The Adolescent

“Impossible, Tatyana Pavlovna,” Versilov answered her imposingly. “Arkady obviously has something in mind, and therefore we absolutely must allow him to finish. Well, and let him! He’ll tell it and get it off his chest, and for him the main thing is to get it off his chest. Begin your new story, my dear—that is, I’m only calling it new; don’t worry, I know the ending.”

IV

“I RAN AWAY, that is, I wanted to run away to you, very simply. Tatyana Pavlovna, you remember how Touchard wrote you a letter two weeks after I was installed there, don’t you? Marya Ivanovna showed me the letter later, it also wound up among the late Andronikov’s papers. Touchard suddenly thought he had asked too little money, and in his letter announced to you ‘with dignity’ that, in his institution, princes and senators’ children were educated, and that he considered it beneath his institution to keep a pupil with such an origin as mine, unless he was paid extra.”

“Mon cher, you might . . .”

“Oh, never mind, never mind,” I interrupted, “I’ll tell only a little about Touchard. You replied to him from the provinces, Tatyana Pavlovna, two weeks later, and sharply refused. I remember him then, all purple, coming into our classroom. He was a very short and very stocky little Frenchman of about forty-five, and indeed of Parisian origin, from cobblers, of course, but from time immemorial he had held a government post in Moscow as a teacher of French, and even had some rank, which he was extremely proud of—a profoundly uneducated man. We, his pupils, were only six in number; among us there was indeed some nephew of a Moscow senator, and we all lived there in a completely family situation, more under the supervision of his wife, a very affected lady, the daughter of some Russian official. During those two weeks I put on airs terribly in front of my comrades, boasting of my dark blue frock coat and my papa, Andrei Petrovich, and their questions—why was I Dolgoruky and not Versilov—didn’t embarrass me in the least, precisely because I didn’t know why myself.”

“Andrei Petrovich!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna in an almost threatening voice. My mother, on the contrary, could not tear her eyes from me, and obviously wanted me to continue.

“Ce Touchard . . . indeed, I recall him now, was small and fidgety,” Versilov said through his teeth, “but he was recommended to me then from the best side . . .”

“Ce Touchard came in holding the letter, went over to our big oak table, at which all six of us were grinding away at something, seized me firmly by the shoulder, raised me from my chair, and told me to pick up my notebooks.

“‘Your place is not here, but there.’ He pointed to a tiny room to the left of the front hall, in which stood a simple table, a wicker chair, and an oilcloth sofa—exactly as I have now in my little room upstairs. I went there with astonishment and greatly intimidated; never before had I been treated rudely. Half an hour later, when Touchard left the classroom, I began exchanging glances and laughter with my comrades; they, of course, were laughing at me, but I didn’t guess that and thought we were laughing because we were having fun. Here Touchard fell on me all at once, seized me by the forelock, and started pulling.

“‘You dare not sit together with noble children, you’re of mean origin and the same as a lackey!’

“And he hit me painfully on my plump red cheek. He liked that at once and hit me a second and a third time. I wept and sobbed, I was terribly astonished. For a whole hour I sat, covering my face with my hands, and wept and wept. Something had taken place that I could in no way understand. I don’t understand how someone like Touchard, a foreigner, who was not a wicked man, who even rejoiced at the emancipation of the Russian peasants, could beat such a stupid child as I. However, I was only astonished, not insulted; I was still unable to be insulted. It seemed to me that I had done some mischief, but when I improved, I’d be forgiven, and we’d all suddenly become merry again, go and play in the yard, and have the best possible life.”

“My friend, if I’d only known . . .” Versilov drawled with the careless smile of a somewhat weary man. “What a scoundrel this Touchard was, though! However, I still haven’t lost hope that you’ll somehow gather your strength and finally forgive us for it all, and again we’ll have the best possible life.”

He decidedly yawned.