The Idiot (104 page)

‘Marriage covers everything up, fools!’

‘No, you won’t find a ravishing beauty like that anywhere. Hurrah!’ cried those who were close.

‘A princess! For such a princess I would sell my soul!’ shouted some clerk or other. ‘“My life I’d give for just one night! ...”’
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Nastasya Filippovna really did emerge as pale as a handkerchief; but her large, black eyes flashed at the crowd like burning coals; it was this gaze that the crowd could not withstand; indignation turned into ecstatic shouts. The doors of the carriage had already been opened, Keller had already given the bride his arm, when suddenly she screamed and rushed straight down the steps into the mass of people. All who were with her froze in astonishment, the crowd parted before her, and five, six paces from the steps Rogozhin suddenly appeared. It was his gaze that Nastasya Filippovna had caught in the crowd. She ran to him like a madwoman and seized him by both hands.

‘Save me! Take me away! Wherever you want, right now!’

Rogozhin almost caught her in his arms and practically lifted her into the carriage. Then, in a single instant, he took from his purse a hundred-rouble note and proffered it to the coachman.

‘To the station, and if you get to the train on time, there’s another hundred roubles for you!’

And he jumped into the carriage after Nastasya Filippovna and closed the doors. The coachman did not hesitate for a moment, and lashed the horses on their way. Later, Keller put the blame on the unexpectedness of it all: ‘Another minute and I’d have recovered myself, I would not have allowed it!’ he explained, as he described what had taken place. He and Burdovsky took another carriage that happened to be there and were about to speed off in pursuit, but while already on the road reflected that ‘in any case it’s too late! We can’t bring them back by force!’

‘And in any case, the prince doesn’t want it!’ the shaken Burdovsky decided.

And Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna got to the station on time. As he got out of the carriage, Rogozhin, almost as he was about to board the train
, managed to stop a girl who was passing, dressed in an old but decent dark mantilla, a silk kerchief thrown over her head.

‘I’ll give you fifty roubles for your mantilla!’ He suddenly held out the money to the girl. Before she had time to be astonished, and was still trying to grasp what was happening, he suddenly thrust the fifty-rouble note into her hand, took off her mantilla and kerchief and threw them over Nastasya Filippovna’s head and shoulders. Her exceedingly fine attire was all too noticeable, and would have drawn attention in the railway carriage; only later did the girl understand the reason for the purchase, at such a profit to herself, of her old clothes, which were worth nothing.

The rumour of this episode reached the church with extraordinary alacrity. As Keller made his way towards the prince, a large number of people who were quite unknown to him rushed forward to ask questions. There was loud talk, shaking of heads, even laughter; no one left the church, everyone was waiting to see how the groom would receive the news. He turned pale, but received the news quietly, saying in a voice that was barely audible: ‘I was afraid of this; but even so, I didn’t think it would happen ...’ - and then, after a short silence, added: ‘As a matter of fact ... in her condition ... it is quite in the order of things.’ Keller himself later called this response ‘unexampled philosophy’. The prince left the church, to all appearances calm and cheerful; that, at least, is what many people observed and described later. It seemed that he very much wanted to get home and be alone as soon as possible; but this he was not allowed to do. He was followed into the room by several of those who had been invited, among them Ptitsyn, Gavrila Ardalionovich and with them the doctor, who was also not intending to leave. In addition, the whole house was literally besieged by the idle public. Even from the terrace the prince could hear Keller and Lebedev enter into a fierce argument with several people who were quite unknown, though apparently people of rank, and who aspired to enter the veranda at all costs. The prince approached the disputants, inquired what the matter was and, politely moving Lebedev and Keller aside, delicately turned to one stout and grey-haired gentleman who was standing on the steps of the porch at the head of several other aspirants, and asked him to do him the honour of conferring a visit upon him. The gentleman was at first embarrassed, but complied all the same; he was followed by a second, a third. From the entire crowd there emerged some seven or eight visitors who did indeed enter, trying to do so in as relaxed a manner as possible; but there proved to be no more candidates, and soon, in the crowd itself, voices began to condemn the upstarts. The entrants were shown to their seats, conversation began, tea was served — all of this done with exceeding decorum and modesty, somewhat to the surprise of the entrants. There were, of course, some attempts to enliven the conversation and bring it round to the ‘proper’ topic; some immodest questions were asked, and some ‘bold’ comments were made. The prince replied to them all so simply and cheerfully, and at the same time with s
uch dignity, with such trust in the decency of his guests, that the immodest questions died away of their own accord. Little by little the conversation began to grow almost serious. One gentleman, attaching himself to something that someone said, suddenly swore, in exceeding indignation, that he would not sell his estate, no matter what happened there; that, on the contrary, he would wait and see what transpired, and that ‘enterprises are better than money’; ‘that, my dear sir, is the basis of my economic system, you may as well know, sir.’ As he was addressing the prince, the prince praised him with ardour, in spite of the fact that Lebedev was whispering in his ear that this gentleman had not a stick of property to his name and had never owned any estate. Almost an hour went by, the tea was drunk, and after tea the guests at last began to feel guilty about staying any longer. The doctor and the grey-haired gentleman warmly took their leave of the prince; and indeed, all said their farewells warmly and noisily. Good wishes were pronounced, and opinions such as ‘there is no point in grieving and perhaps it’s even all for the best,’ etcetera. There were, it was true, attempts to ask for champagne, but the older of the guests restrained the younger. When they had all dispersed, Keller leaned over to Lebedev and told him: ‘You and I would have started shouting, got into a fight, disgraced ourselves, and they’d have called the police; but he, just look at him, he’s acquired new friends, and what friends, too; I know them!’ Lebedev, who was rather ‘primed’, sighed and said: ‘“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”
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I have said that about him before, but now I add that God has preserved the babe, too, saved him from the abyss, him and all his saints!’

At last, at about half-past ten, they left the prince alone, as he had a headache; last to leave was Kolya, who helped him to change out of his wedding clothes into his ordinary ones. They parted on warm terms. Kolya did not expatiate on the event, but promised to come back early the next day. In fact, he later testified that the prince had not warned him of anything at their last farewell, and so must have been hiding his intentions even from him. Soon in the entire house almost no one remained: Burdovsky returned to Ippolit’s; Keller and Lebedev had gone off somewhere. Only Vera Lebedeva remained for a while yet in the rooms, hastily restoring them from their festive aspect to the one that was usual. As she was leaving, she cast a glance towards the prince. He was sitting at the table, leaning on it with both elbows and covering his face with his hands. She quietly went over to him and touched him on the shoulder; the prince looked at her in bewilderment and almost for a minute seemed to be trying to remember something; but having remembered it and worked it all out, he suddenly entered a state of extreme agitation. It was all, however, resolved with an urgent and ardent plea to Vera, that the following morning, when the first train was due to leave, at seven o‘clock, she should knock on the door of his room. Vera promised to do so; the prince began to entreat her ardently not to tell anyone of it; this she promised, too, and, at la
st, when she had now fully opened the door in order to go out, the prince stopped her a third time, took her by the hands, kissed them, then kissed her on the forehead and with a certain ‘peculiar’ expression managed to say to her: ‘Until tomorrow!’ That, at least, was how Vera told it later. She left in great trepidation for him. In the morning she recovered her spirits somewhat when, after seven, as they had arranged, she knocked at his door and informed him that the train to St Petersburg would be leaving in a quarter of an hour; it seemed to her that when he opened the door to her he was quite cheerful, and even smiling. He had hardly undressed for the night, but had slept, all the same. In his opinion, he might return that same evening. It thus transpired that she was the only person whom he had found it possible and necessary to tell at that moment that he was setting off for the city.

An hour later he was already in St Petersburg and, just after nine in the morning, ringing the bell of Rogozhin’s house. He chose the front entrance, and it was a long time before the door was opened to him. At last, the door to the rooms of old Mrs Rogozhin opened, and an elderly, pleasant-looking maidservant appeared.

‘Parfyon Semyonovich is not at home,’ she announced from the door. ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘Parfyon Semyonovich.’

‘His honour’s not at home, sir.’

The maidservant looked the prince over with intense curiosity.

‘Tell me at least, did he spend the night at home? And ... was he alone when he returned yesterday?’

The maidservant continued to look, but did not make any reply.

‘Was ... Nastasya Filippovna here with him yesterday ... in the evening?’

‘Will you permit me to ask who you are, sir?’

‘Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, he and I are very well acquainted.’

‘His honour’s not at home, sir.’

The maidservant lowered her eyes.

‘And is Nastasya Filippovna?’

‘I don’t know anything about that, sir.’

‘Wait, wait! When will he return?’

‘We don’t know that either, sir.’

The door closed.

The prince decided to call back in an hour’s time. Glancing into the courtyard, he met the yardkeeper.

‘Is Parfyon Semyonych at home?’

‘Yes, he is, sir.’

‘Then why was I just told that he’s not at home?’

‘Is that what they told you at his rooms?’

‘No, it was his mother’s maidservant, I rang at Parfyon Semyonovich’s front door, but no one opened up.’

‘Perhaps he did go out, then,’ the yardkeeper decided. ‘He doesn’t tell anyone, you know. And sometimes he takes the key away with him, and his rooms are locked for three days at a time.’

‘You know for certain that he was at home yesterday?’

‘He was. But sometimes he goes in by the front entrance, and you don’t see him.’

‘What about Nastasya Filippovna, was she with him yesterday?’

‘That we don’t know, sir. She doesn’t come visiting very often; I think I’d have known if she’d visited.’

The prince left and walked up and down the pavement for some time in reflection. The windows of the rooms occupied by Rogozhin were all closed; the windows of the part of the house occupied by his mother were almost all open; it was a hot and cloudless day; the prince crossed the street to the opposite pavement and stopped to take another glance at the windows: not only were they closed, but in almost all of them white shades were lowered.

He stood for a minute or so and — it was strange - suddenly fancied that the edge of one shade was raised and that Rogozhin’s face flickered into view, flickered and vanished at that same instant. He waited a while, and had already decided to go and ring the doorbell again when he thought the better of it, and put it off for an hour. ‘Well, who knows, perhaps I just imagined it ...’

Above all, he was now in a hurry to get to Izmailovsky Regiment, to the apartment that had recently been Nastasya Filippovna’s. He knew that, having moved out of Pavlovsk three weeks earlier, at his request, she had settled in Izmailovsky Regiment at the home of an old close friend of hers, a school-master’s widow, a respectable woman with a family, who rented out a good furnished apartment which was practically her main source of income. The most likely thing was that Nastasya Filippovna, moving back to Pavlovsk, had kept the apartment on; it was at least most probable that she had spent the night in that apartment, where, of course, Rogozhin had taken her yesterday. The prince took a cab. On the way it occurred to him that this was where he ought to have begun, because it was unlikely that she would have come straight to Rogozhin’s at night. Here he remembered the words of the yardkeeper, who had said that Nastasya Filippovna did not often come visiting. If it was not often, then why would she be staying at Rogozhin’s now? Trying to keep his spirits up with these consolations, the prince arrived at last in Izmailovsky Regiment, more dead than alive with fear.

To his complete and utter astonishment, no one at the school-master’s widow’s house had heard anything of Nastasya Filippovna either that day or the previous one, and instead came running out to stare as if at something strange and wonderful. All the schoolmaster’s widow’s numerous family - all little girls, with one year in between each of them - from fifteen all the way down to seven - came spilling out after their mother and surrounded the prince, their mouths agape. They were followed by their thin, sallow aunt, in a black dress, and, at last, the grandmother of the family appeared, a little old woman in spectacles. The schoolmaster’s widow asked the prince very insistently to come in and sit down, which he did. He at once realized that they knew perfectly well who he was, and that they were quite aware that yesterday his wedding should have taken place, and that they were dying to ask him both about the wedding and about that wondrous fact that here he was asking them about the woman who ought to be nowhere but together with him, in Pavlovsk, but were too tactful to do s
o. In brief outline he satisfied their curiosity regarding the wedding. There were cries of astonishment, exclamations and groans, so that he was obliged to tell them almost the whole of the rest of the story, in broad outline, of course. At last, this council of most wise and excited ladies determined that he must unfailingly and before all else go and knock on Rogozhin’s door and ascertain some definite facts from him about it all. And if Rogozhin was not at home (which he must find out for sure) or was unwilling to say anything, then he must go to Semyonovsky Regiment,
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to the home of a certain lady, a German and a friend of Nastasya Filippovna‘s, who lived with her mother: it was possible that Nastasya Filippovna, in her excitement and wish to conceal herself, had spent the night with them. The prince stood up completely crushed; they said later that he ‘went awfully pale’; indeed, his legs were almost giving way under him. At last, through a dreadful jabbering of voices, he discerned that they were agreeing to act in concert with him, and asking for his address in the city. It turned out that he had no address; they advised him to stay at a hotel somewhere. The prince thought for a moment and then gave the address of his old hotel, the one where some five weeks earlier he had had a seizure. Then he set off for Rogozhin’s again. This time not only did Rogozhin’s door remain shut, but so did the door to the old woman’s apartment. The prince went down to find the yardkeeper, and after some difficulty, found him out in the courtyard; the yardkeeper was busy with something and hardly replied, hardly even looked at him, but none the less stated positively that Parfyon Semyonovich ‘went out very early this morning, travelled to Pavlovsk and will not be home today’.