“Arkasha, don’t be angry, dear, but what if you really did stop . . .”
“Gambling, is it? Gambling? I will, mama; I’m going today for the last time, especially now that Andrei Petrovich himself has announced, and aloud, that not a cent of that money is his. You won’t believe how I blush . . . I must talk with him, however . . . Mama, dear, the last time I was here I said . . . something awkward . . . mama, darling, I lied: I sincerely want to believe, it was just bravado, I love Christ very much . . .”
The last time we had indeed had a conversation of that sort; mama had been very upset and alarmed. Hearing me now, she smiled at me as at a child:
“Christ will forgive everything, Arkasha: he will forgive your abuse, and he will forgive more than that. Christ is our father, Christ needs nothing and will shine even in the deepest darkness . . .”
I said good-bye to them and left, reflecting on my chances of seeing Versilov that same day; I needed very much to have a talk with him, but just now it had been impossible. I strongly suspected that he was waiting for me at my place. I went on foot; after the warmth it had turned slightly frosty, and it was very pleasant to take a stroll.
II
I LIVED NEAR the Voznesensky Bridge, in an enormous house, on the courtyard. Almost going through the gateway, I bumped into Versilov, who was leaving my place.
“As is my custom, I walked as far as your lodgings, and even waited for you at Pyotr Ippolitovich’s, but I got bored. They’re eternally quarreling, and today his wife has even kept to her bed, weeping. I looked in and left.”
I became vexed for some reason.
“Can it be that I’m the only one you go to see, and besides me and Pyotr Ippolitovich, you have nobody in all Petersburg?”
“My friend . . . but it makes no difference.”
“Where to now?”
“No, I won’t go back to your place. If you like, we can stroll a bit, it’s a nice evening.”
“If, instead of abstract reasonings, you had talked to me like a human being and, for instance, had only so much as hinted to me about this cursed gambling, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten drawn into it like a fool,” I said suddenly.
“You regret it? That’s good,” he said, sifting his words. “I’ve always suspected that gambling isn’t the main thing with you, but only a tem-po-rary deviation . . . You’re right, my friend, gambling is swinishness, and what’s more, one can lose.”
“And lose someone else’s money.”
“Have you lost someone else’s money as well?”
“I’ve lost yours. I took from the prince against your account. Of course, it was awfully preposterous and stupid on my part . . . to regard your money as my own, but I kept wanting to win it back.”
“I warn you once again, my dear, that none of that money is mine. I know the young man is in a squeeze himself, and I don’t count on him at all, despite his promises.”
“In that case, I’m in twice as bad a position . . . I’m in a comical position! And why on earth should he give to me or I take from him, then?”
“That’s your business . . . But you really don’t have the slightest reason for taking from him, eh?”
“Besides comradeship . . .”
“No, besides comradeship? There isn’t anything that would make it possible for you to take from him, eh? Well, for whatever considerations?”
“What considerations? I don’t understand.”
“So much the better if you don’t understand, and, I confess, my friend, I was sure of that. Brisons là, mon cher, 37and try somehow not to gamble.”
“If only you’d told me beforehand! Even now you talk to me as if you’re mumbling.”
“If I’d told you beforehand, we would only have quarreled, and you wouldn’t have been so willing to let me call on you in the evenings. And know, my dear, that all this saving advice beforehand is only an intrusion into another’s conscience at the other’s expense. I’ve done enough jumping into other people’s consciences and in the end suffered nothing but flicks and mockery. Of course, I spit on flicks and mockery, but the main thing is that you achieve nothing by this maneuver: nobody will listen to you, for all your intruding . . . and everybody will dislike you.”
“I’m glad you’ve begun to talk with me about something besides abstractions. I want to ask you about one more thing, I’ve long wanted to, but somehow with you it was always impossible. It’s good that we’re in the street. Remember that evening at your place, the last evening, two months ago, how we sat in my ‘coffin’ and I asked you about mama and Makar Ivanovich—remember how ‘casual’ I was with you then? Could a young pup of a son be allowed to speak of his mother in such terms? And what, then? You didn’t let it show by one little word; on the contrary, you ‘opened yourself up’ to me, and made me even more casual.”
“My friend, it’s all too pleasant for me to hear . . . such feelings from you . . . Yes, I remember very well, I was actually waiting then for your face to turn red, and if I added to it myself, maybe it was precisely to push you to the limit . . .”
“And all you did was deceive me then, and trouble the pure spring in my soul still more! Yes, I’m a pathetic adolescent and don’t know myself from minute to minute what’s evil and what’s good. If you had shown me just a bit of the way then, I would have guessed and jumped at once onto the right path. But you only made me angry then.”
“ Cher enfant, I’ve always sensed that you and I would become close in one way or another: this ‘red’ in your face did come to you of itself and without my directions, and that, I swear, is the better for you . . . I notice, my dear, that you’ve acquired a lot lately . . . could it be in the company of this little prince?”
“Don’t praise me, I don’t like it. Don’t leave the painful suspicion in my heart that you’re praising me out of Jesuitism, to the detriment of truth, so that I won’t stop liking you. But recently . . . you see . . . I’ve been calling on women. I’m very well received, for instance, at Anna Andreevna’s, did you know that?”
“I know it from her, my friend. Yes, she’s very sweet and intelligent. Mais brisons là, mon cher. I feel somehow strangely vile today—spleen, or what? I ascribe it to hemorrhoids. How are things at home? All right? Naturally, you made peace there and there were embraces. Cela va sans dire. 38It’s somehow sad to go back to them sometimes, even after the nastiest walk. Truly, at times I make an unnecessary detour in the rain, only to put off going back to those lower depths . . . And the boredom, the boredom, oh, God!”
“Mama . . .”
“Your mother is the most perfect and lovely being, mais. . . In short, I’m probably not worthy of them. By the way, what’s with them today? Lately they’ve all been somehow sort of . . . You know, I always try to ignore it, but today they’ve got something brewing there . . . You didn’t notice anything?”
“I know decidedly nothing and wouldn’t even have noticed anything, if it hadn’t been for that cursed Tatyana Pavlovna, who can’t keep from biting. You’re right: there’s something there. Today I found Liza at Anna Andreevna’s; there, too, she was somehow . . . she even surprised me. You do know that she’s received at Anna Andreevna’s?”
“I do, my friend. And you . . . when were you at Anna Andreevna’s—that is, at precisely what hour? I need that for the sake of a certain fact.”
“From two to three. And imagine, as I was leaving, the prince came . . .”
Here I told him about my whole visit in extreme detail. He listened to it all silently: about the possibility of the prince proposing to Anna Andreevna he didn’t utter a word; to my rapturous praises of Anna Andreevna he again mumbled that “she’s sweet.”
“I managed to astonish her extremely today by telling her the most fresh-baked society news about Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov marrying Baron Bjoring,” I said suddenly, as if something in me had come unhinged.
“Oh? Imagine, she told me that same ‘news’ earlier today, before noon, that is, much earlier than you could have astonished her with it.”
“What?” I just stopped in my tracks. “But how could she have found out? Though what am I saying? Naturally, she could have found out before me, but imagine: she listened to me say it as if it was absolute news! Though . . . though what am I saying? Long live breadth! One must allow for breadth of character, right? I, for instance, would have blurted it all out at once, but she locks it up in a snuffbox . . . And so be it, so be it, nonetheless she’s the loveliest being and the most excellent character!”