You’ve got nowhere to go; and it’s improper for you to be with them now. Wait!” grandmother interrupted Polina, who was about to begin a reply, “I haven’t finished yet. I won’t demand anything of you. My house in Moscow you know—it’s a palace, you can have a whole floor and not come down to see me for weeks, if you don’t fancy my character. Well, do you want to or not?”
“Allow me to ask you first: do you really mean to leave right now?”
“Do you think I’m joking, dearie? I said I’d leave, and I’ll leave. I’ve dumped fifteen thousand roubles today at your thrice-cursed roulette. Five years ago I promised to replace the wooden church on my estate near Moscow with a stone one, and instead I whistled it away here. Now, dearie, I’m going to go and build that church.”
“And the waters, grandmother? Haven’t you come to take the waters?”
“Eh, you and your waters! Don’t vex me, Praskovya; are you doing it on purpose, or what? Tell me, will you come along?”
“I thank you very, very much, grandmother,” Polina began with feeling, “for the refuge you’re offering me. You’ve partly guessed my situation. I’m so grateful that, believe me, I may even come to you soon; but now there are reasons…important ones…and I can’t decide at once, this minute. If you were staying two weeks…”
“You mean you don’t want to?”
“I mean I can’t. Besides, in any case I can’t leave my brother and sister, and since…since…since they may indeed be all but abandoned, then…if you’ll take me with the little ones, grandmother, I’ll certainly come to you, and, believe me, I’ll come to deserve it of you,” she added warmly, “but without the children I can’t, grandmother.”
“Well, don’t snivel!” (Polina had never thought of sniveling, and she never cried.) “There’ll be room for the chicks as well; it’s a big chicken coop. Besides, it’s time they went to school. Well, so you’re not coming now? Well, Praskovya, watch out! I’d like to wish you well, but I know why you’re not coming. I know everything, Praskovya! That little Frenchman won’t bring you any good.”
Polina flushed. I gave a start. (Everybody knows! I alone, therefore, know nothing!)
“Well, well, don’t frown. I won’t embroider on it. Only watch out that nothing bad happens, understand? You’re a smart girl; I’d be sorry for you. Well, enough, I don’t even want to look at you all! Go! Good-bye!”
“I’ll still come to see you off, grandmother,” said Polina.
“No need to; don’t bother me, I’m sick of you all.”
Polina kissed grandmother’s hand, but she pulled her hand away and kissed Polina on the cheek.
As she passed me, Polina glanced at me quickly and at once turned away.
“Well, good-bye to you, too, Alexei Ivanovich! It’s only an hour till the train. And you’re tired of me, I think. Here, take these fifty gold pieces.”
“I humbly thank you, grandmother, I’m ashamed to…”
“Well, well!” cried grandmother, but so energetically and menacingly that I didn’t dare refuse and accepted.
“In Moscow, when you’re running around without a job, come to me; I’ll recommend you to someone. Well, out with you!”
I went to my room and lay down on the bed. I think I lay for half an hour on my back, my hands thrust behind my head. The catastrophe had broken out, there was something to think about. I decided imperatively to talk with Polina tomorrow.
Ah! the little Frenchman? So then it’s true! What could there be to it, though? Polina and des Grieux! Lord, what a juxtaposition!
All this was simply unbelievable. I suddenly jumped up, beside myself, to go looking for Mr. Astley at once and make him speak at all costs. Here, too, of course, he knows more than I do. Mr. Astley? There’s another riddle for me!
But suddenly there came a knock at my door. I looked—Potapych.
“Alexei Ivanovich, my dear: the mistress, she’s calling.”
“What is it? Is she leaving or something? It’s still twenty minutes till the train.”
“She’s restless, my dear, can barely sit still. ‘Quick, quick!’—meaning you, my dear; for Christ’s sake, don’t delay.”
I raced downstairs at once. Grandmother had already been rolled out to the corridor. She had the wallet in her hands.
“Alexei Ivanovich, lead the way, come on!…”
“Where to, grandmother?”
“It may kill me, but I’ll win back what I lost! Well, march, no questions! They play till midnight there, don’t they?”
I was dumbfounded, reflected, but made up my mind at once.
“As you will, Antonida Vassilyevna, but I won’t go.”
“Why not? What’s this now? Are you all moonstruck or something?”
“As you will, but afterwards I’d reproach myself; I don’t want to! I don’t want either to witness it or to participate in it; spare me, Antonida Vassilyevna. Here are your fifty friedrichs d’or back; good-bye!” And, placing the roll of friedrichs d’or right there on a little table next to grandmother’s chair, I bowed and left.
“What rubbish!” grandmother cried after me. “Don’t come then, if you please, I’ll find the way myself! Potapych, come with me! Well, pick me up, get going.”
I didn’t find Mr. Astley and went back home. Late, past midnight, I learned from Potapych how grandmother’s day had ended. She had lost everything I had exchanged for her earlier, that is, another ten thousand roubles, by our reckoning. That same little Pole to whom she had given two friedrichs d’or had attached himself to her and guided her play the whole time. First, before the little Pole, she had made Potapych stake for her, but soon chased him away; it was then that the little Pole popped up.
As luck would have it, he understood Russian and could even chatter in a mixture of three languages, so that they somehow managed to understand each other. Grandmother scolded him mercilessly all the time, and though he constantly “laid himself out at my lady’s feet,” he was “no comparison with you, Alexei Ivanovich,” Potapych recounted. “She treated you as a gentleman, but that one—I saw it with my own eyes, God strike me dead—he stole from her right there at the table.
She caught him twice and railed at him, my dear, railed at him with all sorts of words, and even pulled his hair once, really, I’m not lying, so that there was laughter all around. She lost everything, my dear; everything she had, everything you exchanged for her.
We brought her here, the dear lady—she just asked for a drink of water, crossed herself, and went to bed. Wore herself out, must be, fell asleep at once. May God send her angelic dreams! Ah, these foreign parts!” Potapych concluded. “I said no good would come of it. We ought to hurry back to our Moscow! We’ve got everything at home in Moscow. A garden, flowers such as don’t exist here, fragrance, apples ripening, vastness—no, she had to go abroad! Oh, oh, oh!…”
Chapter XIII
IT’S ALMOST A WHOLE month now since I’ve touched these notes of mine, begun under the effect of strong though disorderly impressions. The catastrophe, the approach of which I anticipated then, did come, but a hundred times more drastically and unexpectedly than I had thought. It was all something strange, ugly, and even tragic, at any rate for me. Certain things happened to me that were almost miraculous; so at least I look at them to this day—though from another point of view, and especially judging by the whirl I was then spinning in, they were at most only somewhat out of the ordinary. But most miraculous of all for me was the way I regarded these events.
To this day I don’t understand myself! And it all flew away like a dream—even my passion, and yet it really was strong and true, but…where has it gone now? Indeed, the thought occasionally flits through my head: “Didn’t I go out of my mind then and spend the whole time sitting in a madhouse somewhere, and maybe I’m sitting there now—so that for me it was all a seeming and only seems to this day…”
I collected and reread my pages. (Who knows, maybe so as to convince myself that I hadn’t written them in the madhouse?) Now I’m all alone. Autumn is coming, the leaves are turning yellow. I’m sitting in this dreary little town (oh, how dreary little German towns are!), and instead of thinking over the next step, I live under the influence of feelings just past, under the influence of fresh memories, under the influence of all this recent whirl, which drew me into that turbulence then, and threw me out of it again somewhere. It still seems to me at times that I’m spinning in the same whirl, and that the storm is about to rush upon me, snatch me up with its wing in passing, and I will again break out of all order and sense of measure, and spin, spin, spin…
However, maybe I’ll settle somehow and stop spinning, if I give myself as precise an account as possible of all that happened this month. I’m drawn to my pen again; and sometimes there’s nothing at all to do in the evenings. Strangely, in order to occupy myself with at least something, I go to the mangy local library and take out the novels of Paul de Kock11 (in German translation!), which I can barely stand, but I read them and—marvel at myself: it’s as if I’m afraid to spoil
