The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings. Федор Достоевский

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СКАЧАТЬ nonsense. But I’ll tell you what, Vanya, you’d much better let me know where it is you always go. What is your business? May I know? You keep running off somewhere every day. You don’t work….”

      “But why do you want to know? I’ll tell you perhaps afterwards. You’d better explain why you came to see me yesterday when I told you myself I shouldn’t be at home.”

      “I remembered afterwards. But I forgot at the time. I really did want to speak to you about something. But before everything I had to comfort Alexandra Semyonovna. ‘Here,’ says she, ‘is a person, a friend, who has turned up. Why not invite him?’ And here she’s been pestering me about you for the last four days. No doubt they’ll let me off forty sins for the bergamot in the next world, but I thought why shouldn’t he spend an evening with us in a friendly way? So I had recourse to strategy: I wrote to you that I had such business that if you didn’t come it would quite upset our apple-cart.”

      I begged him not to do like this in the future, but to speak to me directly. But this explanation did not altogether satisfy me.

      “Well, but why did you run away from me this morning?” I asked.

      “This morning I really had business. I’m not telling the least little fib.”

      “Not with the prince?”

      “Do you like our tea?” Alexandra Semyonovna asked, in honied accents. For the last five minutes she had been waiting for me to praise the tea, but it never occurred to me.

      “It’s splendid, Alexandra Semyonovna, superb. I have never drunk anything like it.”

      Alexandra Semyonovna positively glowed with satisfaction and flew to pour me out some more.

      “The prince!” cried Masloboev, “the prince! That prince, my boy, is a rogue, a rascal such as …. Well! I can tell you, my boy, though I’m a rogue myself, from a mere sense of decency I shouldn’t care to be in his skin. But enough. Mum’s the word! That’s all I can tell you about him.”

      “But I’ve come, among other things, on purpose to ask you about him. But that will do later. Why did you give my Elena sweetmeats and dance for her when I was away yesterday? And what can you have been talking about for an hour and a half!”

      “Elena is a little girl of twelve, or perhaps eleven, who is living for the time at Ivan Petrovitch’s,” Masloboev exclaimed, suddenly addressing Alexandra Semyonovna. “Look, Vanya, look,” he went on, pointing at her, “how she flushed up when she heard I had taken sweets to an unknown girl. Didn’t she give a start and turn red as though we’d fired a pistol at her? … I say, her eyes are flashing like coals of fire! It’s no use, Alexandra Semyonovna, it’s no use to try and hide it! She’s jealous. If I hadn’t explained that it was a child of eleven she’d have pulled my hair and the bergamot wouldn’t have saved me!”

      “It won’t save you as it is!”

      And with these words Alexandra Semyonovna darted at one bound from behind the tea-table, and before Masloboev had time to protect his head she snatched at a tuft of his hair and gave it a good pull.

      “So there! So there! Don’t dare to say I’m jealous before a visitor! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”

      She was quite crimson, and though she laughed, Masloboev caught it pretty hotly.

      “He talks of all sorts of shameful things,” she added seriously turning to me.

      “Well, Vanya, you see the sort of life I lead! That’s I must have a drop of vodka,” Masloboev concluded, setting his hair straight and going almost at a trot to the decanter But Alexandra Semyonovna was beforehand with him. She skipped up to the table, poured some out herself, handed it him, and even gave him a friendly pat on the cheek. Masloboev winked at me, triumphantly clicked with his tongue, an solemnly emptied his glass.

      “As for the sweets, it’s difficult to say,” he began, sitting down on the sofa beside me. “I bought them at a greengrocer’s shop the other day when I was drunk, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was to support home industries and manufactures, don’t know for sure. I only remember that I was walking along the street drunk, fell in the mud, clutched at my hair and cried at being unfit for anything. I forgot about the sweets, of course so they remained in my pocket till yesterday when I sat down on your sofa and sat on them. The dances, too, were a question of inebriety. Yesterday I was rather drunk, and when I’m drunk, if I’m contented with my lot I sometimes dance. That’s all. Except, perhaps, that that little orphan excited my pity besides, she wouldn’t talk to me, she seemed cross. And so danced to cheer her up and gave her the fruit-drops.”

      “And you weren’t bribing her to try and find something out from her? Own up, honestly, didn’t you come then on purpose knowing I shouldn’t be at home, to talk to her tete-a-tete, to get something out of her? You see, I know you spent an hour and a half with her, declared that you had known her dead mother, and that you questioned her about something.” Masloboev screwed up his eyes and laughed roguishly.

      “Well, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea,” he said. “Vanya, that was not so. Though, indeed, why shouldn’t I question her if I got a chance; but it wasn’t that. Listen, my friend, though as usual I’m rather drunk now, yet you may be sure that with evil intent Filip will never deceive you, with evil intent, that is.”

      “Yes, but without evil intent?

      “Well … even without evil intent. But, damn it all, let’s have a drink and then to business. It’s not a matter of much consequence,” he went on after a drink; “that Bubnov woman had no sort of right to keep the girl. I’ve gone into it all. There was no adoption or anything of that sort. The mother owed her money, and so she got hold of the child. Though the Bubnov woman’s a sly hag and a wicked wretch, she’s a silly woman like all women. The dead woman had a good passport and so everything was all right. Elena can live with you, though it would be a very good thing if some benevolent people with a family would take her for good and bring her up. But meanwhile, let her stay with you. That’s all right. I’ll arrange it all for you. The Bubnov woman won’t dare to stir a finger. I’ve found out scarcely anything certain about Elena’s mother. She was a woman of the name of Salzmann.”

      “Yes, so Nellie told me.”

      “Well, so there the matter ends. Now, Vanya,” he began with a certain solemnity, “I’ve one great favour to ask of you. Mind you grant it. Tell me as fully as you can what it is you’re busy about, where you’re going, and where you spend whole days at a time. Though I have heard something, I want to know about it much more fully.”

      Such solemnity surprised me and even made me uneasy.

      “But what is it? Why do you want to know? You ask so solemnly.”

      “Well, Vanya, without wasting words, I want to do you a service. You see, my dear boy, if I weren’t straight with you I could get it all out of you without being so solemn. But you suspect me of not being straight — just now, those fruit-drops; I understood. But since I’m speaking with such seriousness, you may be sure it’s not my interest but yours I’m thinking of. So don’t have any doubts, but speak out the whole truth.”

      “But what sort of service? Listen, Masloboev, why won’t you tell me anything about the prince? That’s what I want. That would be a service to me.”

      “About the prince? H’m! Very well, I’ll tell you straight out. СКАЧАТЬ