It’s a funny sort of situation to be in—pinned to a person for two years or more.”

“Good gracious, what bad luck! No, I haven’t got such a grandmother.”

“If you haven’t, why do you sit at home all the time?”

“Look here, do you want to know who I am?”

“Yes, of course!”

“In the strict meaning of the word?”

“Yes, in the strictest meaning of the word!”

“Very well, I’m a character.”

“A character? What kind of a character?” the girl cried, laughing merrily, as though she had not laughed for a whole year. “I must say, you’re certainly great fun! Look, here’s a seat. Let’s sit down. No one ever comes this way, so no one will overhear us. Well, start your story, please! For you’ll never convince me that you haven’t got one. You’re just trying to conceal it. Now, first of all, what is a character?”

“A character? Well, it’s an original, a queer chap,” I said, and, infected by her childish laughter, I burst out laughing myself. “It’s a kind of freak. Listen, do you know what a dreamer is?”

“A dreamer? Of course I know. I’m a dreamer myself! Sometimes when I’m sitting by Granny I get all sorts of queer ideas into my head. I mean, once you start dreaming, you let your imagination run away with you, so that in the end I even marry a prince of royal blood! I don’t know, it’s very nice sometimes—dreaming, I mean. But, on the whole, perhaps it isn’t. Especially if you have lots of other things to think of,” the girl added, this time rather seriously.

“Fine! Once you’re married to an emperor, you will, I think, understand me perfectly. Well, listen—but don’t you think I ought to know your name before starting on the story of my life?”

“At last! It took you a long time to think of it, didn’t it?”

“Good lord! I never thought of it. You see, I was so happy anyway.”

“My name’s Nastenka.”

“Nastenka! Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all. Isn’t it enough for you, you insatiable person?”

“Not enough? Why, not at all. It’s more than I expected, much more than I expected, Nastenka, my dear, dear girl, if I may call you by your pet name, if from the very first you—you become Nastenka to me!”

“I’m glad you’re satisfied at last! Well?”

“Well, Nastenka, just listen what an absurd story it all is.”

I sat down beside her, assumed a pedantically serious pose, and began as though reading from a book:

“There are, if you don’t happen to know it already, Nastenka, some very strange places in Petersburg. It is not the same sun which shines upon all the other people of the city that looks in there, but quite a different sun, a new sun, one specially ordered for those places, and the light it sheds on everything is also a different, peculiar sort of light. In those places, dear Nastenka, the people also seem to live quite a different life, unlike that which surges all round us, a life which could only be imagined to exist in some faraway foreign country beyond the seven seas, and not at all in our country and in these much too serious times. Well, it is that life which is a mixture of something purely fantastic, something fervently ideal, and, at the same time (alas, Nastenka!), something frightfully prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar.”

“My goodness, what an awful introduction! What shall I be hearing next, I wonder?”

“What will you be hearing next, Nastenka (I don’t think I shall ever get tired of calling you Nastenka), is that these places are inhabited by strange people—by dreamers. A dreamer—if you must know its exact definition—is not a man, but a sort of creature of the neuter gender. He settles mostly in some inaccessible place, as though anxious to hide in it even from the light of day; and once he gets inside his room, he’ll stick to it like a snail, or, at all events, he is in this respect very like that amusing animal which is an animal and a house both at one and the same time and bears the name of tortoise. Why, do you think, is he so fond of his four walls, invariably painted green, grimy, dismal and reeking unpardonably of tobacco smoke? Why does this funny fellow, when one of his new friends comes to visit him (he usually ends up by losing all his friends one by one), why does this absurd person meet him with such an embarrassed look? Why is he so put out of countenance? Why is he thrown into such confusion, as though he had just committed some terrible crime within his four walls? As though he had been forging paper money? Or writing some atrocious poetry to be sent to a journal with an anonymous letter, in which he will explain that, the poet having recently died, he, his friend, deems it his sacred duty to publish his verses? Can you tell me, Nastenka, why the conversation between the two friends never really gets going? Why doesn’t laughter or some witty remark escape the lips of the perplexed caller, who had so inopportunely dropped out of the blue, and who at other times is so fond of laughter and all sorts of quips and cranks? And conversations about the fair sex. And other cheerful subjects. And why does the visitor, who is most probably a recent acquaintance and on his first visit—for in this case there will never be a second, and his visitor will never call again—why, I say, does this visitor feel so embarrassed himself? Why, in spite of his wit (if, that is, he has any), is he so tongue-tied as he looks at the disconcerted face of his host, who is, in turn, utterly at a loss and bewildered after his herculean efforts to smooth things over, and fumbles desperately for a subject to enliven the conversation, to convince his host that he, too, is a man of the world, that he too can talk of the fair sex? The host does everything in fact to please the poor man, who seems to have come to the wrong place and called on him by mistake, by at least showing how anxious he is to entertain him. And why does the visitor, having most conveniently remembered a most urgent business appointment which never existed, all of a sudden grab his hat and take his leave, snatching away his hand from the clammy grasp of his host, who, in a vain attempt to recover what is irretrievably lost, is doing his best to show how sorry he is? Why does his friend burst out laughing the moment he finds himself on the other side of the door? Why does he vow never to call on this queer fellow again, excellent fellow though he undoubtedly is? Why at the same time can’t he resist the temptation of indulging in the amusing, if rather farfetched, fancy of comparing the face of his friend during his visit with the expression of an unhappy kitten, roughly handled, frightened, and subjected to all sorts of indignities, by children who had treacherously captured and humiliated it? A kitten that hides itself away from its tormentors under a chair, in the dark, where, left in peace at last, it cannot help bristling up, spitting, and washing its insulted face with both paws for a whole hour, and long afterwards looking coldly at life and nature and even the bits saved up for it from the master’s table by a sympathetic housekeeper?”

“Now, look,” interrupted Nastenka, who had listened to me all the time in amazement, opening her eyes and pretty mouth, “look, I haven’t the faintest idea why it all happened and why you should ask me such absurd questions. All I know is that all these adventures have most certainly happened to you, and exactly as you told me.”

“Indubitably,” I replied, keeping a very straight face.

“Well,” said Nastenka, “if it’s indubitably, then please go on, for I’m dying to hear how it will all end.”

“You want to know, Nastenka, what our hero did in his room, or rather what I did in my room, since the hero of this story is none other than my own humble self? You want to know why I was so alarmed and upset for a whole day by the unexpected visit of a friend? You want to know why I was in such a flurry of excitement, why I blushed to the roots of my hair, when the door of my room opened? Why I was not able to entertain my visitor, and why I perished so ignominiously, crushed by the weight of my own hospitality?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do,” answered Nastenka. “That’s the whole point. And, please, I do appreciate the beautiful way in which you’re telling your story, but don’t you think perhaps you ought to tell it a little less beautifully? You see, you talk as if you were reading from a book.”

“Nastenka,” I said in a very grave and solemn voice, scarcely able to keep myself from laughing, “dear Nastenka, I know I’m telling my story very beautifully, but I’m afraid I can’t tell it any other way. For at this moment, Nastenka, at this moment, I am like the spirit of King Solomon when, after being imprisoned for a thousand years in a jar under seven seals, all the seven seals have at last been removed.