she at once went out. This was his wife, and it seemed by the look of it that she, too, had been arguing, but had now gone to nurse the baby. The other two ladies remained in the room—one very short, about twenty years old, in a black dress, and also not a bad-looking sort, while the other was about thirty, dry and sharp-eyed. They sat, listened very much, but did not enter into the conversation.

As far as the men were concerned, they were all standing, and the only ones seated, apart from me, were Kraft and Vasin. Efim pointed them out to me at once, because I was now seeing Kraft as well for the first time in my life. I got up from my seat and went over to make their acquaintance. I’ll never forget Kraft’s face: no special beauty, but something as if all too meek and delicate, though personal dignity showed everywhere. Twenty-six years old, rather lean, of above-average height, blond, his face grave but soft; overall there was something gentle in him. And yet, if you had asked me, I would never have traded my maybe even very banal face for his face, which I found so attractive. There was something in his face that I wouldn’t want to have in mine, something all too calm in a moral sense, something like a sort of secret, unconscious pride. However, I was probably unable to judge so literally then; it seems to me now that I judged that way then, that is, after the event.

“I’m very glad you’ve come,” said Kraft. “I have a letter that concerns you. We’ll sit here a while and then go to my place.”

Dergachev was of medium height, broad-shouldered, very dark-haired, with a big beard; in his glance once could see quickwittedness and restraint in everything, a certain constant wariness; though he was mainly silent, he was obviously in control of the conversation. Vasin’s physiognomy did not impress me very much, though I had heard he was extremely intelligent: blond, with big light gray eyes, a very open face, but at the same time there was something as if excessively hard in it: one sensed little sociability, but his gaze was decidedly intelligent, more intelligent than Dergachev’s, more profound—the most intelligent in the room; however, maybe I’m exaggerating it all now. Of the rest, I recall only two faces among all those young men: one tall, swarthy man with black side-whiskers, who talked a lot, about twenty-seven years old, a teacher or something of that sort, and also a young fellow of my age, in a long Russian vest—with a wrinkle in his face, taciturn, a listener. He turned out later to be of peasant stock.

“No, that’s not the way to put it,” began the teacher with black side-whiskers, who was the most excited of them all, obviously taking up the previous argument again. “I’m not saying anything about mathematical proofs, but this idea, which I’m ready to believe even without mathematical proofs . . .”

“Wait, Tikhomirov,” Dergachev interrupted loudly, “the latest arrivals don’t understand. This, you see,” he suddenly turned to me alone (and, I confess, if his intention was to examine me as a newcomer or make me speak, the method was very clever on his part; I immediately sensed it and prepared myself ), “this, you see, is Mr. Kraft, whose character and solid convictions are quite well-known to us all. Starting from a rather ordinary fact, he has arrived at a rather extraordinary conclusion, which has surprised everybody. He has deduced that the Russian people are a second-rate people . . .”

“Third-rate,” someone cried.

“. . . second-rate, whose fate is to serve merely as material for a more noble race, and not to have its own independent role in the destinies of mankind. In view of this possibly correct deduction of his, Mr. Kraft has come to the conclusion that any further activity of any Russian man should be paralyzed by this idea, so to speak, that everyone should drop their hands and . . .”

“Permit me, Dergachev, that’s not the way to put it,” Tikhomirov again picked up impatiently (Dergachev yielded at once). “In view of the fact that Kraft has done serious research, has deduced deductions on the basis of physiology, which he considers mathematical, and has killed maybe two years on his idea (which I would quite calmly accept a priori), in view of that, that is, in view of Kraft’s anxieties and seriousness, this matter presents itself as a phenomenon. A question arises from all this which Kraft cannot comprehend, and that is what we should occupy ourselves with, that is, Kraft’s incomprehension, because it is a phenomenon. We should decide whether this is a clinical phenomenon, as a singular case, or is a property that may normally be repeated in others; this is of interest in view of the common cause. I shall believe Kraft about Russia and even say that I am perhaps also glad; if this idea were adopted by everyone, it would unbind hands and free many from patriotic prejudice . . .”

“It’s not out of patriotism,” said Kraft, as if with strain. This whole debate seemed disagreeable to him.

“Patriotism or not, that can be left aside,” said Vasin, who was very silent.

“But, tell me, how could Kraft’s deduction weaken the striving for the general human cause?” shouted the teacher (he alone shouted, all the rest spoke quietly). “Suppose Russia is destined to be second-rate; but it is possible not to work for Russia alone. And, besides, how can Kraft be a patriot, if he has ceased to believe in Russia?”

“Anyhow he’s German,” a voice was heard again.

“I’m Russian,” said Kraft.

“That question is not directly related to the matter,” Dergachev pointed out to the one who had interrupted.

“Abandon the narrowness of your idea.” Tikhomirov wouldn’t listen to anything. “If Russia is only material for nobler races, why shouldn’t she serve as such material? It’s a handsome enough role. Why not settle on this idea with a view to broadening the task? Mankind is on the eve of its regeneration, which has already begun. Only blind men can deny the forthcoming task. Leave Russia, if you’ve lost faith in her, and work for the future—for the future of a still unknown people, but which will be composed of all mankind, with no distinction of races. Even without that, Russia will die one day; peoples, even the most gifted of them, live no more than fifteen hundred, two thousand years at most; what difference does it make, two thousand or two hundred years? The Romans didn’t survive even fifteen hundred years as a living entity, and they also became material. They’re long gone, but they left an idea, and it entered into the destinies of mankind as an element of things to come. How can you tell a man there’s nothing to do? I can’t imagine a situation in which there could ever be nothing to do! Do it for mankind and don’t worry about the rest. There’s so much to do that a lifetime won’t be enough, if you look around attentively.”

“We must live by the law of nature and truth,”
¹⁶
Mrs. Dergachev said from behind the door. The door was slightly ajar, and she could be seen standing there, holding the baby to her breast, with her breast covered, and listening ardently.

Kraft listened, smiling slightly, and finally said, as if with a somewhat weary look, though with great sincerity:

“I don’t understand how it’s possible, while under the influence of some dominant idea, to which your mind and heart are totally subject, to live by anything that lies outside that idea.”

“But if you’re told logically, mathematically, that your deduction is mistaken, that the whole thought is mistaken, that you do not have the least right to exclude yourself from general useful activity only because Russia is predestined to be second-rate; if you are shown that, instead of a narrow horizon, an infinity is open to you, that instead of a narrow idea of patriotism . . .”

“Eh!” Kraft quietly waved his hand, “but I told you it’s not a matter of patriotism.”

“There’s obviously a misunderstanding here,” Vasin suddenly mixed in. “The mistake is that for Kraft it’s not just a logical deduction, but, so to speak, a deduction that has turned into a feeling. Not all natures are the same; for many, a logical deduction sometimes turns into the strongest feeling, which takes over their whole being, and which it is very difficult to drive out or alter. To cure such a person, it’s necessary in that case to change the feeling itself, which can be done only by replacing it with another that is equally strong. That is always difficult, and in many cases impossible.”

“Mistake!” the arguer yelled. “A logical deduction in itself already breaks down prejudices. An intelligent conviction generates the same feeling. Thought proceeds from feeling and, installing itself in a person in its turn, formulates the new!”

“People are very varied: some change their feelings easily, others with difficulty,” replied Vasin, as if not wishing to prolong the argument; but I was delighted with his idea.

“It’s precisely as you say!” I suddenly turned to him, breaking the ice and suddenly beginning to speak. “It’s precisely necessary to put one feeling in the place of another, so as to replace it. Four years ago, in Moscow, a certain general . . . You see, gentlemen, I didn’t know him, but . . . Maybe he, indeed, could not inspire respect on his own . . . And besides, the fact itself might seem unreasonable, but . . . However, you see, his child died, that is, as a matter of fact, two girls, one after the other, of scarlet fever . . . Well, he was suddenly so crushed that he was sad all the time, so sad that he went around and you couldn’t even look at him—and he ended by dying in about half a year. That he died of it is a fact! What, then, could have resurrected him? Answer: a feeling of equal strength! Those two girls should have been dug up from the grave and given to him—that’s all, or something of the sort. So he died. And meanwhile you could have presented him with beautiful deductions: that life is fleeting, that everyone is mortal; presented him with calendar statistics,
¹⁷
how many children die of scarlet fever . . . He was retired . . .”