Despite all, I embraced mama tenderly and asked at once about him. An alarmed curiosity instantly flashed in mama’s eyes. I hastily mentioned that he and I had spent the whole last evening together, till late into the night, but that today he hadn’t been at home since daybreak, whereas just yesterday he had invited me himself, as we were parting, to come today as early as possible. Mama made no reply, and Tatyana Pavlovna, seizing the moment, shook her finger at me.
“Good-bye, brother,” Liza suddenly cut off, quickly going out of the room. I naturally went after her, but she had stopped right at the front door.
“I thought it might occur to you to come down,” she said in a quick whisper.
“Liza, what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know myself, only there’s a lot of something. Probably the dénouement of the ‘eternal story.’ He hasn’t come, but they have some sort of information about him. They won’t tell you, don’t worry, and you won’t ask, if you’re smart; but mama is crushed. I didn’t ask about anything either. Good-bye.”
She opened the door.
“But, Liza, what about you?” I sprang after her into the hallway. Her terribly crushed, desperate air pierced my heart. She gave me a look, not so much angry as even almost somehow embittered, grinned biliously, and waved her hand.
“If he died—it would be a godsend!” she flung at me from the stairs, and went out. She said this of Prince Sergei Petrovich, who at the time was lying in delirium and unconscious. “Eternal story! What eternal story?” I thought with defiance, and then suddenly I absolutely wanted to tell them at least part of my impressions yesterday from his night confession, and the confession itself. “They think something bad about him now—let them know all!” flew through my head.
I remember that I managed somehow very deftly to begin my story. Their faces instantly showed a terrible curiosity. This time Tatyana Pavlovna simply fastened her eyes on me, but mama was more restrained; she was very serious, but a light, beautiful, though somehow quite hopeless smile came to her face and almost never left it all the while I was talking. I spoke well, of course, though I knew that for them it was almost incomprehensible. To my surprise, Tatyana Pavlovna did not pick on me, did not insist on exactitude, did not try to catch me up, as she was accustomed to do whenever I began saying something. She only pressed her lips occasionally and narrowed her eyes, as if making an effort to comprehend. At times it even seemed to me that they understood everything, but that was all but impossible. I talked, for instance, about his convictions, but, above all, about his rapture yesterday, about his rapture over mama, about his love for mama, about how he kissed her portrait . . . Listening to that, they exchanged quick and silent glances, and mama turned all red, though they both went on being silent. Then . . . then, of course, I couldn’t touch on the main point before mama, that is, the meeting with her and all the rest, and, above all, her letter to him yesterday and his moral “resurrection” after the letter; but that was the main thing, so that all his feelings yesterday, with which I had thought to gladden mama, naturally remained incomprehensible, though, of course, through no fault of my own, because all that could be told, I told beautifully. I ended in total perplexity; their silence remained unbroken, and it became very oppressive for me to be with them.
“Surely he’s come back by now, or maybe he’s sitting at my place and waiting,” I said, and got up to leave.
“Go, go!” Tatyana Pavlovna firmly agreed.
“Have you been downstairs?” mama asked me in a half-whisper, as I was taking my leave.
“Yes, I bowed down to him and prayed for him. Such a calm, seemly face he has, mama! Thank you, mama, for not sparing on his coffin. First I found it strange, but then I thought at once that I would have done the same myself.”
“Will you come to church tomorrow?” she asked, and her lips trembled.
“What are you asking, mama?” I was surprised. “I’ll come to the panikhida38 today, too, and I’ll come again; and . . . besides, tomorrow is your birthday, mama, my dearest! He didn’t live the three days till then!”
I left in painful astonishment. How could she ask such questions— whether I’d come to the funeral at the church or not? “And if it’s so about me, then what do they think about him?”
I knew that Tatyana Pavlovna would come running after me, and I purposely lingered in the front doorway; but she, having overtaken me, pushed me out onto the stairway with her hand, came out after me, and closed the door behind her.
“Tatyana Pavlovna, you mean you don’t expect Andrei Petrovich either today or tomorrow? I’m alarmed . . .”
“Quiet. Much it matters that you’re alarmed. Speak—what was it you didn’t finish saying when you told about yesterday’s balderdash?”
I found no need to conceal it, and, almost annoyed with Versilov, told her all about Katerina Nikolaevna’s letter to him yesterday, and about the effect of the letter, that is, his resurrection into a new life. To my surprise, the fact of the letter didn’t surprise her in the least, and I guessed that she already knew about it.
“You’re not lying?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, now,” she smiled venomously, as if pondering, “resurrected! Just what he’d do! Is it true that he kissed the portrait?”
“It’s true, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“Did he kiss it with feeling, without pretending?”
“Pretending? Does he ever pretend? Shame on you, Tatyana Pavlovna; you have a coarse soul, a woman’s soul.”
I said it heatedly, but it was as if she didn’t hear me. She again seemed to be figuring something out, despite the intense cold on the stairway. I was wearing a fur coat, but she was wearing only a dress.
“I’d entrust you with an errand, but the trouble is you’re very stupid,” she said with contempt and as if with vexation. “Listen, go to Anna Andreevna’s and see what’s happening there . . . Ah, no, don’t go; a dolt is a dolt! Leave, be off, don’t stand there like a post!”
“I’m just not going to go to Anna Andreevna’s! And Anna Andreevna sent for me herself.”
“Herself? Sent Nastasya Egorovna?” she quickly turned to me. She was on the point of leaving and had even opened the door, but she slammed it shut again.
“I won’t go to Anna Andreevna’s for anything!” I repeated with spiteful glee. “I won’t go, because you just called me a dolt, while I’ve never been so perspicacious as today. I can see all your doings as if on the palm of my hand; and even so I won’t go to Anna Andreevna’s!”
“I just knew it!” she exclaimed, but, again, not in response to my words, but continuing to think her own thoughts. “They’ll ensnare her completely now, and tighten the deadly noose!”
“Anna Andreevna?”
“Fool!”
“Whom do you mean, then? Not Katerina Nikolaevna? What deadly noose?” I was terribly frightened. Some vague but terrible idea passed through my soul. Tatyana Pavlovna looked at me piercingly.
“And what are you doing in it?” she asked suddenly. “What’s your part? I did hear something about you—oh, watch out!”
“Listen, Tatyana Pavlovna, I’ll tell you a terrible secret, only not now, I have no time now, but tomorrow, when we’re alone, but in return tell me the whole truth now, and what this is about the deadly noose . . . because I’m trembling all over . . .”
“I spit on your trembling!” she exclaimed. “What secret do you want to tell me tomorrow? Can it really be that you know something?” she fixed me with her questioning gaze. “Didn’t you swear to her yourself that you had burned Kraft’s letter?”
“Tatyana Pavlovna, I repeat, don’t torment me,” I went on with my own thing, ignoring her question in turn, because I was beside myself, “watch out, Tatyana Pavlovna, what you hide from me may lead to something worse . . . why, yesterday he was in full, in the fullest resurrection!”
“Eh, away with you, buffoon! You must be in love like a sparrow yourself—father and son with the same object! Pah, outrageous creatures!”
She disappeared, slamming the door in indignation. Infuriated by the impudent, shameless cynicism of her very last words—a cynicism that only a woman is capable of—I rushed off, deeply offended. But I won’t describe my vague sensations, as I’ve already promised; I will continue with just the facts, which will now resolve everything. Naturally, I ran over to his place for a moment, and again heard from the nanny that he hadn’t been there.
“And he won’t come at all?”
“God knows.”
III
FACTS, FACTS!…But does the reader understand anything? I myself remember how these same facts weighed on me then and kept me from comprehending anything, so that by the end of that day my head was totally thrown off. And therefore I’ll run ahead for two or three words!
All my torments consisted in this: if yesterday he had resurrected and stopped loving her, then in that case where should he have been today? Answer: first of all with me, since he had spent last night embracing me, and then right away with mama, whose portrait he had kissed yesterday. And yet, instead of these two natural steps, suddenly, at “first light,” he’s not at home and has disappeared somewhere, and Nastasya
