The Adolescent

“Why, Tatyana Pavlovna has indeed told me something new,” I finally turned firmly to Versilov. “I’m indeed so much of a lackey that I can in no way be satisfied merely with the fact that Versilov did not send me to be a cobbler; even ‘rights’ didn’t appease me, but give me, say, the whole of Versilov, give me my father . . . that’s what I was demanding—am I not a lackey? Mama, it has been on my conscience for eight years, how you came alone to Touchard’s to visit me, and how I received you then, but there’s no time for that now, Tatyana Pavlovna won’t let me tell it. Till tomorrow, mama, maybe you and I can still see each other. Tatyana Pavlovna! Well, what if I’m once again a lackey to such a degree that I cannot even allow a man whose wife is still living to marry yet another wife? And that’s nearly what happened with Andrei Petrovich in Ems! Mama, if you don’t want to stay with a husband who might marry another woman tomorrow, remember that you have a son, who promises to be a respectful son forever—remember, and let’s go, only with the understanding that it’s ‘either him or me.’ Do you want to? I’m not asking for an answer now; I know it’s impossible to answer such questions straight off . . .”

But I couldn’t finish, first of all, because I became excited and confused. My mother turned all pale and her voice seemed to fail her: she couldn’t utter a word. Tatyana Pavlovna was saying a lot and very loudly, so that I couldn’t even make it out, and twice she shoved me on the shoulder with her fist. I only remember her shouting that my words were “affected, fostered in a petty soul, dug out with a finger.” Versilov sat motionless and very serious, not smiling. I went to my room upstairs. The last look to accompany me out of the room was my sister’s look of reproach; she sternly shook her head behind me.

Chapter Seven

I

I’M DESCRIBING ALL these scenes without sparing myself, in order to recall it all clearly and restore the impression. Going upstairs to my room, I had absolutely no idea whether I should be ashamed of myself or triumphant, like someone who has done his duty. If I had been a bit more experienced, I would have guessed that the least doubt in such a matter should be interpreted for the worse. But I was thrown off by another circumstance: I don’t understand what I was glad about, but I was terribly glad, in spite of my doubts and the clear awareness that I had flunked it downstairs. Even the fact that Tatyana Pavlovna had abused me so spitefully struck me as only ridiculous and amusing, but didn’t anger me at all. Probably that was all because I had broken the chain anyway and for the first time felt myself free.

I also felt that I had harmed my situation: still greater darkness surrounded the question of how I should now act with the letter about the inheritance. They would now decidedly take it as a wish to be revenged on Versilov. But while still downstairs, during all those debates, I had resolved to submit the matter of the letter about the inheritance to arbitration, and to appeal to Vasin as arbiter, and, failing Vasin, to yet another person, I already knew whom. Once, this time only, I’ll go to Vasin, I thought to myself, and then—disappear from them all for a long time, for several months, and I’ll even especially disappear from Vasin; only maybe I’ll see my mother and sister every once in a while. All this was disorderly; I felt I had done something, though not in the right way, and—and I was pleased; I repeat, all the same I was glad of something.

I had decided to go to bed early, foreseeing a lot of running around the next day. Besides renting an apartment and moving, I took a few other decisions which I resolved to carry out in one way or another. But the evening was not to end without its curiosity, and Versilov did manage to astonish me greatly. He had decidedly never come up to my little room, and suddenly, I hadn’t been there an hour when I heard his footsteps on the little stairs: he called me to light his way. I brought a candle and, reaching out my hand, which he seized, helped him to drag himself up.

“Merci, friend, I never once crept up here, not even when I was renting the apartment. I sensed it was something like this, but all the same I never supposed it was quite such a kennel,” he stood in the middle of my room, looking around with curiosity. “Why, it’s a coffin, a perfect coffin!”

Indeed, it had a certain resemblance to the inside of a coffin, and I even marveled at how correctly he had defined it with a single word. It was a long and narrow closet; at the height of my shoulder, not more, the angle between the wall and the roof began, the top of which I could touch with my palm. For the first minute, Versilov instinctively stooped, for fear of bumping his head on the ceiling, though he didn’t and ended by sitting down quite calmly on my sofa, where my bed was already made up. As for me, I did not sit down and looked at him in deep astonishment.