THE wedding was to take place in two weeks’ time, but, as our lectures
had begun already, Woloda and myself were forced to return to Moscow at
the beginning of September. The Nechludoffs had also returned from the
country, and Dimitri (with whom, on parting, I had made an agreement
that we should correspond frequently with the result, of course, that we
had never once written to one another) came to see us immediately
after our arrival, and arranged to escort me to my first lecture on the
morrow.
It was a beautiful sunny day. No sooner had I entered the auditorium
than I felt my personality entirely disappear amid the swarm of
light-hearted youths who were seething tumultuously through every
doorway and corridor under the influence of the sunlight pouring through
the great windows. I found the sense of being a member of this huge
community very pleasing, yet there were few among the throng whom I
knew, and that only on terms of a nod and a “How do you do, Irtenieff?”
All around me men were shaking hands and chatting together--from every
side came expressions of friendship, laughter, jests, and badinage.
Everywhere I could feel the tie which bound this youthful society in
one, and everywhere, too, I could feel that it left me out. Yet this
impression lasted for a moment only, and was succeeded, together with
the vexation which it had caused, by the idea that it was best that
I should not belong to that society, but keep to my own circle of
gentlemen; wherefore I proceeded to seat myself upon the third bench,
with, as neighbours, Count B., Baron Z., the Prince R., Iwin, and
some other young men of the same class with none of whom, however, was
acquainted save with Iwin and Count B. Yet the look which these young
gentlemen threw at me at once made me feel that I was not of their set,
and I turned to observe what was going on around me. Semenoff, with
grey, matted hair, white teeth, and tunic flying open, was seated a
little distance off, and leaning forward on his elbows as he nibbled
a pen, while the gymnasium student who had come out first in the
examinations had established himself on the front bench, and, with a
black stock coming half-way up his cheek, was toying with the silver
watch-chain which adorned his satin waistcoat. On a bench in a raised
part of the hall I could descry Ikonin (evidently he had contrived to
enter the University somehow!), and hear him fussily proclaiming, in all
the glory of blue piped trousers which completely hid his boots, that he
was now seated on Parnassus. Ilinka--who had surprised me by giving me a
bow not only cold, but supercilious, as though to remind me that here we
were all equals--was just in front of me, with his legs resting in free
and easy style on another bench (a hit, somehow I thought, at myself),
and conversing with a student as he threw occasional glances in my
direction. Iwin’s set by my side were talking in French, yet every word
which I overheard of their conversation seemed to me both stupid and
incorrect (“Ce n’est pas francais,” I thought to myself), while all
the attitudes, utterances, and doings of Semenoff, Ilinka, and the rest
struck me as uniformly coarse, ungentlemanly, and “comme il ne faut
pas.”
Thus, attached to no particular set, I felt isolated and unable to make
friends, and so grew resentful. One of the students on the bench in
front of me kept biting his nails, which were raw to the quick already,
and this so disgusted me that I edged away from him. In short, I
remember finding my first day a most depressing affair.
When the professor entered, and there was a general stir and a cessation
of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at him, as also
that he began his discourse with a sentence which I thought devoid of
meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from first to last, so clever
that not a word ought to be taken from or added to it. Disappointed in
this, I at once proceeded to draw beneath the heading “First Lecture”
with which I had adorned my beautifully-bound notebook no less than
eighteen faces in profile, joined together in a sort of chaplet, and
only occasionally moved my hand along the page in order to give the
professor (who, I felt sure, must be greatly interested in me) the
impression that I was writing something. In fact, at this very first
lecture I came to the decision which I maintained to the end of my
course, namely, that it was unnecessary, and even stupid, to take down
every word said by every professor.
At subsequent lectures, however, I did not feel my isolation so
strongly, since I made several acquaintances and got into the way of
shaking hands and entering into conversation. Yet for some reason or
another no real intimacy ever sprang up between us, and I often found
myself depressed and only feigning cheerfulness. With the set which
comprised Iwin and “the aristocrats,” as they were generally known, I
could not make any headway at all, for, as I now remember, I was always
shy and churlish to them, and nodded to them only when they nodded to
me; so that they had little inducement to desire my acquaintance. With
most of the other students, however, this arose from quite a different
cause. As soon as ever I discerned friendliness on the part of a
comrade, I at once gave him to understand that I went to luncheon with
Prince Ivan Ivanovitch and kept my own drozhki. All this I said merely
to show myself in the most favourable light in his eyes, and to induce
him to like me all the more; yet almost invariably the only result of
my communicating to him the intelligence concerning the drozhki and my
relationship to Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was that, to my astonishment, he
at once adopted a cold and haughty bearing towards me.
Among us we had a Crown student named Operoff--a very modest,
industrious, and clever young fellow, who always offered one his hand
like a slab of wood (that is to say, without closing his fingers or
making the slightest movement with them); with the result that his
comrades often did the same to him in jest, and called it the “deal
board” way of shaking hands. He and I nearly always sat next to one
another, and discussed matters generally. In particular he pleased me
with the freedom with which he would criticise the professors as he
pointed out to me with great clearness and acumen the merits or demerits
of their respective ways of teaching and made occasional fun of them.
Such remarks I found exceedingly striking and diverting when uttered
in his quiet, mincing voice. Nevertheless he never let a lecture
pass without taking careful notes of it in his fine handwriting,
and eventually we decided to join forces, and to do our preparation
together. Things had progressed to the point of his always looking
pleased when I took my usual seat beside him when, unfortunately, I one
day found it necessary to inform him that, before her death, my mother
had besought my father never to allow us to enter for a government
scholarship, as well as that I myself considered Crown students, no
matter how clever, to be-“well, they are not GENTLEMEN,” I concluded,
though beginning to flounder a little and grow red. At the moment
Operoff said nothing, but at subsequent lectures he ceased to greet me
or to offer me his board-like hand, and never attempted to talk to me,
but, as soon as ever I sat down, he would lean his head upon his arm,
and purport to be absorbed in his notebooks. I was surprised at this
sudden coolness, but looked upon it as infra dig, “pour un jeune
homme de bonne maison” to curry favour with a mere Crown student of
an Operoff, and so left him severely alone--though I confess that his
aloofness hurt my feelings. On one occasion I arrived before him,
and, since the lecture was to be delivered by a popular professor whom
students came to hear who did not usually attend such functions, I found
almost every seat occupied. Accordingly I secured Operoff’s place for
myself by spreading my notebooks on the desk before it; after which I
left the room again for a moment. When I returned I perceived that my
paraphernalia had been relegated to the bench behind, and the place
taken by Operoff himself. I remarked to him that I had already secured
it by placing my notebooks there.
“I know nothing about that,” he replied sharply, yet without looking up
at me.
“I tell you I placed my notebooks there,” I repeated, purposely trying
to bluster, in the hope of intimidating him. “Every one saw me do it,”
I added, including the students near me in my glance. Several of them
looked at me with curiosity, yet none of them spoke.
“Seats cannot be booked here,” said Operoff. “Whoever first sits down
in a place keeps it,” and, settling himself angrily where he was, he
flashed at me a glance of defiance.
“Well, that only means that you are a cad,” I said.
I have an idea that he murmured something about my being “a stupid young
idiot,” but I decided not to hear it. What would be the use, I asked
myself, of my hearing it? That we should brawl like a couple of manants
over less than nothing? (I was very fond of the word manants, and often
used it for meeting awkward junctures.) Perhaps I should have said
something more had not, at that moment, a door slammed and the professor
(dressed in a blue frockcoat, and shuffling his feet as he walked)
ascended the rostrum.
Nevertheless, when the examination was about to come on, and I had need
of some one’s notebooks, Operoff remembered his promise to lend me his,
and we did our preparation together.