“Is anything wrong?” he murmured. “I’ve been waiting to ask you,” he added, seeing that I didn’t answer, “whether you wouldn’t like to open this door, for direct communication with the prince’s rooms . . . rather than through the corridor?” He was pointing to the side door, which was always locked, and which communicated with his own rooms and now, therefore, with the prince’s quarters.
“Look here, Pyotr Ippolitovich,” I addressed him with a stern air, “I humbly beg you to go and invite Anna Andreevna here to my room for a talk. Have they been here long?”
“Must be nearly an hour.”
“So go.”
He went and brought back the strange reply that Anna Andreevna and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich were impatiently awaiting me in their rooms—meaning that Anna Andreevna did not wish to come. I straightened and cleaned my frock coat, which had become wrinkled during the night, washed, combed my hair, all of that unhurriedly, and, aware of how necessary it was to be cautious, went to see the old man.
The prince was sitting on the sofa at a round table, and Anna Andreevna was preparing tea for him in another corner, at another table covered with a tablecloth, on which the landlord’s samovar, polished as it had never been before, was boiling. I came in with the same stern look on my face, and the old man, instantly noticing it, gave a start, and the smile on his face quickly gave way to decided alarm. But I couldn’t keep it up, laughed at once, and held out my arms to him. The poor man simply threw himself into my embrace.
Unquestionably, I realized at once whom I was dealing with. First of all, it became as clear to me as two times two that, during the time since I last saw him, they had made the old man, who had even been almost hale and still at least somewhat sensible and with a certain character, into a sort of mummy, a sort of perfect child, fearful and mistrustful. I will add that he knew perfectly well why he had been brought here, and that everything had happened exactly as I explained above, when I ran ahead of myself. He was suddenly struck, broken, crushed by the news of his daughter’s betrayal and of the madhouse. He had allowed himself to be brought, so frightened that he scarcely knew what he was doing. He had been told that I was in possession of the secret, and held the key to the ultimate solution. I’ll say beforehand: it was this ultimate solution and key that he feared more than anything in the world. He expected that I’d just walk in there with some sort of sentence on my forehead and a paper in my hand, and he was awfully glad that I was prepared meanwhile to laugh and chatter about other things. When we embraced, he wept. I confess, I wept a bit, too. But I suddenly felt very sorry for him . . . Alphonsinka’s little dog went off into a high, bell-like barking and strained towards me from the sofa. He hadn’t parted from this tiny dog since the day he acquired it, and even slept with it.
“Oh, je disais qu’il a du coeur!” 100he exclaimed, pointing at me to Anna Andreevna.
“But how you’ve improved, Prince, what a fine, fresh, healthy look you have!” I observed. Alas! it was all quite the opposite: this was a mummy, and I only said it to encourage him.
“N’est-cepas, n’est-cepas?” 101he repeated joyfully. “Oh, my health has improved astonishingly.”
“Anyhow, have your tea, and if you offer me a cup, I’ll drink with you.”
“Marvelous! ‘Let us drink and enjoy . . .’ or how does the poem go? Anna Andreevna, give him tea, il prend toujours par les sentiments 102. . . give us tea, my dear.”
Anna Andreevna served us tea, but suddenly turned to me and began with extreme solemnity:
“Arkady Makarovich, both of us, I and my benefactor, Prince Nikolai Ivanovich, have taken refuge with you. I consider that we have come to you, to you alone, and we are both asking you for shelter. Remember that almost the whole destiny of this saintly, this most noble and offended man is in your hands . . . We await the decision of your truthful heart!”
But she was unable to finish; the prince was horrified and almost trembled with fear:
“Après, après, n’est-ce pas? Chère amie! ” 103; he repeated, holding his hands up to her.
I can’t express how unpleasantly her outburst also affected me. I said nothing in reply and contented myself only with a cold and grave bow; then I sat down at the table and even deliberately began talking about other things, about some foolishness, started laughing and cracking jokes . . . The old man was obviously grateful to me and became rapturously merry. But his merriment, though rapturous, was somehow fragile and might be supplanted at any moment by complete dispiritedness; that was clear from the first glance.
“Cher enfant, I hear you were ill . . . Ah, pardon! I hear you’ve been occupied all the while with spiritism?” 41
“Never dreamed of it,” I smiled.
“No? Then who was talking about spir-it-ism?”
“That clerk here, Pyotr Ippolitovich, spoke to you about it earlier,” Anna Andreevna explained. “He’s a very merry man and knows lots of anecdotes; would you like me to invite him here?”
“ Oui, oui, il est charmant 104. . . he knows anecdotes, but we’d better invite him later. We’ll invite him, and he’ll tell us everything, mais après. Imagine, earlier they were setting the table, and he says, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t fly away, we’re not spiritists.’ Can spiritists make tables fly?”
“I really don’t know; they say they get all four legs off the ground.”
“Mais c’est terrible ce que tu dis,” 105he looked at me in fright.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s nonsense.”
“I say so myself. Nastasya Stepanovna Salomeeva . . . you do know her . . . ah, no, you don’t know her . . . imagine, she also believes in spiritism, and imagine, chère enfant,” he turned to Anna Andreevna, “I tell her there are tables in the ministry as well, with eight pairs of clerkly hands lying on them, all writing documents—why don’t the tables dance there? Imagine if they suddenly started dancing! A revolt of the tables in the Ministry of Finance or National Education—just what we need!”
“What nice things you say, Prince, as always,” I exclaimed, trying to laugh sincerely.
“N’est-ce pas? Je ne parle pas trop, mais je dis bien.” 106
“I’ll bring Pyotr Ippolitovich,” Anna Andreevna got up. Her face shone with pleasure; she was glad to see how affectionate I was with the old man. But as soon as she went out, the old man’s face changed instantly. He glanced back hastily at the door, looked around, and, leaning towards me from the sofa, whispered in a frightened voice:
“ Cher ami!Oh, if only I could see the two of them here together! Oh, cher enfant!”
“Calm yourself, Prince . . .”
“Yes, yes, but . . . we’ll reconcile them, n’est-ce pas? It’s an empty little quarrel of two most worthy women, n’est-ce pas? I put my hopes in you alone . . . We’ll straighten it all out here; and what a strange apartment you have here,” he looked around almost fearfully, “and, you know, this landlord . . . he’s got such a face . . . Tell me, he’s not dangerous?”
“The landlord? Oh, no! how could he be dangerous?”
“C’est ça. 107So much the better. Il semble qu’il est bête, ce gentilhomme. 108Cher enfant, for Christ’s sake, don’t tell Anna Andreevna that I’m afraid of everything here; I praised everything here from the first, I praised the landlord, too. Listen, you know the story of von Sohn 42—remember?”
“What about it?”
“Rien, rien du tout . . . Mais je suis libre ici, n’est-ce pas? 109What do you think, can anything happen to me here . . . of the same sort?”
“But I assure you, dearest Prince . . . for pity’s sake!”
“ Mon ami! Mon enfant!” he exclaimed suddenly, clasping his hands before him and no longer hiding his fear. “If you do indeed have something . . . documents . . . in short, if you have anything to tell me, then don’t tell me; for God’s sake, don’t tell me anything; better not tell me at all . . . for as long as you can, don’t tell me . . .”