The Adolescent

“ALL THESE TWENTY years, your mother and I have lived in complete silence,” he began his palaver (affected and unnatural in the highest degree), “and all that has been between us has taken place in silence. The main quality of our twenty-year-long liaison has been—speechlessness. I don’t think we even quarreled once. True, I often went away and left her alone, but in the end I always came back. Nous revenons toujours,²² that’s a fundamental quality of men; it’s owing to their magnanimity. If the matter of marriage depended on women alone, no marriage would stay together. Humility, meekness, lowliness, and at the same time firmness, strength, real strength—that is your mother’s character. Note that she’s the best of all the women I’ve met in the world. And that there is strength in her—that I can testify to; I’ve seen how that strength nourishes her. Where it’s a matter, I wouldn’t say of convictions, there can be no proper convictions here, but of what they consider convictions, which, to their minds, also means sacred, there even torture would be to no avail. Well, but you can judge for yourself: do I look like a torturer? That’s why I preferred to be silent about almost everything, not only because it’s easier, and, I confess, I don’t regret it. In this way everything went over by itself, broadly and humanely, so that I don’t even ascribe to myself any praise for it. I’ll say, by the way, in parenthesis, that for some reason I suspect she never believed in my humaneness, and therefore always trembled; but while trembling, at the same time she never yielded to any culture. They somehow know how to do it, and there’s something here that we don’t understand, and generally they know better than we how to manage their own affairs. They can go on living in their own way in situations that are most unnatural for them, and remain completely themselves in situations that are most not their own. We can’t do that.”

“They who? I don’t quite understand you.”

“The people, my friend, I’m speaking of the people. They have demonstrated this great, vital force and historical breadth both morally and politically. But to return to what we were saying, I’ll observe about your mother that she’s not always silent; your mother occasionally says things, but says them in such a way that you see straight off that you’ve only wasted your time talking, even if you’ve spent five years beforehand gradually preparing her. Besides, her objections are quite unexpected. Note once again that I don’t consider her a fool at all; on the contrary, there’s a certain kind of intelligence here, and even a most remarkable intelligence; however, maybe you won’t believe me about her intelligence . . .”

“Why not? I only don’t believe that you really believe in her intelligence yourself, and are not pretending.”

“Oh? You consider me such a chameleon? My friend, I allow you a bit too much . . . as a spoiled son . . . but let it remain so for this time.”

“Tell me about my father—the truth, if you can.”

“Concerning Makar Ivanovich? Makar Ivanovich is, as you already know, a household serf, who had, so to speak, a desire for a certain glory . . .”

“I’ll bet that at this moment you envy him for something!”

“On the contrary, my friend, on the contrary, and, if you wish, I’m very glad to see you in such whimsical spirits; I swear that precisely now I am in a highly repentant humor, and precisely now, at this moment, and maybe for the thousandth time, I impotently regret all that happened twenty years ago. Besides, as God is my witness, it all happened quite inadvertently . . . well, and afterwards, as far as it was in my power, also humanely; at least so far as I then understood the endeavor of humaneness. Oh, we were all boiling over then with the zeal to do good, to serve civic goals, high ideas; we condemned ranks, our inherited rights, estates, and even moneylenders, at least some of us did . . . I swear to you. We weren’t many, but we spoke well and, I assure you, we sometimes even acted well.”

“That was when you wept on his shoulder?”

“My friend, I agree with you in everything beforehand; by the way, you heard about the shoulder from me, which means that at this moment you are making wicked use of my own simpleheartedness and trustfulness; but you must agree that that shoulder really wasn’t as bad as it seems at first sight, especially for that time; we were only beginning then. I was faking, of course, but I didn’t know I was faking. Don’t you ever fake, for instance, in practical cases?”

“Just now, downstairs, I waxed a little sentimental, and felt very ashamed, as I was coming up here, at the thought that you might think I was faking. It’s true that on some occasions, though your feelings are sincere, you sometimes pretend; but downstairs just now it was all natural.”