The Possessed

Scene 1

The curtain rises on Varvara Stavrogin’s drawing room. The narrator goes over and sits down at the table to play cards with stepan trofimovich.

STEPAN: Oh, I forgot to ask you to cut the cards. Forgive me, Anton, but I didn’t sleep well at all last night. How I regretted having complained to you of Varvara!

GRIGORIEV: You merely said she was keeping you out of vanity and that she was jealous of your education.

STEPAN: That’s what I mean. But it’s not true! Your turn. You see, she’s an angel of honor and sensitivity, and I’m just the reverse.

(varvara stavrogin comes in, but stops at the door.)

VARVARA: Cards again! (They rise.) Sit down and go on. I am busy. (She goes over to look at some papers on a table at the left. They continue playing, but stepan trofimovich keeps glancing at varvara stavrogin, who finally speaks, avoiding his eyes.) I thought you were to work on your book this morning.

STEPAN: I took a walk in the garden. I had taken Tocqueville under my arm—­

VARVARA: And you read Paul de Kock instead. But you have been announcing your book for fifteen years now.

STEPAN: Yes, I have gathered the material, but I have to put it together. It doesn’t matter anyway! I am forgotten. No one needs me.

VARVARA: You would be less forgotten if you played cards less often.

STEPAN: Yes, I play cards. And it’s unworthy of me. But who is responsible? Who nipped my career in the bud? Ah, que meure la Russie! I’ll trump that.

VARVARA: Nothing keeps you from working and from proving by your work that people were wrong to neglect you.

STEPAN: You are forgetting, chère amie, that I have published a great deal.

VARVARA: Indeed? Who remembers that now?

STEPAN: Who? Why, our friend here certainly remembers it.

GRIGORIEV: Of course I do. To begin with, your lectures on the nature of the Arabs, then the start of your study on the exceptional moral nobility of certain knights at a certain period, and, above all, your thesis on the importance that the small city of Hanau might have achieved between 1413 and 1428 if it had not been prevented from doing so by half-­hidden causes, which you analyzed brilliantly.

STEPAN: You have a memory like a steel trap, Anton. Thank you.

VARVARA: That is not the point. The point is that for fifteen years you have been announcing a book and you haven’t written a single word of it.

STEPAN: Of course not, that would be too easy! I want to be sterile and solitary! That will teach them what they have lost. I want to be a living reproach!

VARVARA: You would be if you spent less time in bed.

STEPAN: What?

VARVARA: Yes, to be a living reproach one has to stand on one’s feet.

STEPAN: Standing up or lying down, the important thing is to personify the idea. Besides, I am active, I am active, and always according to my principles. This very week I signed a protest.

VARVARA: Against what?

STEPAN: I don’t know. It was . . . oh, I’ve forgotten. Il fallait protester, voilà tout. Oh, in my time everything was different. I used to work twelve hours a day. . . .

VARVARA: Five or six would have been enough. . . .

STEPAN: I used to spend hours in the library gathering mountains of notes. We had hope then! We used to talk until daybreak, building the future. Oh, how noble we were then, strong as steel, firm as the Rock of Gibraltar! Those were evenings truly worthy of Athens: music, Spanish melodies, love of humanity, the Sistine Madonna . . . O ma noble et fidèle amie, have you any idea of all I gave up?

VARVARA: No. (She rises.) But I know that if you talked until dawn you couldn’t work twelve hours a day. Besides, all this is mere talk! You know that at long last I am expecting my son, Nicholas, any moment. . . . I must have a word with you. (grigoriev gets up, comes over, and kisses her hand.) Thank you, Anton, you are discreet. Stay in the garden and you can come back later.

(grigoriev leaves.)

STEPAN: Quel bonheur, ma noble amie, de revoir notre Nicholas!

VARVARA: Yes, I am very happy. He is my whole life. But I am worried.

STEPAN: Worried?

VARVARA: Yes—­don’t act like a male nurse—­I am worried. By the way, since when have you been wearing red neckties?

STEPAN: Why, just today I—­

VARVARA: It doesn’t suit your age, in my opinion. Where was I? Yes, I am worried. And you know very well why. All those rumors . . . I can’t believe them, and yet I can’t forget them. Debauchery, violence, duels, he insults everybody, he frequents the dregs of society! Absurd, absurd! And, yet, suppose it were true?

STEPAN: But it isn’t possible. Just remember the dreamy, affectionate child he was. Just remember the touching melancholies he used to fall into. No one but an exceptional soul can feel such melancholy . . . as I am well aware.

VARVARA: You are forgetting that he is no longer a child.

[STEPAN: But his health is poor. Just remember: he used to weep for nights on end. Can you imagine him forcing men to fight?

VARVARA: He was in no way weak! What has made you imagine that? He was simply high-­strung, that’s all. But you got it into your head to wake him up in the middle of the night, when he was twelve years old, to tell him your troubles. That’s the kind of tutor you were.

STEPAN: Le cher ange loved me. He used to ask me to confide in him and would weep in my arms.

VARVARA: The angel has changed. I am told that I wouldn’t recognize him now, that his physical strength is exceptional.]

STEPAN: But what does he tell you in his letters?

VARVARA: His letters are few and far between but always respectful.

STEPAN: You see?

VARVARA: I see nothing. You should get out of the habit of talking without saying anything. And, besides, the facts speak for themselves. Did he or didn’t he have his commission taken away from him because he had seriously wounded another officer in a duel?

STEPAN: That’s not a crime. He was motivated by the warmth of his noble blood. That’s all very chivalrous.

VARVARA: Yes. But it is less chivalrous to live in the vilest sections of St. Petersburg and to enjoy the company of cutthroats and drunkards.

STEPAN (laughing): Oh, that’s simply Prince Harry’s youth all over again!

VARVARA: What do you mean by that?

STEPAN: Why, Shakespeare, ma noble amie, immortal Shakespeare, the genius of geniuses, great Will, in short, who shows us Prince Harry indulging in debauch with his friend Falstaff.

VARVARA: I shall reread the play. By the way, are you taking any exercise? You are well aware that you should walk six versts a day. Good. In any case, I asked Nicholas to come home. I want you to sound him out. I plan to keep him here and to arrange his marriage.

STEPAN: His marriage! Oh, how romantic that is! Have you anyone in mind?

VARVARA: Yes, I am thinking of Lisa, the daughter of my friend Prascovya Drozdov. They are in Switzerland with my ward, Dasha. . . . But what does it matter to you?

STEPAN: I love Nicholas as much as my own son.

VARVARA: That isn’t much. Altogether, you have seen your son only twice, including the day of his birth.

STEPAN: His aunts brought him up and I sent him regularly the income from the little estate his mother left him, and all the time I suffered bitterly from his absence. Moreover, he’s a complete dud, poor in spirit and poor in heart. You should see the letters he writes me! You would think he was speaking to a servant. I asked him with all my paternal love if he didn’t want to come and see me. Do you know what he replied? “If I come home, it will be to check up on my accounts, and to settle accounts too.”

VARVARA: Why don’t you learn once and for all to make people respect you? Well, I shall leave you. It is time for your little gathering. Your friends, your little spree, cards, atheism, and, above all, the stench, the stench of tobacco and of men . . . I am leaving. Don’t drink too much; you know it upsets you. . . . Good-­by! (She looks at him; then, shrugging her shoulders) A red necktie! (She leaves.)