The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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      CHAPTER XI

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       BUT I HAD HARDLY stepped out on the muddy wet pavement of the Prospect when I ran against a passerby, who was hastening somewhere with his head down, apparently lost in thought. To my intense amazement I recognized my old friend Ichmenyev. It was an evening of unexpected meetings for me. I knew that the old man had been taken seriously unwell three days before; and here I was meeting him in such wet weather in the street. Moreover it had never been his habit to go out in the evening, and since Natasha had gone away, that is, for the last six months, he had become a regular stay-at-home. He seemed to be exceptionally delighted to see me, like a man who has at last found a friend with whom he can talk over his ideas. He seized my hand, pressed it warmly, and without asking where I was going, drew me along with him. He was upset about something, jerky and hurried in his manner. “Where had he been going?” I wondered.

      It would have been tactless to question him. He had become terribly suspicious, and sometimes detected some offensive hint, some insult, in the simplest inquiry or remark.

      I looked at him stealthily. His face showed signs of illness he had grown much thinner of late. His chin showed a week’s growth of beard. His hair, which had turned quite grey, hung down in disorder under his crushed hat, and lay in long straggling tails on the collar of his shabby old greatcoat. I had noticed before that at some moments he seemed, as it were, forgetful, forgot for instance that he was not alone in the room, and would talk to himself, gesticulating with his hands. It was painful to look at him.

      “Well, Vanya, well?” he began. “Where were you going? I’ve come out, my boy, you see; business. Are you quite well?”

      “Are you quite well?” I answered. “You were ill only the other day, and here you are, out.”

      The old man seemed not to hear what I said and made no answer.

      “How is Anna Andreyevna?”

      “She’s quite well, quite well …. Though she’s rather poorly, too. She’s rather depressed … she was speaking of you, wondering why you hadn’t been. Were you coming to see us now, Vanya, or not? Maybe I’m keeping you, hindering you from something,” he asked suddenly, looking at me distrustfully and suspiciously.

      The sensitive old man had become so touchy and irritable that if I had answered him now that I wasn’t going to see them, he would certainly have been wounded, and have parted from me coldly. I hastened to say that I was on my way to look in on Anna Andreyevna, though I knew I was already late, and might not have time to see Natasha at all.

      “That’s all right,” said the old man, completely pacified by my answer, “that’s all right.”

      And he suddenly sank into silence and pondered, as though he had left something unsaid.

      “Yes, that’s all right,” he repeated mechanically, five minutes later, as though coming to himself after a long reverie. “Hm! You know, Vanya, you’ve always been like a son to us. God has not blessed us … with a son, but He has sent us you. That’s what I’ve always thought. And my wife the same … yes! And you’ve always been tender and respectful to us, like a grateful son. God will bless you for it, Vanya, as we two old people bless and love you…. Yes!”

      His voice quavered. He paused a moment.

      “Well…well? You haven’t been ill, have you? Why have you not been to see us for so long?”

      I told him the whole incident of Smith, apologizing for having let Smith’s affairs keep me, telling him that I had besides been almost ill, and that with all this on my hands it was a long way to go to Vassilyevsky Island (they lived there then). I was almost blurting out that I had nevertheless made time to see Natasha, but stopped myself in time.

      My account of Smith interested my old friend very much. He listened more attentively. Hearing that my new lodging was damp, perhaps even worse than my old one, and that the rent was six roubles a month, he grew positively heated. He had become altogether excitable and impatient. No one but Anna Andreyevna could soothe him at such moments, and even she was not always successful.

      “Hm! This is what comes of your literature, Vanya! It’s brought you to a garret, and it will bring you to the graveyard I said so at the time. I foretold it! … Is B. still writing reviews?”

      “No, he died of consumption. I told you so before, I believe.”

      “Dead, hm, dead! Yes, that’s just what one would expect. Has he left anything to his wife and children? You told me he had a wife, didn’t you? … What do such people marry for?”

      “No, he’s left nothing,” I answered.

      “Well, just as I thought! “ he cried, with as much warmth as though the matter closely and intimately concerned him, as though the deceased B. had been his brother. “Nothing! Nothing, you may be sure. And, do you know, Vanya, I had a presentiment he’d end like that, at the time when you used to be always singing his praises, do you remember? It’s easy to say left nothing! Hm! … He’s won fame. Even supposing it’s lasting fame, it doesn’t mean bread and butter. I always had a foreboding about you, too, Vanya, my boy. Though I praised you, I always had misgivings. So B.’s dead? Yes, and he well might be! It’s a nice way we live here, and … a nice place! Look at it!”

      And with a rapid, unconscious movement of his hand he pointed to the foggy vista of the street, lighted up by the streetlamps dimly twinkling in the damp mist, to the dirty houses, to the wet and shining flags of the pavement, to the cross, sullen, drenched figures that passed by, to all this picture, hemmed in by the dome of the Petersburg sky, black as though smudged with Indian ink. СКАЧАТЬ