III
THAT SAME DAY I had to see Efim Zverev, one of my former high-school comrades, who had dropped out of school and enrolled in some specialized higher institute in Petersburg. He himself is not worth describing, and in fact I wasn’t friends with him; but I had looked him up in Petersburg; he could (owing to various circumstances that are also not worth talking about) tell me the address of a certain Kraft, a man I needed very much, once he came back from Vilno. Zverev expected him precisely that day or the next, and had informed me of it two days before. I had to walk to the Petersburg side, but I wasn’t tired at all.
I found Zverev (who was also about nineteen years old) in the courtyard of his aunt’s house, where he was living temporarily. He had just had dinner and was walking around the courtyard on stilts; he informed me at once that Kraft had arrived the day before and stopped off at his former apartment, also there on the Petersburg side, and that he wished to see me himself as soon as possible, to inform me immediately of something necessary.
“He’s going away again,” Efim added.
Since in my present circumstances it was of capital importance for me to see Kraft, I asked Efim to take me at once to his apartment, which turned out to be two steps away in a lane. But Zverev declared that he had met Kraft an hour before and that he had gone to see Dergachev.14
“So let’s go to Dergachev’s, why do you keep making excuses—are you scared?”
Indeed, Kraft might spend a long time at Dergachev’s, and then where was I to wait for him? I wasn’t scared of going to Dergachev’s, but I didn’t want to, though this was already the third time Efim tried to drag me there. And this “scared” he always pronounced with the nastiest smile on my score. It wasn’t a matter of being scared, I declare beforehand, and if I was afraid, it was of something quite different. This time I decided to go; it was also just two steps away. As we went, I asked Efim whether he still intended to run away to America.
“I may wait a little,” he answered with a slight laugh.
I didn’t much like him, I even didn’t like him at all. His hair was very blond, he had a full, much too white face, even indecently white, to the point of infantility, and he was even taller than I, but you wouldn’t have taken him for more than seventeen years old. I had nothing to talk about with him.
“And what’s there? Always a crowd?” I asked for the sake of solidity.
“But why do you keep getting scared?” he laughed again.
“Go to the devil!” I got angry.
“Not a crowd at all. Only acquaintances come, and all our people, rest assured.”
“But what the devil business is it of mine whether they’re all your people or not? Am I one of your people? Why should they go and trust me?”
“I’m bringing you, and that’s enough. They’ve even heard about you. Kraft can also speak for you.”
“Listen, will Vasin be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he is, nudge me as soon as we go in and point to Vasin—as soon as we go in, you hear?”
I had heard a lot about Vasin and had long been interested.
Dergachev lived in a little wing in the courtyard of a wooden house that belonged to a merchant’s widow, but the whole wing was at his disposal. There were three good rooms in all. The four windows all had their blinds lowered. He was a technician and had a job in Petersburg; I had heard in passing that he had been offered a profitable private post in the provinces and that he was about to set off.
As soon as we went into the tiny front hall, we heard voices; there seemed to be a heated argument and someone shouted: “Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat.”1715
I was actually somewhat worried. Of course, I wasn’t used to company, even whatever it might be. In high school I had addressed all my comrades informally, but I was comrades with almost none of them; I had made myself a corner and lived in my corner. But that was not what troubled me. In any case, I had promised myself not to get into any arguments and to say only what was most necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me; above all—don’t argue.
In the room, which was even much too small, there were some seven people, ten including the women. Dergachev was twentyfive years old, and he was married. His wife had a sister and another female relation; they also lived at Dergachev’s. The room was furnished haphazardly, though sufficiently, and was even clean. On the wall hung a lithographic portrait, but a very cheap one, and in the corner an icon without a casing, but with a lighted icon lamp. Dergachev came over to me, shook hands, and invited me to sit down.
“Sit down, they’re all our people here.”
“Be so kind,” a young woman added at once. She was rather pretty, very modestly dressed, and having bowed slightly to me, she at once went out. This was his wife, and it seemed by the look of it that she, too, had been arguing, but had now gone to nurse the baby. The other two ladies remained in the room—one very short, about twenty years old, in a black dress, and also not a bad-looking sort, while the other was about thirty, dry and sharp-eyed. They sat, listened very much, but did not enter into the conversation.
As far as the men were concerned, they were all standing, and the only ones seated, apart from me, were Kraft and Vasin. Efim pointed them out to me at once, because I was now seeing Kraft as well for the first time in my life. I got up from my seat and went over to make their acquaintance. I’ll never forget Kraft’s face: no special beauty, but something as if all too meek and delicate, though personal dignity showed everywhere. Twenty-six years old, rather lean, of above-average height, blond, his face grave but soft; overall there was something gentle in him. And yet, if you had asked me, I would never have traded my maybe even very banal face for his face, which I found so attractive. There was something in his face that I wouldn’t want to have in mine, something all too calm in a moral sense, something like a sort of secret, unconscious pride. However, I was probably unable to judge so literally then; it seems to me now that I judged that way then, that is, after the event.
“I’m very glad you’ve come,” said Kraft. “I have a letter that concerns you. We’ll sit here a while and then go to my place.”
Dergachev was of medium height, broad-shouldered, very dark-haired, with a big beard; in his glance once could see quickwittedness and restraint in everything, a certain constant wariness; though he was mainly silent, he was obviously in control of the conversation. Vasin’s physiognomy did not impress me very much, though I had heard he was extremely intelligent: blond, with big light gray eyes, a very open face, but at the same time there was something as if excessively hard in it: one sensed little sociability, but his gaze was decidedly intelligent, more intelligent than Dergachev’s, more profound—the most intelligent in the room; however, maybe I’m exaggerating it all now. Of the rest, I recall only two faces among all those young men: one tall, swarthy man with black side-whiskers, who talked a lot, about twenty-seven years old, a teacher or something of that sort, and also a young fellow of my age, in a long Russian vest—with a wrinkle in his face, taciturn, a listener. He turned out later to be of peasant stock.
“No, that’s not the way to put it,” began the teacher with black side-whiskers, who was the most excited of them all, obviously taking up the previous argument again. “I’m not saying anything about mathematical proofs, but this idea, which I’m ready to believe even without mathematical proofs . . .”
“Wait, Tikhomirov,” Dergachev interrupted loudly, “the latest arrivals don’t understand. This, you see,” he suddenly turned to me alone (and, I confess, if his intention was to examine me as a newcomer or make me speak, the method was very clever on his part; I immediately sensed it and prepared myself ), “this, you see, is Mr. Kraft, whose character and solid convictions are quite well-known to us all. Starting from a rather ordinary fact, he has arrived at a rather extraordinary conclusion, which has surprised everybody. He has deduced that the Russian people are a second-rate people . . .”