The Adolescent

On the first of April last year, Marya Ivanovna had a name-day party. In the evening some guests came, a very few. Suddenly Agrafena comes in, breathless, and announces that there’s a foundling baby squealing in the entry, by the kitchen door, and that she doesn’t know what to do. Excited by the news, we all went and saw a basket, and in the basket a three- or four-week-old squealing girl. I took the basket, brought it to the kitchen, and at once found a folded note: “Dear benefactors, render your well-wishing aid to the baptized girl Arina, and with her we will ever send up our tears to the throne of God for you, and we congratulate you on your angel’s day. People unknown to you.” Here Nikolai Semyonovich, whom I so respect, upset me very much: he made a very serious face and decided to send the girl to the orphanage immediately. I felt very sad. They lived very economically, but had no children, and Nikolai Semyonovich was always glad of it. I carefully took Arinochka out of the basket and held her up by her little shoulders; the basket gave off a sort of sour and sharp smell, as of a long-unwashed nursing baby. After some arguing with Nikolai Semyonovich, I suddenly announced to him that I was taking the girl at my own expense. He began to object with a certain severity, despite all his mildness, and though he ended with a joke, he left his intention about the orphanage in full force. It worked out my way, however: on the same courtyard, but in another wing, lived a very poor cabinetmaker, already an old man and a drunkard, but his wife, a very healthy woman and not old at all, had just lost her nursing baby, and above all her only one, who had been born after eight years of childless marriage, also a girl, and by strange luck also named Arinochka. I say luck, because as we were arguing in the kitchen, this woman, hearing about the incident, came running to see, and when she learned that it was Arinochka, her heart melted. Her milk was not gone yet; she opened her bodice and put the baby to her breast. I fell before her and began begging her to take Arinochka with her, and said I’d pay her monthly. She feared her husband wouldn’t allow it, but took her for the night. In the morning, the husband allowed it for eight roubles a month, and I counted them out to him for the first month in advance. He drank up the money at once. Nikolai Semyonovich, still smiling strangely, agreed to vouch for me to the cabinetmaker that the money, eight roubles a month, would be paid regularly. I tried to give Nikolai Semyonovich my sixty roubles in cash, by way of security, but he wouldn’t take it; however, he knew I had the money and trusted me. This delicacy on his part smoothed over our momentary quarrel. Marya Ivanovna said nothing, but was surprised at my taking on such a care. I especially appreciated their delicacy in that neither of them allowed themselves the slightest mockery of me, but, on the contrary, began to treat the matter with the proper seriousness. I ran by Darya Rodionovna’s every day, three times a day or so, and a week later I gave her personally, in her own hand, on the quiet from her husband, three more roubles. For another three I bought swaddling clothes and a little blanket. But ten days later, Rinochka suddenly got sick. I brought a doctor at once, he prescribed something, and we spent the whole night fussing about and tormenting the tiny thing with his nasty medicine, but the next day he declared that it was too late, and to my entreaties—though they seemed more like reproaches—he said with noble evasiveness, “I am not God.” The girl’s tongue, lips, and whole mouth got covered with a sort of fine white rash, and towards evening she died, gazing at me with her big dark eyes, as if she already understood. I don’t understand how it didn’t occur to me to take a photograph of her dead. Well, would you believe that I did not weep but simply howled that evening, something I had never allowed myself to do, and Marya Ivanovna was forced to comfort me—and again, totally without mockery either on her own or on his part. The cabinetmaker made a little coffin; Marya Ivanovna trimmed it with ruche and put a pretty little pillow in it, and I bought flowers and strewed them over the little baby; and so they took away my poor little wisp, whom, believe me, to this day I cannot forget. A while later, though, this whole almost unexpected occurrence even made me reflect a lot. Of course, Rinochka had not cost me much—thirty roubles in all, including the coffin, the burial, the doctor, the flowers, and the payments to Darya Rodionovna. I reimbursed myself for this money, as I was leaving for Petersburg, from the forty roubles Versilov had sent me for my trip, and by selling some things before I left, so that my whole “capital” remained intact. “But,” I thought, “if I can be sidetracked like that, I won’t get very far.” From the story with the student, it followed that the “idea” can fascinate one to the point of a blurring of impressions and distract one from the flow of actualities. From the story with Rinochka the opposite followed, that no “idea” can be so intensely fascinating (for me, at least) that I cannot stop suddenly before some overwhelming fact and sacrifice to it at once all that I had done for the idea during years of toil. Both conclusions were nonetheless correct.