The Idiot (100 page)

‘How dare you address me like that?’ she said quietly, with indescribable haughtiness, in reply to Nastasya Filippovna’s comment.

‘You must have misheard me,’ Nastasya Filippovna said with surprise. ‘How did I address you?’

‘If you wanted to be an honest woman, why didn’t you just leave your seducer, Totsky ... without theatrical performances?’ Aglaya said suddenly, for no apparent reason.

‘What do you know of my position, that you dare to judge me?’ Nastasya Filippovna said with a start, turning horribly pale.

‘All I know is that you didn’t go off and work, you went off with the wealthy Rogozhin, in order to play the fallen angel. I’m not surprised that Totsky wanted to shoot himself to get away from a fallen angel!’

‘Stop it!’ Nastasya said quietly with revulsion and as if through pain. ‘You understand me about as well as Darya Alexeyevna’s housemaid, who took legal proceedings against her fiance the other day. She’d have understood better than you...’

‘She’s probably an honest girl, and lives by her own toil. Why do you, of all people, view a housemaid with such contempt?’

‘It’s not toil I view with contempt, but you, when you speak of toil.’

‘If you wanted to be honest, you should have been a washerwoman.’

Both rose and looked at one another palely.

‘Aglaya, stop it! I mean, it isn’t fair!’ exclaimed the prince, like a man who was lost. Rogozhin no longer smiled, but was listening, his lips compressed and his arms folded.

‘There, look at her,’ said Nastasya Filippovna, trembling with animosity, ‘look at that young lady! And I considered her an angel! Have you come to see me without your governess, Aglaya Ivanovna? ... Well, would you like ... would like me to tell you now directly, without embellishment, why you have come to see me? You’re afraid, that’s why you’ve come here.’

‘Afraid of you?’ asked Aglaya, beside herself with naive and insolent amazement that the other should speak to her like this.

‘Of course! You’re afraid of me if you’ve resolved to come and see me. One doesn’t have contempt for someone one’s afraid of. And to think
that I respected you, even until this very moment! And do you know why you’re afraid of me, and what your principal aim is now? You wanted to personally ascertain whether he loves me more than you, because you are horribly jealous ...’

‘He has already told me that he hates you ...’ Aglaya barely managed to mouth.

‘Perhaps; perhaps I’m not worthy of him, but ... but I think you are lying! It’s not possible that he hates me, and he could not have said that! I am, however, prepared to forgive you ... with regard to your position ... yet all the same I thought better of you; thought that you were cleverer, and even prettier, I swear! ... Well then, take your treasure ... there he is, looking at you, can’t recover his wits, take him, but on one condition: go away at once! This very minute! ...

She fell into an armchair and burst into tears. But suddenly something new began to gleam in her eyes, she gave Aglaya a fixed and stubborn look, and got up.

‘Or would you like me to ... com-
mand
him, do you hear? I need only com
-mand
him, and he will immediately desert you and stay with me for good, and marry me, and you may run home alone? Is that what you want, is that it?’ she shouted like a madwoman, perhaps herself almost not believing that she could utter such words.

‘Would you like me to send Rogozhin away? Did you think I was going to marry Rogozhin for your pleasure? I’ll shout now, in front of you: “Go away, Rogozhin!”, and to the prince I’ll say: “Remember what you promised?” Good Lord! Why have I lowered myself like this before them? But wasn’t it you, Prince, who assured me that you would follow me, no matter what happened to me, and would never abandon me; that you love me and forgive me everything and res ... respe ... Yes, you said that, too! And I, merely to set you free, ran away from you, and now I don’t want to! Why has she treated me as if I were a loose woman? Am I a loose woman? Ask Rogozhin, he’ll tell you! Now that he has exposed me to disgrace, and in your eyes, too, will you also turn aside from me, and lead her away, arm in arm? Then curse you after that, for you were the only one I trusted. Go away, Rogozhin, you’re not wanted!’ she shouted, almost crazed, releasing the words from her bosom with effort, her face contorted and her lips parched, obviously not believing one iota of her own fanfaronade, but at the same time wanting to prolong the moment, if only by a second, and deceive herself. The outburst was so violent that she might perhaps have died, or at least that was how it seemed to the prince. ‘There he is, look!’ she shouted, at last, to Aglaya, pointing to the prince. ‘If he doesn’t come up to me now, doesn’t take me and doesn’t leave you, then take him, I’ll give him up, I don’t need him! ...’

Both she and Aglaya paused as if in expectation, and both looked at the prince like women insane. It is possible, however, that he did not understand the full strength of this challenge, in
deed that may even be stated for certain. All he saw before him was a desperate, reckless face which, as he had once let slip to Aglaya, had ‘pierced his heart for ever’. He could endure no longer and addressed Aglaya with entreaty and reproach, pointing to Nastasya Filippovna:

‘How can you do this? I mean, she is ... so unhappy!’

But that was all he managed to get out, rendered speechless by Aglaya’s terrible gaze. In that gaze was expressed so much suffering and at the same time so much infinite hatred, that he threw up his hands, exclaimed and rushed to her, but it was already too late! She had not been able to endure even a moment of his hesitation, had covered her face with her hands, exclaimed: ‘Oh my God!’ — and rushed out of the room, Rogozhin following her in order to undo the bolt on the front door for her.

The prince, too, went running, but on the threshold he was seized by two arms. Nastasya Filippovna’s desolate, contorted face stared at him point-blank, and her bluish lips moved, asking:

‘After her? Aft
er her? ...’

She fell senseless into his arms. He lifted her up, carried her into the room, put her down in an armchair and stood over her in dull expectancy. On the small table stood a glass of water; Rogozhin, returning to the room, seized it and sprinkled water in her face; she opened her eyes and for about a minute did not comprehend anything; but suddenly looked round, started, exclaimed and rushed over to the prince.

‘Mine! Mine!’ she cried. ‘Has the proud young lady gone? Ha-ha-ha!’ she laughed hysterically. ‘Ha-ha-ha! I was giving him up to that young lady! But why? Why on earth? I’m insane! Insane! ... Go away, Rogozhin! Ha-ha-ha!’

Rogozhin gave them a fixed look, did not say a word, took his hat and went away. Ten minutes later the prince was sitting beside Nastasya Filippovna, never taking his eyes off her and stroking her head and face, with both hands, like a little child. He laughed in response to her laughter and was ready to cry at her tears. He said nothing, but listened fixedly to her jerky, ecstatic and incoherent babbling, hardly understood anything, but quietly smiled, and as soon as it seemed to him that she was beginning to pine or weep again, to reproach or complain, he would at once begin to stroke her head again and tenderly pass his hands across her cheeks, comforting and coaxing her like a child.

Two weeks have passed since the event related in the last chapter, and the position of the
dramatis personae
of our narrative has changed so greatly that it would be extremely difficult for us to proceed to the sequel without particular explanations. And yet we feel that we must confine ourselves to the plain exposition of the facts, as far as possible without particular explanations, and for a very simple reason: because we ourselves, in many instances, are hard put to it to explain what happened. Such a forewarning on our part must seem very strange and unclear to the reader: how can one relate things in respect of which one has neither a clear conception nor a personal opinion? In order not to place ourselves in an even more false position, we had better attempt to explain ourselves by example, and, perhaps, the gracious reader will understand why precisely we are hard put to it, the more so as this example will not be a digression, but, on the contrary, a direct and immediate sequel to the narrative.

Two weeks later, that is to say, at the beginning of July now, and throughout these two weeks, the story of our hero, and especially the latest episode of that story, turns into a strange, highly entertaining, almost incredible and at the same time almost perfectly clear anecdote, spreading little by little through every street adjacent to the dachas of Lebedev, Ptitsyn, Darya Alexeyevna and the Yepanchins, in short, through almost the entire town and even through its environs. Almost the whole of society — local residents, dacha-dwellers, visitors to the bandstand - began to tell the same story, in a thousand different variations, of how a prince, creating a scandal in an honest and well-known household, having rejected a girl from that household, who was already his fiancée, had been carried away by a certain
lorette,
¹
had severed all his previous ties and, in spite of everything, in spite of threats, in spite of the public’s universal indignation, intended to marry the disgraced woman in a few days’ time here in Pavlovsk, openly, publicly, head held high and looking them all straight in the eye. So embellished with scandals did the story become, so numerous were the well-known and important personages involved in it, so many were the various fantastic and mysterious nuances attached to it, while on the other hand it presented itself in such incontrovertible and graphically visible facts, that the universal curiosity and gossip were, of course, very excusable. The most subtle, cunning and at the same time plausible interpretation remained in the hands of a few serious gossip-mongers, from that stratum of rational people who always, in every society, hurry to be the first to explain an event to others, something in which they find their calling and, not infrequently, their consolation. In their interpreting of the matter, a young man, of good family, a prince, almost wealthy, an imbecile, but a democrat who was mad about the contemporary ni
hilism uncovered by Mr Turgenev,
²
almost unable to speak Russian, had fallen in love with one of General Yepanchin’s daughters and had got so far as to be received in the household as her fiance. But like that French seminarist, about whom an anecdote was recently published and who deliberately allowed himself to be ordained to the cloth of the priesthood, and deliberately himself requested such ordination, completed all the rites, all the genuflections, kisses, vows, etcetera, only to publicly declare the following day in a letter to his bishop that, as he did not believe in God, he considered it dishonourable to deceive the people and make a living from it free of charge, and therefore cast away the cloth he had received the day before, and published his letter in the liberal newspapers - it was averred that the prince had played false in a manner similar to this atheist. It was said that he had deliberately waited for the formal guest night at the home of his fiancée’s parents, at which he was presented to a great many important personages, in order, out loud and in everyone’s presence, to declare his views, curse at the respected dignitaries, reject his fiancée publicly and with insults, and, while resisting the servants who were leading him out, break a handsome Chinese vase. To this it was added, as a contemporary characterization of
mores,
that the muddle-headed young man really loved his fiancée, the general’s daughter, but had rejected her solely out of nihilism and for the sake of the impending scandal, so as not to deny himself the pleasure of marrying a lost woman in front of the whole world and thus to prove that in his conviction there were neither lost nor virtuous women, but only free ones; that he did not believe in the old social divisions, but put his faith solely in the ‘woman question’. That finally, in his eyes, a lost woman even stood somewhat higher than one who was not lost. This explanation seemed most plausible, and was accepted by a majority of the dacha-dwellers, especially as it was confirmed by daily facts. To be sure, a large number of things were still in want of explanation: it was said that the poor girl loved her fiancé — according to some, her ‘seducer’ — so much that she went running to him the very next day after he had rejected her and was now with his mistress; others, on the other hand, maintained that he had deliberately enticed her to his mistress’s, solely out of nihilism, that is to say, in order to shame her and insult her. Whatever the truth of the matter, interest in the event grew daily, all the more so now there remained not the slightest doubt that the scandalous wedding really was going to take place.

And thus, were we to be asked for an explanation — not with regard to the nihilistic qualities of the event, but simply with regard to the degree to which the wedding that had been fixed fulfilled the prince’s actual wishes, what precisely those wishes were at the present moment, how precisely one might define our hero’s state of mind at the present moment, etcetera, etcetera, in similar vein, then, we must confess, we should be thoroughly hard put to it to reply. All we know is that the wedding really was fixed and that the prince himself had authorized Lebedev, Keller and some acquaintance of Lebedev’s, whom the latter had introduced to the p
rince for this occasion, to take upon themselves all the arrangements connected with the affair, both ecclesiastical and economic; that they had been told not to spare on money, that Nastasya Filippovna was in a hurry and insisting upon the wedding; that Keller had been chosen as the prince’s best man, at Keller’s own ardent request, while Burdovksy — who accepted this appointment with enthusiasm — was to give Nastasya Filippovna away, and that the day of the wedding was fixed for the beginning of July. But apart from these most precise contingencies, we know of several additional facts that decidedly perplex us, for the specific reason that they contradict the facts that precede them. We strongly suspect, for example, that, having authorized Lebedev and the others to take upon themselves all the arrangements, the prince nearly forgot that very same day that he had a master of ceremonies, a best man and a wedding, and that if he had given his instructions rather quickly, entrusting the arrangements to others, it was solely so that he need not think about them himself and might even, perhaps, rather quickly forget about them. In that case, what was he thinking about himself, what was he trying to remember and what was he striving for? There can also be no doubt that here no coercion was exerted upon him (on the part, for example, of Nastasya Filippovna), that Nastasya Filippovna really did desire an early wedding and that it was she who had thought of the wedding, and not the prince at all; but the prince freely gave his consent; even rather absent-mindedly, and as if he had been asked to do some rather ordinary thing. Before us there are very many such strange facts, but not only do they not elucidate, but, in our opinion, even obscure the interpretation of the affair, no matter how many of them are brought forward; but, be that as it may, let us present one more example.