“It’s not exactly this old man’s death,” he replied, “not only his death; there’s something else now that has hit on the same spot . . . May God bless this moment and our life, for a long time to come! Let’s talk, my dear! I keep getting broken up, diverted, I want to talk about one thing and get sidetracked into a thousand other details. That always happens when one’s heart is full . . . But let’s talk; the time has come, and I’ve long been in love with you, my boy . . .”
He leaned back in his armchair and looked me over once more.
“How strange! How strange it is to hear that!” I repeated, drowning in ecstasy.
And then, I remember, in his face there suddenly flashed the usual wrinkle—as if of sadness and mockery together—which I knew so well. He controlled himself and, as if with a certain strain, began.
II
“HERE’S THE THING, Arkady: if I had invited you earlier, what would I have said to you? In this question lies my whole answer.”
“That is, you mean to say that you’re now mama’s husband and my father, while then . . . You wouldn’t have known before what to say about my social position? Is that it?”
“That’s not the only thing I wouldn’t have known what to say about, my dear; there’s much here that I would have had to pass over in silence. There’s even much here that’s ridiculous and humiliating, because it looks like a trick—really, like a most farcical trick. Well, how could we have understood each other before, if I understood myself only today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, exactly two hours before Makar Ivanovich’s death? You look at me with unpleasant perplexity? Don’t worry, I’ll explain the trick; but what I said is quite right: life is all wanderings and perplexities, and suddenly—the resolution, on such-and-such a day, at five o’clock in the afternoon! It’s even offensive, isn’t it? In the still-recent old days I’d have been quite offended.”
I was actually listening in painful perplexity; there was a strong presence of the former Versilovian wrinkle, which I had no wish to encounter that evening, after the words that had been spoken. Suddenly I exclaimed:
“My God! You got something from her . . . at five o’clock today?”
He looked at me intently and was evidently struck by my exclamation, and maybe also by my saying “from her.”
“You’ll learn everything,” he said with a pensive smile, “and, of course, I won’t conceal from you what you need to know, because that’s what I brought you here for; but let’s set it aside for now. You see, my friend, I’ve long known that we have children who brood about their families from childhood on, who are outraged by the unseemliness of their fathers and their surroundings. I noticed these brooders while I was still in school, and concluded then that it was all because they became envious very early on. Note, however, that I myself was one of these brooding children, but . . . excuse me, my dear, I’m surprisingly distracted. I only wanted to say how constantly I’ve been afraid for you here almost all this time. I always imagined you as one of those little beings who are conscious of their giftedness and given over to solitude. Like you, I also never cared for my comrades. Woe to those beings who are left only to their own powers and dreams, and with a passionate, all too premature, and almost vengeful longing for seemliness—precisely ‘vengeful.’ But enough, my dear, I’m digressing again . . . Even before I began to love you, I had already imagined you and your solitary, wild dreams . . . But enough; in fact, I’ve forgotten what I started to say. However, all that still had to be spoken out. But before, before, what could I have said to you? Now I see your gaze upon me and know that it’s my sonlooking at me; while even yesterday I couldn’t have believed I’d ever be sitting and talking with my boy as I am today.”
He was indeed becoming very distracted, but at the same time was as if touched by something.
“Now I have no need for dreams and reveries, now you are enough for me! I will follow you!” I said, giving myself to him with all my soul.
“Follow me? But my wanderings have just ended, and just today as it happens. You’re too late, my dear. Today is the finale of the last act, and the curtain is coming down. This last act dragged on for a long time. It began very long ago—when I fled abroad for the last time. I abandoned everything then, and know, my dear, that I unmarried your mother then, and told her so myself. You should know that. I explained to her then that I was going away forever, and that she would never see me again. Worst of all, I even forgot to leave her any money then. Nor did I think of you for a minute. I left with the intention of remaining in Europe, my dear, and never coming home. I emigrated.”
“To Herzen? 30To take part in foreign propaganda? You’ve probably taken part in some conspiracy all your life?” I cried, not restraining myself.
“No, my friend, I never took part in any conspiracy. But your eyes are even flashing; I like your exclamations, my dear. No, I simply left then from yearning. From a sudden yearning. This was the yearning of a Russian nobleman—I truly can’t put it any better. A nobleman’s yearning—and nothing more.”
“Serfdom . . . the emancipation of the people?” 31I murmured, breathless.
“Serfdom? You think I was yearning for serfdom? Couldn’t bear the emancipation of the people? Oh, no, my friend, it was we who were the emancipators. I emigrated without any spite. I had just been an arbiter of the peace and had struggled with all my might; I had struggled disinterestedly, and didn’t even leave because I had gotten too little reward for my liberalism. None of us got anything then—that is, again, the ones like me. I left rather in pride than in repentance, and, believe me, quite far from thinking it was time to end my life as a humble bootmaker. Je suis gentilhomme avant tout et je mourrai gentilhomme! 94But even so I felt sad. There are maybe about a thousand men of our sort in Russia; maybe no more, in fact, but that’s quite enough for an idea not to die. We are the bearers of an idea, my dear! . . . My friend, I’m talking in some strange hope that you’ll understand all this gibberish. I invited you on a whim of my heart: I’ve long been dreaming of how I might say something to you . . . to you, precisely to you! But, anyhow . . . anyhow . . .”
“No, speak,” I cried, “I see sincerity in your face again . . . So what, did Europe resurrect you then? And what was your ‘nobleman’s yearning’? Forgive me, dear heart, I still don’t understand.”
“Did Europe resurrect me? But I myself was going then to bury her!”
“To bury her?” I repeated in surprise.
He smiled.
“Arkady, my friend, my soul has waxed tender now, and my spirit is stirred. I’ll never forget my first moments in Europe that time. I had lived in Europe before, but that was a special time, and I had never arrived there with such inconsolable sadness and . . . such love as at that time. I’ll tell you one of my first impressions then, one of the dreams I had then, an actual dream. It was still in Germany. I had just left Dresden and, in my absentmindedness, had missed the station at which I should have changed direction and wound up on another branch line. They got me off at once; it was past two in the afternoon, a bright day. It was a little German town. They directed me to a hotel. I had to wait: the next train came through at eleven o’clock at night. I was even pleased to have an adventure, because I was in no particular hurry. I was wandering, my dear, just wandering. The hotel turned out to be wretched and small, but it was all covered in greenery and surrounded with beds of flowers, as always there. I was given a little room and, as I had spent the whole night on the road, I fell asleep after dinner, at four o’clock in the afternoon.
“I dreamed a dream that was completely unexpected for me, because I had never had one like it. In Dresden, in the gallery, there’s a painting by Claude Lorrain—Acis and Galatea 32according to the catalog, but I’ve always called it The Golden Age, I don’t know why myself. I had seen it before, and then, some three days earlier, I had noticed it once again in passing. I saw this painting in my dream, but not as a painting, but as if it were something happening. However, I don’t know precisely what I dreamed; it was exactly as in the painting—a corner of the Greek archipelago, and time, too, seemed to have shifted back three thousand years; gentle blue waves, islands and rocks, a flowering coast, a magic panorama in the distance, the inviting, setting sun—words can’t express it. Here European mankind remembered its cradle, and the thought of it seemed to fill my soul with a kindred love. This was the earthly paradise of mankind: the gods came down from heaven and were united with people . . . Oh, beautiful people lived here! They woke up and fell asleep happy and innocent; the meadows and groves were filled with their songs and merry shouts; a great surplus of untouched forces went into love and simplehearted joy. The sun poured down warmth and light on them, rejoicing over its beautiful children . . . A wonderful reverie, a lofty delusion of mankind! The golden age—the most incredible dream of all that have ever been, but for which people have given all their lives and all their strength, for which prophets have died and been slain, without which the peoples do not want to live and cannot even die! And it was as if I lived through this whole feeling in my dream; the cliffs and the sea and the slanting rays of the setting sun—it was as if I could still see it all when I woke up and opened my eyes, literally wet with tears. I remember that I was glad. A feeling of happiness unknown to me before went through my heart, even to the point of pain; this was an all-human love. It was already full evening; a sheaf of slanting rays came in the window of my little room, breaking through the greenery of the plants on the windowsill, pouring its light over me. And then, my friend, and then—this setting sun of the first day of European mankind, which I had seen in my dream, turned for me as soon as I woke up, in reality, into the setting sun of the last day of European mankind! At that time especially it was as if a death knell could be heard over Europe. I’m not just speaking of the war, or of the Tuileries; 33I knew even without that that it would all pass away, the whole countenance of the old European world—sooner or later; but as a Russian European I couldn’t accept it. Yes, they had just burned the Tuileries then . . . Oh, don’t worry, I know it was ‘logical,’ and I understand only too well the irresistibility of the current idea, but as a bearer of the highest Russian cultural thought I couldn’t accept it, because the highest Russian thought is the all-reconciliation of ideas. And who in the whole world could understand such a thought then? I wandered alone. I’m not talking about myself personally—I’m talking about Russian thought. There, there was strife and logic; there the Frenchman was only a Frenchman, and the German only a German, and that with a greater intensity than at any time in their entire history; meaning that a Frenchman never did more harm to France, or a German to his Germany, than at that time! In the whole of Europe then there wasn’t a single European! I alone among all those pétroleurs 34could tell them to their faces that their Tuileries was a mistake, and I alone among all the avenging conservatives could tell the avengers that the Tuileries, though a crime, still had its logic. And that was so, my boy, because I alone, as a Russian, was then the only Europeanin Europe. I’m not talking about myself—I’m talking about all of Russian thought. I wandered, my friend, I wandered and knew firmly that I had to keep silent and wander. But still I felt sad. My boy, I cannot help respecting my nobility. It seems you’re laughing?”