Two years had passed. Circumstances had changed; I had come to
Petersburg again and could live here openly. I was no longer afraid of
being and seeming sentimental, and gave myself up entirely to the
fatherly, or rather idolatrous feeling roused in me by Sonya, Zinaida
Fyodorovna's child. I fed her with my own hands, gave her her bath, put
her to bed, never took my eyes off her for nights together, and screamed
when it seemed to me that the nurse was just going to drop her. My
thirst for normal ordinary life became stronger and more acute as time
went on, but wider visions stopped short at Sonya, as though I had found
in her at last just what I needed. I loved the child madly. In her I saw
the continuation of my life, and it was not exactly that I fancied, but
I felt, I almost believed, that when I had cast off at last my long,
bony, bearded frame, I should go on living in those little blue eyes,
that silky flaxen hair, those dimpled pink hands which stroked my face
so lovingly and were clasped round my neck.
Sonya's future made me anxious. Orlov was her father; in her birth
certificate she was called Krasnovsky, and the only person who knew of
her existence, and took interest in her--that is, I--was at death's
door. I had to think about her seriously.
The day after I arrived in Petersburg I went to see Orlov. The door was
opened to me by a stout old fellow with red whiskers and no moustache,
who looked like a German. Polya, who was tidying the drawing-room, did
not recognise me, but Orlov knew me at once.
"Ah, Mr. Revolutionist!" he said, looking at me with curiosity, and
laughing. "What fate has brought you?"
He was not changed in the least: the same well-groomed, unpleasant face,
the same irony. And a new book was lying on the table just as of old,
with an ivory paper-knife thrust in it. He had evidently been reading
before I came in. He made me sit down, offered me a cigar, and with a
delicacy only found in well-bred people, concealing the unpleasant
feeling aroused by my face and my wasted figure, observed casually that
I was not in the least changed, and that he would have known me anywhere
in spite of my having grown a beard. We talked of the weather, of Paris.
To dispose as quickly as possible of the oppressive, inevitable
question, which weighed upon him and me, he asked:
"Zinaida Fyodorovna is dead?"
"Yes," I answered.
"In childbirth?"
"Yes, in childbirth. The doctor suspected another cause of death, but
... it is more comforting for you and for me to think that she died in
childbirth."
He sighed decorously and was silent. The angel of silence passed over
us, as they say.
"Yes. And here everything is as it used to be--no changes," he said
briskly, seeing that I was looking about the room. "My father, as you
know, has left the service and is living in retirement; I am still in
the same department. Do you remember Pekarsky? He is just the same as
ever. Gruzin died of diphtheria a year ago.... Kukushkin is alive, and
often speaks of you. By the way," said Orlov, dropping his eyes with an
air of reserve, "when Kukushkin heard who you were, he began telling
every one you had attacked him and tried to murder him ... and that he
only just escaped with his life."