PART II

June 17

IT HAS ALREADY been two weeks since Lyolya left Paris. With a speed that has surprised even me, I have managed to regain my composure, or, rather, I have liberated myself from that initial rebellious sense of despair, the one that did not understand life without Lyolya, without those festive, habitual, essential hours with her. The fever, the constant intoxication of these last months, has been replaced by something different, not as keen (since I am not made to get ready or to wait every other moment), but nobler, like everything that is undemanding, not graspingly proprietorial, by something that is now guaranteed. Because I cannot see Lyolya, because I cannot seek her out or expect to encounter her (which was very nearly a perpetual preoccupation of mine, and of which I am now, as it were, unburdened), I again feel the desire to set down of an evening everything that happens to me, and this is not only a desire to express myself, but also an attempt to save from oblivion another special time in my life, to salvage something for my future, for the man that I anticipate and envisage myself to be in the years to come—changed and having forgotten many things. Never before have I been drawn so credibly to this apparently useless endeavor, and never has it so manifestly constituted a distinct part of my life, a distinct and consistent aim, more distinctive than money, pleasure, or books, and second in terms of its appeal to one thing only: what Lyolya might have been—but there is no Lyolya, nor, it seems, will there be. My desire “to write” begins to resemble a passion, one that is attended by impatience and a hatred for people or things that stand in my way: I have surrounded myself with ridiculous obligations that seem as if by design to sap away every hour of the day and evening, and frequently (as at the mention of something tactless or particularly offensive) I avert my eyes when people invite me to stay or go off with them somewhere. And yet, still I found it difficult to overcome that inevitable first bit of inertia, and every time, as soon as I would find myself alone—in a café during the day or in my room late at night—I would write nothing and breezily absolve myself on grounds of noise, distractions, or fatigue. Even now, as I sit before these large, smooth sheets of paper, which are being filled thanks to my exertions, there still remains a neurasthenic fear of work, of doing harm unto myself, of the necessary will.

I saw off Lyolya with that utmost despair that emotionally well-brought-up people try not to show and that even in their recollections they only mention by name, because that sort of despair is shameless and strips a person wickedly—it is only too pleased to do anything absurd and lurid if it means announcing its presence and shouting at the top of its lungs—and later on it will seem a perfect miracle, one that has saved us from irrevocable humiliation, that we managed to hide all that or at least never once to say a word about it: we ourselves scarcely suspect how treacherously our appearance betrays us, how we must rejoice (and, more importantly, content ourselves) if no one can find fault with our careless actions or words. My despair at the time was caused by the fact that Lyolya—manifestly—was leaving me, and it grew larger on account of one specific feature inherent in so many goodbyes—the impression that the person doing the seeing-off is being abandoned. True, sometimes the seer-off will return to his usual rut, to his work or friends, while the person leaving will seem abandoned, alone among others in the carriage, but with Lyolya and I it happened the other way around (and thus not the exception, but the rule): I did not know where to turn without her, while she journeyed off to Berlin, at the request, at the summons of Sergei N. All throughout the despair—it was worse at the station than at any other time before then—I felt that it would soon pass, and indeed, with every day it did become easier to bear, until at last I reached that agreeably unhappy state, with its frequent sharp pricks and the constant fear of being pricked, a state that will likely prove robust and long-lasting: at any rate, I do not envisage or imagine its end or any possible substitution.

Why did calm come so quickly, and is there not something in it that debases my irrefutable feelings for Lyolya? In a shrewd and observant French novel I recently read: “L’amour supporte mieux l’absence ou la mort, que la doute et la trahison.” This simulacrum of an explanation—that everything can be reduced to romantic egotism, which selects from various possibilities the most placid one for itself (relatively speaking)—this intimation seemed to open the floor to uneasy speculations, and I could but impotently and honestly admit to myself that I had no real words of my own, nor any explanation.

Perhaps another reason that I mastered myself so quickly was that right after Lyolya’s departure a new affliction befell me—penury, and all the ghastly to-do and running about that goes with it: they say that one misfortune, when compounded by another, does not increase the acuity or strength of those painful, bitter feelings, but rather ought to diminish them and help us cope with them; more to the point, an idle, chance unpleasantness can sometimes devour a hefty concern, imperceptibly eating into it, cutting it down to size, to its easily borne negligibility, and vindicating, as it were, the proverb “fight fire with fire.” I have often wanted—in moments of grief or fear—to cause myself deliberate physical pain (something like an inoculation from psychological pain), to attempt to recall something humiliating, shameful, unforgivable in my past: in this present suffering there is a pretentious inner posture that believes in its own righteousness and stands indignant before fate, and so it is necessary to deprive it of its nobility, its righteousness, its fervent belief in these things, to sweep out from under it the most solid foundation for any postures of suffering—a sense of injustice, a resentment of one’s fate—and only then is deliverance possible. Granted, there will be an element of unwitting self-deceit to begin with: even before Lyolya’s departure I looked indifferently, with a maniac’s unconcern for everything extraneous, on the money that was slipping through my fingers and the little that remained, thinking dismally that soon enough some dreary worries, troubles, blandishments would burst in on my cruel abandonment, that I should have to conceal much about myself from Derval or anyone else, that it would be especially hard to master and bestir myself in the midst of despair, and I had not supposed just how this would evolve into an almost accidental distraction, how all this breakneck (never having time for pause), eternal business—not being late, meeting, waiting, searching for addresses, stairwells, interchanges in the Métro—would gradually take shape, and how on the heels of these affairs (which are uncontrived, obligatory, and have been rudely imposed on me) the inevitable joys of achievement or grievances of disappointment would appear, annihilating (temporarily, of course) all my foregoing pain—and when that pain rears its head again, it will seem superficial and more easily borne, no matter how new, how fresh and acute it may seem at the moment when it returns. There may well be a kind of suffering that is inconsolable and lingering, but Lyolya’s departure, which did not graze my romantic egotism and has not proved fatal, has been upstaged, mollified by these initial distractions, among which penury is not the only one.

Another distraction has come in the form of the Wilczewski family. As with everything that surrounds and occupies me at the moment, the Wilczewskis appeared on the scene in Lyolya’s final weeks, and even then our bland encounters had become a regular occurrence. In truth, I had always—since my Petersburg days—known them a little, and news of them reached me continually, but I had no personal relationship with them to speak of, and despite all my curiosity for even the remotest and most uninteresting of people, I do not believe that I ever once thought of them. I do not quite understand how it came about that Bobby Wilczewski one evening, amid the drunken clamor at a renowned haunt in Montparnasse, unexpectedly came up to Lyolya and me, smiling as though he had at last managed to find his friends; he sat down with us until late in the evening, and together we saw Lyolya home, who laughingly heard out his incessant anecdotes. Boring and monotonous though they were, Bobby’s appearance and his idle talk enlivened our conversation, which had been strained, like all conversations at that affrontingly inexplicit hour, and I only pitied that I could not subsequently be rid of him and alone with Lyolya, who by now had brightened up and was uncharacteristically (as she used to be) sweet; I tried to elaborate this to her, but she, by accident or design, failed to understand. We agreed to meet Bobby on the following day, and, what was more, he promised to bring along his sister, who was “forever sniveling that she has no one to go out with,” and so after that the four of us began to see one another almost every day.

The Wilczewskis, having been of dubious wealth back in Petersburg, hardly find themselves flush in Paris, although they consider it a point of honor to “compete,” and so, for them, the expenses, contacts, and connections of others are things that have held their value, things with which they still care to trouble themselves. There are three of them—a father, a son, and a daughter—and, although they are often together, they remain individuated in my imagination. The old man is a quick, sharp, always unshaven little man, whose questions are disjointed, designed to elicit confusion and fascination, and not at all the other person’s answer; when there are guests, he will burst into the drawing room for a minute, and then just as quickly dart out again, leaving in his wake a general feeling of exasperation, disjunction, and a lingering sense of awkwardness. When I visited him for the first time—just before Lyolya’s departure—he bizarrely tore into me on account of his son: “How can you be friends with that ass, who let happiness slip through his fingers today?” He was alluding to some minor business matter, but it came out so abominably, and en route home Lyolya rebuked me at great length—with sudden, unwarranted irascibility—for not having tried hard enough to hide my disgust.

The young Wilczewskis are for some reason patronizingly if affectionately called, both to their face and in their absence, “little Bobby” and “little Zina,” despite the fact that “little Zina” has been married, divorced, and is, so it would seem, twenty-eight years of age. These frivolous names, however, are justified and natural-sounding: there is something lost and adrift about brother and sister, something that forever evades definition and is unintentionally pathetic; above all else, both siblings worship glamor, the success of others, without envy and with a certain desire merely to mimic the glamor that is beyond their reach—of course, in some modest, vicarious way. With “little Zina” this desire is directed (impotently and in a surprisingly old-fashioned manner) at “art,” at little-known actors and writers; with Bobby it is more emphatic and grasping—at money and commerce. He even holds me to be a successful businessman, “with contacts” (on account of Derval), and talks to me with a touch of deference, as though any advice I gave would never fail to be heeded. Bobby is of average height, with sleek and shiny dark hair, which he wears in a parting; he has brilliant dark-chestnut eyes, rosy cheeks (as though he has just stepped in from the cold), dimples, and that ostentatiously cheeky smile of his, one that is forever seeking approval and infects no one, recalling somehow a hand hanging in midair. He is quite ungainly, too—because of his square torso, because of his hands, which are much too big (they look swollen) with their wooden fingers and broad, round nails, because of his heavy, clumsy feet—yet he does try to project a sort of elegance and has contrived his own “style” (gaiters, a motley though tolerable array of shirts and ties, a mincing gait), and next to Lyolya—as though in tune with her, although following no particular pattern—he would on occasion seem radiantly flamboyant and picturesque. Zina, on the other hand, is quite dull; she has an ashen face, the colorless hair of a darkling blonde, and also big, albeit pleasingly so, hands and, thanks to her low heels, a wide, graceless, almost masculine gait. What is striking, incongruous even, about her is her full, readily amenable, somehow shameless lips and her long, shapely (of the robust sort) legs, which she—without abashment or invitation—attempts to show off. Brother and sister, both tall and young, do not constitute, as one might expect, a balanced and neat couple: the confusion, the approximation that is so apparent in each of them requires—even for an outward comparison—some sound, additional support.

I should prefer to race through all these tedious descriptions, which are unnecessary in a work like this—one that is for myself alone—yet I cannot escape the persistent vain hope that one day these notes of mine (despite myself and, as it were, as a reward for my pains) will be read carefully by somebody, and so now, ahead of time, like a dewy-eyed child, I choose to believe in that reader, one who is understanding and kind, and shall wait until at last “she” (Lyolya, or else her successor and final incarnation) is found; then, we shall both deserve the miracle of mutual trust, and for “her,” who will not know my former life, I shall prepare everything in good conscience, as futile and gratuitous as it may seem. Speaking for myself, superficial people, circumstances, “mass” events are nothing but vulgarity, a substitute for that real human essence that is so clearly involved in every single feeling, in every love, be it distressing or joyous, because our own uninhibited feelings and our careful, skilled reflection on them, frees us of the psychological dust that ordinarily covers everything, and it is a pity to waste on this, on superficial things, our brief, singular life that forever strives for flight but finds itself so heavily weighed down. “Real human essence”—these are not nonce words: in jealousy (be it one’s own or observed in others), in every relationship that touches us, especially in romantic ones, there is, alongside what goes on and is experienced (even that which is suicidally tragic), some newborn novelty that revels in itself and is ravishingly alive, and for the sake of which it is giddyingly easy both to torment oneself and to die, something that is absent and not to be found in the respectability of the Wilczewski household, in Bobby’s gaiters, in everything and everywhere from which it has been banished by superficial, wretchedly devised, deadening repetitions. I could yet vastly extend the scope of what is alive and what is dead, but I want to and must limit myself, otherwise a danger worse than living death will rear its head—that of preoccupation with chance, absence of will and dissipation.

Let me return to the Wilczewskis, if only for a brief moment: it pains me especially to write about them—for it is they who are the principal, absurd, unnecessary impediment to the simple and unattainable things that I seek all day long: seclusion and the diarist’s work. It used to seem to me as though Lyolya, in an attempt to avoid being left alone with me, to evade my reproaches and possibly too explicit interrogations, was consciously ensnaring me in the first group that presented itself; yet even in her absence the outcome would have been the same, and this is explained partly by my feeble lack of will and partly by my being overindulged—over the months with Lyolya I had gradually grown accustomed to people, begun fearing loneliness, and was ready to exchange it for anything that came my way, be it tedious or unseemly. Today at the Wilczewskis’ I pondered this peculiar unscrupulousness of mine for the very first time—as always, the thought was provoked by something trivial and haphazard: as Zina was bidding farewell to someone, she said jokingly, “Do come again, now that you know how to find us” (she says this without fail to every new guest), and I unwittingly compared her to Lyolya, who could never trot out the same old smug commonplaces; it was not only Lyolya’s absence and substitution by the Wilczewski lot, but also my whole day, its sense of being preordained, its artificiality, the rehearsedness of every minute, the never-ending haste—from the moment I open my eyes until that when I close them again—it all seemed unbearable to me, and now Zina’s silly phrase, which inadvertently reminded me that nowhere around, among the others, is support or favor to be found, proved for me so significant that it has apparently forced me to take up once again my interrupted, isolating chronicle. All the same, I do need the Wilczewskis: they are, for the time being, my sole reminder of Lyolya, and just after her departure, they were as vital to me as blood—a consequence of the instantaneous psychological transition, so usual in such circumstances, from security, from the intoxication of someone else’s presence, which we so especially cherish, to hopeless, cold abandonment, when those whom we have always held to be intrusive and superfluous suddenly become worthy, desirable companions; they ape something that has been lost, something precious and irreplaceable, and are able to touch us, to listen intelligently—and to surprise us with things still unknown.

Lyolya does not write about herself per se, and in two weeks I have received from her only a postcard sent en route—a sweet but dreadfully confused missive, which I have committed to memory, and which has long since become tattered in my trouser pocket. Not once since then have I had any news of her, and I know neither where she is nor what she is doing. I feel no initial resentment, and my relatively friendly letters (which I send to Katerina Viktorovna’s Berlin address) neither reproach nor make demands.

June 18

MY MOST TREASURED state of being, which I anticipate during business conversations and at the Wilczewskis’, when I am busy or otherwise occupied, and to which I am ready to give myself over, singing, as soon as I find myself alone—in the street, in a café, in the Métro, or at home, in my room, before I fall asleep—I half-consciously want to dub, with words that are meaningless to others, “Lyolya and I.” These words, pronounced almost inaudibly and with great relish, this sense of freedom—that everything is permitted and, consequently, I am permitted to think as I please about us both—these are what this state of being begins with, and it seems to continue my innumerable imaginary encounters with Lyolya, our unwritten, unsent letters, our hypothetical arguments that swell with indignation. All this began long ago, long before Lyolya’s departure, when, after her first, petulant quibbling, after my timidity began to develop incrementally, the easygoing simplicity of even our outward friendship came to an end. Earlier still, before Lyolya, since time immemorial, if during the course of an evening I should forget to say something felicitous or crucial, then later, recalling this, I would not be able to sleep or find repose, and would compose phrases, find means by which to memorize them, sometimes—as though in a writer’s fever—get up, switch on the light, and jot down something essential, and, I suppose, it was from these agitated nocturnal recollections of what had been forgotten, from this redressing of the past and what I had memorized, that this current, most pleasant state of being—one that is also a form of redress—was born.

Granted, what I wrote in those bygone years seemed second-rate even the morning after, but later, once Lyolya appeared on the scene, everything I prepared fell flat, since it was imposed artificially on a lively and unrelated conversation, and it is possible that now, too, during a real, non-imaginary encounter, all my contrived remarks would prove just as misplaced (how unlike my real letters are those that I imagine), but what so persistently and joyously engrosses me emerges and flows ever so naturally, seems so spot-on and right, as though it really were the natural, unencumbered development of my romantic relations, while the other, decent, reasonable path, the one that was never hidden from Lyolya, has simply been disfigured by her rebuff, and, in recent weeks, further still by her absence and distance.

The dynamism of my inner world, which is set in motion, as it were, by the magic words “Lyolya and I,” is more loaded than I ever believed possible: rage, noble sentiment, tenderness—they all reach their limits without the slightest bit of reticence or restraint. At first I believed that someday I would give expression to everything amassed in me, and I tried to commit to memory at least what mattered (that because of Lyolya’s proven treachery, for instance, I ought not to love her), but later—before long—that changed: practically since childhood I have been able to divide quite soberly what is real from what is imagined (and to move suddenly, almost imperceptibly, from one to the other), and so now, having realized the real vanity of my constant fictions about Lyolya, I have allowed myself to be charmed by them for their own sake, the very fact of which also entails a measure of self-preservation—it touches me without posing any danger. I daresay such a game might have somehow influenced my current feelings for Lyolya, too, imbuing them with a mitigating artificiality, yet the fact itself that I divide what is real and what is imagined with almost unerring accuracy prevents their mutual interference, any penetration of one into the other.

Most often in my fantasies I enjoy rebuking Lyolya out of spite—I seem to have some kind of unending suit against her, owing to a multitude of offenses, and I find myself wanting not only to speak out, to tug at Lyolya’s heartstrings, to try to win her back, but also to punish her, to convince her of the irreparability of her mistakes, the impossibility of my forgetting and returning to how things were, and so our relations permutate, as if Lyolya will come to me to make amends, and I cannot accept this. I have become so used to such a permutation, to my constant, sweet, justified spite, that I should find myself at a loss, were Lyolya in fact to come back to me, wanting to redress the past—but this will never happen.

I find innumerable faults in Lyolya (this current cruel absence of letters, her gross disregard for how easily I am hurt, her attempts to avoid explanations in the wake of her own words, which oblige her to be frank), but, even with all this in mind, I must own to my recent, bitterest discovery—that all this had in fact manifested itself (albeit pale and inert) long before Lyolya’s departure, and even prior to Sergei N.’s decisive letter, which served as a convenient and noble pretext that ultimately delivered Lyolya from a preposterous, tiresome burden: me. Her departure came about independently, unconnected with Sergei N.’s summons—such as I understand it—but still it came as a blow to me, utterly unjustified, unprovoked, and in my more spiteful fantasies there is something telling in that: if somebody close to us deals the blow, we occasionally and more often than not forgive, but this forgiveness does not alter our new opinion of the individual, of how this person treats us (or could treat us), and only in rare cases, when we must absolve this person in all our profound sobriety, only then do we forgive wholly, but even this forgiveness is redundant, for there is no guilt of which to speak. I find it hard, and myself unwilling, to “forgive” Lyolya, and her latest wrong is destroying not only the carefree joy of my initial impressions, but also my current—albeit infrequent—imagined hopes for her. Even today—because of a scarf, perfumed with Lyolya’s scent—I was gripped by an enamored, almost unconscious sense of expectation (it took me some time to realize its origin), but then I happened to remember the disdain and negligence with which she accepted that bottle of scent that I gave her, and how offended I had been then (after such excitement about the gift)—and so today’s expectation has given way to the usual feelings of vengeful displeasure.

Repeatedly I pick over all the wretched trivia that provide definitive proof of Lyolya’s change in attitude toward me, and this perpetual comparison of our beginning and end, which before would have been unbearable, no longer pains me but is, if anything, agreeable. But even then—in those days with Lyolya—when for the first time I discovered the sorry change, and the blow was still palpable and aching, I intentionally resorted to ever newer and more persistent tests, tests that were so often blundering and belligerent—not for the sake of hope, not from any desire to convince myself, yet again, of our tragic end, but to raise some dismal, much-needed smile inside me, one that has given rise to all these never-ending, touching comparisons. One day, at an ill-chosen moment, suddenly breaking off our previous conversation and foreknowing my imminent failure, I asked Lyolya to mend an old, blackened glove of mine. Just as I had anticipated, she marveled at this request and replied, half-incensed: “Your concierge will do it far better than I”—and it was not difficult to discern in her irritated refusal an accompanying renunciation of any sweet concern, any solicitude for me, and moreover (hence my own outrage) a note of squeamish disgust directed specifically at the glove. I recalled that first day we spent together, my delight at her nimble handiwork and touching kindness, and how, in conducting this provocative experiment, I had poisoned that delight forever.

Even more morbidly was I struck (though now the memory is especially delectable) by Lyolya’s dogged attempts to evade my favors: how she had once preened at my ardent, instinctive, chivalrous magnanimity, and how later all this seemed to her so tedious and redundant (“You’re forever doing unnecessary things”—whenever I, who do not smoke, would proffer some cigarettes in their yellow wrapping, which I had bought just for her, on the off chance)—perhaps what vexed her was that it was not somebody else being so obliging.

Lyolya resisted as best she could our old mutual attentiveness, and, so as to rid herself of it, to make it officially impossible, she would not be left alone with me, the fact of which spared her not the responsibility itself (which had essentially vanished long ago), but everything that she found bothersome, everything that I have already described—the need to reciprocate, my reproachful, insistent questions—and again, despite myself, I would compare how in days past she would strive to ensure that we be together, how she would regard outsiders as enemies and, blushing with delight, cherish her every admission of care, tact, and kindness toward me. In that first month she could never have enjoyed Bobby Wilczewski’s company, hitting it off with him, meeting that motley array of ludicrous, unworthy individuals, nor would she ever have fallen disappointedly, spitefully silent if an abortive date or some instruction I had bungled forced us to spend a whole evening alone together. Though I feared Lyolya’s wrathful perspicacity, I proved rather deft at thwarting her wishes and shifting the blame onto others (the line would always be engaged, the Wilczewskis had gone away somewhere, it was not worth inviting Bobby today—he was with his girlfriend), and occasionally I would feel bad for Lyolya’s deceived credulity, but I much preferred this dubious (for the fear of rebuff) and rarely exploited opportunity to have our infrequent, private rendezvous—to explain myself, to question, to solicit, to torment and suffer the torments of my own unanswered rebukes.

My barrage of comparisons and would-be accusations leveled against Lyolya forever come up against others—in her favor—from the friends we have in common and, more importantly, from the time, the evenings I spent with and without her, but these comparisons, which stem only from living reality, and not from my imagination, never stimulate me or arrest me, as it were, in passing, they never enter the alluring province of “Lyolya and I,” and so they prove a sober truth—that all the people around me are superfluous, that I require only Lyolya, and that I must, setting aside all this unpleasantness, go after her, secure her return and restore her lost favor. This is nigh impossible and will not happen any time soon, and I lack both the strength and the fortitude to want, to seek, to wait, and so one thing alone remains to distract and deceive me—those wonted thoughts of vengeance, the shameful joy in proofs of Lyolya’s error, all that half-baked “Lyolya and I.”

The most realistic and mundane experience that is still in any way available to me is the moment when, in a state of excitement, I arrive home and search for the letters that are not there but could so easily be, the letters that Lyolya might have written and ultimately (to do otherwise would be callous) will write, by hand, in her own hand, about herself and in her own words, and this anticipation, these prospective (likely cold and aloof) letters are the only thing binding me to Lyolya, the only thing that likens me to all others, people who live life, people beloved or aspiring to love, people who seem to me irresistibly worthy. And yet I have chosen for myself a different fate, the even keel of appeasement—forged from life’s concessions and little, nonbinding fictions—perhaps because the fate of someone worthy and strong has not been mine, and because I no longer have a choice, or the courage to alter that choice.

I often see myself as though from without, and when I do, my purpose draws into focus, but then, how difficult and unbecoming to conquer and guard something jealously, without dreading the responsibility, a rivalry, a conflict, nor yielding to the sweet self-oblivion of sleep. Yet even as I discover my poor, unhappy predicament, I do not immediately or lightly reconcile myself to it, to failed youth, to being fated to loneliness; I obsess over the reason for my cowardice, as though some deliverance were to be found therein, and seemingly I begin to apprehend—it is difficult to put a name to and utterly impossible to eliminate; it is arguably my strongest and most intrinsic trait—that I lack that constant alternation of charge and discharge that forms the basis of every inner life and promises both respite and, thereafter, a fresh jolt into action (my first effort always demands something new); however, if I relax, then I will not be able to restrain myself, and so my accidental aspiration (these fictions about Lyolya are a case in point) will turn into an unstoppable and futile flight. My every effort will be drawn out and inevitably tiring, each distraction will lead me too far astray, and I shall find everything simple and necessary harder than others do—granted, though, my sluggish mind will manage to register and appreciate both the intense effort and the swift flight that, despite myself, overshoots its mark.

But having struck upon what predetermines my fate, a fate that is so monotonous and dull, that leads me forever away from victory and happiness, I cannot but recall some discrepancies, attempts to raise and revive me; unwittingly I compare—by dint of this new and fervent habit—my highs and lows, and with morbid curiosity I watch how slowly within me the worthy, smitten man is vanishing, the man I was when I routinely saw Lyolya, the man on whose account I would struggle and deceive, and how he is now being replaced by another—someone ordinary, placid, reserved, and no longer drawn to anything. This disappearance is taking place almost imperceptibly, and the only things that remind me of it are ridiculous, superficial trivia (my first haircut after Lyolya, a new pair of gloves instead of the old torn ones that she refused to mend) and a naïve sense of mourning for what I had with her and what was somehow connected to her, unexpected and bitter though that sense is, like a second parting. After such a conclusive split, by now quite bereft of dignity, I am transported to that most ignominious region of comparisons, wherein the supposed, the imaginary, and the real knowingly and unnecessarily merge into one: I imagine Lyolya and Sergei N. “there” and myself alone here, and it grieves me—alas, grieves and thrills me—to compare what has been so unfairly dealt us: Lyolya’s preoccupation with Sergei N. and my indifference to everything, Lyolya’s conviction and my jealousy, her nonchalance and my eternal searching, our so dissimilar nights, the ever-glaring disparity of success and hopeless bad luck. At the same time (crushing though it is to imagine their trysts and undoubted intimacy), for vanity’s sake—for my future triumph before Lyolya—I want each of my assumptions to be proved true and accurate; I calculate, strive to remember, and am not even averse to certain underhand measures, if only to prove that I am right, and not for the first time have I tried to bolster my ineptitude for guesswork, which is so essential to carry off this internal posturing of mine, with sheer guile.

All this posturing demands of me a certain proximity to real life—it demands not only guesswork, as it does of others, but also my own active participation, and often these demands and the means of satisfying them have struck me as excessive and contradictory: I think of Lyolya (not of my own bottled-up feelings), of the idea that she may yet reciprocate, and of that terrible evening after the affair in the bistro, when it struck me that she would never love me and I allowed myself to write, but then, unexpectedly, for the very first time, I was brought closer to her. Granted, our rapprochement was passionless, consolatory—Lyolya, weary and cold, hurried me out, practically ejecting me, complaining about the late hour, and so I might have left wronged and beaten, whereas in actual fact I stood there, calm and satisfied like never before: something undeniable and important had been achieved, had miraculously come about—something that could not be taken away from me, and at long last I managed to do away with the elusiveness of fictions and assumptions, with my distrust of them, and found myself in real, proven, incontestable reality. Now I could await the advantageous equalization of my platonic friendship with Lyolya (not the equality of love, which cannot be achieved by force, but some frank, trusting, ingenuous, and friendly conversations) and with a restrained sense of impatience, without any awkwardness or annoyance—as if all that romantic uncertainty had vanished—I made ready for our next encounter, and I cannot recall another instance when a meeting after a rapprochement has been so indistinct, so like the last, so perfectly unaltered. Thereafter followed a period of painful obsession, of minute-by-minute predictions about Lyolya’s current disposition toward me—yesterday, today, that very moment—and by what new and old signs I might divine this, and no longer could I, in my usual unhurried, easy way, reason with myself; I stopped recording whatever I observed and would just cling blindly to something or other quite accidental, always at random, searching for and failing to find solace or at least a relative peace of mind.

June 22

THERE IS A young lady who visits the Wilczewskis in the evenings, Ida Ivanovna Z., who is, it would seem, a Baltic German from Riga: having lived a long (and fugitive) life in Moscow, then in Berlin and in Paris, she has so muddled it all that it is no longer possible to determine her origins or the sequence of her wanderings, as if she has been stripped of her nationality—a common occurrence among Russians abroad, particularly the women. She has a milliner’s workshop, opened on some small savings or borrowed money and now turning a tidy profit—the Wilczewskis speak of this with the deepest respect, and even old Wilczewski himself holds interminable discussions with her (as he does with every business-minded guest) on a means to “expand the business” with the help of one of the banks where he has “friendly connections,” on Zina’s joining the enterprise (in other cases it is Bobby who is tentatively proposed), but Ida Ivanovna prudently, unwaveringly, politely insists on their bringing in hard cash, which, evidently, the Wilczewskis do not have. Meanwhile, poor Zina has taken up some hat-making course and considers herself thankful for her father’s constant solicitude on her behalf.

Ida Ivanovna is meek to the point of insignificance, answers questions kindly and very softly, and is never one to strike up a conversation—all this corresponds little to her appearance, which is provocative, full-blooded, and has something of the animal about it. Whenever you enter the Wilczewskis’ little drawing room, Ida Ivanovna is always to be found in the corner, in an armchair, in a stiff and awkward pose—her head inclined forward, her arms folded in her lap, her legs crossed, the upper one somehow broadened, flattened, while the lower is rounded and bent—and all this, as indeed everything else about her, gives an impression of rude health, robustness, something rich and tempting. Her hands are masculine and too big, but this is made less apparent by their whiteness and manicure, and I enjoy their gentle, serene, honest grip. But when Ida Ivanovna stands and straightens herself out, she at once becomes different—as though freed of the restrictive effort to hold herself elegantly, as though forever being drawn somewhere farther down the track, and taller than one might have imagined: all people with long legs, while sitting down, seem to be shorter than they really are. I find Ida Ivanovna no sweeter or more charming than the other habitués of the Wilczewskis: there is nothing about her that might have touched or moved me, and without Lyolya, after Lyolya, although I am not searching for a touching, moving replacement, I am forever ready to be moved by somebody’s feminine wiles, especially by those that resemble Lyolya’s and would, as it were, prolong them, invigorate them, prop them up in my memory. This gangly and gauche woman, however, seems to be a design of contrasts: she has a broad, simple face with an energetic hook nose, soft, plump, almost tumescent lips, high cheekbones, and a plain, though pleasing, complexion—bright white and so soft, as if she has just got out of the bath. Though finding nothing “for myself” in Ida Ivanovna and scarcely sparing a thought for her after our chance encounters at the Wilczewskis’, I nevertheless marked that I was glad of these chance encounters, that I would somehow set them apart and often—amid a silence or a conversation with whomever—examine her rather potent charms with that shamelessly offhand impudence that eats away at any man who has lived in Paris for a long while and cannot offend any Parisienne.

The most fortunate thing about all this was—as is usually the case for me—the absence of any obligation to act, the halfheartedness of the situation, the fact that Ida Ivanovna could not fail to mark and feel my persistent gaze, even if she did not give herself away, did not try to evade me, and only took care to adjust her skirt, which already hung below the knee—a rare modesty for such graceful, advantageous legs as hers.

This unobliging, convenient (for me), and altogether pleasant rapport was unexpectedly broken, and through no fault of my own: just the other day, at the Wilczewskis’, Ida Ivanovna turned to me, as it were (she talks without altering her habitual stiff pose, and only looks directly at her vis-à-vis with those jaundiced, vacant, seemingly unmoving eyes of hers) and began to question me on a matter that was evidently preoccupying her:

“They say you’re a man of business. My comptable is utterly hopeless and my accounts are in such a mess. Won’t you please advise me what I’m to do?”

“It’s difficult to give advice from where I’m standing—I’d have to take a look at your accounts.”

“If you ever—of course, not tomorrow or even this week, but any time—find yourself free, you’d be doing me a great favor by paying me a visit. Please, I’d be ever so grateful. Otherwise, you know, I’ll simply be at a loss.”

“Why delay? I’ll be delighted to come tomorrow.”

Ida Ivanovna’s invitation whipped me into action, as though I had given her my word of honor, and all of a sudden I felt that it was impossible to put the matter off. Very likely I shall never know whether it was a pretext, an “advance” (the common refrain of my student years), or whether Ida Ivanovna really had heard about me and needed my help—as with so many others who constantly monitor themselves, I completely forget that people may talk about me in my absence and what simple, unsubstantiated conclusions may be drawn from these conversations.

In any case, from this assistance in business matters, from this act of commonplace kindness, I confected for myself something joyous, and in the morning, when I awoke and, as always, became unerringly aware of my mood and the highlight of the impending day, I at once smiled inwardly and thought of Ida Ivanovna.

I had selected—not without some cunning—the approximate hour when all manner of businesses close, hoping that the staff and milliners would disperse with my appearance, and that I would be invited into the proprietress’s living quarters, which were located on the premises (a fact that had been mentioned one day at the Wilczewskis’ and which I had half-consciously registered and committed to memory). My first impression of the atelier was a glimpse of bare arms belonging to the young female workers, who were elegant and carefree in that Parisian way, among whom the proprietress stood out, and whom she dominated—like the prima donna in an opera—with her height and forceful appearance, which however remained (as in her unassuming corner at the Wilczewskis’) expectantly silent, a little absent and abashed. Her arms were also bared to the shoulders: strong, slender, and so soft to the touch that I had the urge to reach out and caress them there and then.

It happened exactly as I had expected, or, rather, as I had calculated and engineered—I know from long experience that easily won success is not in my lot, that I must myself encourage events and gerrymander my fortune—and this time Ida Ivanovna, as though executing my plans, asked me to wait while the workers dispersed, before leading me into her spotless dining room, where after some inconspicuous efforts she treated me to tea and jam—à la russe—and to French liqueurs of various colors in sparkling crystal decanters.

Directly after tea we set about tackling the ledgers—I can, by suppressing my primordial laziness, bring myself to the necessary state of intense effort required for work and remain there for long periods, continuing all the while to suppress my impatient desire to return to my former lazy inertia, and then (insofar as possible) I will delve into the work assigned to me, after which—because of luck or praise, like a diligent first-rate pupil—I will light up with inspiration and often, impatient and at the same time focused, achieve more than I myself could have hoped for or expected. Much to my pride and pleasure, I found some obvious errors in the accounts, but more importantly I balanced the books for the previous year. Ida Ivanovna tried to explain to me a great number of things that I did not immediately comprehend, beginning, as it were, from afar and in an uncertain tone of voice, but so sensibly, with such an ingenuous disclosure of her apparently remarkable commercial ventures, that I felt sorry for her, for her lack of success, and my own affairs were cast as unworthy amateurism. After an hour and a half’s work, Ida Ivanovna, grateful and as though emboldened by my cooperation and success, bid me occupy myself while she quickly fixed “a little something for dinner.”

“I’ll be terribly hurt if you don’t stay.”

She brought vodka, cognac, expensive caviar, some salads, and as I looked at the table, decked with all these tempting articles, I marveled, roused as though from hibernation, from my long exertion, and already rejoicing that tedium and work were at an end, that now came the reward, deserved, happy, with untold possibilities, supper and afterward these untold possibilities, and I began to feel so perfectly fine, so instantly renewed, as though my abandonment of the previous weeks, the clinging to the past, to Lyolya’s specter, all that constant melancholic glancing over my shoulder had never been, and an unexpected childish primal joy set in, the one that makes us jump and run, the one that we dub gratuitous and whose cause is often discovered without difficulty: that being somebody’s arrival, one’s own return to rude health, impending pleasure, the warm spring sun. Unexpectedly, Ida Ivanovna had dressed up for the occasion and entered the room radiant, fresh, and with charming, insincere apologies that she had had to let the maid go and that instead of dinner there would be “a cold and frugal supper.” Intoxicated even before I had touched the vodka, I watched Ida Ivanovna—not as I did at the Wilczewskis’, but quite brazenly, in the sure expectation of her responsiveness, as though having arranged beforehand that she would be drawn into the game (in such cases I know I wear an obnoxious, triumphant smile, one that I cannot suppress). To my surprise, Ida Ivanovna maintained a contemplative restraint, a kind of unwitting dignity—true, one that no longer put up any resistance, yet this untimely dignity prevented my unravelling entirely, my casting off all humanity and scrupulousness, my deeming every one of my desires—a monstrously shameful thing—to be instantly practicable and necessarily given fiat; in short, it halted my inflamed rudeness, which forever required some conspiratorial, almost larcenous, consent, while at the same time it animated me, it eased and inspired my merry intoxication. The vodka, the rich red wine, the liqueurs—all this took its toll little by little, but in such inebriety (not the lonely sort, without despair or expectation) I find there to be an incomparable loveliness and, dare I say it, an unquestionable advantage: not only does it dispense with my memories of myself, with this constant awareness of my own reality, this prying mistrust of everything, but it also does away with the awareness of any awkwardness in external situations, as it does the awareness of any intimacy, of any toe-curling proximity—had I been sober, I should not have been able to forget what an incongruous pair Ida Ivanovna and I made, that she is tall, hefty, no longer youthful, and possessed of a somehow bovine, obtusely melancholic nature, while I look like a boy and ought or want to present myself as sardonic and aloof, that she and I are irretrievably alien to one another, and that we simply cannot be side by side, I should have been ashamed of my friendly, quasi-amorous tone, but there you have it—after all that I had drunk, there was neither any awkwardness nor impediment, and I do not recall how we wound up in the bedroom, atop that wide double bed, or how I, having cozily nestled up to Ida Ivanovna, with the faint brush of half-parted lips kissed her tender shoulder, which was revealed by degrees and suddenly freed, like a separate, animated concentration of blinding light and warmth. Taking her obedient fingers, excessively big and powerful as they are, and her wary, almost weightless palm, I caressed my own cheeks (rejoicing at my forethought to have shaven) and reveling in the provision of these rare hours and, in a different way—feebly, almost imperceptibly—in the possibility of some support. Suddenly Ida Ivanovna broke free and, with a significant look (voluptuous, almost cruel, her eyes dark and moist), at last having transformed herself into my shameless accomplice, quietly and insinuatingly whispered, “I’ll be just a moment, my dear,” before leisurely disappearing somewhere. A few minutes later she reappeared from the bathroom (obviously taking care to avoid the other rooms), slowly parted the draperies, and touchingly, all but theatrically, leaned forward, for some reason shielding her face with her hands—in a state of complete undress, shapelier and more slender than I had imagined, “fausse-forte” to coin an expression. Then, with a curiously solemn gesture, she flicked a switch, leaving only the reflected light of the bathroom, and rushed toward me, silent, unsmiling, and not quite fathomable. She took me firmly in her arms—so firmly in fact that I could not breathe—but I (from male instinct or experience) tried to push her off, to overpower her, to exhaust her, and, scarcely having demonstrated my cool dominance over her, I took her in my own arms tenderly and firmly, remaining perfectly still, as though resting, as though regretting her fatigue, delighting in our prodigious union, in the ostensibly magical power of the embrace, which always thrills me—to the point of fright.

As so often in such moments, I was able to reason freely, though confusedly, with myself, and a bright flash of bewilderment struck me as I wondered why I had never felt so impeccably assured with Lyolya; equally bewildering was the logical conclusion that love is not to be found in a carnal or sexual “match” alone and is even frequently incompatible with it. Stirred thus by recollections of Lyolya, succumbing to age-old resentments, I mused (as I had done before) that her rejection, a constant and glaring source of bitterness to me, was to blame for everything, but in that same instant Ida Ivanovna took it upon herself to speak of Lyolya for the first time—half-jealously—and just then I sensed the approaching, disinhibiting danger of my customary heartache for Lyolya, so I had to dismiss those sharp, clear thoughts and all this unnecessary talk at once, brushing them aside indignantly. Nonetheless, my pleasure was tinged with a slightly bitter note, much too insignificant to spoil it but sufficient enough to ruffle it, and so my enjoyment, compounded by this bitterness, proved subtly and, as it were, cruelly tender. When I woke from my stupor, however, now sober, I had the irresistible urge to leave (how different it was with Lyolya—flight after intimacy is an irrefutable proof of love’s absence), and I set about persuading Ida Ivanovna that I should not be able to get up in the morning, that I feared “compromising” her, that the Wilczewskis might infer something, and so in the end poor Ida Ivanovna, frightened, bewildered, drove me out herself.

“Pity. I thought you might stay the night. When will I see you again?”

“Tell you what: I’ll telephone, if I may.”

June 23

YESTERDAY I LACKED the mental stamina, was simply too lazy to bother with the usual exertions required to describe everything that happened, everything that I felt after the evening with Ida Ivanovna. I left her and forgot about her instantly, vaguely conscious of some conceited triumph of mine, glad that I had not obliged myself in any way to her, had not agreed to another meeting, glad of my freedom and the languorous, immaculate slumber that lay ahead. It was still early, and the warmth was balmy, as it is in summer; there were people about, people in no rush to go anywhere, enjoying their leisure and a humble stroll through the city, lonely latecomers like me, and, hidden on benches, enamored couples would loom out of the dark, frozen in a blissful stasis—I am always astonished how many happily loving people there are, how many flagrant displays of happy love one encounters, how rarely this happens to me and how my own experiences, rare though they are, seem so incomparably lofty, casting a radiance over my other, ordinary, lackluster days. As I continued to marvel at the happy nocturnal couples, not envying them in the least, I could not help thinking of Lyolya and inevitably imagined myself with her, and the scrap of nature that one distinguishes in Paris—the darkling clearings of verdure, the odd streaks of sky between roofs and trees, delicate, beneficent, perhaps even remotely forbidding, and the almost living, caressing, gently enswathing warmth—this scrap of nature reconstituted another, real, nature, one so overflowing with love and so powerful that one can but surrender to it, that one must, submissively and compliantly, love and sweetly be loved. My feelings for Lyolya momentarily swelled to infinite proportions and made me, without making any allowance for failure, wish ardently for the only possible means of her incarnation—a letter: no sooner had I thought of this than I was instantaneously transported to a long-familiar realm (that of feverish epistolary anticipation); I recognized it at once by its telltale signs and re-enacted it, until I stumbled upon something new, a situation that I had never before encountered—that for the first time I had not gone home for a whole day and, hence, there had been three posts and thrice the ordinary chance of a letter; what was more, I had “betrayed” Lyolya, someone had taken a fancy to me, just as someone else had to her, we were “quits,” and I would read this, today’s sought-for and undoubted letter from Lyolya, on even terms.

In the event, it was a miracle of coincidence, as though fate had begun to push me in the way of success and action, to prove that something could be achieved, and so I was less surprised by the letter than I had been by that other, prior coincidence—when Ida Ivanovna, as though in reply to my fleeting thoughts about Lyolya, had suddenly begun to talk of her.

I examined the envelope and its address like a rare gift (delivered into my hands at long last and so, admittedly, having already lost a little of its value), and, like a spoiled child, I pitied myself and my homecomings—those that had gone before and the many that were yet to come—when such a letter would not be waiting for me, and so, without rushing, without guessing at the content and tone of the letter, tempering my reckless inclinations, I tore open the envelope—Lyolya wrote cordially, a dash excitedly, and I immediately understood that she was not writing out of duty, but wanted to discuss a great many things and somehow to reckon with me anew. The letter was—contrary to my expectation—not addressed from Berlin: Sergei N. has invited Lyolya and Katerina Viktorovna to W. just outside Dresden, and lodged them together in a small country house, while installing himself in a pension. Lyolya did not hide her disappointment—I have always been astonished by the courage of her confessions, her ability to overcome, to overpower her sense of amour-propre and, without excessive, ostentatious self-abasement, to tell the truth. She writes: “Sergei and I cannot be together, Aunt Katya is with us constantly, and in the evening, after some music, Sergei sends me home, lest there be any awkwardness in front of her. I think he has arranged all this on purpose. Generally speaking, he treats me as he did on that day when our relationship ended, but now, as then, I cannot be certain that he doesn’t love me. To think, I asked him why it ended and even tried to prompt him, talking about art, the need for freedom, and his sacrifice at the time, but he changed the subject in disgust. Am I really never to know?” I detected in Lyolya’s letter not only a note of disappointment in Sergei N.’s attitude to her, but also in Sergei N. himself, and, instinctively rushing to divine everything and make flippant generalizations, I immediately decided that Sergei N. had both sensed his own blunder with Lyolya and tried, with the help of Katerina Viktorovna, to protect himself from any worries or temptations. No sooner had I decided that Lyolya was somehow “reckoning” with me and that Sergei N. had “bungled it” than I found myself immovably calm; nothing that Lyolya said or did could hurt me now—I was impervious to those artificially roused, pointed recollections that were once so insulting and so often hurtful. This strange, well-noted, paradoxical human trait—to draw attention through indifference and to repel it through displays of ardor or kindness—exists not only in love, where it is indisputable, but also in every other human endeavor, and so often in politics, in art, in business even, the successful ones are those who are indifferent, or feign indifference, to their métier. This inscrutable general propensity offends—especially in the case of love—my perhaps naïve striving for perfection, for transparent incorruptibility, and my reluctance to “play the game,” and I console myself with the idea that there is a higher tier of love where this trait vanishes—we, people without God and without faith, need something palpably alive at least to invest it with divinity and lofty perfection, and we unwittingly sanctify those rare days and hours of love’s reciprocity, of which we write and talk, as do the faithful of hours of prayer. And yet, as I recall in all good conscience, my own such days, so astonishing and never to be repeated, I seem unable to apprehend that strange trait, to discern that push and pull of the contradictory (truly, it does run its course and vanish), and perhaps this higher tier of love—devoid of miserable human frailty—is neither my own invention nor a comfort, and it is only my habitual mistrust of everything exalted in me that brings me to talk of consolation.

I no longer wished to think about Lyolya, and so my obsessive attention to her was transferred onto Sergei N., whose fate, like mine, seems suddenly more familiar to me than all my wasted feelings for Lyolya, which have lost their hold and vibrancy. Such miracles of temporary loss or the definitive end to robust and seemingly powerful emotions always strike me as an especially tragic imperfection of ours, yet another proof of our cruel inconstancy; I am trying to unravel this and make it clear to myself—but I fear that my understanding is simplistic and much too arbitrary: to me, love seems to be the development of a stubborn, basic, and undoubtedly touching ambition, one that constitutes the essence, the whole sense, the “idea” of any romantic relationship, which is destroyed when that very ambition disappears; the ambition, the “idea,” the sense of my first love for Lyolya was my faith in her benevolent support, in our mutual support for one another, the kind that is natural in those who have suffered greatly and for that reason understand each other; later came another “idea”—how unlike the former it was—one that, without my noticing, became habitual and convenient, a kind of voluptuous abandonment, a resentment of Sergei N.’s favor, but now Lyolya’s unexpectedly agreeable letter has broken that familiar, sweet resentment, and nothing has come to take its place. I have yet to find within myself some psychological echo of those contrived, artificial thoughts about Lyolya, but on the other hand I have understood, have simply recognized in Sergei N. my own lingering and unduly deceived expectations: never before have we enjoyed such similarity in our respective situations; I once envied his five-year intimacy with Lyolya; back then—not without condescension—I looked upon myself as his happy successor, but only now, since this letter, have I been overwhelmed by bouts of sympathy and burning curiosity, which is driven by some sort of diabolical affinity for my rival, by the prospect of having it out with him, as I have never done with any other. For so long I failed to see such a rival in Sergei N., one who arouses my curiosity and in whom I share an inadvertent kinship, for I have neither met him, nor had any direct confrontation with him, for it is not nagging, loathsome jealousy that has been drawing me to him, nor is it conciliatory (in the wake of jealousy and victory) forgiveness, but yesterday our sorry resemblance was suddenly revealed to me, and in that moment a pity—the very same that I lavish upon myself—was born of our kinship, and so, giving myself free rein, cutting loose and running wild, I imagined endless conversations filled with mutual admiration, conversations predicated on a sense of despair that was allayed by the spiritual depths that we both of us possessed.

These imaginary conversations, the possibility of such a meeting, seemed all the more pleasing to me since I had always maintained (because of all that I knew about Sergei N. or else had gathered from Lyolya) a perfectly singular attitude toward him—that of the semienamored devotion we so readily feel for those to whom we necessarily or voluntarily submit (or for those to whom we should like to submit) and who as a rule simply do not notice us. This boundless devotion is of course in no way obligatory—indeed, how often it is precisely the reverse—yet it does serve as the basis, or rather even the impetus, for the many movements of our psyche, which guide us toward the powerful, and which betray an elusive though indisputable uniformity: the doggish devotion to the hand that pushes it away; the benediction of a tormentress who cares nothing for us; the confession (even if fictitious) of a criminal before a judge who is just and “understands all”; the facelessness of first-rate soldiers, who blend, as it were, into their commanding officer-cum-father; the faith schoolboys hold in the wisdom of a favorite teacher; the hero-worship of a sovereign, at times even of noblemen or plutocrats, from which loyalty and snobbism arise—these are but some haphazardly named incarnations of that same undiscriminating devotion, and for each of us it is captivating beyond compare to imagine just reward and praise for all this unbridled devotion, for all our efforts and pains. Within me this loyal semienamorment is joined—out of latent, brazen self-conceit—by a mad hope, that my ennobling parity with some magnifico to whom I have been devoted, that my merited, rightful superiority before all others, will at last be recognized: when I used to imagine conversations with Sergei N., it was this rather lifeless, never-yet-realized triumph of mine that I envisaged, but now my level-pegging with him seems to me so thrillingly assured (this must be the same thrill that a military commander experiences on the eve of certain victory: just a few days more, and then—glory). My unmistakable parity with Sergei N. becomes all the clearer and more incontestable to me: we both of us chose Lyolya, both of us lost her, and we both, with equal reconciliation, bore this irreparable loss; we share the same history, the same—hidden from all, understood by us both, equally heroic—outcome. There is yet another winning (at least, as far as I am concerned) trait that unites us in some meaningful way: I am moved, both in myself and in others, by unshakeable, lasting feelings, by everything that is illumined as the years pass by, and how glorious it is to find that what matters most to me burns slowly and lasts for so long: such is the case with my imaginary novel, dreamed up in childhood and still having those same characters and relationships, with my endless patience for Lyolya, which was eventually crowned with love—is this not the same level on which Sergei N.’s stubborn love for Lyolya exists? A love that survived their estrangement, her marriage, his segue from obscurity to fame and recognition, which might have altered everything about a man. To all appearances, his so perfect love has not been diminished by this current rejection (surely instituted by me), but this rejection suddenly seems—of course, from here, from afar—not entirely like mine, which was always cowardly, bound for the pain of humiliation, but somehow sublimely tragic, which would have suited me marvelously, and so I see anew, with more lenience and dignity, my own recent past, and am already certain of an estimable and artful future. Now from Sergei N. I return to Lyolya, to Lyolya and me, and find myself once again with but one wish—ardent, unassuming, unattainable—that of Lyolya’s immediate presence, of being sated by that presence.

June 26

BEFORE THE ARRIVAL of Lyolya’s letter, I believed (after all my unanswered appeals to the void) that writing my reply would be a glad occasion. It unexpectedly transpires, however, that I find it just as tedious to fill the statutory four pages, just as necessary to overcome myself, as with any other obligatory task standing before me: clearly there is something lingering from my newfound, dispiriting semiconfidence in Lyolya, but then my days, more to the point, are filled with little events that distract and divert me—only yesterday, with relative ease, I concluded a large and complex business deal, and even now I am stunned by all the money, the purchases, the assurance of material well-being, the emboldened expectations for the future. Queer how at a time ostensibly demanding confidences and ingenuous friendly outpourings I am able to content myself alone or with chance acquaintances and drinking companions—I suppose this way I exhibit neither the vanity nor the usual poses of bright-eyed triumph or gloomy resignation; perhaps my spiritual core exists above and beyond the boom and bust of business.

Just yesterday, toward evening—after two solitary days without any obligations that might otherwise have justified my idleness—I suddenly realized that I could put it off no longer and forced myself to write the most rational and detailed response I could muster. Soon enough, however, I got carried away, and the result was a feverish missive—at long last I could satisfy my unforgotten grievances, bearing into reality all my lengthy quarrel with Lyolya, which until now had been imaginary and devoid of purpose. What I really wanted (beastly though it was) was to hurt Lyolya, to crush her mercilessly by pointing out—in a friendly way, of course—that in a position such as hers, one so patently desperate and absurd, she could not remain forcibly bound to Sergei N., could not remain dependent on him financially and not look for a way out. I was in fact furious at the thought that Lyolya had sacrificed me for the sake of this “situation.” If only, with words that were pure and courageous, I had prevented this, fought it, assuming responsibility for all my rebukes; but out of caution, or feigned delicacy, I preferred to avail myself of another stratagem, one so typical of many, which consists in alluding to the opinion of others (presumed or imagined) and, under that protection, uttering all the poisonous, dangerous, wicked things that I could otherwise neither say nor write. (A common enough formula: I myself am tolerant and broad-minded, but just think of your parents—in other instances, friends, critics, jurors—they won’t see eye to eye and will argue the following …) I invoked Katerina Viktorovna’s undoubted objection: “The poor woman. I can just imagine how embarrassed she must feel, how awkward it must be for her to witness your relations and to be made to partake in them herself—and what with her sense of independence and those old-fashioned sensibilities of hers.” Of my own dissatisfaction I wrote with restraint—that, being so far away, I could not judge, that from the very day of her departure I had resolved not to interfere, that, when all is said and done, I trust her judgments in those trickier moments—and in a few brief words I described my days, and, as so often happens, I recounted only the most recent events that cast me in a worthy light: “I meet nobody and desire to see no one; but I am never bored by myself. The Wilczewskis, whom I have not visited in a long while, have always been very good and attentive to me. Tell me, ought I to try my luck with Zina? She has been awfully kind to me and is clearly bored on her own.”

I cannot recall why I made such a boastful and false innuendo—so as to tease Lyolya or for some other not entirely clear, esoteric reason: I have, where such observations are concerned, a curious habit whereby I never allow myself to “fictionalize” (unless, of course, the observations themselves are deliberate lies)—every “fictitious,” casually dropped observation about myself, which I later regret and would rather destroy and take back, always comes true in the end, as though life itself provides the missing material and, in so doing, salvages my precarious honesty, or as though I see so very much that fails to reach my insufficiently observant consciousness, only for it to be revealed to me later in my own words which seem so like another’s. All this came to me because of that remark about Zina—a remark that was arbitrary, yet as ever proved right in the end.

Lately, as I mentioned to Lyolya in my letter, I have not paid the Wilczewskis a single visit, fearing an encounter with Ida Ivanovna; my feelings for her are not at all honorable or chivalrous, as they were for Lyolya and as they still are, in my naïve fantasies, for any another woman. It is true that sometimes—especially at night, when haunted by visions of Ida Ivanovna looking just as she did on that drunken evening—I lament my solitude and find myself suddenly wanting to be with her, as she surrenders to me and gives in to love, but come morning this desire always vanishes: in the light of day, out in public and in the midst of work, it is the sober, long-divined awareness of our incompatibility, of the need to hide our shameful rapprochement, that must inevitably win out; if only it were possible to meet for the sake of immediate gratification, without all those tedious and insincere overtures—“Like animals,” as mothers disdainfully educate their curious sons—how many strong, long-lasting bonds there would be, how many women’s pride would be spared. Yet I find simply intolerable all these obligatory overtures and this show of intimacy (or else, that I should be made vainly to seek out that intimacy from some ingrained sense of gentlemanliness) for a woman to whom I am emotionally indifferent; instead, I put off the promised telephone calls and the calculatedly fortuitous meetings, taking my elusiveness to the point of outright defiance, to the point whereby it is impossible to remedy the situation or to undertake anything without some inadvertent nudge from without. But it just so happened that Bobby provided exactly this.

He arrived just as I was rereading my (on the face of it) scrupulously honest and (essentially) vindictive letter to Lyolya. As I nodded my approval of the missive, he began to chide me in a friendly sort of way for my recent neglect.

“It’s a bit rum of you just to drop off the face of the earth like that. Zina’s ever so cross with you, you know. She gave me orders to bring you back forthwith. How have you been anyway? All work and no play?”

In abstraction, I examined his light summer necktie, done in a devil-may-care manner but without a single crease, his pastel silk shirt and the deliberately mismatched suit that hung on him like a sack—it was all gaily colored and terribly expensive, and, as always, I was taken aback and not a little envious, wondering where he had got his hands on the money for it. He perused the few books I had and dutifully marveled at something else entirely:

“You have all of Pushkin, you lucky thing. How I adore Pushkin. He has such lapidary lines. Do you recall The Egyptian Nights? I really must introduce you to L. Such an erudite chap, as you can’t even begin to imagine.”

Bobby stood there, full pleased with the daintiness of his turn of phrase (as it happens, “erudite” is another favorite and oft-repeated word of his), and, deciding that he had proved himself well enough, turned to more prosaic matters:

“All the same, I simply cannot fathom how it is that you can live in such sparse and dreary (he meant to say ‘dilapidated’) rooms. With all your means, you ought to set yourself up somewhere much grander than this. In any case, grab your hat. You’re not going to give me the slip this time.”

We set out together, arm in arm (not without a certain cunningness has Bobby befriended and ingratiated himself with me), and along the way we chatted about women.

“A charming specimen, that Ida Ivanovna. The poor thing’s caught cold and has been cooped up indoors lately. Do you suppose she has anybody?”

I was relieved to learn that I would not encounter her at the Wilczewskis’, that I should be spared an evening of rebuke, albeit tacit. Cheered immeasurably by this, I began to point out some of the young ladies coming toward us and, like schoolboys, we arrogantly discussed their advantages and disadvantages and, most importantly, tried to divine what their appearance concealed: that one has down over her lip—I doubt she’d look good taking off her stockings or showing her bare arms; look at the way that one’s blouse quivers as she walks—her chest must be uneven; and that one, look how straight her dress hangs—she must have a low waist; on the contrary, it’s those flat shoes of hers—she has fearlessly long legs.… It would be impossible to enumerate all those inane attributes; it feels strange even to have picked up on them and to call them by their name after my long inattention to such things because of Lyolya. My dealings with Ida Ivanovna have changed me, and it is as if I have begun to see things clearly: sometimes a novel experience, however insignificant, is enough to jolt our memory and make us perceive afresh the similarities, and all this leaves us, as it were, precipitously enriched. There is something else that Ida Ivanovna has bequeathed me: I now find it easy to judge and think about other women, because some long-standing barrier between them and me has diminished, vanished almost; they now seem more intelligible, more approachable, closer, in a word, as though I have managed to retain that winning, enchanting sense of ease that Ida Ivanovna would acquire after a little wine and that has spread to all women, and as though this sense of ease has granted me not only confidence in my own success—on account of my vainglorious memories—but even the success itself, that mysterious capacity to excite, which before I would impotently and sorrowfully find only in others, and which back in Lyolya’s days was probably still hindered by my constant lack of freedom. With this newfound confidence, with a vague sense of hope, I arrived at the Wilczewskis’, where Zina met me with her usual languorous and all-encompassing, “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”—while somebody (apparently the “erudite chap,” L.) answered deftly on my behalf: “Guilty as charged but deserving of leniency.”

At the Wilczewskis’ it was, as always (and despite their worldly pretensions), noisy and shambolic, guests sitting in various attitudes, each group absorbed in its own affairs and seeming a nuisance to the others. I realized, one way or another, that I should easily be able to constitute such a separate, solitary little group with Zina, and her tacit consent, along with this immediate clarity—forgoing any tiresome or tedious pains—added to the cheery confidence that had brought me there and was gradually flourishing because of all these successively favorable circumstances—the postponement of my encounter with Ida Ivanovna, Zina’s alarming, half-encouraging “consent,” my sudden freedom from Lyolya, a freedom that was not definitive, resembling as it did a reprieve and having begun at that very moment when Ida Ivanovna took a fancy to me and I began to hope for something from her (yet another proof of my correct and well-founded jealousy of Lyolya’s success, of her desire to be liked—a fleeting, accidental thought, but one that nevertheless poisoned my happy inspiration just a touch, one that single-handedly reminded me of the long and shameful time that I spent obsessing over Lyolya, full of resentment for her and unceasing fearful devotion to her).

Zina seemed to me a changed woman—no longer her usual pallid gray and a little awkward, but rosier somehow, proud and elegant in her bearing, and wearing a pair of pointed, pinching, patent-leather heels. She strode up to me in an unaccountably cheerful mood, and I found it so charming—in sharp distinction to Ida Ivanovna, probably on account of her age and appearance—to have her by my side, holding her warm, tightly clasped palm in my hand. We ensconced ourselves in a corner and talked about the inevitable—to women like Zina (those who lack that glint, who are seen through at once) I always speak with a kind of inner disdain, ignoring them and never answering for my own words—Zina was evidently not listening to me, and she just smiled with her intoxicated, distant, suggestive eyes while she stroked (almost caressed) her slender legs with her beautiful, strong fingers, arousing herself as she did so—and, what was more, her arousal was immediately transmitted to me. That seemingly absent-minded feminine manner, that very gesture of one leg thrown over the other, squeezing it tightly as though in an embrace, contains both an invitation and a dangerous, attractive hope. I sat there beside Zina while she played the quiet ingénue (just as before), and I knew that I could not leave her there with the others, that if I did not stay, then I should lose a unique opportunity for a bit of easy male luck—thus, occasionally, on a tram or in the underground, do you spot in the eyes of your accidental neighbor an alluring promise, without any guile, and from a sense of embarrassment, from a sense of terror that others might notice, you unexpectedly, with a feeling of shame and disappointment, get off at your intended, murderously early stop. But perhaps I was destined not to give up, but to keep going—doggedly, boorishly, primitively (less and less do I find myself impeded by considerations of decorum or delicacy)—and so, after the guests had stood up and said their good-byes, I nonchalantly, without the least inhibition, thinking of one thing only, to win, and to this end trying to be as natural and convincing as possible, asked Zina:

“You don’t look very tired. I’m not, either. Why don’t we sit here some more and continue our little chat.”

She gave me the faintest of smiles.

“Very well, but let me see to Papa and tidy up first.”

Bobby retired to his room—the siblings never get in each other’s way—leaving Zina and me in that little parlor. She lay down on the daybed, and a decisive moment came when I, apropos of nothing, boldly and without pretext, moved over to this daybed as well. Then, intuitively, without any stratagem, hitting upon some convenient and long-familiar formula, I took her hands in mine (or, rather, I took possession of them), ticklingly scratched the silk of her stockings, leaned in and kissed her neck, grazing her soft, delicate chin, before suddenly—surprising even myself—overwhelming her, marveling at the cruelty of my weight and the impossibility for her to free herself and push me away. At that moment, she whispered, “Careful! Papa,” (women are more accustomed to fear than we are, and they have such instincts that we cannot hope to grasp), and no sooner had I moved to one side and adopted a more respectable position, than old Wilczewski appeared at the door, unshaven, wearing cheap, threadbare slippers (not intended for guests) and carrying a French newspaper.

“Time for bed, Zina dear,” he softly intoned. “You must be tired.”

As I left, I lamented—on account of my masculine vanity—my dashed good fortune, though I considered it secured and postponed only for a short period of time: I had grown so coarse that I was no longer ashamed of myself, nor did I feel any guilt before Zina or her father, who had doubtless divined everything and, dare I say, as a father, as a man belonging to another generation, must have felt gravely and terribly offended by my behavior. I consoled myself with the compellingly simple argument so typical of my generation—“She is a grown woman and knows what she wants and is free to act as she pleases”—after which I calmed down and immediately forgot about her.

I also reflected—smugly and with surprise—on the varied and active life that I now enjoy, when before it had seemed so imperviously humdrum: easy success in business, two women fussing over me, to say nothing of the need to be devious and cunning, which my sense of indifference finds agreeable. Indifference, however, is what I feel most of all these days, perhaps alongside an awareness of novelty: the recent past may remain uniquely close and be mine alone, yet it was also feeble, blind, poor, and at times devastatingly humiliating.

July 5

MY “ACTIVE” LIFE continues, but it is not what I naïvely imagined it to be—it lacks the anticipated thrill of movement, of success, of being able to give orders and comfortably, without rushing, to discuss what really changes from suchlike discussions; it lacks those touching, thrilling, deliberately withheld delights that feelings and hints of feelings entail (whether they are happy or sad is unimportant): somehow or other I must see the day through to evening, trying to dodge the many tedious or irrelevant people, and those two women (without giving myself airs, there could be more of them), giving them the slip and dreaming up pretexts to avoid seeing them, to put off our latest assignation and to remain alone for a single, solitary hour more—I have not yet the strength to escape all this, to finish with it once and for all, or, rather, I have not yet decided anything: it will be easy for me to act on my decision, for I have not been drawn into this present, as it were, alien, life, and I am not inextricably bound by it to anyone. And yet it goes on, robbing me of my time, and there is nothing to take its place: what I dread more than anything is an empty, unallocated day.

I am, essentially, still tied up with Lyolya; everything to do with her, all those imaginary rebukes, slights, and hopes remain, but they are somehow muted, frozen by the cold and excessive tranquility of this internally static “active life,” devoid as it is of that ordinary irrepressible spirit, and often I must artificially muster the requisite indignation or tenderness to escape the tedium and ascertain whether I have not become too numbed. I often receive Lyolya’s sweet, considerate, solicitous letters—these pertain to my active, real, unimaginary relations—and, as before, I wait for them impatiently, but with a new, circumspect sangfroid: hence, if I myself compose a particularly touching or successful letter, I immediately envisage Lyolya’s grateful reaction, I long to know it with palpable accuracy, and in the interim—until I receive a response—I even prefer not to find a familiar white envelope on my desk.

Lyolya continues to have trouble with Sergei N., but still she hesitates to leave him. I, too, find my circumstances unchanged—as though jaded by both women, I wearily, sometimes with a predatory, instantly extinguished sense of anticipation, await now Zina, now Ida Ivanovna, and I am even accustomed—at the Wilczewskis’, when they are together—to their petty, acrimonious squabbling, to the never-ending barbs, the sudden, squalling half declarations—made out of spite—and to my own cowardly, neutral politeness as I continue to feign ignorance. Far too often, when the evening is nearly over—after the obligatory boring farewells—I unwittingly find myself at Ida Ivanovna’s. She is disillusioned with me and, in her naïveté, has revealed to me her original designs: “Every business needs a man, you know.” Having realized once and for all that I shall never be that man in her business, that my help has been incidental and mercenary, that I was, so to speak, lumbered with her, she no longer insists, and only occasionally does she seek my advice or beseechingly bring me her confused ledgers, although she cannot understand my apathy: this (and her scornful jealousy for Zina) inevitably piques her, but what matters is that she has accepted the terms of our agreement—like a man, without regrets, and having, as it were, “weathered the storm”—and I suspect that she has decided, with a businesslike acumen, not to let me go, not to bother finding a replacement, lest she happen to land upon someone shady and disreputable. Ida Ivanovna strikes me as one of those women who will faithfully “work at a lover,” if they deem him to be superior to themselves in some way, and who will then take pride in the tendernesses that they have bought, but which seem somehow earned. Their demands are limited to a bit of help in business, which they find so touching and which binds their lovers a little, but it so happens that these women often come a cropper—more often, in fact, than others: they are taken in with skillful persistence by wicked idlers and men of dubious and even criminal nature, and, owing to this difficult experience—their own and that of others—they constantly fear everything. I do not measure up to Ida Ivanovna’s sentimental expectations, but then she is safe with me.

No emotional intimacy has developed between us: neither do I listen to, nor do I recall, her tales—which usually entail resentment and regret—because of their deplorable wretchedness, because of their absurd straightforwardness, and, perhaps, because of Ida Ivanovna’s distinctly un-Russian patter; often I simply cut her off with an unabashed, rude, unambiguous gesture, to which she does not object, smiling docilely with her instantly moist, muddy eyes.

My relationship with Zina is a far more complex affair and, in a sense, it matters more to me. It lacked, almost from the very outset, that pleasing game of flirtation that I played with Ida Ivanovna, and—although I am not in the least hurt by this, although Zina irritates me even more than Ida Ivanovna and is forever artless in the extreme—I still weigh my words, deem it necessary to pity and indulge, and I restrain myself in many respects. Such exaggerated solicitude, which clearly does not correspond to my actual indifference toward Zina, has sprung from a trifle, the memory of which is more wounding than the actual event that caused it and immediately took its place. One evening, soon after that memorable night at the Wilczewskis’ (with my clumsy and degrading failure), Zina paid me an unexpected visit, spent an age waiting for me in our pension’s “salon” (I returned home later than she had anticipated), and then, in my room upstairs—without resistance, without pretense—she gave herself to me fully, as it were, silently clinging to me and seemingly surprised by the impetuosity that she encountered from me. I had not managed to wake up from the drowsy fatigue of the day and was both exhilarated and aroused like never before by this sudden transition, but just as inexplicably quickly, I cooled, sobered up, and hurried under some pretext to send Zina packing, while she, still aflame, ashamed, hiding and stroking her naked, practically waled shoulder (into which only a moment ago, having torn off her blouse, I had been boorishly burying my face), with the indignant conviction of a child, bawled straight at me—as usual, with borrowed, clichéd words:

“Oh, you nasty man! Wicked, wicked man!”

I sensed, however, that these borrowed words expressed her righteous indignation and constituted an indictment (one that I deserved, on account of my foolish greed), and they moved me to a feeling of repugnance for myself: I could not let Zina go without putting things right, without satisfying myself (even if I was forced to overplay my hand) that she had forgiven me or else had treated me unjustly.

“Why wicked? I don’t want to risk riling you, but you don’t love me any more than I love you. Our relations are friendly, free of ambition and grudges—why are you so determined to complicate them?”

“Friendly? If that’s what you call it. I would never have come here if I didn’t love you. You know that perfectly well. By all accounts, I expected better of you, and I was well within my rights to do so.”

Then, trying to envisage clearly our recent conversations in the presence of others, I recalled those much too irresponsible, so reassuringly kind looks that I had given her, the slow and gentle squeezing or suggestive kissing of a hand, my bitter surprise at her cold and saddening words, my hasty intercessions in arguments to win her warm and trusting gratitude—everything that each of us so easily and imperceptibly squanders (from loneliness, from a sense of spiritual malaise, from the habitual desire to please or be chronically obliging) and that an innocent, dreamy woman like Zina, one given to exaggeration, can take, and is entitled to take, for something more. No matter how I tried, I could not find any comforting—even for a while—ruse (I do sometimes have such attacks of uncharacteristic sincerity), and, as I said good-bye, I pressed myself expiatorily to Zina’s cheek, which was wet with tears, using all the little artifice that I could muster, knowing that I should have to carry out some foolish obligation—and that the consciousness of this obligation would remain with me forever.

True enough, I often rebel and try to convince myself of the opposite: it was Zina who came to me, while I promised nothing and declared in all honesty that I was not in love with her; she would do well to remember the brevity and ambiguity of our meetings, her rebuffs for any effusiveness, but still I cannot shake off a certain feeling of guilt and disappointment with myself. I never ring Zina up; very rarely, and always without forewarning, she will show up at my pension—as that playful Parisian expression goes, “de cinq à sept”—and find me wearily lounging around during these would-be reclusive hours; and each of our rapprochements is so like the first: every bit as unexpected and just as fraught with nerves. But I have no use for these meetings of ours—however infrequent, bewildering, or exhilarating they may be: they rob me of my only sanctuary (even my nights are not always peaceful—Zina is reckless and knows how to get at me), and besides, my hands are pitifully tied at the Wilczewskis’, where some muddled sense of duty persistently draws me—to the house, to Ida Ivanovna, to Zina. Eagerly I imagine my imminent split with Zina (every time she takes offense, every time she spoils for a fight), and in an instant I see how much calmer and easier things would be for me, how much more convenient—the orderly management of my own time, one woman, an absence of unmitigated pity and legitimate self-reproach. I reread these entries and am amazed at the change I see in myself, a change that is incomprehensible yet seemingly not accidental—that I choose my business affairs, my women, practically even my own moods—yet it would appear that I am right only superficially; deep down, nothing has changed: by no means have I chosen my present identity (buried as it is under layers of women, books, and cafés): this current identity is but the resurrection of my old deathly solitude, and I must turn to Zina (sometimes irritated, in a frenzy of humility) in order to recreate—in reverse order—those sweet days of Lyolya, days that briefly destroyed that deathly abandonment. I found being with Lyolya so captivating (I cannot find a better word for it) that even now I try, despite myself, to rediscover that old steady flame in Zina’s feelings for me, to find Lyolya’s aloofness and displeasure in the way that Zina irritates me, and lo, my extravagant, pointed betrayals with Ida Ivanovna, Zina’s suspicions and rightful jealousy, my obligatory heartlessness fill me—for her sake, for that of the man I used to be before Lyolya, before the possibility of Lyolya’s “betrayals”—with an unpleasant and uncommonly exhilarating pain that is every bit like the real thing. This intrusion of a pain connecting two of my extremes—how I have suffered and how I cause others to suffer—leads to a certain reconciliation with my fate and my own (until now seemingly unique and uniquely undeserved) failures far more clearly than any speculative, wholly unconvincing comparisons: since I now have that same dark, unnecessarily hurtful power over someone that Lyolya once had over me, that same nagging cruelty (born of animus), since I, sensible to and mindful of the wrong done to me, am capable of and even compelled to inflict it in turn, there is, one might even say, an inevitability to all this, an eternal exchange of roles that brings us hope and comfort on bad days. It was something odd and barely noticeable that made me think of my excessive and inevitable cruelty yesterday at the Wilczewskis’: they were talking about a French novel, a recent succès de scandale, one much too risqué and close to the bone, and Zina, with comic directness, came over to me at once (I was sitting by the little table adorned with fruit) and, resting her hand on my shoulder, slightly crouching on her long legs, reached over me to the apples—she spent an indelicately long time selecting one and suddenly looked me in the eyes so expressively and shamelessly that I could actually feel her burning, involuntary abandon, a reluctance to control herself or obey my whims, a question so indignant and so understandable that my usual, somewhat mocking, judgmental disdain for Zina vanished in an instant. I ought to have quietly said, “I must see you later,” or for all to hear—to calm and reassure—“What a marvelous evening. Why don’t you see the guests off, and I’ll bring you back later” (it would have been simple and, in that moment, perfectly justifiable on account of our mutual desire); but one obstacle yet remained—one that was irremediable, idiotic, tedious—and that was Ida Ivanovna, in whose presence not only could I not promise or suggest anything to Zina, but with whom I had, as it were, tacitly agreed to deceive Zina that very night. In the event, I said nothing and, annoyed with myself, projected my annoyance onto both women, while Zina, biting her lip theatrically, but sincerely perplexed and shocked, tapped her nail on the top apple and clumsily extricated herself from me. With some surprise, I thought how distressing it is to recognize in everything the inequality that we have wrought (even when it is in my favor): because of Ida Ivanovna, I have somebody with whom to ward off the dangerous sensuality that bedevils so many as yet unestablished relationships; Zina, on the other hand, has no one, and that is why she forever has this excessive readiness to abase herself and to surrender to me, to suffer these habitual disappointments. Because of other similar instances of my rudeness, ruthlessness, or simply my contrived, evasive blindness, I have begun to pardon—gradually coaxing them out of my memory—other moments of Lyolya’s annoyance, her rash words, her stubborn refusal to see that I needed to be comforted, and how easy it would have been to give that comfort; and so, next to me, Lyolya appears almost heroic in her patience and condescension: indeed, to me, at least, it felt tormentingly sweet (because of the assurance of continual meetings, which assurance Zina lacks after my evasive blindness) to endure all that vitriol—because it was alive, because it was Lyolya’s—vitriol that I did not attempt to avoid and at times even seemed to provoke. The inevitability of her growing bored with me back then is becoming ever clearer to me, but I believe that it would be a different story now: I know that Lyolya’s boredom was caused by my eternal muddled attempts to foist my love on her, a love that was as unbearable as it was unrequited, but we had other things, too—the exchange of observations, jokes, ideals (which could be united under the term “friendship,” and which was all that Lyolya found worthwhile and interesting in her conversations with me)—all this I would hide whenever I divined in her words an irritated haste in response to the loving tone of my own ones, sensible and inconsequential though they were. It pained Lyolya that I was oblivious to the real subject of our friendly conversations, that I understood nothing and did not make the likely futile efforts that in the future I shall make without fail and that will alter our complicated relationship, tainted as it has been by thoughtlessness. It is possible, of course, that even then I shall not be able to stand my ground and that, as usual, some rival will appear, attended by jealousy, striking at all human resoluteness; but I daresay that after Sergei N., Lyolya will be even more broken than before, even more in need of some calm and carefree respite.

Once again I am convinced that this change in myself (especially if it is not imaginary or deliberate, but arisen from genuine personal experience) is in some way a lesson in patience, fairness, and kindness, but this is not the first time that I have tried to apply this theoretical method (likely borrowed from somewhere), and its past success has depended on my being little hurt, whereas in the most wounding of circumstances—during spells of rivalry and jealousy, for instance, as I have just described—no decision holds fast, and the impossibility of achieving, predetermining, calculating, plunges us back into the unknown, into a struggle with only our helpless, already-defeated intuition to guide us—but then, just maybe, it also imbues our life with a bit of hope and the unconceited sense of dignity that would not exist, were it not for such failures—or, for that matter, the torments of the unknown.

In these half-hearted times (without submitting to daily duties imposed by all manner of little responsibilities, without blindly submitting to love), all the more soberly do I perceive the frailties and dangers posed by submission in its variety of forms—that fatal shortcoming in all our lives—and somehow I am able to compare them, and perhaps it is what remains of love, strangled yet still ennobling, that reveals to me just how much trivia there is in my cold, dull depths, in all the “weight” that I have finally achieved, and what remains compels me once again—albeit with something of an ulterior motive—not to be callous or indifferent, but to be conscientious, and to suffer.

July 7

TODAY I RECEIVED an unexpected letter from Katerina Viktorovna: Lyolya has gone to Berlin for a few days with Sergei N. and asked her to send me that old photograph of her with clasped hands, the one that I myself would often remind her of; at the same time, emboldened and availing herself of the opportunity afforded by Lyolya’s absence, Katerina Viktorovna has informed me of everything that she managed to glean over time, discussing Lyolya in that conspiratorial tone of devotion and with such a passionate attention to even the most trifling of details, and to their constant interpretation, which admits of no reproach and can only merit an indulgent, affectionate grin or a delightedly scandalized whisper, in a tone somewhat slavish and imbued with somebody else’s life, the one in which old aunties will speak of a favorite, spoiled nephew, or faithful courtiers of their sovereign. The letter, of course, brought news of Lyolya’s predicament: “Sergei Nikolayevich is a marvelous man and loves Lyolya enormously, but he does not know how to handle her.” (It struck me that Katerina Viktorovna has not yet clocked how poorly I myself “handled” her.) “He has a difficult character, is quick to take offense, and won’t say anything for days on end if Lyolya dares to contradict him, but you know what the girl is like, how frank and direct she can be. Besides, he is unspeakably jealous and scarcely bothers to conceal his jealousy.” This was the sole criticism in the letter, a hint at something of which I was not aware, but it was immediately followed by more cheering words: “We talk about you all the time, and Lyolya insists that you alone were always able to cheer her up.” I am beginning to believe it myself—over the six months of our “friendship,” a great many things happened, and I am able to call to mind anything I like, some chance joke of mine that was especially successful, Lyolya’s cheerful and approving laugh. That especially cunning, quick-witted laughter of hers, revived now in my memory, this lovely letter from Katerina Viktorovna—it has all of a sudden broken Lyolya’s distance and unattainability and has revealed her to me anew, near to me, preoccupied with me: I smiled as it dawned on me just why she had sent me that photograph—Lyolya, sensitive, kind, apt not to forget the little things in the days when she was well-disposed toward me, had now thought of my potential anxiety, of my suspicions owing to her trip with Sergei N., and so from there, from afar, she seemed to nod at me reassuringly. Enchanted, I looked at the photograph of Lyolya, as though at something rare and precious, although I had seen this photograph only in Berlin—at Katerina Viktorovna’s—and never in Lyolya’s possession, and although I experienced after Berlin another feeling, the very same that brightened my recent boredom and was destroyed so entirely by Lyolya’s overwhelming arrival. Ever since that arrival, however, I have always thought back on my first years in Paris, and those before them in Berlin, with a kind of wonder—they are touchingly and tenderly connected for me, now, with Lyolya, who at the time was only a name, while the other feelings that so suffused me back then seem cheapened, a dreary list of events, expectations, and developments that affect me now only if they are associated with Lyolya. Plainly, those whom we love at any given moment appear poeticized and near to us even in the memories that predate that love (if such memories in any way concern the object of our affection), while those whom we have ceased to love, whom we have replaced—at very least, for the duration of the replacement—seem dull and unpoetic not only now, but even in our romantic past, which is cast in a light (despite the truth of the matter in our heads) determined not by how we felt then, but by how we feel now. The photograph, the discussions about Lyolya in Berlin—they are all more acute than her suddenly revived but nevertheless pale laughter; they have unexpectedly drawn me to her and made me wish—ardently, capriciously, willfully—for her greater obtainability in some way, for some real, tangible embodiment, and I began impatiently to search, to pick over my—alas, limited—options: a letter was a tried and tested pleasure, but it entailed a less-than-immediate response; I could have tried asking Bobby and Zina, though I recalled their previous stories about Lyolya, which struck me simply for their mediocrity. What did that leave me with? Derval?

I could not put off a meeting; no sooner had I considered the prospect than I found myself racing there in a taxicab, astonished by both my extravagance and the groundlessness of my hopes, yet there was, as I soon discovered, a certain logic and meaning in this seemingly absurd and rash act. Derval, bored in the midst of work, forever ready to be distracted, beamed at me in delight—he loves these strange talks with me (about the revolution in Russia, about my supposed courting), and so, as if deciphering my intentions, having enquired for appearances’ sake and for that of my shattered dignity about some routine affairs, he suddenly, with that same tension in his eyes and forehead with which he asks about matters of business, as though having recollected something of significance to us both, said to me quite naturally: “Et votre amie, qu’est-ce qu’elle est devenue?”

After several persistent questions, he formulated an accurate impression of the situation and, I thought, almost with a rival’s sense of satisfaction, one understandable in an old man who has, at one time or another, been much loved, he sympathized with me and began to console me, saying that Lyolya would yet come back “to us” and that now “we” knew what the matter was and should not let her go. Such exceeding responsiveness to my earlier hopes (to have a chat about Lyolya; to listen, as it were, to the oracle; to have, as it were, my fortune told) even galled me a little—for this was yet another proof of that human omniscience, the insight of others that belittles mine; I was, essentially, comforted by the talk, and if by “gentlemanly” habit I preferred to remain silent, still I smiled intelligently enough. I daresay that Derval misinterpreted my silence, believing that he had gone too far in breaking the rules of decorum, and he cooled obdurately, as he had done previously after instances of incautious, bothersome chatter.

My presentiment about this visit to Derval was, I repeat, not in the least bit irrational: the revival of the past, the accuracy and intensity of the remembrance, depend in some measure on its enchanting fortuitousness; they appear a miracle, the gift of which has suddenly befallen us, and none of our artificial efforts can so resurrect the past anew, while every repeated attempt at revival—always somewhat artificial—will inevitably be feebler than the archetype (today’s example: the unexpected receipt of the photograph, the unanticipated letter from Katerina Viktorovna but not one from Lyolya herself—her letters have become commonplace and scarcely excite me now), and if one were to try to find a way to revive the past, or to keep it revived, one would have to turn, just as I turned to Derval, to people and opportunities yet untried.

In fact, the miracle that was Lyolya’s would-be presence today was maintained and strengthened at Derval’s, not by his encouraging words, but by a single astonishing detail that almost escaped me at first, but later, all day long, seemed connected to Lyolya and to something about her that was, as far as I was concerned, reassuringly sweet and dear: she has an amusing knack for catching other people’s expressions, their turns of phrase, even their intonations, and can mimic them with such infectious precision that they become a model of imitation, one that is understood by everybody and is inseparable from the person being imitated, and so today, thanks to Derval, I was reminded how Lyolya would make fun of him and recalled, as it were, her “imitation of an imitation.” It is true—how we used to laugh and poke fun at that “old boy,” repeating certain beloved phrases of his (“mon cher, voilà”), emulating that captain of industry’s clipped, imperious, theatrical tone before any vital declaration (although it must be said that his imperious solemnity never lasts), and those curious, chesty, affectionate little notes intended to convince you of his friendship or of the benefit of some deal with a particularly useful individual. With his voice, Derval reminded me—in a strange and perverse fashion—of Lyolya and how she used to poke fun at him, reminded me with a freshness that was so sweet, so unexpectedly joyful, just like old times, that the feeling lasted all day long: to see Lyolya then and there, feigning seriousness, pleased by my laughter and already laughing with me, well-meaning, as she has so rarely been in these last few months, all I had to do was furrow my brow like Derval, look triumphantly ahead and say the magic words: mon cher, voilà.

Probably wishing to pin this down even more securely, I found myself, almost for the first time, reaching irresistibly for music—music is especially associated for some reason with romantic feelings, feelings that are, to some extent, replaced by it, that are intensified as it swells and mingles with them: both music and love entail that same ennobling dissociation from everything selfish and vain, that same fearless height. What pushed me in the way of music was a poster I happened to see for Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony; I wanted to hear it immediately—as vindication for a joke that Lyolya made at my expense a long time ago. I am no judge of music; without somebody else’s direction, I am hopelessly lost, and yet—although dependent, reliant on the verdict of others—I do love it, only I tire and will quickly begin to grow bored. I have heard the Sixth Symphony many times before and have read all manner of explanations that poeticize and inspire one’s perception of it, and some of its independent spirit has trickled down to me: gone for me are its longueurs and novelty, forever so dangerously dispiriting, and I can relate to the now thoroughly familiar flow of sounds as I please. I hold the second and third movements to be things of perfection, even if they are a little shallow and frivolous, but then the first and final movements (it is possible that I am borrowing these words, but so lasting has been their impression) astonish me, like an echo of something that is, I daresay, deeply personal and terrifying. Fearing fatigue and boredom and, at the same time, the loss of Lyolya’s appearance today, I decided to listen to nothing but the “Pathétique” Symphony, and truly it touched and uplifted me, as Lyolya’s presence had never done, even when it was unexpected, well-intentioned, felicitous. Never have I ceased to know—clairvoyantly, deep down—that Lyolya is with me, or that she will be with me yet, that we are fated to be together, that one day, just as surely as I am listening to this symphony now, I shall explain it all to Lyolya, and she will come (through this musical connection) to understand that our friendship is in fact kinship. It strikes me that the only salvation from how I imagine—with terror and despair—man’s station and his fate is to be found in Lyolya’s succor. Like everyone, I have my own, maybe obsessive, futile, maybe in some way authentic, vision: all of a sudden, I will imagine the entire homogenous world as it is revealed to us—the streets, the cities, the rooms, those intelligent beasts of a sad and predatory nature, who have learned to stand on their hind legs, who have built all this but are fated to disappear, who, despite this, still try to cling to something solid and lasting, still try to ward off the inevitability of death, who dreamed up fairy tales and, now that these stories have been disproved, are disconsolate—and for me the only means of defending myself from our terrible fate is love, my love—Lyolya. Without love we fall into a stupor or despair, it covers our naked animal essence; with the fear of death, with deliberate attempts to grab hold of some kind of eternity, one that is at once a mystery to us and yet devised by us, even the remains of love, even its very echo in music, imbues us with a semblance of fearlessness, dignity, and the spiritual range to disregard death. Only by loving, by knowing about love, hoping for love, are we inspired and meaningfully engaged in life, able to banish the sovereignty of petty day-to-day cares, to stop waiting for the end to come; hence my conclusion, my hope—despite all doubt, despite experience, despite my perennial, easily pacified patience: Lyolya must love—for my sake (thankfully I have mellowed, and it startles me to think for the first time—for her own sake, too); she cannot leave me, else she will know how feeble, how inadequate and elusive are the remains of love, and how, before we realize it, it will be too late. Because of the enormous triple strain—Lyolya’s almost tangible presence all day, somebody else’s dying, desperate music, my own foolish fever—I have ceased to doubt and now begin to believe, with rejoicing, with relief, that Lyolya has already staged her intervention.

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MY FOOLISH FEVER continues yet: urged on by obsessive nocturnal observations, I have had to jump out of bed and now I race to inscribe my thoughts in pencil, and in all likelihood tomorrow I shall regret what I have written—for in the morning it always proves worthless and of dubious significance—but still I cannot help myself. The first such observation: the terrific heat forced me to lie down on top of the duvet and inadvertently I felt—one on top of the other—the warmth of my legs, and suddenly I recalled how last winter at Lyolya’s I undressed in the dark, how embarrassed I was by my ice-cold legs, rubbing them for so long and fearing to touch Lyolya, and now it pains me to realize that the night is passing, and so with it all this wasted, living warmth meant for Lyolya. I felt something vaguely like this when I was a child, when the dog, loved and doted on by all our family, ran off one day during a walk, after which at each and every meal I would feel sad—with a touch of that same mercenariness that I now foster for what is untouched—that bones and titbits intended for our beloved pet were going to waste, no longer of use to anybody.

No, my observations began with something else: when I entered my room, I saw on the table a bar of chocolate in its wrapper—ordinarily, this would have brought a sense a comfort, prosperity, “everything in its rightful place,” hope amid all this loneliness, but today it symbolized something more, something so shameful that I am loath to write about it. Nor indeed shall I write about it: I do not mean to dramatize, but, simply put, I am already quite certain that I shall boldly cross out these rather wet, debasing, self-pitying words that only mar these pages granting Lyolya resurrection, pages that are particularly pleasing to reread.