“I don’t know whether that’s a known fact . . . or whether it’s so,” I murmured, “but I’m surprised that you consider it all so natural, and yet was it long ago that Kraft spoke, worried, sat among us? Can it be that you’re not at least sorry for him?”
“Oh, of course I’m sorry for him, and that’s quite another matter; but in any case Kraft himself pictured his death as a logical conclusion. It turns out that everything said about him at Dergachev’s was correct: he left behind a notebook this big, full of learned conclusions, based on phrenology, craniology, and even mathematics, proving that the Russians are a second-rate breed of people, and that, consequently, it’s not at all worth living as a Russian. If you wish, what’s most characteristic here is that it’s possible to draw any logical conclusion you like, but to up and shoot oneself as the result of a conclusion—that, of course, doesn’t happen all the time.”
“At least we must give credit to his character.”
“And maybe not only that,” Vasin observed evasively, but clearly he had in mind stupidity or weakness of reason. All this irritated me.
“You yourself spoke about feelings yesterday, Vasin.”
“Nor do I deny them now; but in view of the accomplished fact, something in him presents itself as so badly mistaken that a severe view of the matter somehow unwillingly drives out pity itself.”
“You know, I could tell earlier by your eyes that you would revile Kraft, and so as not to hear it, I decided not to seek your opinion; but you’ve voiced it yourself, and I’m unwillingly forced to agree with you; but still I’m displeased with you! I feel sorry for Kraft!”
“You know, we’ve gone too far . . .”
“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, “but it’s comforting at least that in such cases those who are left alive, the judges of the deceased, can always say of themselves, ‘Though the man who shot himself was worthy of all regret and indulgence, we’re still left, and therefore there’s no point in grieving too much.’”
“Yes, naturally, if you see it from that angle . . . Ah, yes, it seems you were joking! And most wittily. This is my tea time and I’ll have it brought at once—you’ll probably keep me company.”
And he went out, measuring my suitcase and bundle with his eyes.
I actually had wanted to say something malicious, in revenge for Kraft; and I had said it as I could, but, curiously, he had first taken my thought that “the likes of us are left ” as serious. But be that as it may, he was still more right than I in everything, even feelings. I admitted all that without any displeasure, but I decidedly felt that I did not like him.
When tea was brought, I explained to him that I was asking for his hospitality for only one night, and that if it was impossible, he should say so and I would move to the inn. Then I briefly told him my reasons, stating simply and directly that I had quarreled definitively with Versilov, without going into details. Vasin listened attentively, but without any emotion. Generally, he only answered questions, though he answered affably and with sufficient fullness. I passed over in total silence the letter with which I had come to him previously to ask for advice; and I explained my previous call as a simple visit. Having given Versilov my word that no one would know of the letter besides me, I considered myself as no longer having the right to tell anyone about it. For some reason it became particularly repugnant to me to inform Vasin of certain things. Of certain things, but not of others: I still managed to get him interested in my stories about those scenes in the corridor and with the women in the neighboring room, culminating in Versilov’s apartment. He listened with great attention, especially about Stebelkov. He asked me to repeat twice how Stebelkov inquired about Dergachev, and he even fell to pondering; however, he still smiled in the end. It suddenly seemed to me at that moment that nothing could ever disconcert Vasin; however, the first thought of it, I remember, presented itself to me in a form quite flattering to him.
“Generally, I couldn’t gather much from what Mr. Stebelkov said,” I concluded about Stebelkov. “He speaks somehow confusedly . . . and there seemed to be something light-minded in him . . .”
Vasin immediately assumed a serious look.
“He indeed has no gift of eloquence, but that’s only at first sight. He has managed to make extremely apt observations; and generally—these are more people of business, of affairs, than of generalizing thought; they should be judged from that angle . . .”
Exactly as I had guessed earlier.
“Anyhow he acted up terribly at your neighbors’, and God knows how it might have ended.”
About the neighbors, Vasin told me that they had lived there for about three weeks and had come from somewhere in the provinces; that their room was extremely small, and everything indicated that they were very poor; that they were sitting and waiting for something. He didn’t know that the young one had advertised in the newspapers as a teacher, but he had heard that Versilov had visited them; this had happened while he was away, and the landlady had told him. The neighbors, on the contrary, avoided everybody, even the landlady herself. In the last few days he had begun to notice that something was indeed not right with them, but there had been no such scenes as today’s. All this talk of ours about the neighbors I recall now with a view to what followed; meanwhile a dead silence reigned behind their door. Vasin listened with particular interest when I said that Stebelkov thought it necessary to talk with the landlady about them, and that he had twice repeated, “You’ll see, you’ll see!”
“And you will see,” Vasin added, “that it didn’t come into his head for nothing; he has a very keen eye in that regard.”
“So, then, in your opinion, the landlady should be advised to throw them out?”
“No, I’m not saying they should be thrown out, but so that some sort of story doesn’t happen . . . However, all such stories end one way or another . . . Let’s drop it.”
As for Versilov’s visit to the women, he resolutely refused to offer any conclusion.
“Everything is possible; the man felt money in his pocket . . . However, it’s also probable that he simply offered charity; it suits his tradition, and maybe also his inclination.”
I told him what Stebelkov had babbled that day about the “nursing baby.”
“Stebelkov in this case is completely mistaken,” Vasin said with particular seriousness and particular emphasis (and that I remember all too well).
“Stebelkov,” he went on, “sometimes trusts all too much in his practical sense, and because of that rushes to a conclusion in accordance with his logic, which is often quite perspicacious; yet the event may in fact have a much more fantastic and unexpected coloration, considering the characters involved. And so it happened here: having partial knowledge of the matter, he concluded that the baby belongs to Versilov; however, the baby is not Versilov’s.”
I latched on to him, and here is what I learned, to my great astonishment: the baby was Prince Sergei Sokolsky’s. Lydia Akhmakov, either owing to her illness, or simply because of her fantastic character, sometimes behaved like a crazy woman. She became infatuated with the prince still before Versilov, and the prince “had no qualms about accepting her love,” as Vasin put it. The liaison lasted only a moment: they quarreled, as is already known, and Lydia chased the prince away, “of which, it seems, the man was glad.”
“She was a very strange girl,” Vasin added, “it’s even very possible that she was not always in her right mind. But, as he was leaving for Paris, the prince had no idea of the condition in which he had left his victim, and he didn’t know it to the very end, until his return. Versilov, having become the young person’s friend, offered to marry her precisely in view of the emergent circumstance (which it seems the parents did not suspect almost to the end). The enamored girl was delighted, and saw in Versilov’s proposal ‘not only his self-sacrifice,’ which, however, she also appreciated. However, he certainly knew how to do it,” Vasin added. “The baby, a girl, was born a month or six weeks before term, was placed somewhere in Germany, then Versilov took it back, and it is now somewhere in Russia, maybe in Petersburg.”