‘What, I disgrace you, milksop? You? I can only bring you honour, not dishonour you!’
He leaped to his feet, and this time could not be restrained; but Gavrila Ardalionovich had also plainly thrown caution to the winds.
‘Get out of here with your talk about honour!’ he cried with malice.
‘What did you say?’ the general boomed, turning pale and taking a step towards him.
‘That I have only to open my mouth for ...’ Ganya howled suddenly, but did not finish. Both stood facing each other, extremely shaken, especially Ganya.
‘Ganya, stop it!’ cried Nina Alexandrovna, rushing forward to restrain her son.
‘A lot of nonsense, on every side!’ snapped Varya angrily. ‘That will do, Mama,’ she said, seizing her.
‘I spare him only for mother’s sake,’ Ganya announced in a tragic tone.
‘Speak!’ roared the general in a perfect frenzy. ‘Speak, on pain of a father’s curse ... speak!’
‘Well now, your curse, you really frighten me with that! And who’s to blame for the fact that you’ve been going around like a madman for eight days now? Eight days, you see, I’ve been keeping count ... Just mind you don’t drive me to the limit: I’ll say it all ... Why did you drag yourself to the Yepanchins yesterday? And he calls himself the old man, the grey hair, the paterfamilias! Very fine, I must say!’
‘Be quiet, Ganka!’ shouted Kolya. ‘Be quiet, you fool!’
‘But what about me, how have I insulted him?’ insisted Ippolit, but still, as it were, in the same mocking tone. ‘Why does he call me a screw, you heard him? He was the one who pestered me; arrived just now and started talking about some Captain Yeropegov. I’ve absolutely no desire for your company, General; I’ve avoided it before, as you well know. What do I care about your Captain Yeropegov, come now, admit it! I didn’t come all the way here for Captain Yeropegov. I merely expressed aloud to him my opinion that perhaps this Captain Yeropegov never existed at all. Then he let all hell break loose.’
‘He never existed, beyond any shadow of doubt!’ snapped Ganya.
But the general stood like a man dumbfounded, and merely gazed around him senselessly. His son’s words had shocked him with their exceeding frankness. For a moment or two he was even unable to find any words. And, at last, only when Ippolit burst into laughter at Ganya’s reply and shouted: ‘Well, there you are, you heard him, even your own son says Captain Yeropegov didn’t exist!’ the old man babbled, utterly disconcerted:
‘Kapiton Yeropegov, not Captain ... Kapiton ... retired lieutenant-colonel, Yeropegov ... Kapiton.’
‘And there wasn’t any Kapiton, either!’ Ganya had completely lost his temper now.
‘Wh ... what do you mean there wasn’t?’ muttered the general, and the colour rushed to his face.
‘Oh, that’s enough!’ Ptitsyn and Varya tried to calm them.
‘Shut up, Ganka!’ Kolya cried again.
But the intervention seemed to jog the general’s memory.
‘What do you mean, there wasn’t? How could he not have existed?’ he assailed his son threateningly.
‘Because he didn’t. He didn’t exist, and that’s that, and it’s quite impossible! There. Back off, I tell you.’
‘And this is my son ... this is my own son, whom I ... Oh Lord! Yeropegov, Yeroshka Yeropegov didn’t exist!’
‘There, first it’s Kapitoshka, and now it’s Yeroshka!’ Ippolit put in, turning the screw.
‘Kapitoshka, sir, Kapitoshka, not Yeroshka! Kapiton, Kapitan Alexeyevich, Kapiton, rather ... lieutenant-colonel ... retired ... married Marya ... Marya Petrovna Su ... Su ... friend and companion-at-arms ... Sutugova, all the way, even from the time we were cadets. I shed my blood for him ... deflected the bullet ... but he was killed. Wasn’t any Kapitoshka Yeropegov, indeed! Didn’t exist!’
The general was shouting excitedly, but in such a way that one might have supposed the matter concerned one thing, and the shouting another. To be sure, on another occasion he would, of course, have endured things far more offensive than the news of the complete non-existence of Kapiton Yeropegov, would have shouted, caused a scene, been beside himself with rage, but even so, in the end he would have retired upstairs to his room to take a nap. But now, because of the exceeding strangeness of the human heart, it so transpired that it was precisely an insult such as the doubt in the existence of Yeropegov that was destined to fill the cup to overflowing. The old man turned pale, raised his arms, and shouted:
‘Enough! My curse ... away from this house! Kolya, fetch my bag, I’m going ... away!’
He went out, hurrying and in a state of exceeding wrath. After him rushed Nina Alexandrovna, Kolya and Ptitsyn.
‘Well, what have you done now?’ said Varya to her brother. ‘He’s probably going to go trailing over there again. The disgrace, the disgrace!’
‘And don’t go thieving!’ cried Ganya, almost choking with fury; suddenly his gaze encountered Ippolit; Ganya almost began to shake. ‘And you, my dear sir,’ he cried, ‘ought to remember that you are, after all, in someone else’s house, and ... enjoying hospitality, and should not be provoking an old man who has obviously lost his mind ...’
Ippolit also seemed to shudder in a kind of convulsion, but in an instant regained control.
‘I don’t quite agree with you that your papa has lost his mind,’ he replied calmly. ‘On the contrary, it seems to me that his mind has even been growing stronger of late, truly it does; you don’t believe it? He’s become so cautious, suspicious, tries to find out everything, weighs every word ... I mean, he started telling me about this Kapitoshka with a purpose; imagine, he wanted to suggest to me ...’
‘Oh, what the devil do I care what he wanted to suggest to you! I would ask you not to scheme and not to be evasive with me, sir!’ screeched Ganya. ‘If you also know the real reason why the old man is in such a state (and you’ve been spying on me these past five days so
much that you probably do), then you really ought not to be provoking the ... poor man, and tormenting my mother by exaggerating the affair, because the whole affair is rubbish, just a drunken episode, no more, not even proven in any way, and I wouldn’t give the price of a table-leg for it ... But you have to wound and spy because you’re ... you’re ...’
‘A screw,’ Ippolit said with a sarcastic smile.
‘Because you’re trash, for half an hour you tormented people, thinking to frighten them into supposing you were going to shoot yourself with your pistol, which was unloaded, and with which you made such a cowardly spectacle of yourself, you failed suicide, you burst spleen ... on two legs. I gave you hospitality, you put on weight, stopped coughing, and yet you repay ...’
‘Two words only, if you will be so good, sir; it’s Varvara Ardalionovna I’m staying with, not you; you have given me no hospitality, and I even think that you’re enjoying Mr Ptitsyn’s hospitality yourself. Four days ago I asked my mother to find an apartment in Pavlovsk for me and to move here herself, because I really do feel better here, although I haven’t put on any weight, and still have my cough. Mother informed me last night that the apartment is ready, and I hasten to inform you on my part that, having thanked your dear mother and sister, I shall be moving to my quarters this very day, something I decided last night. I’m sorry, I interrupted you; I believe you still had much to say.’
‘Oh, if that’s how it is ...’ Ganya began to tremble.
‘If that’s how it is, then allow me to sit down,’ added Ippolit, very calmly sitting down on the chair the general had been seated on. ‘I mean, I’m still sick, you see; well, now I am ready to listen to you, all the more so as this is our last conversation and even, perhaps, our last meeting.’
Ganya suddenly felt ashamed.
‘Believe me when I say I shall not lower myself to settling scores with you,’ he said, ‘and if you ...’
‘You needn’t be so snooty,’ Ippolit broke in. ‘I, for my part, on the very first day I moved here, vowed to myself that I wouldn’t deny myself the pleasure of telling you everything in no uncertain terms, and even in the frankest manner, when we said farewell. I intend to fulfil my vow in a moment - after you’ve finished, of course.’
‘And I request you to leave this room.’
‘You’d do better to talk; I mean, you’ll regret not having spoken your mind.’
‘Stop it, Ippolit, all this is horribly shameful, please be so good as to stop it!’ said Varya.
‘Anything to please a lady,’ Ippolit laughed, getting up. ‘Very well, Varvara Ardalionovna, for you I’m prepared to shorten it, but only shorten it, because some sort of explanation between myself and your dear brother has become absolutely necessary, and I can’t possibly bring myself to go while leaving misunderstandings behind me.’
‘Quite simply, you’re a scandalmonger,’ exclaimed Ganya, ‘and so you can’t bring yourself to go without starting some scandal.’
‘There, you see,’ Ippolit observed dispassionately, ‘you really can’t control yourself, can you? Truly, you’ll regret not having spoken your mind. Once again I give you the floor. I’m waiting.’
Gavrila Ardalionovich was silent, and looked at him contemptuously.
‘No, you’re not. You plan to assert your character - as you wish. For my part, I shall be as brief as possible. Two or three times today I have heard a reproach concerning hospitality; that is unfair. In inviting me to stay with you, you yourself were trying to catch me in your net; you counted on me taking revenge on the prince. You had also heard that Aglaya Ivanovna had expressed sympathy for me and had read my confession. Calculating, for some reason, that I would therefore wholly consign myself to your interests, you hoped that in me you might perhaps find an accomplice. I shall not explain myself in more detail! I demand on your part neither admission nor confirmation; it’s enough for me to leave you with your conscience, as I think that now we understand each other very well.’
‘But you’re creating Lord only knows what out of a most ordinary matter!’ exclaimed Varya.
‘I told you: a scandalmonger and a little brat,’ said Ganya.
‘With your permission, Varvara Ardalionovna, I shall continue. The prince, of course, I can neither love nor respect; but he is certainly a kind man, though also a ... ridiculous one. There would have been absolutely no reason for me to hate him, however; I did not let on to your dear brother when he himself tried to incite me against the prince; I simply calculated that I’d be able to laugh when the dénouement arrived. I knew that your brother would let the cat out of the bag to me and miss his cue in the highest degree. So indeed it was ... I am ready now to spare him, but solely out of respect for you, Varvara Ardalionovna. But, having made it clear to you that it is not so easy to make me swallow the bait, I must also make it clear to you why I so much wanted to make a fool of your dear brother. I may as well tell you, then, that I did it out of hatred, I admit it openly. In the process of dying (for I shall die none the less, even though I have put on weight, as you assert), in the process of dying I felt I would go to an incomparably more peaceful paradise were I to make a fool of at least one representative of that countless category of men who have persecuted me all my life, whom I have hated all my life and of whom your brother serves as such a graphic example. I hate you, Gavrila Ardalionovich, solely because - and to you this may seem surprising –
solely because
you are the type and incarnation, the personification and acme of the most brazen, the most vulgar and loathsome ordinariness! You are a pompous commonplace, an unswerving commonplace of Olympian calm; you are the routine of the routine! Not one even slightly original idea is ever destined to come into being either in your mind or in your heart. But you are infinitely envious; you’re firmly convinced that you’re the greatest geniu
s, yet doubt still sometimes visits you at dark moments, and you’re filled with anger and envy. Oh, there are still dark patches on your horizon; they will pass when you become completely stupid, which will not be long now; and yet a long and varied path still lies ahead of you, though I wouldn’t say it’s a cheerful one, and I’m glad of that. In the first place, I predict to you that you will never win a certain lady ...’
‘Oh, this is intolerable!’ exclaimed Varya. ‘Will you stop this, you repulsive, malicious creature?’
Ganya turned pale, trembled, and was silent. Ippolit stopped, looked at him with beady satisfaction, transferred his gaze to Varya, smiled ironically, bowed and walked out, not adding a single word.
Gavrila Ardalionovich might justifiably have complained of his fortune and failure. For some time Varya could not bring herself to speak to him, did not even give him a glance as he strode past her with long steps; at last he went to the window and stood with his back to her. Varya thought of the Russian saying: ‘a stick with two ends’.
1
Noise was coming from upstairs again.
‘Are you going?’ Ganya turned to her suddenly, hearing her get up. ‘Wait; just look at this.’
He walked over and threw on to the chair in front of her a small piece of paper, folded to make a little note.
‘Merciful Lord!’ exclaimed Varya, throwing up her hands.
The note contained just seven lines:
‘Gavrila Ardalionovich! Being now persuaded of your kind disposition towards me, I have resolved to ask your advice in a certain matter that is important to me. I should like to meet you tomorrow morning at exactly seven o’clock, on the green bench. It is not far from our dacha. Varvara Ardalionovna, who must accompany you without fail, knows this place very well. A. E.’
‘Well, what is one to make of her after that?’ Varvara Ardalionovna threw up her hands.
No matter how far Ganya felt from wanting to brag at that moment, he could not help showing his triumph, especially after Ippolit’s humiliating predictions. A complacent smile began to shine openly on his face, and even Varya beamed with delight.
‘And on the very day they’re announcing the engagement! Well, what can one make of her after this?’