“You’ll offend me, Semyon Sidorovitch.”
“That’s what I wish,” Semyon Sidorovitch snapped out, taking his hat, and without saying good-bye to anybody, he walked alone out of the room. Lambert tossed the money to the waiter and hurriedly ran after him, even forgetting my existence in his confusion. Trishatov and I walked out last of all. Andreyev was standing like a post at the door, waiting for Trishatov.
“You scoundrel!” cried Lambert, unable to restrain himself.
“There, there!” Andreyev grunted at him, and with one swing of his arm he knocked off his round hat, which went spinning along the pavement. Lambert flew abjectly to pick it up.
“Vinq-cinq roubles!” Andreyev showed Trishatov the note, which he had just got from Lambert.
“That’s enough,” Trishatov shouted to him. “Why must you always make an uproar? . . . And why have you wrung twenty-five roubles out of him? You only ought to have had seven.”
“Why did I wring it out of him? He promised us a private dinner with Athenian women, and instead of women he regaled us with the pock-marked man, and what’s more, I did not finish my dinner and I’ve been freezing here in the cold, it’s certainly worth eighteen roubles. He owed me seven, so that makes twenty-five.”
“Go to the devil both of you!” yelled Lambert. “I’ll send you both packing, I’ll pay you out . . .”
“Lambert, I’ll send you packing. I’ll pay you out!” cried Andreyev. “Adieu, mon prince, don’t drink any more wine! Petya, marche! Ohé Lambert! Où est Lambert? As-tu vu Lambert?” he roared for the last time as he strode away.
“So I shall come and see you, may I?” Trishatov murmured hurriedly, and hastened after his friend.
I was left alone with Lambert.
“Well . . . come along!” he brought out, seeming stupefied and breathing with difficulty.
“Where shall I come along? I’m not coming anywhere with you!” I made haste to reply defiantly.
“You’re not coming,” he said, startled and apprehensive. “Why, I have only been waiting for us to be alone!”
“But where to go?” I must confess I, too, had a slight ringing in my head, from the three glasses of champagne and the two wine-glasses of sherry I had drunk.
“This way, this way. Do you see?”
“But this is an oyster bar: you see it is written up. It smells so horrid . . .”
“That’s only because you have just had dinner. We won’t have oysters, but I’ll give you some champagne. . . .”
“I don’t want any! You want to make me drunk.”
“That’s what they told you; they’ve been laughing at you. You believe blackguards like that!”
“No, Trishatov’s not a blackguard. But I know how to take care of myself — that’s all!”
“So you’ve a will of your own, have you?”
“Yes, I have a character; more than you have, for you’re servile to everybody you meet. You disgraced us, you begged pardon of the Poles like a lackey. I suppose you’ve often been beaten in restaurants?”
“But we must have a talk, you fool!” he cried with the same contemptuous impatience, which almost implied, what are you driving at? “Why, you are afraid, aren’t you? Are you my friend or not?”
“I am not your friend and you are a swindler. We’ll go along simply to show you I’m not afraid of you. Oh, what a horrid smell, it smells of cheese! How disgusting!”
Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:22 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.
A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Chapter VI
1
I must beg the reader to remember again that I had a slight giddiness in my head; if it had not been for that I should have acted and spoken differently. In the shop, in a back room, one could indeed have eaten oysters, and we sat down to a table covered with a filthy cloth. Lambert ordered champagne; a glass of cold wine of a golden colour was set before me and seemed looking at me invitingly; but I felt annoyed.
“You see, Lambert, what annoys me most is that you think you can order me about now as you used to do at Touchard’s, while you are cringing upon everybody here.”
“You fool! Aië, let’s clink glasses.”
“You don’t even deign to keep up appearances with me: you might at least disguise the fact that you want to make me drunk.”
“You are talking rot and you’re drunk. You must drink some more, and you’ll be more cheerful. Take your glass, take it!”
“Why do you keep on ‘take it’? I am going and that’s the end of it.”
And I really did get up. He was awfully vexed:
“It was Trishatov whispered that to you: I saw you whispering. You are a fool for that. Alphonsine is really disgusted if he goes near her. . . . He’s a dirty beast, I’ll tell you what he’s like.”
“You’ve told me already. You can talk of nothing but your Alphonsine, you’re frightfully limited.”
“Limited?” he did not understand. “They’ve gone over now to that pock-marked fellow. That’s what it is! That’s why I sent them about their business. They’re dishonest. That fellow’s a blackguard and he’s corrupting them. I insisted that they should always behave decently.”
I sat still and as it were mechanically took my glass and drank a draught.
“I’m ever so far ahead of you in education,” I said. But he was only too delighted that I went on sitting there, and at once filled up my glass.
“And you know you’re afraid of them!” I went on taunting him, and no doubt I was even nastier than he was at that moment. “Andreyev knocked your hat off, and you gave him twenty-five roubles for it.”
“I did give it him, but he’ll pay me back. They are rebellious, but I’ll be quits with them.”
“You are awfully upset by that pock-marked man. And do you know it strikes me that I’m the only one left you. All your hopes now are resting on me — aren’t they?”
“Yes, Arkasha, that is so: you are the only friend left me; you are right in saying that!” he slapped me on the shoulder.
What could be done with a man so crude; he was utterly obtuse, and took irony for serious praise.
“You could save me from bad things if you would be a good comrade, Arkady,” he went on, looking at me caressingly.
“In what way could I save you?”
“You know yourself what it is. Without me, like a fool, you will certainly be stupid; but I’d get you thirty thousand and we would go halves and you know how. Why, think who you are; you’re nothing — no name, no position, and here you’d win first prize straight off: and having such a fortune, you’ll know how to make a career!”
I was simply astounded at this attack. I had taken for granted that he would dissemble, but he had begun upon it with such bluntness, such schoolboyish bluntness. I resolved to listen to him from a desire to be open-minded and . . . from intense curiosity.
“Look here, Lambert, you won’t understand this, but I’m consenting to listen to you because I’m open-minded,” I declared firmly, and again I took a gulp at my glass. Lambert at once filled it up.
“I’ll tell you what, Arkady: if a fellow like Büring had dared to abuse me and strike me in the presence of a lady I adored, I don’t know what I should have done! But you put up with it, I’m ashamed of you: you’re a poor creature!”
“How dare you say that Büring struck me!” I shouted, turning crimson. “It was more I struck him than he me.”
“No, it was he struck you, not you struck him.”
“You’re lying, I trod on his foot too!”
“But he shoved you back, and told the footman to drag you away . . . and she sat and looked on from her carriage and laughed at you; she knows that you have no father and that you can be insulted.”