The Adolescent

He came to the country then, “God knows why”—at least that was how he put it to me later. His little children were, as usual, not with him but with some relations; that was what he did with his children, legitimate and illegitimate, all his life. There was a significant number of household serfs on this estate; among them was the gardener Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky. I will add here, to be rid of it once and for all: rarely can anyone have been so thoroughly angered by his last name as I was throughout my whole life. That was stupid, of course, but it was so. Each time I entered some school or met persons to whom I owed an accounting because of my age, in short, every little teacher, tutor, inspector, priest, anybody you like, they would ask my last name and, on hearing that I was Dolgoruky, would inevitably find it somehow necessary to add:

“Prince Dolgoruky?”

And each time I was obliged to explain to all these idle people:

“No, simply Dolgoruky.”

This simply began, finally, to drive me out of my mind. I will note with that, as a phenomenon, that I do not recall a single exception: everybody asked. Some of them seemingly had no need at all to ask; who the devil could have had any need of it, I’d like to know? But everybody asked, everybody to a man. Hearing that I was simply Dolgoruky, the asker ordinarily measured me with a dull and stupidly indifferent look, indicating thereby that he did not know himself why he had asked, and walked away. My schoolmates were the most insulting. How does a schoolboy question a newcomer? A lost and abashed newcomer, on the first day he enters school (no matter what kind), is a common victim: he is ordered around, he is teased, he is treated like a lackey. Some hale and fat boy suddenly stops right in front of his victim and looks at him point-blank for several moments with a long, stern, and arrogant gaze. The newcomer stands silently before him, looks askance, if he’s not a coward, and waits for whatever is coming.

“What’s your last name?”

“Dolgoruky.”

“Prince Dolgoruky?”

“No, simply Dolgoruky.”

“Ah, simply! Fool!”

And he’s right; there is nothing stupider than to be called Dolgoruky without being a prince. I drag this stupidity around on my back without any guilt. Later on, when I began to get very angry, to the question “Are you a prince?” I always answered, “No, I’m the son of a household servant, a former serf.”

Then, when I got angry in the last degree, to the question “Are you a prince?” I once answered firmly, “No, simply Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of my former master, Mr. Versilov.”

I had already thought that up when I was in the sixth class² in high school, and though I quickly became convinced beyond doubt that it was stupid, all the same I did not stop being stupid at once. I remember that one of my teachers—though he was the only one—found me “full of a vengeful and civic idea.” Generally they took this escapade with a sort of offensive thoughtfulness. Finally, one of my classmates, a very sarcastic fellow, with whom I spoke only once a year, said to me with a serious air, but looking somewhat askance:

“Such feelings, of course, do you honor, and you undoubtedly have something to be proud of; but all the same, if I were in your place, I wouldn’t celebrate my illegitimacy so much . . . you sound like a birthday boy!”

Since then I stopped boasting that I was illegitimate.

I repeat, it’s very difficult to write in Russian: here I’ve scribbled a whole three pages on how I’ve spent all my life being angry over my last name, and meanwhile the reader has surely concluded that I’m angry precisely because I’m not a prince, but simply Dolgoruky. To explain again and justify myself would be humiliating for me.

IV

AND SO, AMONG this household, of whom there were a great many besides Makar Ivanovich, there was a girl, and she was already about eighteen years old when the fifty-year-old Makar Dolgoruky suddenly showed the intention of marrying her. Marriages between domestics, as is known, were concluded in the time of serfdom with the permission of the masters, and sometimes even on their orders. There was an aunt about the estate then; that is, she wasn’t my aunt, she was a landowner herself; yet, I don’t know why, but all her life everybody called her aunt, not only mine, but in general, in Versilov’s family as well, to which she was in fact almost related. This was Tatyana Pavlovna Prutkov. At that time she still had thirty-five souls of her own, in the same province and the same district. She didn’t really manage Versilov’s estate (of five hundred souls), but supervised it in a neighborly way, and that supervision, as I heard, was worth the supervision of some educated manager. However, I really don’t care about her knowledge; I only want to add, setting aside all thought of flattery and fawning, that this Tatyana Pavlovna is a noble and even original being.