I am setting out for far away,
I am leaving Moscow for many a day, To all my dear ones I say good-bye, By stagecoach to the Crimee I fly.
(They’ve been preserved in my memory!) I decided that I had “failed”; if there was anything nobody needed, this was precisely it.
“Never mind,” I decided, “you always lose on the first card; it’s even a good omen.”
I was decidedly cheerful.
“Ah, I’m too late! It’s yours? Did you acquire it?” I suddenly heard beside me the voice of a gentleman in a dark blue coat, well dressed and of an imposing air. He was too late.
“I’m too late. Ah, what a pity! How much?”
“Two roubles, five kopecks.”
“Ah, what a pity! Won’t you let me have it?”
“Let’s step out,” I whispered to him, my heart skipping a beat.
We went out to the stairway.
“I’ll let you have it for ten roubles,” I said, feeling a chill in my spine.
“Ten roubles! Good heavens, how can you!”
“As you wish.”
He stared wide-eyed at me; I was well dressed, in no way resembled a Jew or a retailer.
“Merciful heavens, it’s a trashy old album, who needs it? The case is in fact quite worthless, you won’t sell it to anybody.”
“You want to buy it.”
“But mine is a special case, I found out only yesterday, I’m the only one like that! Good heavens, how can you!”
“I should have asked twenty-five roubles; but since there was a risk that you’d let it go, I asked only ten so as to be sure. I won’t go down even a kopeck.”
I turned and walked away.
“Take four roubles,” he overtook me in the courtyard, “or make it five.”
I said nothing and walked on.
“All right, here!” He took out ten roubles, and I gave him the album.
“But you must agree it’s dishonest! Two roubles and ten—eh?”
“Why dishonest? It’s the market!”
“What kind of market is this?” (He was angry.)
“Where there’s demand, there’s the market. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have been able to sell it for forty kopecks.”
Though I wasn’t laughing out loud and looked serious, I did laugh my head off inwardly, not really with delight, but I don’t know why myself, slightly out of breath.
“Listen,” I murmured quite irrepressibly, but amiably and loving him terribly, “listen: when James Rothschild,13 the late one, in Paris, the one who left seventeen hundred million francs” (the man nodded), “while still a young man, when he chanced to learn a few hours ahead of everybody else about the murder of the Duke of Berry, he rushed off at once to inform the right people, and with that one trick, in one instant, made several million— that’s the way to do it!”
“So you’re Rothschild, are you?” he shouted at me indignantly, as at a fool.
I quickly left the house. One step—and I’d made seven roubles, ninety-five kopecks! The step was meaningless, child’s play, I agree, but even so it coincided with my thought and couldn’t help stirring me extremely deeply . . . However, there’s no point in describing feelings. The ten-rouble bill was in my waistcoat pocket, I stuck two fingers in to feel it—and walked along that way, without taking my hand out. Having gone about a hundred steps down the street, I took it out to look at it, looked, and wanted to kiss it. A carriage suddenly clattered at the porch of a house; the doorkeeper opened the door, and a lady came out of the house to get into the carriage, magnificent, young, beautiful, rich, in silk and velvet, with a fivefoot train. Suddenly a pretty little pocketbook dropped from her hand and fell on the ground; she got in; the valet bent down to pick up the little thing, but I ran over quickly, picked it up, and handed it to the lady, tipping my hat. (It was a top hat, I was dressed like a young gentleman, not so badly.) With restraint, but smiling most pleasantly, the lady said to me, “Merci , m’sieu.” The carriage clattered off. I kissed the ten-rouble bill.
III
THAT SAME DAY I had to see Efim Zverev, one of my former high-school comrades, who had dropped out of school and enrolled in some specialized higher institute in Petersburg. He himself is not worth describing, and in fact I wasn’t friends with him; but I had looked him up in Petersburg; he could (owing to various circumstances that are also not worth talking about) tell me the address of a certain Kraft, a man I needed very much, once he came back from Vilno. Zverev expected him precisely that day or the next, and had informed me of it two days before. I had to walk to the Petersburg side, but I wasn’t tired at all.
I found Zverev (who was also about nineteen years old) in the courtyard of his aunt’s house, where he was living temporarily. He had just had dinner and was walking around the courtyard on stilts; he informed me at once that Kraft had arrived the day before and stopped off at his former apartment, also there on the Petersburg side, and that he wished to see me himself as soon as possible, to inform me immediately of something necessary.
“He’s going away again,” Efim added.
Since in my present circumstances it was of capital importance for me to see Kraft, I asked Efim to take me at once to his apartment, which turned out to be two steps away in a lane. But Zverev declared that he had met Kraft an hour before and that he had gone to see Dergachev.14
“So let’s go to Dergachev’s, why do you keep making excuses—are you scared?”
Indeed, Kraft might spend a long time at Dergachev’s, and then where was I to wait for him? I wasn’t scared of going to Dergachev’s, but I didn’t want to, though this was already the third time Efim tried to drag me there. And this “scared” he always pronounced with the nastiest smile on my score. It wasn’t a matter of being scared, I declare beforehand, and if I was afraid, it was of something quite different. This time I decided to go; it was also just two steps away. As we went, I asked Efim whether he still intended to run away to America.
“I may wait a little,” he answered with a slight laugh.
I didn’t much like him, I even didn’t like him at all. His hair was very blond, he had a full, much too white face, even indecently white, to the point of infantility, and he was even taller than I, but you wouldn’t have taken him for more than seventeen years old. I had nothing to talk about with him.
“And what’s there? Always a crowd?” I asked for the sake of solidity.
“But why do you keep getting scared?” he laughed again.
“Go to the devil!” I got angry.
“Not a crowd at all. Only acquaintances come, and all our people, rest assured.”
“But what the devil business is it of mine whether they’re all your people or not? Am I one of your people? Why should they go and trust me?”
“I’m bringing you, and that’s enough. They’ve even heard about you. Kraft can also speak for you.”
“Listen, will Vasin be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he is, nudge me as soon as we go in and point to Vasin—as soon as we go in, you hear?”
I had heard a lot about Vasin and had long been interested.
Dergachev lived in a little wing in the courtyard of a wooden house that belonged to a merchant’s widow, but the whole wing was at his disposal. There were three good rooms in all. The four windows all had their blinds lowered. He was a technician and had a job in Petersburg; I had heard in passing that he had been offered a profitable private post in the provinces and that he was about to set off.
As soon as we went into the tiny front hall, we heard voices; there seemed to be a heated argument and someone shouted: “Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat.”1715
I was actually somewhat worried. Of course, I wasn’t used to company, even whatever it might be. In high school I had addressed all my comrades informally, but I was comrades with almost none of them; I had made myself a corner and lived in my corner. But that was not what troubled me. In any case, I had promised myself not to get into any arguments and to say only what was most necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me; above all—don’t argue.
In the room, which was even much too small, there were some seven people, ten including the women. Dergachev was twentyfive years old, and he was married. His wife had a sister and another female relation; they also lived at Dergachev’s. The room was furnished haphazardly, though sufficiently, and was even clean. On the wall hung a lithographic portrait, but a very cheap one, and in the corner an icon without a casing, but with a lighted icon lamp. Dergachev came over to me, shook hands, and invited me to sit down.
“Sit down, they’re all our people here.”
“Be so kind,” a young woman added at once. She was
