Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (593 page)

“You are so certain of that, my good baron?”

“Confound you,” cried the baron, suddenly getting up; “you tempt me to show you at once that I am not ‘your good baron.’”

“Ach, I must warn you once again,” said Versilov, and he too stood up, “that my wife and daughter are not far off . . . and so I must ask you not to speak so loud, for your shouts may reach their ears.”

“Your wife . . . the devil . . . I am sitting here talking to you solely in order to get to the bottom of this disgusting business,” the baron continued as wrathfully as before, not dropping his voice in the least.  “Enough!” he roared furiously, “you are not only excluded from the society of decent people, but you’re a maniac, a regular raving maniac, and such you’ve been proved to be!  You do not deserve indulgence, and I can tell you that this very day measures will be taken in regard to you . . . and you will be placed where they will know how to restore you to sanity . . . and will remove you from the town.”

He marched with rapid strides out of the room.  Versilov did not accompany him to the door.  He stood gazing at me absentmindedly, as though he did not see me; all at once he smiled, tossed back his hair, and taking his hat, he too made for the door.  I clutched at his hand.

“Ach, yes, you are here too.  You . . . heard?” he said, stopping short before me.

“How could you do it?  How could you distort . . . disgrace with such treachery!”

He looked at me intently, his smile broadened and broadened till it passed into actual laughter.

“Why, I’ve been disgraced . . . before her! before her!  They laughed at me before her eyes, and he . . . and he pushed me away!” I cried, beside myself.

“Really?  Ach, poor boy, I am sorry for you. . . .  So they laughed at you, did they?”

“You are laughing yourself, you are laughing at me; it amuses you!”

He quickly pulled his hand away, put on his hat and laughing, laughing aloud, went out of the flat.  What was the use of running after him?  I understood and — I had lost everything in one instant!  All at once I saw my mother; she had come downstairs and was timidly looking about her.

“Has he gone away?”

I put my arms around her without a word, and she held me tight in hers.

“Mother, my own, surely you can’t stay?  Let us go at once, I will shelter you, I will work for you like a slave, for you and for Liza.  Leave them all, all, and let us go away.  Let us be alone.  Mother, do you remember how you came to me at Touchard’s and I would not recognize you?”

“I remember, my own; I have been bad to you all your life.  You were my own child, and I was a stranger to you.”

“That was his fault, mother, it was all his fault; he has never loved us.”

“Yes, yes, he did love us.”

“Let us go, mother.”

“How could I go away from him, do you suppose he is happy?”

“Where’s Liza?”

“She’s lying down; she felt ill when she came in; I’m frightened.  Why are they so angry with him?  What will they do to him now?  Where’s he gone?  What was that officer threatening?”

“Nothing will happen to him, mother, nothing does happen to him, or ever can happen to him.  He’s that sort of man!  Here’s Tatyana Pavlovna, ask her, if you don’t believe me, here she is.”  (Tatyana Pavlovna came quickly into the room.)  “Good-bye, mother.  I will come to you directly, and when I come, I shall ask you the same thing again. . . .”

I ran away.  I could not bear to see anyone, let alone Tatyana Pavlovna.  Even mother distressed me.  I wanted to be alone, alone.

5

But before I had crossed the street, I felt that I could hardly walk, and I jostled aimlessly, heedlessly, against the passers-by, feeling listless and adrift; but what could I do with myself?  What use am I to anyone, and — what use is anything to me now?  Mechanically I trudged to Prince Sergay’s, though I was not thinking of him at all.  He was not at home.  I told Pyotr (his man) that I would wait in his study (as I had done many times before).  His study was a large one, a very high room, cumbered up with furniture.  I crept into the darkest corner, sat down on the sofa and, putting my elbows on the table, rested my head in my hands.  Yes, that was the question: “what was of any use to me now?”  If I was able to formulate that question then, I was totally unable to answer it.

But I could not myself answer the question, or think about it rationally.  I have mentioned already that towards the end of those days I was overwhelmed by the rush of events.  I sat now, and everything was whirling round like chaos in my mind.  “Yes, I had failed to see all that was in him, and did not understand him at all,” was the thought that glimmered dimly in my mind at moments.  “He laughed in my face just now: that was not at me, it was all Büring then, not me.  The day before yesterday he knew everything and he was gloomy.  He pounced on my stupid confession in the restaurant, and distorted it, regardless of the truth; but what did he care for the truth?  He did not believe a syllable of what he wrote to her.  All he wanted was to insult her, to insult her senselessly, without knowing what for; he was looking out for a pretext and I gave him the pretext. . . .  He behaved like a mad dog!  Does he want to kill Büring now?  What for?  His heart knows what for!  And I know nothing of what’s in his heart. . . .  No, no, I don’t know even now.  Can it be that he loves her with such passion?  Or does he hate her to such a pitch of passion?  I don’t know, but does he know himself?  Why did I tell mother that ‘nothing could happen to him’; what did I mean to say by that?  Have I lost him or haven’t I?

“. . . She saw how I was pushed away. . . .  Did she laugh too, or not?  I should have laughed!  They were beating a spy, a spy. . . .

“What does it mean,” suddenly flashed on my mind, “what does it mean that in that loathsome letter he puts in that the document has not been burnt, but is in existence? . . .

“He is not killing Büring but is sitting at this moment, no doubt, in the restaurant listening to ‘Lucia’!  And perhaps after Lucia he will go and kill Büring.  Büring pushed me away, almost struck me; did he strike me?  And Büring disdains to fight even Versilov, so would he be likely to fight with me?  Perhaps I ought to kill him to-morrow with a revolver, waiting for him in the street. . . .”  I let that thought flit through my mind quite mechanically without being brought to a pause by it.

At moments I seemed to dream that the door would open all at once, that Katerina Nikolaevna would come in, would give me her hand, and we should both burst out laughing. . . .  Oh, my student, my dear one!  I had a vision of this, or rather an intense longing for it, as soon as it got dark.  It was not long ago I had been standing before her saying good-bye to her, and she had given me her hand, and laughed.  How could it have happened that in such a short time we were so completely separated!  Simply to go to her and to explain everything this minute, simply, simply!  Good heavens! how was it that an utterly new world had begun for me so suddenly!  Yes, a new world, utterly, utterly new. . . .  And Liza, and Prince Sergay, that was all old. . . .  Here I was now at Prince Sergay’s.  And mother — how could she go on living with him if it was like this!  I could, I can do anything, but she?  What will be now?  And the figures of Liza, Anna Andreyevna, Stebelkov, Prince Sergay, Aferdov, kept disconnectedly whirling round in my sick brain.  But my thoughts became more and more formless and elusive; I was glad when I succeeded in thinking of something and clutching at it.

“I have ‘my idea’!” I thought suddenly; “but have I?  Don’t I repeat that from habit?  My idea was the fruit of darkness and solitude, and is it possible to creep back into the old darkness?  Oh, my God, I never burnt that ‘letter’!  I actually forgot to burn it the day before yesterday.  I will go back and burn it in a candle, in a candle of course; only I don’t know if I’m thinking properly. . . .”

It had long been dark and Pyotr brought candles.  He stood over me and asked whether I had had supper.  I simply motioned him away.  An hour later, however, he brought me some tea, and I greedily drank a large cupful.  Then I asked what time it was?  It was half- past eight, and I felt no surprise to find I had been sitting there five hours.

“I have been in to you three times already,” said Pyotr, “but I think you were asleep.”

I did not remember his coming in.  I don’t know why, but I felt all at once horribly scared to think I had been asleep.  I got up and walked about the room, that I might not go to sleep again.  At last my head began to ache violently.  At ten o’clock Prince Sergay came in and I was surprised that I had been waiting for him: I had completely forgotten him, completely.

“You are here, and I’ve been round to you to fetch you,” he said to me.  His face looked gloomy and severe, and there was not a trace of a smile.  There was a fixed idea in his eyes.

“I have been doing my very utmost all day and straining every nerve,” he said with concentrated intensity; “everything has failed, and nothing in the future, but horror. . . .”  (N.B. — he had not been to Prince Nikolay Ivanitch’s.)  “I have seen Zhibyelsky, he is an impossible person.  You see, to begin with we must get the money, then we shall see.  And if we don’t succeed with the money, then we shall see. . . .  I have made up my mind not to think about that.  If only we get hold of the money to-day, to-morrow we shall see everything.  The three thousand you won is still untouched, every farthing of it.  It’s three thousand all except three roubles.  After paying back what I lent you, there is three hundred and forty roubles change for you.  Take it.  Another seven hundred as well, to make up a thousand, and I will take the other two thousand.  Then let us both go to Zerstchikov and try at opposite ends of the table to win ten thousand — perhaps we shall do something, if we don’t win it — then. . . .  This is the only way left, anyhow.”

He looked at me with a fateful smile.

“Yes, yes!” I cried suddenly, as though coming to life again “let us go.  I was only waiting for you. . . .”

I may remark that I had never once thought of roulette during those hours.

“But the baseness?  The degradation of the action?” Prince Sergay asked suddenly.

“Our going to roulette!  Why that’s everything,” I cried, “money’s everything.  Why, you and I are the only saints, while Büring has sold himself, Anna Andreyevna’s sold herself, and Versilov — have you heard that Versilov’s a maniac?  A maniac! A maniac!”

“Are you quite well, Arkady Makarovitch?  Your eyes are somehow strange.”

“You say that because you want to go without me!  But I shall stick to you now.  It’s not for nothing I’ve been dreaming of play all night.  Let us go, let us go!” I kept exclaiming, as though I had found the solution to everything.

“Well, let us go, though you’re in a fever, and there . . .”

He did not finish.  His face looked heavy and terrible.  We were just going out when he stopped in the doorway.

“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “that there is another way out of my trouble, besides play?”

“What way.”

“A princely way.”

“What’s that?  What’s that?”

“You’ll know what afterwards.  Only let me tell you I’m not worthy of it, because I have delayed too long.  Let us go, but you remember my words.  We’ll try the lackey’s way. . . .  And do you suppose I don’t know that I am consciously, of my own free will, behaving like a lackey?”

6

I flew to the roulette table as though in it were concentrated all hopes of my salvation, all means of escape, and yet as I have mentioned already, I had not once thought of it before Prince Sergay’s arrival.  Moreover, I was going to gamble, not for myself but for Prince Sergay, and with his money; I can’t explain what was the attraction, but it was an irresistible attraction.  Oh, never had those people, those faces, those croupiers with their monotonous shouts, all the details of the squalid gambling saloon seemed so revolting to me, so depressing, so coarse, and so melancholy as that evening!  I remember well the sadness and misery that gripped my heart at times during those hours at the gambling table.  But why didn’t I go away?  Why did I endure and, as it were, accept this fate, this sacrifice, this devotion?  I will only say one thing: I can hardly say of myself that I was then in my right senses.  Yet at the same time, I had never played so prudently as that evening.  I was silent and concentrated, attentive and extremely calculating; I was patient and niggardly, and at the same time resolute at critical moments.  I established myself again at the zero end of the table, that is between Zerstchikov and Aferdov, who always sat on the former’s right hand; the place was distasteful to me, but I had an overwhelming desire to stake on zero, and all the other places at that end were taken.  We had been playing over an hour; at last, from my place, I saw Prince Sergay get up from his seat and with a pale face move across to us and remain facing me the other side of the table: he had lost all he had and watched my play in silence, though he probably did not follow it and had ceased to think of play.  At that moment I just began winning, and Zerstchikov was counting me out what I had won.  Suddenly, without a word, Aferdov with the utmost effrontery took one of my hundred-rouble notes before my very eyes and added it to the pile of money lying before him.  I cried out, and caught hold of his hand.  Then something quite unexpected happened to me: it was as though I had broken some chain that restrained me, as though all the affronts and insults of that day were concentrated in that moment in the loss of that hundred-rouble note.  It was as though everything that had been accumulating and suppressed within me had only been waiting for that moment to break out.

“He’s a thief, he has just stolen my hundred roubles,” I exclaimed, looking round, beside myself.

I won’t describe the hubbub that followed; such a scandal was a novelty there.  At Zerstchikov’s, people behaved with propriety, and his saloon was famous for it.  But I did not know what I was doing.  Zerstchikov’s voice was suddenly heard in the midst of the clamour and din:

“But the money’s not here, and it was lying here!  Four hundred roubles!”

Another scene followed at once: the money in the bank had disappeared under Zerstchikov’s very nose, a roll of four hundred roubles.  Zerstchikov pointed to the spot where the notes had only that minute been lying, and that spot turned out to be close to me, next to the spot where my money was lying, much closer to me than to Aferdov.