“Ah, Andrei Petrovich, she must be helped! Where does she live?” exclaimed Tatyana Pavlovna.
“Oh, there are lots of them!” He put the address in his pocket. “This bag is full of all sorts of treats—for you, Liza, and for you, Tatyana Pavlovna; Sofya and I don’t like sweets. You, too, if you please, young man. I bought it all myself at Eliseevs’ and Ballet’s. 34For too long we’ve been ‘sitting hungry,’ as Lukerya says.” (N.B. None of us ever sat hungry.) “There are grapes, bonbons, duchesse pears, and a strawberry tart; I even bought some excellent liqueur; also nuts. It’s curious, Tatyana Pavlovna, ever since childhood I’ve loved nuts, you know, the simplest kinds. Liza takes after me: she also likes to crack nuts like a squirrel. But there’s nothing lovelier, Tatyana Pavlovna, than chancing sometimes, among your childhood memories, to imagine yourself momentarily in the woods, in the bushes, when you were gathering nuts . . . The days are almost autumnal, but clear, sometimes so fresh, you hide in the thicket, you wander off into the forest, there’s a smell of leaves . . . Do I see something sympathetic in your look, Arkady Makarovich?”
“The first years of my childhood were also spent in the country.”
“Why, no, I believe you were living in Moscow . . . if I’m not mistaken.”
“He was living with the Andronikovs in Moscow when you came that time; but before then he lived with your late aunt, Varvara Stepanovna, in the country,” Tatyana Pavlovna picked up.
“Sofya, here’s the money, put it away. They promised to give me five thousand one of these days.”
“So there’s no more hope for the princes?” asked Tatyana Pavlovna.
“None whatsoever, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“I’ve always sympathized with you, Andrei Petrovich, and all of yours, and have been a friend of your house; but, though the princes are strangers to me, by God, I feel sorry for them. Don’t be angry, Andrei Petrovich.”
“I have no intention of sharing, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“Of course, you know my thinking, Andrei Petrovich. They would have stopped the litigation if you had offered to go halves with them at the very beginning; now, of course, it’s too late. However, I won’t venture to judge . . . I say it because the deceased certainly wouldn’t have cut them out of his will.”
“Not only wouldn’t have cut them out, he’d certainly have left everything to them and cut out just me alone, if he’d been able to do it and had known how to write a will properly; but now the law is with me—and it’s finished. I cannot and do not want to share, Tatyana Pavlovna, and the matter ends there.”
He uttered this even with anger, which he rarely allowed himself. Tatyana Pavlovna quieted down. Mother lowered her eyes somehow sadly: Versilov knew that she approved of Tatyana Pavlovna’s opinion.
“It’s the slap in Ems!” I thought to myself. The document procured by Kraft, which I had in my pocket, would fare badly if it fell into his hands. I suddenly felt that it was all still hanging on my neck; this thought, in connection with all the rest, of course, had an irritating effect on me.
“Arkady, I wish you’d dress better, my friend; you’re not dressed badly, but in view of things to come, there’s a good Frenchman I might recommend to you, a most conscientious man, and with taste.”
“I beg you never to make me such offers,” I suddenly ripped out.
“Why’s that?”
“I, of course, do not find it humiliating, but we are not in such agreement; on the contrary, we even disagree, because one day, tomorrow, I’ll stop going to the prince’s, seeing not the least work to do there . . .”
“But the fact that you go there, that you sit with him—is already work!”
“Such notions are humiliating.”
“I don’t understand; however, if you’re so ticklish, don’t take money from him, just go there. You’ll upset him terribly; he’s already stuck on you, you can be sure . . . However, as you wish . . .”
He was obviously displeased.
“You tell me not to ask for money, but thanks to you I did a mean thing today. You didn’t warn me, and today I demanded my month’s salary from him.”
“So you’ve already taken care of it; and, I’ll confess, I thought you’d never begin to ask. How adroit you’ve all now become, though! There are no young people these days, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
He was terribly irritated; I also became terribly angry.
“I ought to have settled accounts with you . . . it was you who made me do it—now I don’t know how to be.”
“By the way, Sophie, give Arkady back his sixty roubles immediately; and you, my friend, don’t be angry at the hasty reckoning. I can guess from your face that you have some enterprise in mind, and that you’re in need of . . . working capital . . . or something like that.”
“I don’t know what my face expresses, but I never expected of mama that she would tell you about that money, since I asked her not to.” I looked at my mother, flashing my eyes. I can’t even express how offended I was.
“Arkasha, darling, forgive me, for God’s sake, there was no way I couldn’t tell him . . .”
“My friend, don’t hold it against her that she revealed your secrets,” he turned to me. “Besides, she did it with good intentions—a mother simply wanted to boast of her son’s feelings. But believe me, I’d have guessed that you’re a capitalist even without that. All your secrets are written on your honest face. He has ‘his idea,’ Tatyana Pavlovna, I told you so.”
“Let’s forget my honest face,” I went on ripping out. “I know you often see through things, though in other cases no further than a chicken’s nose—and your perceptive abilities have surprised me. Well, yes, I do have my ‘idea.’ The fact that you put it that way is, of course, accidental, but I’m not afraid to admit it: I have an ‘idea.’ I’m not afraid and not ashamed.”
“Above all, don’t be ashamed.”
“But all the same I won’t ever reveal it to you.”
“That is, you won’t deign to reveal it. No need, my friend, I know the essence of your idea even so; in any case, it’s this: ‘To the desert I withdraw . . .’ 35Tatyana Pavlovna! I think he wants . . . to become Rothschild, or something like that, and withdraw into his grandeur. Naturally, he will magnanimously grant you and me a pension—or maybe he won’t grant me one—but in any case, that will be the last we see of him. He’s like a new moon—it no sooner appears than it sets.”
I shuddered inside. Of course, it was all chance: he knew nothing and wasn’t speaking of that at all, though he did mention Rothschild. But how could he have defined my feelings so accurately: to break with them and withdraw? He had guessed it all and wanted to dirty the tragedy of the fact beforehand with his cynicism. There was no doubt that he was terribly irritated.
“Mama, forgive me my outburst, the more so as it’s impossible to hide anything from Andrei Petrovich anyway!” I laughed in-sincerely, trying to move it all towards joking at least for a moment.
“The best thing, my dear, is that you laughed. It’s hard to imagine how much every person gains by that, even in appearance. I’m speaking in the most serious way. You know, Tatyana Pavlovna, he always looks as if he has something so important on his mind that he’s even ashamed of this circumstance himself.”
“I beg you seriously to be more restrained, Andrei Petrovich.”
“You’re right, my friend; but it needs to be spoken out once and for all, so that we don’t keep touching on it later. You came to us from Moscow in order to rebel at once—that’s what we know so far about the purpose of your coming. Of the fact that you came in order to astonish us with something—of that I naturally make no mention. Then, you’ve been with us and snorting at us for a whole month—yet you’re obviously an intelligent man and in that quality might have left such snorting to those who have no other way of taking revenge on people for their nonentity. You always close yourself up, whereas your honest air and red cheeks testify directly that you could look everyone in the eyes with perfect innocence. He’s a hypochondriac, Tatyana Pavlovna; I don’t understand, why are they all hypochondriacs now?”