The Idiot (105 page)

‘I’ll wait; perhaps he’ll be back by evening?’

‘And perhaps he won’t be back for a week. Who can tell with him?’

‘So he did spend last night here, then?’

‘Spend the night, yes he spent the night ...’

This was all suspicious, and one could smell a rat somewhere. In this interval of time the yardkeeper had very possibly managed to obtain new instructions: earlier he had even been talkative, but was now simply turning away. However, the prince decided to call back once more a couple of hours later, and even watch the house, if necessary, but there was still some hope with the German lady, and so he dashed off to Semyonovsky Regiment.

But at the German lady’s house he could not even make himself understood. From a few fleeting phrases he managed to guess that some two weeks earlier the beautiful German lady had quarrelled with Nastasya Filippovna, so that all these recent days she had not heard anything of her, and was now exerting all her energies to let it be known that she was not interested in hearing anything of her, ‘even though she had married all the princes in the world’. The prince hurried to leave. Among other things, the thought came to him that perhaps, as before, she had gone to Moscow, and that Rogozhin would of course have followed her, or
perhaps even gone with her. ‘I must at least find some kind of trace of her!’ He remembered, however, that he had to stay at an inn, and hurried to Liteinaya; there he was at once given a room. The waiter inquired if he wished to have a meal; absent-mindedly he replied that he did, and, when he regained his wits, was dreadfully annoyed with himself, as the meal detained him for more than half an hour; only later did he realize that there had been nothing to stop him leaving it uneaten. In that dim and stifling corridor a strange sensation took hold of him, a sensation that agonizingly strove to realize itself in some kind of thought; but as yet he was unable to guess what this new, insistent thought consisted of. At last, not himself, he left the inn; his head was spinning, but — where was he to go now? He rushed to Rogozhin’s.

Rogozhin had not returned; when he rang the bell, no one opened; he rang at the door of old Mrs Rogozhin; the door opened and he was informed that Parfyon Semyonovich was not at home and might perhaps not be back for some three days. What upset the prince was that, as before, he was examined with such intense curiosity. This time he did not find the yardkeeper at all. As earlier, he crossed to the opposite pavement, looked at the windows and walked about in the tormenting, stifling heat for about half an hour, perhaps even more; this time nothing stirred; the windows were not opened, the white shades were motionless. It finally occurred to him that earlier he had probably just been imagining things, that the windows, by all appearances, were so dim and so long unwashed that it would have been hard to make anything out even if someone really had looked through the panes. Rejoicing in this thought, he drove back to Izmailovsky Regiment and the schoolmaster’s widow’s house.

There he was already expected. The schoolmaster’s widow had already been to three or four places, and had even called at Rogozhin’s house: not a trace. The prince listened without saying anything, entered the room, sat down on a sofa and began to look at them all, as though he did not understand what they were saying to him. It was strange: at one moment he was extremely observant, at another suddenly became absent-minded to the point of absurdity. The whole family later declared that he was an ‘astonishingly’ strange person that day, so that ‘perhaps it was all obvious even then’. At last he got up and asked them to show him Nastasya Filippovna’s rooms. They were two large, light, high-ceilinged rooms, very respectably furnished and not cheap. All these ladies said later that the prince examined every object in the rooms; that on the small table he spotted a book from the lending library, the French novel
Madame Bovary;
²
that he commented on it, and turned down the corner of the page at which the book was open; that he asked to be allowed to take the volume with him and right there and then, impervious to their objections that it was a library book; and that he put it in his pocket. That he sat down by the open window and, seeing a card-table covered in chalk-marks, asked who played cards. They told him that every evening Nastasya Filippovna played card-games with Rogozhin: ‘fools’,
préférence
, ‘millers’, whist, trumps —
all the games, and that the cards had appeared only very recently, after their move back from Pavlovsk to St Petersburg, as Nastasya Filippovna kept complaining she was bored, and Rogozhin sat for whole evenings in silence, unable to talk about anything, and she often wept; and that suddenly the next evening Rogozhin had produced a pack of cards from his pocket, at which Nastasya Filippovna burst into laughter, and they began to play. The prince asked where were the cards they had played with. But the cards were not there; Rogozhin always brought them in his pocket, a new pack every day, and later took it away with him again.

These ladies advised him to go back to Rogozhin’s and knock there again rather loudly, not right now, but in the evening: ‘Perhaps he’ll be there then.’ The schoolmaster’s widow meanwhile volunteered to go and see Darya Alexeyevna in Pavlovsk: perhaps they would know something? They asked the prince to come back and visit them again at about ten that evening, in any case, to agree on plans for the following day. In spite of all their consoling and reassurances, the prince’s soul was gripped by complete despair. In inexpressible anguish, he reached his inn on foot. The summer-bound, dusty, stifling St Petersburg crushed him as in a vice; he had been jostled in the midst of the sullen or drunken crowds, had stared purposelessly into faces, had walked far further than he ought to have done, perhaps; it was already almost evening when he entered his room. He decided to rest a little and then go back to Rogozhin’s, as they had advised him, sat down on the sofa, leaned both his elbows on the table, and began to think.

Lord knows how long, and Lord knows what he thought about. Many were the things he feared, and he felt, in distress and agony, that he was horribly afraid. Vera Lebedeva entered his mind; then it occurred to him that perhaps Lebedev knew something about this matter or, if he did not, then he would be able to find out both more quickly and more easily than he, the prince. Then he remembered Ippolit, and that Rogozhin visited Ippolit. Then he remembered Rogozhin; recently at the funeral service, then in the park, then - suddenly here in the corridor, when Rogozhin had hidden in the corner that day and had waited for him with the knife. It was Rogozhin’s eyes he remembered now, those eyes that had stared from the darkness then. He shuddered: the earlier insistent thought suddenly entered his mind.

It was partly that if Rogozhin were in St Petersburg, then although he might hide for a while, in the end he would most likely be certain to come to him, the prince, with good or bad intent, more or less as he had done then. At any rate, if Rogozhin wanted to come and see him, then there was nowhere for him to come but here, back to this same corridor. The address Rogozhin did not know; so it might very well occur to him that the prince was staying at the same inn as before; he would at least try to find him here ... if he really needed him. And who could tell, perhaps he would need him?

Thus did he reflect, and for some reason this thought seemed perfectly plausible to him. Had he begun to examine it more deeply, he would have been quite unable to account for it: why, for example, would Rogozhin suddenly need him so much and why was it even impossible that they should not meet at all? The thought was a painful one: ‘If he’s all right, he won’t come,’ the prince continued to reflect. ‘It’s if he’s not all right that he’ll come; and I’m sure he isn’t all right...’

Of course, with a conviction like this he ought to have waited for Rogozhin at home, in his room at the inn; but it was as if he could not endure this new thought, and he leaped up, grabbed his hat and ran. In the corridor it was now almost completely dark: ‘What if he suddenly emerges from that corner and stops me by the staircase?’ flickered through his mind as he approached the familiar spot. But no one emerged. He went downstairs and out through the gateway, stepped on to the pavement, looked in astonishment at the dense crowd of people pouring out on to the street at sunset (as always in St Petersburg in holiday time), and walked in the direction of Gorokhovaya. Fifty paces from the inn, at the first intersection, in the crowd, someone suddenly touched him on the shoulder and said in a low voice, right by his ear:

‘Lev Nikolayevich, come with me, brother, you’re needed.’

It was Rogozhin.

Strange: the prince suddenly began, babbling and almost not finishing his words, to tell how he had expected to see him just now, at the inn.

‘I was there,’ Rogozhin replied unexpectedly, ‘let’s go.’

The prince was astonished at the reply, but he was astonished at least two minutes later, when he had worked it out. Having worked out the reply, he was frightened and began to look closely at Rogozhin. The latter was already walking almost half a step ahead, looking straight ahead of him and not casting a glance at anyone he encountered, letting them all go past, with mechanical caution.

‘But why didn’t you ask for me in my room ... if you were at the inn?’ the prince asked suddenly.

Rogozhin stopped, looked at him, thought for a moment and, as if he had not understood the question at all, said:

‘I tell you what, Lev Nikolayevich, you go straight on, right up to the house, you know? And I’ll walk on the other side. But make sure we get there together ...’

Having said this, he crossed the street, mounted the opposite pavement, looked to see if the prince was making his way, and, observing that the prince was standing still, staring at him, waved his arm in the direction of Gorokhovaya and set off, turning round to look at the prince every moment or so and inviting him to follow. He was plainly encouraged to see that the prince had understood him and was not coming to over to him from the other pavement. It occurred to the prince that Rogozhin needed to look out for someone and not miss him on the way, and that th
is was why he had crossed to the opposite pavement. ‘Only why didn’t he say who it was he needed to look out for?’ They continued like this for some five hundred paces. And suddenly the prince began to shiver for some reason; although Rogozhin was looking round less frequently, he had not stopped doing so; the prince lost patience, and beckoned to him. Rogozhin at once came across the street towards him.

‘Is Nastasya Filippovna at your house?’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘And was it you who looked at me from behind the shade earlier?’

‘I...’

‘Then why did you ...’

But the prince did not know what to ask next, or how to finish the question; moreover, his heart was pounding so violently that he even found it hard to speak. Rogozhin also said nothing, and looked at him as before, as if in reflection.

‘Well, I’m going,’ he said suddenly, again preparing to cross over, ‘and you walk alone. Let’s go along the street separately ... it’ll be better for us that way ... on opposite sides ... you’ll see.’

When, at last, they turned from their two different pavements into Gorokhovaya and began to approach Rogozhin’s house, the prince’s legs again started to give way under him, so that it was quite difficult for him to walk at all. It was by now about ten in the evening. The windows on the old woman’s side of the house were open, as earlier, while Rogozhin’s were closed, and in the twilight the white, lowered shades in them were becoming even more noticeable. The prince approached the house from the opposite pavement; while Rogozhin, from his pavement, mounted the front steps and waved at him with his arm. The prince crossed over to him and up the steps.

‘Not even the yardkeeper knows I’m back. I told him earlier that I was going to Pavlovsk, and I said the same thing at mother’s, too,’ he whispered with a cunning and almost contented smile. ‘We’ll go in, and no one will hear.’

There was now a key in his hands. Going up the stairs, he turned and shook his finger at the prince to make him go more quietly, quietly unlocked the door into his rooms, let the prince in, cautiously followed him, locked the door from inside and put the key in his pocket.

‘Come on,’ he said in a whisper.

Ever since the pavement on Liteinaya he had begun to speak in a whisper. In spite of all his outward calm, he was in a kind of deep, inner anxiety. When they entered the hall, right beside the study, he went over to the window and mysteriously beckoned to the prince:

‘You see, when you rang my doorbell earlier, I guessed at once that it was you; I went over to the door on tiptoe and heard you talking to Pafnutyevna, well, at first light I’d given her instructions: if you, or anyone from you, or anyone at all, were to come knocking on my door, t
hen she was to say nothing about me at all, not under any circumstances; and especially if you yourself came asking for me, and told her your name. But later, when you had gone, it occurred to me: what if he’s down there now keeping a lookout, or watching from the street? I went over to this window, moved the shade aside, and there you were, looking right at me ... That’s what happened.’

‘But where’s ... Nastasya Filippovna?’ the prince got out, struggling for breath.

‘She’s ... here,’ Rogozhin said slowly, as if waiting for a moment before replying.

‘But where?’

‘Come on ...’

He was still speaking in a whisper and without hurrying, slowly, and in a somehow strangely reflective tone, as before. Even when he talked about the shade, he seemed to be trying to say something else, in spite of all the expansiveness of his narrative.

They went into the study. A certain change had taken place in that room since the prince had been there last: a green damask silk curtain had been stretched the width of the entire room, with an entrance at either end, separating the study from an alcove in which Rogozhin’s bed had been set up. The heavy curtain was lowered, and the entrances were closed. But it was very dark in the room; the ‘white’ summer nights of St Petersburg were beginning to grow darker, and had it not been for the full moon, it would have been hard to discern anything in Rogozhin’s dark rooms. To be sure, it was still possible to make out faces, though very indistinctly. Rogozhin’s face was pale, as usual; his eyes gazed fixedly at the prince, with an intense brilliance, but somehow motionlessly.