I babbled these last incoherent phrases when we were already in the street. Oh, I’m recalling it all in detail, to let the reader see that, for all my raptures and for all my vows and promises to be regenerated for the better and to seek seemliness, I could fall so easily then, and into such mire! And I swear, if I weren’t fully and completely certain that I’m not at all like that now and that I have developed my character through practical life, I would not have confessed all this to the reader for anything.
We came out of the shop, and Lambert supported me, putting his arm lightly around me. Suddenly I looked at him and saw almost the same expression in his eyes—intent, scrutinizing, terribly attentive, and at the same time sober in the highest degree—as on that morning when I was freezing and he led me to a cab, with his arm around me in exactly the same way, and listened, all ears and eyes, to my incoherent babble. People who are getting drunk, but are not quite drunk yet, can suddenly have moments of the fullest sobriety.
“I won’t go to your place for anything!” I uttered firmly and coherently, looking at him mockingly and pushing him away with my hand.
“Ah, come on, I’ll tell Alphonsine to make tea, come on!”
He was terribly certain that I wouldn’t escape; he held and supported me with relish, like a dear little victim, and I, of course, was just what he needed, precisely that evening and in that condition! Why—will be explained later.
“I’m not going!” I repeated. “Cabbie!”
Just then a cab came trotting up, and I hopped into the sledge.
“Where are you going? What’s with you?” yelled Lambert, in terrible alarm, seizing my fur coat.
“And don’t you dare follow me,” I cried, “don’t try to overtake me!” At that moment the cab started, and my coat was torn from Lambert’s hand.
“You’ll come anyway!” he shouted after me in an angry voice.
“I’ll come if I want to—by my own will!” I turned to him from the sledge.
II
HE DIDN’T PURSUE ME, of course, because there happened to be no other cab at hand, and I managed to disappear from his sight. I drove only as far as the Haymarket, and there I got out and dismissed the sledge. I wanted terribly to go by foot. I felt no fatigue, no great drunkenness, but was just full of vigor; there was an influx of strength, there was an extraordinary ability for any undertaking, and an endless number of pleasant thoughts in my head.
My heart was pounding intensely and distinctly—I could hear each beat. And everything seemed so nice to me, everything was so easy. Walking past the guardhouse on the Haymarket, I wanted terribly to go up to the sentry and kiss him. There was a thaw, the square turned black and smelly, but the square, too, I liked very much.
“I’ll go to Obukhovsky Prospect now,” I thought, “then turn left and come out in the Semyonovsky quarter, I’ll make a detour, it’s excellent, it’s all excellent. My fur coat’s unbuttoned—why doesn’t anybody take it off me, where are the thieves? They say there are thieves in the Haymarket, let them come, maybe I’ll give them my fur coat. What do I need a fur coat for? A fur coat is property. La propriété, c’est le vol. 92 29But anyhow, what nonsense, and how good everything is. It’s good that there’s a thaw. Why frost? There’s no need at all for frost. It’s also good to talk nonsense. What was it I said to Lambert about principles? I said there are no general principles, but only special cases. That’s nonsense, that’s arch-nonsense! I said it on purpose, to show off. It’s a bit shameful, but anyhow—never mind, I’ll smooth it over. Don’t be ashamed, don’t torment yourself, Arkady Makarovich. Arkady Makarovich, I like you. I even like you very much, my young friend. It’s too bad you’re a little knave . . . and . . . and . . . ah, yes . . . ah!”
I suddenly stopped, and again my whole heart was wrung in ecstasy:
“Lord! What was it he said? He said she loves me. Oh, he’s a crook, he told a lot of lies here; it was so that I’d go and spend the night with him. But maybe not. He said Anna Andreevna thought so, too . . . Bah! Nastasya Egorovna could also find out a thing or two here: she pokes around everywhere. And why didn’t I go to his place? I’d learn everything. Hm! he’s got a plan, and I anticipated it all to the last stroke. A dream. It’s broadly conceived, Mr. Lambert, only you’re wrong, it won’t be that way. But maybe it will! Maybe it will! And can he really get me married? But maybe he can. He’s naïve and credulous. He’s stupid and impudent, like all practical people. Stupidity and impudence, joined together, are a great force. And confess that you were in fact afraid of Lambert, Arkady Makarovich! What does he need honest people for? He says it so seriously: there’s not one honest man here! And you yourself—who are you? Eh, never mind me! Don’t scoundrels need honest people? In knavery, honest people are more needed than anywhere else. Ha, ha! You’re the only one who didn’t know that before, Arkady Makarovich, with your total innocence. Lord! What if he really gets me married!”
I paused again. Here I must confess one stupidity (since it happened so long ago), I must confess that I had already wanted to marry long before—that is, I didn’t want to and it would never have happened (and it won’t in the future, I give my word), but already more than once and long before then I had dreamed of how nice it would be to get married—that is, terribly many times, especially on going to sleep each night. This began with me when I was almost sixteen. I had a schoolmate, Lavrovsky, the same age as me—such a nice, quiet, pretty boy, though not distinguished in any way. I hardly ever spoke to him. Suddenly one day we were sitting next to each other alone, and he was very pensive, and suddenly he says to me, “Ah, Dolgoruky, what do you think about getting married now? Really, when should one get married if not now? Now would be the very best time, and yet it’s quite impossible!” And he said it so candidly. And I suddenly agreed with him wholeheartedly, because I myself had dreamed of something like it. Then we came together for several days in a row and kept talking about it, as if in secret, though only about that. And then, I don’t know how it happened, but we drifted apart and stopped talking. But ever since then I began to dream. This, of course, would not be worth recalling, but I only wanted to show how far back these things can sometimes go . . .
“There’s only one serious objection here,” I went on dreaming as I walked. “Oh, of course, the insignificant difference in age would be no obstacle, but there’s this: she’s such an aristocrat, and I’m—simply Dolgoruky! Awfully nasty! Hm! Surely Versilov, once he’s married my mother, could ask the authorities for permission to adopt me . . . for the father’s services, so to speak . . . He was in the service, so of course there were services; he was an arbiter of the peace . . . Oh, devil take it, what vileness!”
I suddenly exclaimed that and suddenly stopped for the third time, but now as if squashed on the spot. All the painful feeling of humiliation from the consciousness that I could wish for such a disgrace as a change of name through adoption, this betrayal of my whole childhood—all this in almost one instant destroyed my whole previous mood, and all my joy vanished like smoke. “No, I won’t tell this to anyone,” I thought, blushing terribly. “I stooped so low because I’m . . . in love and stupid. No, if Lambert is right about anything, it’s that nowadays all this foolishness is simply not required, and that the main thing in our age is the man himself, and then his money. That is, not his money, but his power. With my capital I’ll throw myself into the ‘idea,’ and in ten years all Russia will be talking, and I’ll have my revenge on everyone. And there’s no need to be ceremonious with her, here again Lambert is right. She’ll turn coward and simply marry me. In the simplest and most banal way, she’ll accept and marry me. ‘You don’t know, you don’t know in what sort of back room it went on!’” Lambert’s words came to my mind. “And that’s so,” I confirmed, “Lambert is right in everything, a thousand times righter than I, and Versilov, and all these idealists! He’s a realist. She’ll see that I have character and say, ‘Ah, he has character!’ Lambert is a scoundrel, and all he wants is to fleece me of thirty thousand, and yet he’s the only friend I’ve got. There is no other friendship and cannot be, that was all invented by impractical people. And I don’t even humiliate her; do I humiliate her? Not a bit: women are all like that! Can there be a woman without meanness? That’s why she needs to have man over her, that’s why she was created a subordinate being. Woman is vice and temptation, and man is nobility and magnanimity. And so it will be unto ages of ages. And never mind that I’m preparing to use the ‘document.’ That won’t prevent either nobility or magnanimity. Schillers in a pure form don’t exist—they’ve been invented. Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid! Afterwards it will all be washed away, smoothed over. And now it’s only—breadth, it’s only—life, it’s only—life’s truth—that’s what they call it now!”