Mama looked at him strangely; Tatyana Pavlovna seemed to cringe.
“Who’s here in the room?” she asked.
“The deceased. Never mind. You know that a man who doesn’t fully believe in all these wonders is always the more inclined to prejudices . . . But I’d better speak of the bouquet: how I got it here, I don’t know. Three times on the way I wanted to drop it in the snow and trample it with my feet.”
Mama shuddered.
“I wanted to terribly. Pity me, Sonya, and my poor head. But I wanted to, because it’s too beautiful. Of anything in the world, what is more beautiful than a flower? I was carrying it, and here there was snow and frost. Our frost and flowers—what a contrast! However, that’s not what I’m getting at: I wanted to crush it because it was beautiful. Sonya, I’m going to disappear again now, but I’ll come back very soon, because it seems I’ll be afraid. I’ll be afraid—and who will cure me of my fear, where will I get hold of an angel like Sonya? . . . What’s this icon you have here? Ah, it’s the old man’s, I remember. It came to him from his family, his forefathers; he never parted with it all his life; I know, I remember, he bequeathed it to me; I remember very well . . . and it seems it’s an Old Believers’ icon 39. . . let me look at it.”
He took the icon in his hand, brought it to a candle, and studied it intently, but after holding it for just a few seconds, he set it down on the table in front of him. I wondered, but he uttered all these strange speeches so unexpectedly that I could make no sense of them yet. All I remember is that a morbid fear was coming into my heart. Mama’s fear was changing to perplexity and compassion; before all, she saw just an unhappy man in him; it happened that formerly as well he had sometimes spoken almost as strangely as now. Liza suddenly became very pale for some reason and strangely nodded her head towards him to me. But Tatyana Pavlovna was the most frightened of all.
“What’s wrong with you, dearest Andrei Petrovich?” she spoke cautiously.
“I really don’t know what’s wrong with me, my dear Tatyana Pavlovna. Don’t worry, I still remember that you are Tatyana Pavlovna and that you are dear. However, I’ve dropped in just for a minute; I’d like to say something nice to Sonya, and I’m looking for the right word, though my heart is filled with words which I’m unable to utter; truly, they’re all somehow such strange words. You know, it seems to me as if I’m divided in two,” he looked us all over with a terribly serious face and with the most sincere communicativeness. “Truly, mentally divided in two, and I’m terribly afraid of that. Just as if your double were standing next to you; you yourself are intelligent and reasonable, but that one absolutely wants to do something senseless next to you, and sometimes something very amusing, and you suddenly notice that it’s you who want to do this amusing thing, and, God knows why, that is, somehow unwillingly you want it, resisting with all your might, you want it. I once knew a doctor who suddenly started whistling in church at his father’s funeral. Truly, I was afraid to come to the funeral today, because for some reason the absolute conviction came into my head that I would suddenly start whistling or guffawing, like that unfortunate doctor, who ended rather badly . . . And, truly, I don’t know why I keep remembering that doctor today—so much so that there’s no getting rid of him. You know, Sonya, here I’ve picked up this icon again” (he had picked it up and was turning it in his hands), “and you know, I want terribly much to smash it against the stove now, this second, on this very corner. I’m sure it will split at once into two halves—no more, no less.”
Above all, he said all this without any air of pretense or even of some sort of prank; he spoke quite simply, but that was the more terrible; and it seemed he really was terribly afraid of something; I suddenly noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.
“Andrei Petrovich!” mama cried, clasping her hands.
“Let it alone, let the icon alone, Andrei Petrovich, put it down!” Tatyana Pavlovna jumped up. “Get undressed and go to bed. Arkady, fetch the doctor!”
“But no . . . but no, why are you fussing so?” he said softly, looking around at us all with an intent gaze. Then he suddenly put both elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.
“I’m frightening you, but I tell you what, my friends: indulge me a little, sit down again and be more calm, all of you—at least for one minute! Sonya, that’s not at all what I came here to talk about; I came to tell you something, but quite different. Good-bye, Sonya, I’m setting out on my wanderings again, as I’ve set out from you several times already . . . Well, of course, someday I’ll come back to you, in this sense you’re inevitable. To whom am I to come when it’s all over? Believe me, Sonya, I’ve come to you now as to an angel, and not at all as to an enemy: what sort of enemy, what sort of enemy are you to me! Don’t think it’s in order to break this icon, because, do you know, Sonya, I still want to break it . . .”
When Tatyana Pavlovna had cried before then, “Let the icon alone!”—she had snatched the image out of his hands and was holding it herself. Suddenly, at his last words, he quickly jumped up, instantly snatched the icon out of Tatyana’s hands, and, swinging ferociously, smashed it with all his might against the corner of the tile stove. The icon split exactly into two pieces . . . He suddenly turned to us, and his pale face suddenly turned all red, almost purple, and every feature of his face trembled and twitched:
“Don’t take it as an allegory, Sonya, it’s not Makar’s inheritance I’ve broken, I only did it in order to break . . . And even so I’ll come back to you, my last angel! But, anyhow, why not take it as an allegory; it certainly must have been! . . .”
And he suddenly hurried out of the room, again through the kitchen (where he had left his fur coat and hat). I won’t describe in detail what happened with mama: scared to death, she stood with her hands raised and clasped above her and suddenly called out after him:
“Andrei Petrovich, come back at least to say good-bye, dear!”
“He’ll come, Sofya, he’ll come! Don’t worry!” Tatyana cried, trembling all over in a terrible fit of anger, ferocious anger. “You heard, he himself promised to come back! Let the madcap run loose for one last time. He’ll get old, and who indeed will nurse him then, when he’s broken down, except you, his old nurse? He says it straight out himself, without shame . . .”
As for us, Liza was in a faint. I was about to run after him, but then I rushed to mama. I put my arms around her and held her in my embrace. Lukerya came running with a glass of water for Liza. But mama soon recovered; she sank onto the sofa, covered her face with her hands, and wept.
“But no, but no . . . catch up with him!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly cried out with all her might, as if coming to her senses. “Go . . . go . . . catch up with him, don’t let him get a step ahead of you—go, go!” She was pulling me away from mama with all her might. “Ah, I’ll run myself !”
“Arkasha, ah, run after him quickly!” mama suddenly cried as well.
I ran out headlong, also through the kitchen and the yard, but he was nowhere to be seen. Far down the sidewalk I made out the black figures of passersby in the darkness; I started running after them and, catching up with them, looked each one in the face as I ran past. In this way I ran as far as the intersection.
“You don’t get angry with madmen,” suddenly flashed in my head, “but Tatyana was ferociously angry with him, which means he’s not mad at all . . .” Oh, I kept thinking that it was an allegoryand that he absolutely wanted to have done with something, as with that icon, and to show it to us, to mama, to everybody. But the “double” was also undoubtedly next to him; of that there was no doubt at all . . .
III
HE DIDN’T TURN up anywhere, however, and there was no point in running to his place; it was hard to imagine that he had just simply gone home. Suddenly a thought began to gleam before me, and I rushed headlong to Anna Andreevna’s.
Anna Andreevna had already returned, and I was admitted at once. I went in, controlling myself as far as I could. Without sitting down, I told her directly about the scene that had just taken place, that is, precisely about the “double.” I will never forget nor forgive her the greedy but mercilessly calm and self-assured curiosity with which she listened to me, also without sitting down.