“There’s only one serious objection here,” I went on dreaming as I walked. “Oh, of course, the insignificant difference in age would be no obstacle, but there’s this: she’s such an aristocrat, and I’m—simply Dolgoruky! Awfully nasty! Hm! Surely Versilov, once he’s married my mother, could ask the authorities for permission to adopt me . . . for the father’s services, so to speak . . . He was in the service, so of course there were services; he was an arbiter of the peace . . . Oh, devil take it, what vileness!”
I suddenly exclaimed that and suddenly stopped for the third time, but now as if squashed on the spot. All the painful feeling of humiliation from the consciousness that I could wish for such a disgrace as a change of name through adoption, this betrayal of my whole childhood—all this in almost one instant destroyed my whole previous mood, and all my joy vanished like smoke. “No, I won’t tell this to anyone,” I thought, blushing terribly. “I stooped so low because I’m . . . in love and stupid. No, if Lambert is right about anything, it’s that nowadays all this foolishness is simply not required, and that the main thing in our age is the man himself, and then his money. That is, not his money, but his power. With my capital I’ll throw myself into the ‘idea,’ and in ten years all Russia will be talking, and I’ll have my revenge on everyone. And there’s no need to be ceremonious with her, here again Lambert is right. She’ll turn coward and simply marry me. In the simplest and most banal way, she’ll accept and marry me. ‘You don’t know, you don’t know in what sort of back room it went on!’” Lambert’s words came to my mind. “And that’s so,” I confirmed, “Lambert is right in everything, a thousand times righter than I, and Versilov, and all these idealists! He’s a realist. She’ll see that I have character and say, ‘Ah, he has character!’ Lambert is a scoundrel, and all he wants is to fleece me of thirty thousand, and yet he’s the only friend I’ve got. There is no other friendship and cannot be, that was all invented by impractical people. And I don’t even humiliate her; do I humiliate her? Not a bit: women are all like that! Can there be a woman without meanness? That’s why she needs to have man over her, that’s why she was created a subordinate being. Woman is vice and temptation, and man is nobility and magnanimity. And so it will be unto ages of ages. And never mind that I’m preparing to use the ‘document.’ That won’t prevent either nobility or magnanimity. Schillers in a pure form don’t exist—they’ve been invented. Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid! Afterwards it will all be washed away, smoothed over. And now it’s only—breadth, it’s only—life, it’s only—life’s truth—that’s what they call it now!”
Oh, again I repeat: may I be forgiven for citing to the last line all this drunken raving from that time. Of course, this is only the essence of my thoughts from that time, but I believe I did speak in those very words. I had to cite them, because I sat down to write in order to judge myself. And what am I to judge, if not that? Can there be anything more serious in life? Wine is no justification. In vino veritas.93
Dreaming thus and all buried in fantasy, I didn’t notice that I had finally reached home, that is, mama’s apartment. I didn’t even notice how I entered the apartment; but as soon as I stepped into our tiny front hall, I understood at once that something extraordinary had happened. In the rooms they were talking loudly, exclaiming, and mama could be heard weeping. In the doorway I was almost knocked off my feet by Lukerya, who ran swiftly from Makar Ivanovich’s room to the kitchen. I threw off my coat and went into Makar Ivanovich’s room, because everyone was crowded there.
There stood Versilov and mama. Mama lay in his arms, and he pressed her tightly to his heart. Makar Ivanovich was sitting, as usual, on his little bench, but as if in some sort of strengthlessness, so that Liza had to support him by the shoulders with her arms to keep him from falling; and it was even obvious that he was all leaning over so as to fall. I swiftly stepped closer, gave a start, and realized that the old man was dead.
He had only just died, about a minute before my arrival. Ten minutes earlier he had felt as much himself as ever. Only Liza was with him; she was sitting with him and telling him about her grief, and he was stroking her hair as the day before. Suddenly he trembled all over (Liza told us), made as if to stand up, made as if to cry out, and silently began to fall towards the left. “Heart failure!” said Versilov. Liza cried out for the whole house to hear, and it was then that they came running—all that about a minute before my arrival.
“Arkady!” Versilov shouted to me. “Run instantly to Tatyana Pavlovna’s. She should certainly be at home. Ask her to come at once. Take a cab. Quickly, I beg you!”
His eyes were flashing—I remember that clearly. I didn’t notice in his face anything like pure pity, tears—only mama, Liza, and Lukerya were weeping. On the contrary, and this I recall very well, what was striking in his face was some extraordinary excitement, almost ecstasy. I ran for Tatyana Pavlovna.
The way, as is known from the foregoing, wasn’t long. I didn’t take a cab, but ran all the way without stopping. There was confusion in my mind, and also even almost something ecstatic. I realized that a radical event had happened. The drunkenness had disappeared completely in me, to the last drop, and along with it all ignoble thoughts, by the time I rang at Tatyana Pavlovna’s.
The Finnish woman unlocked the door: “Not at home!” and wanted to lock it at once.
“What do you mean, not at home?” I burst into the front hall by force. “It can’t be! Makar Ivanovich is dead!”
“Wha-a-at?” Tatyana Pavlovna’s cry suddenly rang out through the closed door of her drawing room.
“Dead! Makar Ivanovich is dead! Andrei Petrovich asks you to come this minute.”
“No, you’re lying! . . .”
The latch clicked, but the door opened only an inch: “What is it, tell me!”
“I don’t know myself, I just arrived and he was already dead. Andrei Petrovich says it’s heart failure!”
“At once, this minute. Run, tell them I’ll be there. Go on, go on, go on! Well, what are you standing there for?”
But I saw clearly through the half-opened door that someone had come out from behind the curtain that screened Tatyana Pavlovna’s bed and was standing there in the room behind Tatyana Pavlovna. Mechanically, instinctively, I seized the latch and would not let her close the door.
“Arkady Makarovich! Is it really true that he’s dead?” the familiar, soft, smooth, metallic voice rang out, at which everything began to tremble in my soul all at once: in the question something could be heard that had penetrated and stirred her soul.
“In that case,” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly abandoned the door, “in that case—settle it between you as you like. You want it that way!”
She rushed impetuously out of the apartment, putting on her kerchief and coat as she ran, and started down the stairs. We were left alone. I threw off my coat, stepped in, and closed the door behind me. She stood before me as she had when we met the other time, with a bright face, a bright gaze, and, as then, reached both hands out to me. As if cut down, I literally fell at her feet.
III
I WAS BEGINNING to weep, I don’t know why; I don’t remember how she sat me down beside her, I only remember, in a memory that is priceless for me, how we sat next to each other, hand in hand, and talked impetuously: she was asking about the old man and his death, and I was telling her about him—so that one might have thought I was weeping over Makar Ivanovich, whereas that would have been the height of absurdity; and I know that she could never have supposed in me such a thoroughly childish banality. At last I suddenly recollected myself and felt ashamed. Now I suppose that I wept then solely out of ecstasy, and I think she understood it very well herself, so that with regard to this memory I’m at peace.
It suddenly seemed very strange to me that she should keep asking like that about Makar Ivanovich.
“Did you know him?” I asked in surprise.
“For a long time. I’ve never seen him, but he has played a role in my life, too. At one time the man I’m afraid of told me a great deal about him. You know who that man is.”
“I only know now that ‘the man’ was much nearer to your soul than you revealed to me before,” I said, not knowing myself what I meant to
