I dismissed Matvei and told him to come for me, to my apartment, at nine o’clock.
Chapter Five
I
I WAS LATE for dinner, but they hadn’t sat down yet and were waiting for me. Maybe because in general I dined with them rarely, certain special additions had even been made: sardines appeared as an entrée, and so on. But, to my surprise and grief, I found them all as if preoccupied, frowning about something; Liza barely smiled when she saw me, and mama was obviously worried; Versilov was smiling, but with effort. “Can they have been quarreling?” it occurred to me. However, at first everything went well: Versilov only winced a little at the soup with dumplings, and grimaced badly when the stuffed meatcakes were served.
“I have only to warn you that my stomach can’t stand a certain dish, for it to appear the very next day,” escaped him in vexation.
“But what are we to think up, Andrei Petrovich? There’s no way to think up any sort of new dish,” mama answered timidly.
“Your mother is the direct opposite of some of our newspapers, for which whatever is new is also good.” Versilov had meant to joke playfully and amicably, but somehow it didn’t come off, and he only frightened mama still more, who naturally understood nothing in the comparison of her with a newspaper, and she looked around in perplexity. At that moment Tatyana Pavlovna came in and, announcing that she had already had dinner, sat down beside mama on the sofa.
I still hadn’t managed to gain this person’s favor; even the contrary, she had begun to attack me still more for each and every thing. Her displeasure with me had especially intensified of late: she couldn’t abide my foppish clothes, and Liza told me she almost had a fit when she learned I had a coachman. I ended by avoiding meeting her as far as possible. Two months ago, after the return of the inheritance, I ran over to her to chat about Versilov’s act, but I didn’t meet with the least sympathy; on the contrary, she was awfully angry: it displeased her very much that it had all been returned, and not just half. To me she observed sharply at the time:
“I’ll bet you’re convinced that he returned the money and challenged him to a duel solely so as to better himself in the opinion of Arkady Makarovich.”
And she had almost guessed right: in essence I actually felt something of that sort at the time.
I understood at once, as soon as she came in, that she was bound to throw herself upon me; I was even slightly convinced that she had, in fact, come for that, and therefore I suddenly became extraordinarily casual; and it didn’t cost me anything, because, after what had just taken place, I still went on being in joy and radiance. I’ll note once and for all that never in my life has casualness suited me, that is, it has never made me look good, but, on the contrary, has always covered me with shame. So it happened now as well: I instantly made a blunder; without any bad feeling, but purely from thoughtlessness, having noticed that Liza was terribly dull, I suddenly blurted out, not even thinking what I was saying:
“Once a century I have dinner here, and as if on purpose, Liza, you’re so dull!”
“I have a headache,” Liza answered.
“Ah, my God,” Tatyana Pavlovna latched on, “so what if you’re sick? Arkady Makarovich has deigned to come for dinner, so you must dance and be merry.”
“You are decidedly the bane of my existence, Tatyana Pavlovna; never will I come here when you’re here!”—and I slapped the table with my hand in sincere vexation. Mama gave a start, and Versilov looked at me strangely. I suddenly laughed and begged their pardon.
“I take back the word ‘bane,’ Tatyana Pavlovna,” I turned to her, going on with my casualness.
“No, no,” she snapped, “it’s far more flattering for me to be your bane than the opposite, you may be sure.”
“My dear, one should know how to endure the small banes of life,” Versilov murmured, smiling. “Without them, life’s not worth living.”
“You know, sometimes you’re an awful retrograde!” I exclaimed with a nervous laugh.
“Spit on it, my friend.”
“No, I won’t spit on it! Why don’t you tell an ass outright that he’s an ass?”
“You don’t mean yourself, do you? First of all, I will not and cannot judge anyone.”
“Why won’t you, why can’t you?”
“Laziness and distaste. An intelligent woman told me once that I had no right to judge others, because I ‘don’t know how to suffer,’ and in order to be a judge of others, you must gain the right to judge through suffering. It’s a bit high-flown, but applied to me it may also be true, so that I even submitted willingly to the judgment.”
“Can it be Tatyana Pavlovna who said that to you?” I exclaimed.
“How could you tell?” Versilov glanced at me with some surprise.
“I guessed from Tatyana Pavlovna’s face; she suddenly twitched so.”
I had guessed by chance. The phrase, as it turned out later, had indeed been spoken to Versilov by Tatyana Pavlovna the day before in a heated conversation. And in general, I repeat, it was the wrong time for me to fly at them with my joy and expansiveness: each of them had his own cares, and very heavy ones.
“I don’t understand anything, because it’s all so abstract with you; and here’s a trait: you have this terrible love of speaking abstractly, Andrei Petrovich. It’s an egoistic trait; only egoists love to speak abstractly.”
“Not stupidly put, but don’t nag.”
“No, excuse me,” I got at him with my expansiveness, “what does it mean ‘to gain the right to judge through suffering’? Whoever’s honest can be a judge—that’s what I think.”
“You’ll come up with very few judges, in that case.”
“I already know one.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s now sitting and talking to me.”
Versilov chuckled strangely, leaned over right to my ear, and, taking me by the shoulder, whispered to me, “He lies to you all the time.”
To this day I don’t understand what he had in mind then, but obviously at that moment he was in some extreme anxiety (owing to a certain piece of news, as I figured out later). But this phrase, “He lies to you all the time,” was spoken so unexpectedly and so seriously, and with such a strange, not at all jocular, expression, that I somehow shuddered all over nervously, almost frightened, and looked at him wildly; but Versilov hastened to laugh.
“Ah, thank God!” said mama, frightened because he had whispered in my ear. “And I was beginning to think . . . Don’t you be angry with us, Arkasha, there will be intelligent people without us, but who’s going to love you if we don’t have each other?”
“That’s why love among relations is immoral, mama, because it’s unearned. Love has to be earned.”
“Who knows when you’ll earn it, but here we love you for nothing.”
Everyone suddenly laughed.
“Well, mama, maybe you didn’t mean to shoot, but you hit the bird!” I cried out, also laughing.
“And you really imagined there was something to love you for,” Tatyana Pavlovna fell upon me again. “Not only do they love you for nothing, but they love you through revulsion!”
“Ah, not so!” I cried gaily. “Do you know who, maybe, talked today about loving me?”
“Talked while laughing at you!” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up suddenly with some sort of unnatural spite, as if she had been waiting for precisely those words from me. “A delicate person, and especially a woman, would be filled with loathing just from your inner filth alone. You’ve got a part in your hair, fine linen, a suit from a French tailor, but it’s all filth! Who clothes you, who feeds you, who gives you money to play roulette? Remember who you’re not ashamed to take money from!”
Mama got so flushed, I’d never yet seen such shame on her face. I cringed all over.
“If I spend, I spend my own money, and I owe nobody an accounting,” I snapped, turning all red.
“Whose own? What’s your own?”
“If not mine, then Andrei Petrovich’s. He won’t refuse me . . . I’ve taken from the prince against his debt to Andrei Petrovich . . .”
“My friend,” Versilov suddenly said firmly, “not a cent of that money is mine.”
The phrase was terribly significant. I stopped short on the spot. Oh, naturally, recalling my whole paradoxical and devil-may-care mood then, I would, of course, have gotten out of it by some “most noble” impulse, or catchy little word, or whatever, but I suddenly noticed a spiteful, accusing expression on Liza’s frowning face, an unfair expression, almost mockery, and it was as if the devil pulled at my tongue:
“You, madam,” I suddenly addressed her, “seem to visit Darya Onisimovna frequently in the prince’s apartment? Be so good as to personally convey to him this three hundred roubles, for which you roasted me so much today!”
I produced the money and held it out to her. Will anyone believe that I spoke those mean words then without any purpose, that is, without the slightest allusion to anything? And there could have been no such allusion, because at that moment I knew precisely nothing. Maybe I just had a wish to needle her with something comparatively terribly innocent, something like,
