The Adolescent

I’m yielding and trifling only in trifles, but I will never yield in the main thing. In trifles, in certain social manners, one can do God knows what with me, and I’ve always cursed this trait in myself. Out of some stinking good naturedness, I have sometimes been ready to yes even some society fop, seduced solely by his courtesy, or to get into an argument with a fool, which is most unpardonable. All from lack of self-control and from having grown up in a corner. You go away angry and swearing that tomorrow it won’t be repeated, but tomorrow the same thing happens again. That’s why I’ve sometimes been taken almost for a sixteen-year-old. But instead of acquiring self-control, I prefer even now to shut myself up still more in a corner, though it be in the most misanthropic way: “Maybe I’m awkward, but—farewell!” I say that seriously and forever. However, I am by no means writing this apropos of the prince, and not even apropos of our conversation that time.

“I am by no means saying it for your amusement,” I almost shouted at him, “I am simply voicing a conviction.”

“But how is it that women are rude and indecently dressed? That’s novel.”

“They’re rude. Go to the theater, go for a promenade. Every man knows the right side, they come towards each other and pass each other, he on the right and I on the right. A woman, that is, a lady—I’m speaking of ladies—comes stomping straight at you, without even noticing you, as if it were your unfailing duty to jump aside and yield her the way. I’m ready to yield, as to a weaker being, but why is it her right, why is she so sure I must do it—that’s what’s offensive! I always spit when I run into them. And after that they cry that they’re humiliated and demand equality; what kind of equality is it, if she tramples me down or stuffs my mouth full of sand!”

“Sand!”

“Yes. Because they’re indecently dressed; only a depraved man can fail to notice that. They shut the doors in courts when a case gets to indecency; why then do they allow it in the streets, where there are a lot more people? They pad themselves quite openly with some frou-frou behind, to show that they’re belles-femmes. Openly! I can’t help noticing it, and any young man will notice it, and a child, a beginning little boy, will also notice it. It’s base. Let old philanderers admire it and run after them with their tongues hanging out, but there are pure young people who must be protected. The only thing left to do is spit. She goes down the boulevard and leaves a four-foot train behind her sweeping the dust; how about the one behind her: you either have to run ahead or jump aside, otherwise she’ll stuff five pounds of sand in your nose and mouth. Besides, it’s silk, and she frays it on the stones for three miles, just for the sake of fashion, and her husband earns five hundred roubles a year in the Senate:⁷ there’s where the bribes are sitting! I always spit on it, I spit and berate them out loud.”

Though I’m writing down this conversation somewhat humorously here, and in a way characteristic of me then, the thinking is still mine.

“And get away with it?” the prince became curious.

“I spit and walk away. Naturally, she feels it, but she doesn’t let it show, she stomps on majestically without turning her head. And there was only one time that I berated a couple of them quite seriously, both with trains, on the boulevard—naturally, not in nasty words, I merely observed out loud that trains were offensive.”

“That’s how you put it?”

“Of course. First, she’s trampling on social conventions, and second, she’s raising dust; and the boulevard is for everybody: I walk there, another person walks there, a third, Fyodor, Ivan, it makes no difference. So I spoke it all out. And generally I don’t like the female gait, if you look from behind; I spoke that out, too, but in a hint.”

“My friend, you could have gotten into a serious incident: they could have dragged you to the justice of the peace!”

“They could have done nothing at all. There were no grounds for complaint: a man walks by and talks to himself. Every man has the right to voice his conviction into the air. I was speaking abstractly, I wasn’t addressing them. They themselves did the pestering: they started berating me, they were much nastier than I was: milksop, ought to go without dinner, nihilist, hand him over to the police, and that I started pestering them because they were alone and weak women, and that if there had been a man with them, I’d have put my tail between my legs at once. I told them coolly that they should stop bothering me, and that I would cross to the other side. And in order to prove to them that I’m not afraid of their men and am ready to accept their challenge, I will follow twenty steps behind them right to their house, then stand in front of their house and wait for their men. And so I did.”

“Really?”