Love and Youth

FIRST LOVE
The other guests had left long ago. The clock
struck half past midnight. The host, and Sergei
Nikolaevich, and Vladimir Petrovich, were the only
people left in the room.
The host rang for the remains of their dinner to be
cleared away.
‘So that’s agreed,’ he said, settling himself deeper
in his armchair and lighting a cigar. ‘Each of us has to
tell the story of his first love. Sergei Nikolaevich, you
start.’
Sergei Nikolaevich, a plump little man with a
chubby, fair-skinned face, first looked at his host and
then stared up at the ceiling.
‘I never had a first love,’ he said finally. ‘I started
with my second.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Very simply. I was eighteen when I had my first
flirtation, with a most attractive young lady. But I
courted her as if I’d done it all before, just the way that
later on I courted other girls. In point of fact, I fell in
love for the first and last time when I was six, and it
was with my nurse. But that was a very long time ago.
I can’t remember anything about our relationship—
and even if I could, who’d be interested?’
‘So what are we to do?’ began the host. ‘There was
nothing particularly interesting about my first love
either. I never fell in love with anyone till I met Anna
Ivanovna, who’s now my wife; and everything went
perfectly smoothly for us, our parents arranged the
match, we soon found we were in love, and got married
as quickly as we could. My story can be told in a couple
of words. I must admit, gentlemen, that when I raised
the question of our first loves, I was relying on you—I
won’t say old bachelors, but bachelors who aren’t as
young as you were. Have you anything entertaining to
tell us, Vladimir Petrovich?’
Vladimir Petrovich, a man of about forty with
black hair just turning grey, hesitated a little and then
said ‘My first love, it’s true, was rather out of the
ordinary.’
‘Aha!’ said the host and Sergei Nikolaevich in
unison. ‘All the better . . . Tell us about it.’
‘Very well . . . Or no, I shan’t tell it, I’m not good at
storytelling. It either comes out too short and sketchy,
or too wordy and affected. If you don’t mind, I’ll write
down all I can remember in a notebook, and then read
it to you.’
At first his friends wouldn’t have this, but Vladimir
Petrovich insisted. Two weeks later they met again,
and he kept his promise.
Here is the story in his notebook:

I
It happened in the summer of 1833, when I was
sixteen.