His heart was pounding so that he was afraid he might not hear the stranger tiptoeing up the stairs. He did not understand the fact, but he felt everything with some tenfold fullness. As if his earlier dream had merged with reality. Velchaninov was brave by nature. He liked sometimes to carry his fearlessness in the face of danger to the point of a certain swagger—even if no one was watching him, just so as to admire himself. But now there was something else there as well. The recent hypochondriac and insecure whiner was completely transformed; this was now a totally different man. Nervous, inaudible laughter was bursting from his breast. From behind the closed door he could guess the stranger’s every move.
“Ah! there he is coming up, he’s here, he’s looking around; listening down the stairs; barely breathing, sneaking… ah! he’s taken hold of the handle, he’s pulling, trying! he was counting on finding my place unlocked! That means he knows I sometimes forget to lock it! He’s pulling the handle again; what, does he think the hook will pop out? He’s sorry to go away! Sorry to leave with nothing?”
And, indeed, everything must certainly have been happening as he pictured it: someone was indeed standing outside the door and kept gently, inaudibly trying the lock and pulling at the handle and—“so, naturally, had some purpose.” But Velchaninov already had the solution of the problem ready, and, with a sort of ecstasy, was waiting for the right moment, calculating and taking aim; he had an invincible desire to suddenly lift the hook, suddenly fling the door open and find himself face-to-face with the “bogey.” To say, “And what are you doing here, my dear sir?”
And so it happened; seizing the moment, he suddenly lifted the hook, pushed the door, and—nearly bumped into the gentleman with crape on his hat.
III
PAVEL PAVLOVICH TRUSOTSKY
The man as if froze on the spot. The two stood opposite each other on the threshold, and looked fixedly into each other’s eyes. Several moments passed in this way, and suddenly—Velchaninov recognized his visitor!
At the same time, the visitor evidently also guessed that Velchaninov recognized him perfectly: it flashed in his eyes. In one instant his whole face as if melted into the sweetest smile.
“I surely have the pleasure of speaking with Alexei Ivanovich?” he nearly sang out in the tenderest voice, comically unsuited to the circumstances.
“But can it be that you are Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky?” Velchaninov, too, finally managed to say with a puzzled look.
“You and I were acquainted some nine years ago in T———, and—if you will permit me to recall—were friendly acquaintances.”
“Yes, sir… maybe so, sir… but it’s now three o’clock, and you spent a whole ten minutes trying to see if my door was locked or not…”
“Three o’clock!” the visitor cried, taking out his watch and even being ruefully surprised. “Exactly right: three! Excuse me, Alexei Ivanovich, I ought to have realized it when I came in; I’m even ashamed. I’ll stop by and have a talk with you one of these days, but now…”
“Ah, no! if we’re to have a talk, let’s have it right now, please!” Velchaninov recollected himself. “Kindly come this way, across the threshold; to my rooms, sir. You yourself, of course, were intending to come in, and not just to pass by at night to check the locks…”
He was agitated and at the same time as if taken aback, and felt unable to collect himself. He was even ashamed: no mystery, no danger—nothing remained of the whole phantasmagoria; there turned up only the stupid figure of some Pavel Pavlovich. But, nevertheless, he by no means believed it was as simple as that; he had a vague and fearful presentiment of something. Seating the visitor in an armchair, he impatiently sat down on his bed, a step away from the armchair, leaned forward, his palms resting on his knees, and waited irritably for the man to speak. He greedily examined and recalled him. But, strangely, the man was silent and seemed not to understand at all that he was “obliged” to speak immediately; on the contrary, he himself looked at his host with eyes that were as if expecting something. It might have been that he was simply timid, feeling some initial awkwardness, like a mouse in a mousetrap; but Velchaninov got angry.
“What’s with you!” he cried. “I don’t suppose you’re a fantasy or a dream! Have you shown up here to play the dead man? Explain yourself, my dear!”
The visitor stirred, smiled, and began warily: “As far as I can see, you find it, first of all, even striking that I came at such an hour and—under such particular circumstances, sir… So that, remembering all past things and how we parted, sir—I find it strange even now, sir… However, I did not even have any intention of calling on you, and if it has turned out this way, it was—accidentally, sir…”
“How, accidentally! I saw you from the window, running across the street on tiptoe!”
“Ah, you saw!—well, then perhaps you now know more about it all than I do, sir! But I’m only vexing you… Here’s the thing, sir: I came here three weeks ago, on my own business… I am Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, you recognized me yourself, sir. My business is that I’m soliciting to be transferred to another province and to another job, sir, to a post with a considerable promotion… But, anyhow, all that is also not it, sir!… The main thing, if you wish, is that it’s the third week I’ve been hanging around here, and it seems I’ve been putting my business off on purpose—that is, about the transfer, sir—and, really, even if it does come off, for all I know I may forget that it came off, sir, and not move out of your Petersburg in the mood I’m in. I’m hanging around as if I’d lost my purpose, and as if I were even glad I’d lost it—in the mood I’m in, sir…”
“What mood is that?” Velchaninov was frowning.
The visitor raised his eyes to him, raised his hat, and now with firm dignity pointed to the crape.
“Yes—here’s what mood, sir!”
Velchaninov gazed dumbly now at the crape, now into his visitor’s face. Suddenly a blush poured instantly over his cheeks, and he became terribly agitated.
“Not Natalia Vassilievna!”
“Herself, sir. Natalia Vassilievna! This past March… Consumption, and almost suddenly, sir, in some two or three months! And I’ve been left—as you see!”
Having said this, the visitor, with strong emotion, spread his arms to both sides, holding his hat with the crape in his left hand and bowing his bald head very deeply for at least ten seconds.
This look and this gesture suddenly as if refreshed Velchaninov; a mocking and even provocative smile flitted over his lips—but as yet only for a moment: the news of the death of this lady (with whom he had been acquainted so long ago and whom he had so long ago managed to forget)—now made an unexpectedly staggering impression on him.
“How can it be!” he muttered the first words that came to his lips. “And why didn’t you come straight to tell me?”
“I thank you for your sympathy, I see and appreciate it, despite…”
“Despite?”
“Despite so many years of separation, you have now treated my grief and even myself with such perfect sympathy that I naturally feel grateful. That is the only thing I wished to say, sir. And it is not that I doubted my friends, even now I can find the most sincere friends here, sir (take just Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov alone), but my acquaintance with you, Alexei Ivanovich (friendship, perhaps—for I recall it with gratitude)—was nine years ago, sir, you never came back to us; there were no letters on either side…”