“But I’ve been disgraced . . . in front of her! In front of her! I was derided in her eyes, and he . . . shoved me!” I cried, beside myself.
“Really? Ah, poor boy, I’m so sorry for you . . . So they . . . de-ri-ded you there!”
“You’re laughing, you’re laughing at me! You think it’s funny!”
He quickly tore his arm from my hand, put his hat on, and laughing, laughing with genuine laughter now, left the apartment. Why should I go after him? What for? I had understood everything and—lost everything in a single moment! Suddenly I saw mama; she had come down from upstairs and was timidly looking around.
“He’s gone?”
I silently embraced her, and she me, tightly, tightly, pressing herself against me.
“Mama, my own, can you possibly stay here? Let’s go now, I’ll protect you, I’ll work for you like at hard labor, for you and for Liza . . . Let’s leave them all, all, and go away. We’ll be by ourselves. Mama, do you remember how you came to see me at Touchard’s and how I refused to recognize you?”
“I remember, my own, all my life I’ve been guilty before you, I gave birth to you, but I didn’t know you.”
“He’s the guilty one, mama, it’s he who is guilty of everything; he never loved us.”
“No, he did love us.”
“Let’s go, mama.”
“How can I go away from him, is he happy, do you think?”
“Where’s Liza?”
“Lying down. She came back and felt unwell; I fear for her. What, are they very angry with him there? What will they do with him now? Where did he go? What was this officer threatening here?”
“Nothing will happen to him, mama, nothing will ever happen to him, and nothing can, he’s that kind of man! Here’s Tatyana Pavlovna, ask her, if you don’t believe me, here she is.” (Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly came into the room.) “Good-bye, mama. I’ll come back to you right away, and when I do, I’ll ask you the same thing again . . .”
I ran off; I couldn’t see anybody at all, not only Tatyana Pavlovna, and mama tormented me. I wanted to be alone, alone.
V
BUT BEFORE I reached the end of the street, I felt that I couldn’t walk around senselessly bumping into these alien, indifferent people; but what to do with myself? Who needs me and—what do I need now? Mechanically, I trudged to Prince Sergei Petrovich’s, without thinking of him at all. He wasn’t home. I told Pyotr (his man) that I’d wait in the study (as I had done many times). His study was a big, very high room, cluttered with furniture. I wandered into the darkest corner, sat down on the sofa, and, placing my elbows on the table, propped my head in both hands. Yes, that was the question: “What do I need now?” And if I could have formulated the question then, the last thing I could have done was answer it.
But I was no longer able either to think or to ask properly. I’ve already made known above that by the end of those days I was “crushed by events”; I sat there now and everything was spinning like chaos in my mind. “Yes, I failed to see everything in him and perceived nothing,” I fancied at moments. “He laughed in my face just now: it wasn’t at me; it’s all Bjoring here, and not me. Two days ago, over dinner, he already knew everything and was gloomy. He picked up my stupid confession in the tavern and distorted all that concerned any truth, only what did he need the truth for? He doesn’t believe half a word of what he wrote to her. He only needed to insult her, to insult her senselessly, not even knowing what for, snatching at a pretext, and I gave him a pretext . . . The act of a rabid dog! Does he want to kill Bjoring now, or what? Why? His heart knows why! And I know nothing of what’s in his heart . . . No, no, even now I don’t know. Can he love her with so much passion? Or hate her with so much passion? I don’t know, but does he know himself? What was that I said to mama, that ‘nothing can happen to him’? What did I mean to say by that? Have I lost him or not?
“. . . She saw how he shoved me . . . Did she also laugh or not? I’d have laughed! The spy’s been beaten, the spy! . . .
“What does it mean” (it suddenly flashed in me), “what does it mean, his including in that nasty letter that the document hasn’t been burned at all, but still exists? . . .
“He won’t kill Bjoring, but he’s certainly sitting in the tavern now, listening to Lucia! And maybe after Lucia he’ll go and kill Bjoring. Bjoring shoved me, almost hit me; did he hit me? Bjoring scorns to fight even with Versilov, how can he go fighting with me? Maybe I should kill him tomorrow with a revolver, waiting in the street . . .” And I let this thought pass through my head quite mechanically, without lingering over it in the least.
At moments it was as if I dreamed that the door would open now, Katerina Nikolaevna would come in, give me her hand, and we’d both laugh . . . Oh, my dear student! I imagined it, that is, wished for it, when it was already very dark in the room. “But was it so long ago that I stood before her, saying good-bye to her, and she gave me her hand and laughed? How could it happen that in such a short time such a terrible distance appeared! Simply go to her and talk it over right now, this minute, simply, simply! Lord, how is it that a totally new world has begun so suddenly! Yes, a new world, totally, totally new . . . And Liza, and the prince, that’s still the old . . . Here I am now at the prince’s. And mama—how could she live with him, if it’s so? I could, I can do anything, but she? What will happen now?” And here, as in a whirl, the figures of Liza, Anna Andreevna, Stebelkov, the prince, Aferdov, everybody flashed tracelessly in my sick brain. But my thoughts were growing more formless and elusive; I was glad when I managed to comprehend one of them and get hold of it.
“I have my ‘idea’!” I thought suddenly. “But is that so? Don’t I just repeat it by rote? My idea is darkness and solitude, but is it possible now to crawl back into the former darkness? Ah, my God, I haven’t burned the ‘document’! I simply forgot to burn it two days ago. I’ll go back and burn it in a candle, precisely in a candle; I don’t know whether what I think now . . .”
It had long been dark, and Pyotr brought in candles. He stood over me and asked whether I had eaten. I only waved my hand. However, an hour later he brought me tea, and I greedily drank a big cup. Then I inquired what time it was. It was half-past eight, and I wasn’t even surprised that I had been sitting there for five hours already.
“I’ve come to you three times now,” said Pyotr, “but it seemed you were asleep.”
I didn’t remember him coming in. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt terribly frightened at having “slept,” got up and began pacing the room so as not to “fall asleep” again. Finally, my head began to ache badly. At exactly ten o’clock the prince came in, and I was surprised that I had waited for him; I had totally forgotten about him, totally.
“You’re here, and I went to your place looking for you,” he said to me. His face was dark and stern, without the slightest smile. There was a fixed idea in his eyes.
“I’ve struggled all day and used all measures,” he went on focusedly. “Everything kept collapsing, and there’s horror to come . . .” (N.B. He never went to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.) “I saw Zhibelsky, he’s an impossible man. You see: first I must have the money, and then we’ll see. And if, with the money, it still doesn’t work out, then . . . But today I decided not to think about it. Let’s just get the money today, and tomorrow we’ll see about it all. Your winnings from three days ago are still intact to the kopeck. It’s three thousand minus three roubles. Subtracting your debt, you’re left with three hundred and forty in change. Take that and another seven hundred to make a thousand, and I’ll take the remaining two thousand. Then we’ll sit down at Zershchikov’s at two different ends and try to win ten thousand—maybe we’ll do something, and if we don’t win, then . . . Anyhow, that’s the only way left.”
He gave me a fateful look.
“Yes, yes!” I cried suddenly, as if resurrecting. “Let’s go! I’ve only been waiting for you . . .”
I’ll note that I hadn’t thought about roulette for a moment in all those hours.
“But the baseness? But the meanness of the act?” the prince asked suddenly.
“That we’re going to play roulette? No, that’s everything!” I cried. “Money is everything! It’s only we who are saints, and Bjoring has sold himself. Anna Andreevna has sold herself, and Versilov—have you heard that Versilov’s a maniac? A maniac! A maniac!”