Demons, p.15
Demons, page 15
"Here she really hesitated, so that she even stopped for a whole minute and suddenly blushed. I got scared. She begins again, not so much in a moving tone—that wouldn't be like her—but so imposingly:
“‘I wish you,' she says, 'to understand me fully and correctly,' she says. 'I sent for you now because I consider you a perspicacious and sharp-witted man, capable of forming an accurate observation' (such compliments!). 'You,' she says, 'will also understand, of course, that this is a mother speaking to you... Nikolai Vsevolodovich has experienced certain misfortunes and many upheavals in his life. All this,' she says, 'could influence his frame of mind. Of course,' she says, 'I am not talking about madness—that could never be!' (spoken firmly and with pride). 'But there could be something strange, peculiar, a certain turn of thought, an inclination towards certain special views' (these are all her exact words, and I marveled, Stepan Trofimovich, at how exactly Varvara Petrovna is able to explain the matter. A lady of high intelligence!). 'I myself, at least,' she says, 'have noticed a certain constant restlessness in him, and an urge towards peculiar inclinations. But I am a mother, while you are an outsider and are therefore capable, given your intelligence, of forming a more independent opinion. I implore you, finally' (uttered just like that: 'I implore'), 'to tell me the whole truth, without any contortions, and if at the same time you give me your promise never to forget in future that I have spoken with you confidentially, you may expect of me a complete and henceforth permanent readiness to show my gratitude at every opportunity.' Well, what do you think of that, sir!"
"You... you astound me so..." Stepan Trofimovich stammered, "that I don't believe you..."
"No, but observe, observe," Liputin picked up, as if he had not even heard Stepan Trofimovich, "how great the trouble and worry must be, if such a question is addressed from such a height to such a man as me, and if she stoops so far as to beg for secrecy. What can it be, sir? Has she received some unexpected news about Nikolai Vsevolodovich?"
"I don't know... any news... it's some days since I've seen... but I must observe to you..." Stepan Trofimovich went on stammering, apparently barely able to master his thoughts, "but I must observe to you, Liputin, that if this was told you confidentially, and now, in front of everyone, you..."
"Absolutely confidentially! God strike me dead if I... And so what if now... what of it, sir? Are we strangers here, even taking Alexei Nilych?"
"I do not share such a view; no doubt the three of us here will keep the secret; it is you, the fourth, that I am afraid of, and I do not believe you in anything!"
"Oh, come now, sir! I'm the one who has most to gain, it's to me the eternal gratitude was promised! And, in this same connection, I precisely wanted to mention an extremely strange occurrence—or more psychological, so to speak, than simply strange. Yesterday evening, under the influence of that conversation at Varvara Petrovna's (you can imagine what an impression it made on me), I addressed Alexei Nilych with a distant question: 'You,' I say, 'used to know Nikolai Vsevolodovich even before, abroad and in Petersburg; what do you think,' I say, 'regarding his intelligence and abilities?' So this gentleman answers laconically, as his way is, that he is a man 'of refined mind and sound judgment,' he says. 'And didn't you ever notice over the years,' I say, 'some deviation of ideas, as it were, or a peculiar turn of thought, or as if some madness, so to speak?' In short, I repeated Varvara Petrovna's own question. And just imagine, Alexei Nilych suddenly turned thoughtful and scowled, just as he's doing now. 'Yes,' he says, 'at times it seemed to me there was something strange.' Note, besides, that if there could seem something strange even to Alexei Nilych, then what might turn out in reality, eh?"
"Is this true?" Stepan Trofimovich turned to Alexei Nilych.
"I wish not to speak of it," Alexei Nilych replied, suddenly raising his head and flashing his eyes. "I want to contest your right, Liputin. You have no right to this occurrence about me. I by no means told my whole opinion. Though I was acquainted in Petersburg, that was long ago, and though I met him now, I still know Nikolai Stavrogin very little. I ask that you remove me and... and this all resembles gossip."
Liputin spread his arms in the guise of oppressed innocence.
"A gossip, am I! And maybe also a spy? It's easy for you to criticize, Alexei Nilych, since you remove yourself from everything. But you wouldn't believe it, Stepan Trofimovich, take even Captain Lebyadkin, sir, one might think he's stupid as a... that is, it's even shameful to say as what—there's a Russian comparison signifying the degree— but he, too, considers himself offended from Nikolai Vsevolodovich, though he bows to his sharp wits. 'The man amazes me,' he says, 'a wise serpent' (his very words). So I asked him (still under yesterday's same influence and after talking with Alexei Nilych), 'And what do you think for your own part, Captain, is your wise serpent crazy, or not?' And, can you believe, it was as if I'd given him a lash from behind without asking permission; he simply jumped in his seat. 'Yes,' he says... 'Yes,' he says, 'only that,' he says, 'cannot affect. . .' but affect what—he didn't finish saying; and then he turned so ruefully thoughtful, so thoughtful that even his drunkenness dropped off him. We were sitting in Filippov's tavern, sir. And only maybe half an hour later he suddenly banged his fist on the table: 'Yes,' he says, 'maybe he is crazy, only that cannot affect...' and again he didn't finish saying what it couldn't affect. Of course, I'm telling you only an extract of the conversation, but the thought is clear; whoever you ask, they all come up with the same thought, even if it never entered anybody's head before: 'Yes,' they say, 'crazy—very intelligent, but maybe also crazy.’”
Stepan Trofimovich sat deep in thought, his mind working intensely.
"And why does Lebyadkin know?"
"Be so good as to make that inquiry of Alexei Nilych, who has just called me a spy. I am a spy, yet I don't know—while Alexei Nilych knows all the innermost secrets and keeps silent, sir."
"I know nothing, or little," the engineer replied, with the same irritation. "You pour drink into Lebyadkin in order to find out. You also brought me here in order to find out, and to get me to say. So you are a spy!"
"I've never yet poured any drink into him, sir, and he's not worth the money, with all his secrets—that's how much he means to me, I don't know about you. On the contrary, he's throwing money around, though twelve days ago he came to beg me for fifteen kopecks, and he's pouring champagne into me, not I into him. But you've given me an idea, and if need be I will get him drunk, precisely in order to find things out, and perhaps I will learn, sir... all your little secrets, sir," Liputin snarled back spitefully.
Bewildered, Stepan Trofimovich observed the two quarreling men. They were giving themselves away and, moreover, were being quite unceremonious about it. It occurred to me that Liputin had brought this Alexei Nilych to us precisely so as to draw him into the conversation he wanted through a third person—his favorite maneuver.
"Alexei Nilych knows Nikolai Vsevolodovich only too well," he went on irritably, "but he conceals it. And as for your question about Captain Lebyadkin, he met him before any of us, in Petersburg, five or six years ago, in that little-known epoch, if I may put it so, of Nikolai Vsevolodovich's life when he had not yet even thought of doing us the happiness of coming here. Our prince, one can only conclude, surrounded himself at that time in Petersburg with a very odd choice of acquaintances. It was then, I believe, that he became acquainted with Alexei Nilych."
"Beware, Liputin, I warn you that Nikolai Vsevolodovich is intending to be here in person soon, and he knows how to stand up for himself."
"And how do I deserve this, sir? I am the first one to shout that he's a man of the most refined and elegant mind, and I set Varvara Petrovna completely at ease yesterday in that regard. 'Only,' I said to her, 'I cannot vouch for his character.' Yesterday Lebyadkin said it in so many words: 'I've suffered from his character,' he said. Ah, Stepan Trofimovich, it's fine for you to shout about gossiping and spying, and that, notice, when you yourself have already extorted everything from me, and with such exceeding curiosity besides. And Varvara Petrovna, she really put her finger on it yesterday: 'You had a personal interest in the matter,' she says, 'that's why I'm turning to you.' And what else, sir! Why talk about purposes, when I swallowed a personal offense from His Excellency in front of a whole gathering! It would seem I have reasons to be interested, not just for the sake of gossip. Today he shakes your hand, and tomorrow, for no reason at all, to repay your hospitality, he slaps your face in front of a whole honorable gathering, the moment he pleases. From fat living, sir! And the main thing with them is the female sex: butterflies and strutting roosters! Landowners with little wings like antique cupids, lady-killer Pechorins![51] It's easy for you, Stepan Trofimovich, an inveterate bachelor, to talk this way and call me a gossip on account of His Excellency. But if you, being the fine fellow you still are, were to marry a pretty and young one, you might just keep your door bolted against our prince, and build barricades in your own house! But why go far: if this Mademoiselle Lebyadkin, who gets whipped with knouts, weren't mad and bow-legged, by God, I'd think it was she who was the victim of our general's passions, and that this is what Captain Lebyadkin has suffered 'in his familial dignity,' as he himself puts it. Only maybe it contradicts his refined taste, but that's no great trouble to him. Any berry will do, so long as it comes his way while he's in a certain mood. You talk about gossip, but I'm not shouting about it, the whole town is clattering, while I just listen and yes them—yessing's not forbidden, sir." "The town is shouting? What is it shouting about?" "That is, it's Captain Lebyadkin, in a drunken state, who's shouting for the whole town to hear—well, and isn't that the same as if the whole marketplace was shouting? How am I to blame? I'm interested only as among friends, sir, because I still consider myself among friends here." He looked around at us with an innocent air. "There was an incident here, sirs, just think: it seems His Excellency, while still in Switzerland, supposedly sent three hundred roubles by a most noble girl and, so to speak, humble orphan, whom I have the honor of knowing, to be given to Captain Lebyadkin. But a little later Lebyadkin received most precise information, I won't say from whom, but also from a most noble and therefore most reliable person, that the sum sent was not three hundred roubles, but a thousand! ... 'That means,' Lebyadkin is shouting, 'that the girl filched seven hundred roubles from me,' and he wants to demand it back even if it's through the police, at least he's threatening to, and he's clattering all over town..."
"That is mean, mean of you!" the engineer suddenly jumped up from his chair.
"But you yourself are that most noble person who confirmed to Lebyadkin on Nikolai Vsevolodovich's behalf that it was not three hundred but a thousand roubles that were sent. The captain himself told me in a drunken state."
"That... that is an unfortunate misunderstanding. Someone made a mistake and it came out... that is nonsense, and you are mean! ..."
"But I also want to believe that it's nonsense, and I listen to it with regret, because, whether you like it or not, a most noble girl is mixed up, first of all, with the seven hundred roubles and, second, in some obvious intimacy with Nikolai Vsevolodovich. It's nothing for His Excellency to disgrace the noblest girl or to defame another man's wife, just as in that mishap with me, sir! He'll come across some man full of magnanimity and make him cover up someone else's sins with his honorable name. Just the same way as I suffered, sir; I'm talking about myself, sir..."
"Beware, Liputin!" Stepan Trofimovich rose from his chair and turned pale.
"Don't believe it, don't believe it! Someone made a mistake, and Lebyadkin is drunk..." the engineer exclaimed in inexpressible agitation. "It will all be made clear, but I can no longer... it's baseness... and enough, enough!"
He ran out of the room.
"What's the matter? I'm going with you!" Liputin, all aflutter, jumped up and ran after Alexei Nilych.
VII
Stepan Trofimovich stood in thought for a moment, glanced at me somehow without looking, took his hat and stick, and slowly walked out of the room. I went after him as before. Passing through the gate, he noticed that I was following him and said:
"Ah, yes, you can serve as a witness ... de l'accident. Vous m'accompagnerez; n'est-ce pas?"[xlv]
"Stepan Trofimovich, are you really going there again? Think what may come of it!"
With a pathetic and lost smile—a smile of shame and utter despair, and at the same time of some strange rapture—he whispered to me, stopping for a moment:
"I really cannot marry 'someone else's sins'!"
This was just the phrase I had been waiting for. At last this little phrase, cherished, concealed from me, had been spoken, after a whole week of hedging and contortions. I decidedly lost my temper.
"And such a dirty, such a... base thought could come to you, to Stepan Verkhovensky, to your lucid mind, to your kind heart, and... even prior to Liputin!"
He looked at me, made no reply, and continued on his way. I did not want to lag behind. I wanted to testify before Varvara Petrovna. I would have forgiven him if, in his womanish faintheartedness, he had simply believed Liputin, but it was clear now that he had conceived it all even long before Liputin, and Liputin had merely confirmed his suspicions and added fat to the fire. He had not hesitated to suspect the girl from the very first day, still without any grounds, not even Liputin's. He had explained Varvara Petrovna's despotic actions to himself only by her desperate wish to paint over the aristocratic peccadilloes of her priceless Nicolas by a marriage with an honorable man! I certainly wanted to see him punished for it.
"O Dieu qui est si grand et si bon![xlvi] Oh, who will comfort me!" he exclaimed, having gone another hundred steps or so and suddenly stopped.
"Let's go home now, and I'll explain everything to you!" I cried out, forcing him to turn back towards his house.
"It's him! Stepan Trofimovich, is it you? You?" a fresh, playful young voice, like a sort of music, was heard beside us.
We had not noticed anything, but suddenly there beside us was Lizaveta Nikolaevna, on horseback, with her usual companion. She stopped her horse.
"Come, come quickly!" she called loudly and gaily. "I haven't seen him for twelve years and I recognized him, but he... Don't you recognize me?"
Stepan Trofimovich seized the hand she offered him and kissed it reverently. He looked at her as if in prayer and could not utter a word.
"He recognizes me, and he's glad! Mavriky Nikolaevich, he's delighted to see me! Then why haven't you come for two whole weeks? Auntie kept persuading us you were sick and couldn't be disturbed; but I know auntie lies. I stamped my feet and abused you, but I absolutely, absolutely wanted you to be the first to come, that's why I didn't send for you. God, he hasn't changed in the least!" she examined him, leaning down from her saddle, "It's funny how he hasn't changed! Ah, no, there are wrinkles, lots of little wrinkles around the eyes, and on the cheeks, and some gray hair, but the eyes are the same! And have I changed? Have I? But why don't you say something?"
I remembered at that moment having been told of how she was almost ill when she was taken to Petersburg at the age of eleven; during her illness she had allegedly cried and asked for Stepan Trofimovich.
"You ... I ..." he babbled now, in a voice breaking with joy, "I just cried out, 'Who will comfort me!' and then heard your voice ... I regard it as a miracle et je commence à croire,"[xlvii]
"En Dieu? En Dieu qui est là-haut et qui est si grand et si bon?[xlviii] You see, I remember all your lectures by heart. Mavriky Nikolaevich, how he taught me then to believe en Dieu, qui est si grand et si bon! And do you remember your story of how Columbus discovered America and everybody shouted: 'Land, land!' My nurse Alyona Frolovna says that I raved during the night after that and shouted 'Land, land!' in my sleep. And do you remember telling me the story of Prince Hamlet? And do you remember describing to me how poor emigrants were transported from Europe to America? It was all untrue, I learned it all later, how they were transported, but how well he lied to me then, Mavriky Nikolaevich, it was almost better than the truth! Why are you looking at Mavriky Nikolaevich that way? He is the best and most faithful man on the whole earth, and you must come to love him as you do me! Il fait tout ce que je veux.[xlix] But, dear Stepan Trofimovich, it must mean you're unhappy again, if you're crying out in the middle of the street about who will comfort you? Unhappy, is it so? Is it?"
"I am happy now..."
"Does auntie offend you?" she went on without listening, "that same wicked, unjust, and eternally priceless auntie of ours! And do you remember how you used to throw yourself into my arms in the garden, and I'd comfort you and weep—don't be afraid of Mavriky Nikolaevich; he has known everything about you, everything, for a long time; you can weep on his shoulder as much as you like, and he'll stand there as long as you like! ... Lift your hat, take it all the way off for a moment, raise your head, stand on tiptoe, I'm going to kiss you on the forehead now, as I kissed you that last time, when we were saying good-bye. See, that young lady is admiring us through the window... Well, closer, closer. God, how gray he's become!"
