Having said that, he suddenly left. I remained standing there, and in such confusion that I didn’t dare call him back. The expression “the document” especially staggered me; from whom could he have learned of it, and in such a precise expression, if not from Lambert? I returned home in great confusion. And how could it happen, the thought flashed in me suddenly, that such a “twoyear-long enchantment ” could vanish like a dream, like fumes, like a phantom?
Chapter Nine
I
BUT I WOKE UP the next morning feeling fresher and heartier. I even reproached myself, involuntarily and sincerely, for the certain levity and haughtiness, as it were, with which I recalled listening yesterday to certain parts of his “confession.” If it was partially disordered, if certain revelations were as if somewhat fumy and even incoherent, he hadn’t really been prepared for an oration when he invited me to his place yesterday. He only did me a great honor, turning to me as to an only friend at such a moment, and I will never forget it. On the contrary, his confession was “touching,” however much I may be laughed at for the expression, and if there was an occasional flash of the cynical or even of something seemingly ridiculous, I was too broad not to understand and not to allow for realism—without, however, besmirching the ideal. Above all, I had finally comprehended this man, and I even felt partly sorry and as if vexed that it had all turned out so simple. In my heart I had always placed this man extremely high, in the clouds, and had unfailingly clothed his destiny in something mysterious, so that I naturally wished that the key wouldn’t fit the lock so easily. However, in his meeting with herand in his two-year-long suffering there was also much that was complicated: “He refused the fatumof life; what he needed was freedom, not slavery to the fatum; through slavery to the fatumhe had been obliged to offend mama, who was sitting in Königsberg . . .” Besides, I considered this man, in any case, a preacher: he bore the golden age in his heart and knew the future of atheism; and then the meeting with her had shattered everything, perverted everything! Oh, I didn’t betray her, but still I took his side. Mama, I reasoned, for instance, wouldn’t hinder anything in his destiny, not even marriage to mama. That I understood; that was quite other than the meeting with that one. True, all the same, mama would not have given him peace, but that would even have been better: such people ought to be judged differently, and let their life always be like that; and there’s nothing unseemly in it; on the contrary, it would be unseemly if they settled down, or generally became similar to all average people. His praise of the nobility and his words, “ Je mourrai gentilhomme,” didn’t confound me in the least; I perceived what sort of gentilhommehe was; he was the type who gives everything away and becomes the herald of world citizenship and the main Russian thought of the “all-unification of ideas.” And though that, too, was even all nonsense, that is, the “all-unification of ideas” (which, of course, is unthinkable), still there was one good thing, that all his life he had worshipped an idea, and not the stupid golden calf. My God! I, I myself, when I conceived my “idea”—was I bowing down to the golden calf? Was it money I wanted then? I swear I wanted only the idea! I swear I wouldn’t have a single chair or sofa upholstered in velvet, and if I had a hundred million, I’d eat the same bowl of beef soup as now!
I was dressing and hurrying to him irrepressibly. I will add: concerning his outburst yesterday about the “document,” I was also five times more at ease than yesterday. First, I hoped to clarify things with him, and, second, so what if Lambert had filtered through to him and they had talked something over? But my chief joy was in one extraordinary sensation; this was the thought that he “didn’t love her” now; I believed in that terribly, and felt as if someone had rolled an awful stone off my heart. I even remember the flash of a certain surmise then: precisely the ugliness and senselessness of his last fierce outburst at the news about Bjoring and the sending of that insulting letter then; precisely that extremity could also have served as a prophecy and precursor of the most radical change in his feelings and of his approaching return to common sense. It must have been almost as with an illness, I thought, and he precisely had to reach the opposite extreme—a medical episode and nothing more! This thought made me happy.
“And let her, let her dispose of her fate as she likes, let her marry her Bjoring as much as she likes, only let him, my father, my friend, not love her anymore,” I exclaimed. However, there was in it a certain secret of my own feelings, but I don’t wish to smear it around here in my notes.
Enough of that. And now I will tell all the horror that followed, and all the machinations of the facts, without any discussions.
II
AT TEN O’CLOCK, just as I was ready to go out—to see him, of course—Nastasya Egorovna appeared. I asked her joyfully if she was coming from him, and heard with vexation that it was not from him at all, but from Anna Andreevna, and that she, Nastasya Egorovna, had “left the apartment at first light.”
“Which apartment?”
“The same one as yesterday. Yesterday’s apartment, the one with the little baby, is rented in my name now, and Tatyana Pavlovna pays . . .”
“Ah, well, it makes no difference to me!” I interrupted with vexation. “Is he at home at least? Will I find him in?”
And to my astonishment I heard from her that he had left the premises even before she had—meaning that she had left “at first light,” and he still earlier.
“Well, so now he’s come back?”
“No, sir, he certainly hasn’t come back, and he may not come back at all,” she said, looking at me with the same keen and furtive eye, and not taking it off me, just as she had done when she visited me while I lay sick. What mainly made me explode was that here again some secrets and stupidities emerged, and that these people apparently couldn’t do without secrets and slyness.
“Why did you say he certainly won’t come back? What are you implying? He went to mama’s, that’s all!”
“I d-don’t know, sir.”
“And why were you so good as to come?”
She told me that she had come now from Anna Andreevna, who was sending for me and expected me at once, otherwise “it would be too late.” This further mysterious phrase drove me completely beside myself.
“Why too late? I don’t want to go and I won’t go! I won’t let myself be taken over again! I spit on Lambert—tell her that, and that if she sends Lambert to me, I’ll chuck him out—just tell her that!”
Nastasya Egorovna was terribly frightened.
“Ah, no, sir!” she stepped towards me, pressing her hands together as if entreating me, “take your time before you go hurrying so. This is an important matter, very important for you yourself, and also for the lady, and for Andrei Petrovich, and for your mama, for everybody . . . Do go to Anna Andreevna at once, because she simply can’t wait any longer . . . I assure you on my honor . . . and then you can make your decision.”
I stared at her in amazement and disgust.
“Nonsense, nothing will happen, I won’t go!” I cried stubbornly and gleefully. “Now everything will be a new way! And how can you understand that? Good-bye, Nastasya Egorovna, I purposely won’t go, I purposely won’t ask you any questions. You only throw me off. I don’t want to enter into your riddles.”
But as she wouldn’t leave and went on standing there, I grabbed my coat and hat and went out myself, leaving her there in the middle of the room. There were no letters or papers in my room, and previously I had almost never locked my door when I left. But before I reached the front door, my landlord, Pyotr Ippolitovich, came running down the stairs after me, hatless and in his uniform.
“Arkady Makarovich! Arkady Makarovich!”
“What is it now?”
“Have you no orders on leaving?”
“None.”
He looked at me with a stabbing glance and with evident uneasiness.