“If you didn’t even know where I grew up—how could you know what makes a man a hypochondriac?”
“There’s the solution: you’re offended that I could forget where you grew up!”
“Not at all! Don’t ascribe stupidities to me. Mama, Andrei Petrovich just praised me for laughing, so let’s laugh—why sit like this! Shall I tell you funny stories about myself? The more so as Andrei Petrovich knows nothing of my adventures?”
It was all smoldering in me. I knew we’d never sit together again like now, and that, having left this house, I would never come back, and therefore, on the eve of all that, I couldn’t restrain myself. He himself had challenged me to such a finish.
“That’s very nice, of course, if it really will be funny,” he observed, peering at me keenly. “You turned a bit crude, my friend, wherever it was that you grew up, but, anyhow, you’re still decent enough. He’s quite nice today, Tatyana Pavlovna, and it’s an excellent thing that you’re finally untying that bag.”
But Tatyana Pavlovna was frowning; she didn’t even turn at his words and went on untying the bag and putting the treats on plates that had been brought. Mother also sat in complete bewilderment, of course, understanding and sensing that things were turning out wrong with us. My sister again touched my elbow.
III
“I SIMPLY WANT to tell you all,” I began with the most casual air, “about how a certain father met his own dear son for the first time; this took place precisely ‘where he grew up’ . . .”
“But, my friend, won’t this be . . . boring? You know: tous les genres . . .” 21 36
“Don’t frown, Andrei Petrovich, it’s not at all what you think. I precisely want everyone to laugh.”
“Then may God hear you, my dear. I know you love us all and . . . you won’t want to upset our evening,” he murmured somehow affectedly, negligently.
“Here, too, of course, you’ve guessed by my face that I love you?”
“Yes, partly by your face.”
“Well, and I’ve long guessed by Tatyana Pavlovna’s face that she’s in love with me. Don’t look at me so ferociously, Tatyana Pavlovna, it’s better to laugh! Better to laugh!”
She suddenly turned quickly to me and peered at me piercingly for half a minute.
“You watch out!” She shook her finger at me, but so seriously that it could no longer refer to my stupid joke, but was a warning about something else: “Does he intend to start something?”
“So, Andrei Petrovich, you really don’t remember how you and I met for the first time in our lives?”
“By God, I’ve forgotten, my friend, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I only remember that it was somehow very long ago and took place somewhere . . .”
“Mama, do you remember visiting the village where I grew up, I think it was before I was six or seven, and above all, did you really come to that village once, or did I only imagine, as in a dream, that I saw you there for the first time? I’ve long wanted to ask you, but I kept putting it off. Now the time has come.”
“Why, yes, Arkashenka, yes! I visited Varvara Stepanovna there three times; the first time I came when you were only one year old, the second when you were already going on four, and then when you were just turning six.”
“Well, there, I’ve been wanting to ask you about it all month.”
Mother simply glowed from the quick rush of memories, and she asked me with feeling:
“Arkashenka, do you really remember me from then?”
“I don’t remember and don’t know anything, only something of your face has remained in my heart all my life, and, besides that, the knowledge remained that you were my mother. I see that village now as in a dream, I even forget my nanny. I have a drop of recollection of Varvara Stepanovna, only because she eternally had her cheek bound from toothache. I also remember huge trees near the house, lindens, I think, then strong sunlight sometimes coming through the open windows, a front garden with flowers, a path, and you, mama, I remember clearly only at one moment, when you took me to communion in the church there, and lifted me up to receive the gifts and kiss the chalice; that was in summer, and a dove flew across under the cupola, from window to window . . .”
“Lord! That’s just how it all was,” my mother clasped her hands, “and I remember that little dove as if it were now. You gave a start just at the chalice and cried, ‘A dove, a little dove!’”
“Your face, or something of it, its expression, remained so well in my memory that five years later, in Moscow, I recognized you at once, though no one told me then that you were my mother. And when I first met Andrei Petrovich, I was taken from the Andronikovs; before that, I had quietly and cheerfully vegetated with them for five years on end. I remember their government apartment in detail, and all those ladies and girls, who have all now aged so much here, and the house full of everything, and Andronikov himself, how he himself brought all the provisions from town in bags—fowl, perch, and suckling pig—and at table ladled out the soup for us, in place of his wife, who was too uppish, and the whole table always laughed at that, and he first of all. The young ladies there taught me French, but most of all I loved Krylov’s fables, 37learned many of them by heart, and recited one to Andronikov each day, going straight to his tiny study, whether he was busy or not. Well, so it was through a fable that you and I became acquainted, Andrei Petrovich . . . I see you’re beginning to remember.”
“I remember a thing or two, my dear, namely, that you recited something to me then . . . a fable, I believe, or a passage from Woe from Wit? 38What a memory you have, though!”
“Memory! What else! I’ve remembered only this all my life.”
“Well, well, my dear, you even liven me up.”
He even smiled, and right after him my mother and sister began to smile. Trustfulness was returning; but Tatyana Pavlovna, having arranged the treats on the table and sat down in the corner, went on piercing me with her nasty gaze.
“It so happened,” I went on, “that suddenly, one bright morning, a friend of my childhood appeared, Tatyana Pavlovna, who always appeared unexpectedly in my life, as in the theater, and took me in a carriage, and brought me to a grand house, to a magnificent apartment. You were then staying with Mme. Fanariotov, Andrei Petrovich, in her empty house, which she had once bought from you; she was abroad at the time. I had always worn short jackets; here suddenly I was dressed in a pretty blue frock coat and excellent linen. Tatyana Pavlovna fussed over me all that day and brought me many things; and I kept walking through the empty rooms, looking at myself in all the mirrors. In this way, at around ten o’clock the next morning, wandering about the apartment, I suddenly walked, quite by chance, into your study. I’d already seen you the day before, when I was brought there, but only fleetingly, on the stairs. You were coming down the stairs to get into a carriage and go somewhere; you had arrived in Moscow alone then, after an extremely long absence, and for a short time, so that you were snapped up by everybody and almost didn’t live at home. Meeting me and Tatyana Pavlovna, you only drew out a long ‘Ah!’—and didn’t even stop.”
“He describes it with particular love,” observed Versilov, turning to Tatyana Pavlovna; she turned away and didn’t answer.
“I can see you then as if it were now, flourishing and handsome. It’s surprising how you’ve managed to age and lose your good looks in these nine years—forgive my frankness; however, back then you were already around thirty-seven, but I even gazed at you in wonder: you had such astonishing hair, almost perfectly black, with a lustrous shine, and not a trace of gray; moustache and side-whiskers of a jeweler’s finish—there’s no other way to put it; your face was matte pale, not the sickly pale that it is now, but like the face of your daughter Anna Andreevna, whom I had the honor of meeting today; burning dark eyes and gleaming teeth, especially when you laughed. You precisely burst out laughing as you looked me over when I came in; I had little discernment then, only my heart rejoiced at your smile. That morning you were in a dark blue velvet jacket, on your neck a scarf of bright Solferino crimson over a magnificent shirt with Alençon lace, standing in front of a mirror with a notebook in your hand and rehearsing, declaiming Chatsky’s last monologue, and especially his last cry: