The Adolescent

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