“Yes, we would—but how?”
“Well, listen now: Grushnitsky is especially angry with him—so he has the principal role! He will find something wrong with some sort of silliness and will challenge Pechorin to a duel . . . Wait now, this is where it gets interesting . . . He will challenge him to a duel: good! And everything—the challenge, the preparations, the stipulations—will be as solemn and awful as possible. I will take care of this. I will be your second, my poor friend! Good! Only here is the hitch: we won’t put bullets in the pistols. I posit that Pechorin will lose his nerve—I will put them at six paces apart, damn it! Are you all in agreement, gentlemen?”
“Glorious plan! We agree! Why not?” resounded from all sides.
“And you, Grushnitsky?”
I awaited Grushnitsky’s answer with agitation. A cold fury possessed me at the thought that were it not for this happenstance, then I would have been made a laughing stock by these idiots. If Grushnitsky hadn’t agreed to it, I would have thrown myself upon him. But after a certain silence, he stood up from his place and, extending a hand to the captain, said very importantly, “Very well, I agree to it.”
It is difficult to describe the rapture of the whole honored company at this.
I returned home, agitated by two different feelings. The first was sorrow. “Why do they all hate me so much?” I thought. Why? Have I insulted someone? No. Surely I am not one of those people who can incite ill will at first appearance? And I felt a poisonous malevolence, little by little, filling my soul.
“Watch yourself, Mr. Grushnitsky!” I was saying, walking up and down my room. “You can’t play with me like this. You may pay dearly for the approval of your stupid comrades. I am not your toy!”
I didn’t sleep all night. By morning, I was as yellow as a sour orange.
In the morning I met the young princess at the well. “Are you unwell?” she said, looking at me intently.
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“I didn’t either . . . I have accused you . . . Perhaps it was unwarranted? But explain yourself, and I can forgive you everything . . .”
“Everything?”
“Everything . . . only tell me the truth . . . and quickly . . . Can’t you see that I have thought about it so much, tried to explain everything, to justify your behavior. Maybe you are afraid of certain obstacles in the form of my relatives . . . This is nothing. When they find out . . . (her voice quivered) I will prevail upon them. Or is it your personal situation . . . but you know that I could sacrifice everything for the person I loved . . . Oh, say something quickly, take pity . . . You don’t despise me—don’t you?” She grabbed my hand. Princess Ligovsky walked in front of us with Vera’s husband and didn’t see anything. But we could be seen by the cure-seekers strolling past, the most curious scandalmongers of all, and I quickly freed my hand from her passionate grip.
“I will tell you the whole truth,” I replied to the young princess, “I won’t justify, nor will I explain my actions. I don’t love you . . .”
Her lips paled slightly . . .
“Leave me alone,” she said, only just distinguishably.
I shrugged my shoulders, turned, and walked off.
June 14
I sometimes despise myself . . . is that not why I despise others? I have become incapable of noble impulses. I am afraid to seem ridiculous to myself. Another person in my place would offer the princess
son coeur et sa fortune.
19
But the word “marry” has some sort of magical power over me. As passionately as I can love a woman, if she gives me to feel even slightly that I should marry her—good-bye love! My heart turns to stone, and nothing will warm it up again. I am prepared for every sacrifice but this one. I would place my life on a card twenty times over—and my honor too . . . but my freedom I will not sell. Why do I value it so much? What does it do for me? Where am I planning to go? What am I expecting of the future? Exactly nothing, really. It is some kind of inborn fear, an inexplicable sense of foreboding . . . There are people who are instinctively afraid of spiders, cockroaches, mice . . . And shall I admit the truth? When I was still a child, an old woman told my fortune to my mother. She predicted that I would die at the hands of an evil woman. At the time, this struck me deeply. An insuperable disgust toward marriage was born in my soul . . . Meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will come true. I will try, at least, to make sure that it comes true as late as possible.
June 15
Yesterday a conjurer called Applebaum arrived here. A long poster appeared on the doors of the restaurant, notifying the most venerable public of the fact that the above-mentioned conjurer, acrobat, chemist, and optician would have the honor of giving a magnificent performance on today’s date at eight o’ clock in the evening, in the noble assembly rooms (otherwise known as the restaurant). Tickets for two rubles and fifty
kopeck
s.
Everyone intends to watch the amazing conjurer. Even the Princess Ligovsky, despite her daughter’s malaise, has taken a ticket for herself.
Today, after dinner, I walked past Vera’s window. She was sitting on the balcony alone. A note fell at my feet:
Today, after nine in the evening, come to me and take the grand staircase. My husband has left for Pyatigorsk, and he will not return until tomorrow morning. My men and housemaids will not be at home. I have given them all tickets, and the Princess’s staff has gone too. I will expect you, come without fail.
“Aha!” I thought. “Finally things are turning out my way.” At eight o’clock I went to see the conjurer. The audience had gathered just before nine. The performance began. In the seats of the back row I recognized the lackeys and housemaids employed by Vera and the Princess Ligovsky. They were all here, every single one. Grushnitsky was sitting in the first row with a lorgnette. The conjurer addressed him every time he needed a handkerchief, a pocket-watch, a ring, and the rest.
Grushnitsky hasn’t bowed to me for a while now, and the last two times he has looked at me rather impertinently. He will be reminded of this when it comes to settling our score.
Before ten, I stood up and left.
It was as dark as pitch in the courtyard. Heavy, cold clouds had settled on the pinnacles of the surrounding mountains. Only now and then, the dying wind sounded in the tops of the poplars, surrounding the restaurant. People were crowded around its windows. I went down the hill and hastened my steps as I turned into the gate. Suddenly it seemed that someone was following me. I stopped and looked around. In the darkness I couldn’t make out anything. However, out of carefulness, I walked around the house, as though I was having a stroll. Walking past the Princess Mary’s window, I heard steps behind me again. A person, wrapped up in a greatcoat, ran past me. This alarmed me. However, I stole onto the veranda and hurriedly ran up the dark staircase. The door opened. A small hand grasped my hand . . .
“No one saw you?” said Vera in a whisper, pressing herself to me.
“No one!”
“Now do you believe that I love you? Oh, I hesitated for a long time, I was tormented . . . but you can do with me what you like.”
Her heart pounded; her hands were as cold as ice. The reproaches, the jealousies, the complaints began. She was demanding of me that I confess everything to her, saying that she would endure my betrayal with submissiveness, because all she wanted was my happiness. I didn’t completely believe this, but I reassured her with my vows, promises, and so on.
“So, you are not marrying Mary? You don’t love her? But she thinks . . . You know, she is madly in love with you, the poor thing!”
Around two o’clock after midnight I opened the window, and tying together two shawls and holding onto the column, I descended from the top balcony to the lower one. Princess Mary’s lights were still lit. The curtain wasn’t totally drawn, and I was able to cast a curious peek into the interior of the room. Mary was sitting on her bed, her hands crossed in her lap. Her thick hair was gathered up under a night bonnet stitched with lace. A big crimson kerchief covered her little white shoulders. Her little feet were hidden in colorful Persian slippers. She was sitting motionless, her head lowered onto her breast. There was an open book in front of her on the table, but her eyes were motionless, full of indescribable sadness, and it seemed that they had been running over one and the same page for the hundredth time, since her thoughts were far away . . .
At that moment, someone moved behind a bush. I leapt from the balcony onto the turf. An invisible hand grabbed me by the shoulder.
“Aha!” said a rough voice. “You’ve been caught! Visiting princesses at night, indeed!”
“Hold him tighter!” said another voice, jumping out from behind a corner.
This was Grushnitsky and the dragoon captain.
I hit the latter on the head with my fist, knocked him from his feet, and fled into the bushes. I was familiar with all the paths of the garden that covered the slope opposite our houses.
“Thieves! Help!” they cried. A rifle shot rang out. A smoking wad fell almost at my feet.
A minute later I was already in my room, undressed and lying down. My lackey had barely closed the door and locked it when Grushnitsky and the captain started knocking.
“Pechorin! Are you sleeping? Are you there?” yelled the captain.
“Get up—there are thieves about . . . Circassians!”
“I have a cold,” I replied, “and I am afraid to make it worse.”
They left. It was a mistake to respond to them: they would have looked for me in the garden for another hour. In the meantime a terrible alarm was raised. A Cossack came galloping from the fortress. Everyone stirred. They started to search for Circassians in every bush—and, it goes without saying, they didn’t find anything. But I imagine many remained firm in the conviction that had the garrison demonstrated more courage and haste, then at least two dozen of the predators would have been stopped in their tracks.
June 16
This morning at the well there was talk and nothing else about the nocturnal attack of the Circassians. Having drunk the prescribed number of glasses of Narzan, I walked the length of the linden avenue about ten times and encountered Vera’s husband, who had just arrived from Pyatigorsk. He took me by the arm, and we went to the restaurant to have breakfast. He was terribly worried about his wife.
“How frightened she was last night!” he was saying. “And that it would happen at the moment of my absence.”
We settled down to breakfast by the door that led to a corner room in which ten or so young men were sitting, and amongst their number was Grushnitsky. Fate, for a second time, had provided me with the occasion of overhearing a conversation that was supposed to decide his fate. He didn’t see me, and therefore I couldn’t be suspicious of his designs. But this only augments his guilt in my eyes.
“It can’t really be that they were Circassians,” someone said. “Did anyone see them?”
“I will tell you the whole story,” replied Grushnitsky, “only, please, don’t give me away. Here is how it was: yesterday a man whom I won’t name comes to me and tells me that just before ten o’clock in the evening he saw someone stealing up to the Ligovsky house. I must remark that the Princess Ligovsky was here, but the young princess was at home. So he and I set off to lie in wait for the lucky man under the window.”
I admit that I took fright at this, even though my interlocutor was very busy with his breakfast: he could have overheard things that would be rather unpleasant for him, if Grushnitsky had guessed the truth. But blind with jealousy, he didn’t suspect it.
“So you see,” continued Grushnitsky, “we set off just simply to scare him, having taken a gun with us, loaded with blank cartridges. Toward two o’clock we were waiting in the garden. Finally, and God knows where he appeared from, only it wasn’t from the window, because it wasn’t open—he must have come out of the glass door that is behind the columns—finally, I say, we see someone coming down from the balcony . . . What kind of princess can she be? Ah? Well, I do declare, young Muscovite ladies! After this, what can you trust? We wanted to capture him, but he broke free, and, like a hare, fled into the bushes. Then I shot at him.”
A grumble of disbelief could be heard around Grushnitsky.
“You don’t believe me?” he continued. “I give you my honest, noble word, that all this is the absolute truth, and in evidence, if you like, I will give the gentleman’s name.”
“Tell us, tell us—who is it, then?” could be heard from every side.
“Pechorin,” replied Grushnitsky.
At that moment, he raised his eyes—I was standing in the doorway opposite him. He blushed horribly. I walked up to him and said slowly and distinctly:
“I am very sorry to have come in after you have already given your honest word in the confirmation of this disgusting slander. My presence saves you from further depravity.”
Grushnitsky leapt up from his place and made motions of becoming impassioned.
“I request of you,” I continued in the same tone, “I request of you that you retract your words right now. You know very well that this is a fabrication. I don’t think that the indifference of a woman toward your shining merits deserves such terrible vengeance. Consider this well: in maintaining your opinion, you are losing the right to be called a noble man and are risking your life.”