Nikolai Semyonovich, still smiling strangely, agreed to vouch for me to the cabinetmaker that the money, eight roubles a month, would be paid regularly. I tried to give Nikolai Semyonovich my sixty roubles in cash, by way of security, but he wouldn’t take it; however, he knew I had the money and trusted me. This delicacy on his part smoothed over our momentary quarrel. Marya Ivanovna said nothing, but was surprised at my taking on such a care. I especially appreciated their delicacy in that neither of them allowed themselves the slightest mockery of me, but, on the contrary, began to treat the matter with the proper seriousness.
I ran by Darya Rodionovna’s every day, three times a day or so, and a week later I gave her personally, in her own hand, on the quiet from her husband, three more roubles. For another three I bought swaddling clothes and a little blanket. But ten days later, Rinochka suddenly got sick. I brought a doctor at once, he prescribed something, and we spent the whole night fussing about and tormenting the tiny thing with his nasty medicine, but the next day he declared that it was too late, and to my entreaties—though they seemed more like reproaches— he said with noble evasiveness, “I am not God.” The girl’s tongue, lips, and whole mouth got covered with a sort of fine white rash, and towards evening she died, gazing at me with her big dark eyes, as if she already understood. I don’t understand how it didn’t occur to me to take a photograph of her dead.
Well, would you believe that I did not weep but simply howled that evening, something I had never allowed myself to do, and Marya Ivanovna was forced to comfort me—and again, totally without mockery either on her own or on his part. The cabinetmaker made a little coffin; Marya Ivanovna trimmed it with ruche and put a pretty little pillow in it, and I bought flowers and strewed them over the little baby; and so they took away my poor little wisp, whom, believe me, to this day I cannot forget. A while later, though, this whole almost unexpected occurrence even made me reflect a lot. Of course, Rinochka had not cost me much—thirty roubles in all, including the coffin, the burial, the doctor, the flowers, and the payments to Darya Rodionovna. I reimbursed myself for this money, as I was leaving for Petersburg, from the forty roubles Versilov had sent me for my trip, and by selling some things before I left, so that my whole “capital” remained intact. “But,” I thought, “if I can be sidetracked like that, I won’t get very far.” From the story with the student, it followed that the “idea” can fascinate one to the point of a blurring of impressions and distract one from the flow of actualities. From the story with Rinochka the opposite followed, that no “idea” can be so intensely fascinating (for me, at least) that I cannot stop suddenly before some overwhelming fact and sacrifice to it at once all that I had done for the idea during years of toil. Both conclusions were nonetheless correct.
Chapter Six
I
MY HOPES WERE not fully realized; I didn’t find them alone: though Versilov wasn’t there, my mother was sitting with Tatyana Pavlovna—an outsider after all. Half of my magnanimous mood fell off of me at once. It’s astonishing how quick I am to turn about on such occasions; a hair or a grain of sand is enough to disperse the good and replace it with the bad. But my bad impressions, to my regret, are not so soon driven out, though I’m not rancorous. As I entered, it flashed in me that my mother at once and hastily broke off the thread of her conversation with Tatyana Pavlovna, which seemed quite animated. My sister had returned from work just a minute before me and had not come out of her little closet yet.
This apartment consisted of three rooms. The one in which everyone usually sat, our middle room, or drawing room, was rather large and almost decent. There were soft red sofas in it, though very shabby ones (Versilov couldn’t stand slipcovers), rugs of some sort, several tables and needless little tables. Then to the right was Versilov’s room, small and narrow, with one window; in it stood a pathetic writing table, on which several unused books and forgotten papers were scattered, and in front of the table, a no less pathetic soft armchair, with a broken spring sticking out at an angle, which often made Versilov groan and curse.
His bed was made up in this same study, on a soft and also shabby sofa; he hated this study of his and, it seems, did nothing in it, but preferred to sit idly in the drawing room for hours at a time. To the left of the drawing room was exactly the same sort of room, in which my mother and sister slept. The entrance to the drawing room was from the corridor, which ended with the entrance to the kitchen, where lived the cook Lukerya, who, when she cooked, mercilessly filled the whole apartment with the smoke of burnt oil. There were moments when Versilov loudly cursed his life and his fate because of this kitchen smoke, and in that alone I fully sympathized with him; I also hate such smells, though they did not penetrate to me: I lived upstairs in a little room under the roof, which I climbed to by an extremely steep and creaky little staircase. Noteworthy in my place were the fan-window, the terribly low ceiling, the oilcloth sofa, on which Lukerya spread a sheet and put a pillow for me at night, while the rest of the furniture was just two objects—the simplest plank table and a wicker chair with a hole in it.
However, our place still preserved the remains of a certain former comfort; in the drawing room, for instance, there was a rather good china lamp, and on the wall hung a fine, big engraving of the Dresden Madonna31 and just opposite on the other wall, an expensive photograph, of huge dimensions, showing the cast bronze doors of the Florentine cathedral.32 In a corner of the same room hung a big case with old family icons, one of which (of All Saints) had a big gilt-silver casing, the same one they had wanted to pawn, and another (of the Mother of God) a velvet casing embroidered with pearls. Before the icons hung an icon lamp that was lit for every feast. Versilov was obviously indifferent to the icons, in the sense of their meaning, and merely winced sometimes, visibly restraining himself, at the light of the icon lamp reflected in the gilt casing, complaining slightly that it hurt his eyes, but all the same he did not keep my mother from lighting it.
I usually entered silently and sullenly, looking somewhere into a corner, and sometimes without any greeting. I always came home earlier than this time, and had my dinner served upstairs. As I came in now, I suddenly said, “Hello, mama,” something I had never done before, though somehow this time, too, out of shyness, I still could not force myself to look at her, and sat down at the opposite side of the room. I was very tired, but wasn’t thinking of that.
“This ignoramus still comes into your house like a boor, just as he used to,” Tatyana Pavlovna hissed at me; she had allowed herself abusive words before as well, and it had become a custom between us.
“Hello . . .” my mother answered, as if immediately at a loss because I had greeted her. “Dinner has been ready for a long time,” she added, almost abashed, “if only the soup isn’t cold, and I’ll tell them right now about the cutlets . . .” She hurriedly started getting up to go to the kitchen, and maybe for the first time in the whole month, I suddenly felt ashamed that she should jump up so promptly to serve me, though before that was just what I myself had demanded.
“I humbly thank you, mama, I’ve already had dinner. If I’m not bothering you, I’ll rest here.”
“Ah . . . well, then . . . stay, of course . . .”
“Don’t worry, mama, I’m not going to be rude to Andrei Petrovich anymore,” I said abruptly . . .
“Ah, Lord, how magnanimous on his part!” cried Tatyana Pavlovna. “Sonya, darling, can it be that you still address him formally? Who is he that he should receive such honors, and that from his own mother! Look at you getting all abashed in front of him, what a shame!”
“It would be very nice for me, mama, if you addressed me informally.”
“Ah . . . well, all right, then, I will,” my mother hastened to say. “I—I didn’t always . . . well,
