My prince knew nothing as yet about the probable arrival of his daughter, and assumed she would return from Moscow maybe in a week. But I learned of it the evening before, quite by accident: Tatyana Pavlovna, who had received a letter from the general’s widow, let it slip to my mother in my presence. Though they whispered and used remote phrases, I guessed it. Of course, I wasn’t eavesdropping; I simply couldn’t help listening when I saw my mother suddenly become so agitated at the news of this woman’s arrival. Versilov was not at home.
I didn’t want to inform the old man of it, because I couldn’t help noticing in all that time how afraid he was of her coming. He had even let slip three days earlier, though timidly and remotely, that he was afraid of her coming on account of me—that is, that on account of me he would get a scolding. I must add, however, that in family relations he still maintained his independence and domination, especially in managing money. My first conclusion about him was that he was a real woman; but then I had to re-conclude, in the sense that, even if he was a woman, all the same there remained in him at times a sort of stubbornness, if not real courage. There were moments when it was almost impossible to do anything with his apparently cowardly and susceptible character. Versilov explained it to me later in more detail. I mention now, with curiosity, that he and I hardly ever spoke of the general’s widow—that is, avoided speaking, as it were; I especially avoided it, and he in turn avoided speaking of Versilov, and I surmised at once that he wouldn’t answer me, if I were to ask any of the ticklish questions that interested me so much.
If anyone wants to know what we talked about during that whole month, I will reply that, essentially, it was about everything in the world, but all of it somehow strange. I very much liked the extreme artlessness with which he treated me. I sometimes studied the man with extreme perplexity, asking myself, “Where was he sitting before? He’s just right for our high school, and for the fourth class at that—he’d make the nicest schoolmate.” I also wondered more than once at his face: it looked extremely serious (almost handsome) and dry; thick, gray, curly hair, an open gaze; and his whole figure was lean, of a good height; but his face had a sort of unpleasant, almost indecent property of changing suddenly from the extraordinarily serious to the much-too-playful, so that someone seeing it for the first time would never expect it. I spoke of it with Versilov, who heard me out with curiosity; it seemed he hadn’t expected me to be able to make such observations; yet he observed in passing that this property had appeared in the prince after his illness and maybe only quite recently.
We talked for the most part about two abstract subjects: about God and his being—that is, whether he exists or not—and about women. The prince was very religious and sentimental. In his office hung an enormous icon case with an icon lamp. But something would come over him—and he’d suddenly begin to doubt God’s existence and say astonishing things, obviously challenging me to reply. My attitude to this idea was rather indifferent, generally speaking, but even so the two of us would get carried away, and always sincerely. Generally, even now I recall all those conversations with pleasure. But the sweetest thing of all for him was to chat about women, and since I, given my dislike of conversations on that topic, could not be a good interlocutor, he would sometimes even get upset.
He had just begun talking in this vein as I came in that morning. I found him in a playful mood, while the previous evening I had left him extremely sad for some reason. Yet I absolutely had to be done that day with the matter of my salary—before the arrival of certain persons. I calculated that we would be interrupted that day without fail (not for nothing was my heart pounding)—and then perhaps I wouldn’t venture to talk about money. But since one couldn’t just start talking about money, I naturally got angry at my own stupidity and, as I remember it now, vexed at some much-too-merry question he asked me, I fired all my views of women at him at once, and that with extreme ardor. But the result was that he got still more carried away, worse luck for me.
III
“ . . . I DON’T LIKE WOMEN, because they’re rude, because they’re awkward, because they’re not independent, and because they wear indecent clothes,” I concluded my lengthy tirade incoherently.
“Have mercy, dear heart!” he cried, terribly amused, which made me still angrier.
I’m yielding and trifling only in trifles, but I will never yield in the main thing. In trifles, in certain social manners, one can do God knows what with me, and I’ve always cursed this trait in myself. Out of some stinking good naturedness, I have sometimes been ready to yes even some society fop, seduced solely by his courtesy, or to get into an argument with a fool, which is most unpardonable. All from lack of self-control and from having grown up in a corner. You go away angry and swearing that tomorrow it won’t be repeated, but tomorrow the same thing happens again. That’s why I’ve sometimes been taken almost for a sixteen-year-old. But instead of acquiring self-control, I prefer even now to shut myself up still more in a corner, though it be in the most misanthropic way: “Maybe I’m awkward, but—farewell!” I say that seriously and forever. However, I am by no means writing this apropos of the prince, and not even apropos of our conversation that time.
“I am by no means saying it for your amusement,” I almost shouted at him, “I am simply voicing a conviction.”
“But how is it that women are rude and indecently dressed? That’s novel.”
“They’re rude. Go to the theater, go for a promenade. Every man knows the right side, they come towards each other and pass each other, he on the right and I on the right. A woman, that is, a lady—I’m speaking of ladies—comes stomping straight at you, without even noticing you, as if it were your unfailing duty to jump aside and yield her the way. I’m ready to yield, as to a weaker being, but why is it her right, why is she so sure I must do it—that’s what’s offensive! I always spit when I run into them. And after that they cry that they’re humiliated and demand equality; what kind of equality is it, if she tramples me down or stuffs my mouth full of sand!”
“Sand!”
“Yes. Because they’re indecently dressed; only a depraved man can fail to notice that. They shut the doors in courts when a case gets to indecency; why then do they allow it in the streets, where there are a lot more people? They pad themselves quite openly with some frou-frou behind, to show that they’re belles-femmes. Openly! I can’t help noticing it, and any young man will notice it, and a child, a beginning little boy, will also notice it. It’s base. Let old philanderers admire it and run after them with their tongues hanging out, but there are pure young people who must be protected. The only thing left to do is spit. She goes down the boulevard and leaves a four-foot train behind her sweeping the dust; how about the one behind her: you either have to run ahead or jump aside, otherwise she’ll stuff five pounds of sand in your nose and mouth. Besides, it’s silk, and she frays it on the stones for three miles, just for the sake of fashion, and her husband earns five hundred roubles a year in the Senate:7 there’s where the bribes are sitting! I always spit on it, I spit and berate them out loud.”
Though I’m writing down this conversation somewhat humorously here, and in a way characteristic of me then, the thinking is still mine.
“And get away with it?” the prince became curious.
“I spit and walk away. Naturally, she feels it, but she doesn’t let it show, she stomps on majestically without turning her head. And there was only one time that I berated a couple of them quite seriously, both with trains, on the boulevard—naturally, not in nasty words, I merely observed out loud that trains were offensive.”