It was around eleven o’clock. I was just about to get out of bed and move to the armchair by the table when she came in. I purposely stayed in bed. Mama was very busy with something upstairs and did not come down when she arrived, so that we suddenly found ourselves alone with each other. She sat down facing me, on a chair by the wall, smiling and not saying a word. I anticipated a game of silence; and generally her coming made a most irritating impression on me. I didn’t even nod to her and looked directly into her eyes; but she also looked directly at me.
“It must be boring for you alone in that apartment, now that the prince is gone?” I asked suddenly, losing patience.
“No, sir, I’m no longer in that apartment. Through Anna Andreevna, I’m now looking after his baby.”
“Whose baby?”
“Andrei Petrovich’s,” she said in a confidential whisper, looking back at the door.
“But Tatyana Pavlovna’s there . . .”
“Tatyana Pavlovna and Anna Andreevna, the both of them, sir, and Lizaveta Makarovna also, and your mother . . . everybody, sir. Everybody’s taking part. Tatyana Pavlovna and Anna Andreevna are now great friends with each other, sir.”
News to me. She became very animated as she spoke. I looked at her with hatred.
“You’ve become very animated since the last time you called on me.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Grown fat, it seems.”
She looked at me strangely.
“I’ve come to like her very much, sir, very much.”
“Who’s that?”
“Why, Anna Andreevna. Very much, sir. Such a noble young lady, and so sensible . . .”
“Just so. And how is she now?”
“She’s very calm, sir, very.”
“She’s always been calm.”
“Always, sir.”
“If you’ve come to gossip,” I suddenly cried, unable to stand it, “know that I don’t meddle with anything, I’ve decided to drop . . . everything, everybody, it makes no difference to me—I’m leaving! . . .”
I fell silent, because I came to my senses. It was humiliating to me that I had begun as if to explain my new goals to her. She listened to me without surprise and without emotion, but silence ensued again. Suddenly she got up, went to the door, and peeked out into the next room. Having made sure there was no one there and we were alone, she quite calmly came back and sat down in her former place.
“Nicely done!” I suddenly laughed.
“That apartment of yours, at the clerk’s, are you going to keep it, sir?” she asked suddenly, leaning towards me slightly and lowering her voice, as if this was the main question she had come for.
“That apartment? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll vacate it . . . How do I know?”
“And your landlords are waiting very much for you; that clerk is in great impatience, and so is his wife. Andrei Petrovich assured them that you’d certainly come back.”
“But why did you ask?”
“Anna Andreevna also wanted to know; she was very pleased to learn that you’re staying.”
“And how does she know so certainly that I’ll be sure to stay in that apartment?”
I was about to add, “And what is it to her?”—but I refrained from asking questions out of pride.
“And Mr. Lambert confirmed the same thing to them.”
“Wha-a-at?”
“Mr. Lambert, sir. And to Andrei Petrovich, too, he confirmed as hard as he could that you would stay, and he assured Anna Andreevna of it.”
I was as if all shaken. What wonders! So Lambert already knows Versilov, Lambert has penetrated as far as Versilov—Lambert and Anna Andreevna—he has penetrated as far as her! Heat came over me, but I said nothing. An awful surge of pride flooded my whole soul, pride or I don’t know what. But it was as if I suddenly said to myself at that moment, “If I ask for just one word of explanation, I’ll get mixed up with this world again and never break with it.” Hatred kindled in my heart. I resolved with all my might to keep silent and lay there motionlessly; she also fell silent for a whole minute.
“What about Prince Nikolai Ivanovich?” I asked suddenly, as if losing my reason. The thing was that I asked decidedly in order to divert the theme, and once more, unwittingly, posed the most capital question, returning again like a madman to that same world from which I had just so convulsively resolved to flee.
“He’s in Tsarskoe Selo, sir. 6He’s been a bit unwell, and there’s fever going around the city now, so everybody advised him to move to Tsarskoe, to his own house there, for the good air, sir.”
I did not reply.
“Anna Andreevna and Mme. Akhmakov visit him every three days, they go together, sir.”
Anna Andreevna and Mme. Akhmakov (that is, she) are friends! They go together! I kept silent.
“They’ve become such friends, sir, and Anna Andreevna speaks so well of Katerina Nikolaevna . . .”
I still kept silent.
“And Katerina Nikolaevna has ‘struck’ into society again, fête after fête, she quite shines; they say even all the courtiers are in love with her . . . and she’s quite abandoned everything with Mr. Bjoring, and there’ll be no wedding; everybody maintains the same . . . supposedly ever since that time.”
That is, since Versilov’s letter. I trembled all over, but didn’t say a word.
“Anna Andreevna is so sorry about Prince Sergei Petrovich, and Katerina Nikolaevna also, sir, and everybody says he’ll be vindicated, and the other one, Stebelkov, will be condemned . . .”
I looked at her hatefully. She got up and suddenly bent over me.
“Anna Andreevna especially told me to find out about your health,” she said in a complete whisper, “and very much told me to ask you to call on her as soon as you start going out. Good-bye, sir. Get well, sir, and I’ll tell her so . . .”
She left. I sat up in bed, cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but it wasn’t fear I felt: the incomprehensible and outrageous news about Lambert and his schemes did not, for instance, fill me with horror at all, compared to the fright—maybe unaccountable—with which I had recalled, both in my illness and in the first days of recovery, my meeting with him that night. On the contrary, in that first confused moment in bed, right after Nastasya Egorovna’s departure, I didn’t even linger over Lambert, but . . . I was thrilled most of all by the news about her, about her break-up with Bjoring, and about her luck in society, about the fêtes, about her success, about her “shining.” “She shines, sir”—I kept hearing Nastasya Egorovna’s little phrase. And I suddenly felt that I did not have strength enough to struggle out of this whirl, though I had been able to restrain myself, keep silent, and not question Nastasya Egorovna after her wondrous stories! A boundless yearning for this life, theirlife, took all my breath away and . . . and also some other sweet yearning, which I felt to the point of happiness and tormenting pain. My thoughts were somehow spinning, but I let them spin. “What’s the point of reasoning!”—was how I felt. “Though even mama didn’t let on to me that Lambert came by,” I thought in incoherent fragments, “it was Versilov who told them not to let on . . . I’ll die before I ask Versilov about Lambert!” “ Versilov,” flashed in me again, “Versilov and Lambert—oh, so much is new with them! Bravo, Versilov! Frightened the German Bjoring with that letter; he slandered her; la calomnie . . . il en reste toujours quelque chose, 66and the German courtier got scared of a scandal—ha, ha . . . there’s a lesson for her!” “Lambert . . . mightn’t Lambert have gotten in with her as well? What else! Why couldn’t she get ‘connected’ with him as well?”
Here I suddenly left off thinking all this nonsense and dropped my head back on the pillow in despair. “But that won’t be!” I exclaimed with unexpected resolution, jumped up from the bed, put on the slippers, the robe, and went straight to Makar Ivanovich’s room, as if there lay the warding off of all obsessions, salvation, an anchor I could hold on to.