“One,” I said. “The Prince gave it to me. This gentleman knows that.” I pointed to Lakatos. He nodded. But at that moment the official shouted: “Out!” and Lakatos was led away.
I was now alone with the official and one policeman, who was still standing by the door. The latter, however, seemed not to be alive, he was more like a post or some other incriminate object.
The official dipped his pen again into the ink pot, fished out a dead and dripping fly — it looked as though the fly were bleeding ink — watched it for a moment, and then said quietly: “Are you the Prince’s son?”
“Yes!”
“You wanted to kill him?”
“Kill him?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the official, quite softly and smiling.
“No, no!” I shouted. “I love him.”
“You may go,” he said to me. I walked across to the door. Suddenly the policeman gripped my arm. He led me out. There stood a police van with barred windows. The door of the van opened. Inside sat another policeman who pulled me in. We drove off to prison.
Here Golubchik made a long pause. His mustache, whose lower edge had become moist with the schnapps which he had been drinking in great draughts, trembled slightly. The faces of all his listeners were pale and immobile and had, so it seemed to me, grown richer in wrinkles and lines, as though each of those present had, during the hour since the commencement of the story, lived both his own youth and that of Semjon Golubchik. Now there rested on us the burden, not only of our own lives, but also of that part of Golubchik’s life which he had just related to us. And it was not without a certain alarm that I awaited the rest of this man’s story, which to a certain extent, I should have to experience rather than hear. Through the closed door one could already hear the rumbling of the first vegetable carts on their way to market, and sometimes the mournful, long-drawn whistle of distant trains.
It was only an ordinary police arrest, began Golubchik again, nothing terrible. I was put into a fairly comfortable room, with wide grills across the high windows, grills as little menacing as the bars across the windows of many houses. In the room there was a table, a chair, and two camp beds. But the terrible thing was that, as I entered the room, my friend Lakatos got up from one of the beds and greeted me. Yes, he offered me his hand just as gaily and nonchalantly as if we had met, for example, in a restaurant. But I ignored his outstretched hand. He sighed, with a sorrowful and injured air. and lay down again. I sat on the chair. I wanted to cry, to lay my head on the table and cry, but I was ashamed of doing so in front of Lakatos, and still stronger than my shame was my fear that he might try to comfort me. So I sat there, with a sort of stony sobbing in my breast, silent upon the chair, and counted the bars outside the window.
“Don’t be downcast, young man!” said Lakatos after a while.
He stood up and walked over to the table. “I have found out all about this.” Against my will, I raised my head, but regretted the move immediately. “I have my connections, even here already. In two hours at the very latest you will be free, And do you know whom we have to thank for this misfortune? Do you know? Go on — guess!”
“Tell me!” I shouted. “Don’t torture me!”
“Well, your fine brother — or rather, the son of Count P. Now do you understand?”
Oh, I understood, and yet I did not understand. But that hatred, my friends, the hatred for that young man, the bastard, the false son of my natural, my princely father, usurped the role of common sense — as so often happens; and because I hated, I thought I understood also. In a flash, so it seemed to me, I saw through a fearful plot that had been woven about me. And for the first time the desire for vengeance, that twin sister of hate, awoke within me; and even quicker than the thunder follows the lightning, I swore to myself that one day I would revenge myself on that boy. How — I knew not; but I already felt that Lakatos was the man to show me the way, and therefore in that instant I felt even attracted to him.
Of course, he knew everything that was passing in my mind. He smiled, and I recognized in his smile that he knew everything. He bent over the table, so near to me that I could see nothing but his gleaming teeth and, behind, the reddish glistening of his gums and from time to time the pink tip of his tongue, which reminded me of the tongue of our cat at home. In very fact, he knew everything. The situation was as follows: To give away boxes, all of the same extremely expensive sort, was one of the many caprices of the old Prince. He had them specially made for him by a jeweller in Venice, after the design of an old snuffbox which he, the Prince, had bought at an auction. These snuffboxes, which were made of solid gold inlaid with ivory and encircled with emerald chips, were presented by the Prince to his guests, and he always had dozens of them in the house. Well, the whole thing was simple. The young boy, whom he regarded as his son, needed money, stole the boxes, and sold them from time to time; and in the course of years the police, as the result of periodical visits paid to the shops round the harbor, had collected an enormous number of these boxes. All the world knew where these precious objects came from. Even the Prince’s steward, even his lackeys, knew it. But who would have dared tell him? — How easy it was then to accuse an unimportant youth like myself of theft, of burglary even; for what was a person of our class in old Russia, my friends? An insect, one of those flies which the official had drowned in his ink pot, a nothing, a grain of dust under the heels of the great nobility. But, my friends, let me digress for a moment, and forgive me for keeping you here: I wish today that we were still the old grains of dust! Our lives were ordered not by laws but by whims. And yet even laws are dependent upon whims. For laws have to be interpreted. Laws, my friends, can never protect a man from arbitrary usage, for laws are dispensed by arbitrary men. What do I know of the whims of a little judge? They are worse than the whims of ordinary people. They are nothing but petty animosities. But the whims of a great nobleman I know. They are more constant even than laws. A real nobleman, who can both punish and pardon, is often incensed by a single word, but he can also be conciliated by a single word. And think how many great noblemen there have already been who were never harsh! Their whims were always kindly ones. But laws, my friends, are nearly always harsh. There can hardly be a single law of which one can say: it is a kindly one. Nowhere on earth is there absolute justice, for justice, my friends, is only to be found in Hell…!
But to return to my story. At that time I wished there were Hell on earth, for I thirsted after justice. And whoever desires absolute justice, has already fallen a victim to the lust for revenge. Such was I at that time. I was grateful to Lakatos for having opened my eyes. And I forced myself to trust him and asked him: “What must I do then?”
“Tell me first, between ourselves,” he began, “had you really no other intention than to inform the Prince that you were his son? — You can tell me everything, no one can hear us. We are comrades in distress now, confidence for confidence. Who sent you to the Prince? Is there in your school class a member of the — well, you know what I mean — the so-called Revolutionary?”