The Idiot (12 page)

‘Oh, on the contrary! And mother will be very pleased too ...’ Ganya confirmed politely and courteously.

‘After all, I think you only have one other room occupied. It’s that, what’s his name, Ferd ... Fer ...’

‘Ferdyshchenko.’

‘Ah yes; I don’t like him, that Ferdyshchenko of yours; he’s some sort of lewd buffoon. And I don’t understand why Nastasya Filippovna encourages him, either. Is he really a relative of hers?’

‘Oh no, that’s all a joke! He doesn’t even come close to being a relative.’

‘Well, the devil take him! So, then, how do you like it, Prince, are you pleased or not?’

‘Thank you, General, you’ve treated me in the most kindly fashion, all the more so as I did not even ask; I say it not from pride, but I really didn’t know where I was going to lay my head. It’s true that Rogozhin invited me a while back.’

‘Rogozhin? Ah, no; I would give you my fatherly, or, if you prefer, friendly advice to forget about Mr Rogozhin. And on the whole I’d counsel you to stick to the family you are about to enter.’

‘As you’re being so kind,’ the prince began, ‘I do have one item of business. I’ve received notification ...’

‘Now, excuse me,’ the general interrupted, ‘I can spare not a moment more. I’ll tell Lizaveta Prokofyevna about you directly: if she is willing to receive you right now (I shall try to introduce you on that pretext), I advise you to take the opportunity to see that she takes a liking to you, for Lizaveta Prokofyevna could be very useful to you; after all, you share her family name. If she is not willing, then please forgive me, some other time. And you, Ganya, take a look at these accounts, Fedoseyev and I were struggling with them just now. We mustn’t forget to include them...’

The general went out, and thus the prince had still not succeeded in telling him his business, the matter of which he had tried to raise three or four times now. Ganya lit a cigarette and offered another to the prince; the prince accepted it, but remained silent, not wishing to be in the way, and began to examine the study; but Ganya barely glanced at the sheet of paper covered in figures, which the general had pointed out to him. His mind was elsewhere; Ganya’s smile, gaze and pensiveness were even more painful, it seemed to the prince, than when they had both been left alone. Suddenly he approached the prince; at that moment, the latter was again standing over the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna and examining it.

‘So you like that sort of woman, do you, Prince?’ he asked him suddenly, giving him a penetrating look. And as though he had some extraordinary purpose.

‘An astonishing face!’ the prince replied. ‘And I’m certain that her fate is not of an ordinary kind. Her face is cheerful, but she has suffered
dreadfully, don’t you think? Her eyes betray it, those two little bones here, two points under her eyes where her cheeks begin. It’s a proud face, a dreadfully proud one, and I simply can’t tell if she is good or not. Oh, if only she were good! It would redeem everything!’

‘And would you marry that sort of woman?’ Ganya continued, keeping his inflamed gaze trained on him.

‘I can’t marry anyone, I’m an invalid,’ said the prince.

‘And would Rogozhin marry her? What do you think?’

‘Well, he might marry her tomorrow; might marry her, and a week later, perhaps, cut her throat.’

No sooner had the prince said this than Ganya gave such a start that the prince nearly cried out.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said, clutching his arm.

‘Your grace! His excellency requests you to attend upon her excellency,’ a lackey announced, appearing in the doorway. The prince set off after the lackey.

All three of the Yepanchin girls were healthy young ladies, blossoming, tall, with striking shoulders, powerful bosoms, strong arms, almost like men’s arms, and, of course, because of their strength and health, liked to eat well now and then, something they did not even try to conceal. Their mother, the general’s wife, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, sometimes looked askance at the frankness of their appetites, but as some of her opinions, in spite of all the outward respect with which they were received by her daughters, had in essence long ago lost their original and unquestionable authority over them, and to such a degree that the harmonious conclave established by the three girls more often than not began to be predominant, the general’s wife, in the interests of her own dignity, found it more convenient not to argue, but to yield. To be sure, her temperament very often would not obey, and would not submit to the decisions of common sense; with each year Lizaveta Prokofyevna became more and more capricious and impatient, was even becoming a sort of eccentric, but as a most obedient and well-trained husband remained to hand, the excessive and accumulated emotions were usually poured on to his head, whereupon harmony was once again restored to the household, and everything went as well as it possibly could.

As a matter of fact, the general’s wife had not lost her appetite either, and usually, at half-past twelve, partook of an abundant breakfast, almost resembling a dinner, together with her daughters. The young ladies each had a cup of coffee even earlier, at exactly ten o’clock, in bed, as soon as they woke up. They liked this routine and it had become firmly established. And at half-past twelve the table would be laid in the small dining room, near the mother’s rooms, and this intimate family breakfast was sometimes attended by the general himself, if time permitted. In addition to tea, coffee, cheese, honey, butter, the special thick pancakes that were the favourite of the general’s wife, rissoles and so on, a strong, hot bouillon was even sometimes served. On the morning our narrative begins, the entire household had gathered in the dining room in expectation of the general, who had promised to appear at half-past twelve. If he had been only a minute late, they would have sent for him at once; but he appeared punctually. As he approached his spouse to greet her and kiss her hand, on this occasion he noticed something rather strange in the look on her face. And although the night before he had had a presentiment that this would indeed be so today because of a certain ‘incident’ (as he was in the habit of putting it), and had been worried about it as he dropped off to sleep, yet none the less his nerve failed him now. His daughters came up to him to give him a kiss; here, though they were not angry with him, and here too there was something strange. To be sure, the general, b
ecause of certain circumstances, had become excessively suspicious; but as he was an experienced and skilful husband, he at once took measures of his own.

Perhaps we shall do no great harm to the vividness of our narrative if we pause here and have recourse to a few explanations, in order to establish, in the most straightforward and precise manner, the relations and circumstances that we find in General Yepanchin’s household at the beginning of our tale. We said just now that the general, though not a man of great education, but, on the contrary, as he said of himself, ‘a man self-taught’, was, however, an experienced husband and a skilful father. Among other things, he had adopted the system of not hurrying his daughters into marriage, in other words not ‘worrying the life out of them’ and not troubling them with an excessive paternal love of their happiness, as happens more often than not, involuntarily and naturally, even in the most intelligent families where there is an accumulation of grown-up daughters. He even managed to win Lizaveta Prokofyevna over to his system, though it was on the whole a difficult task - difficult because unnatural; but the general’s arguments were extremely cogent, and were grounded on tangible facts. What was more, left entirely their own will and resolve, the future brides would naturally be constrained to make up their own minds, and then things would start to happen fast, because they would set to work with a will, putting aside their caprices and excessive discrimination; their parents would merely need to keep a more watchful and unobtrusive eye on them, lest any strange choice or unnatural aberration occur, and then, seizing the proper moment, do all that they could to help them and direct the matter with all their influence. Finally, the very fact that with each year that passed their wealth and social standing grew in geometrical progression meant that, the more time went by, the more the daughters gained, even as future brides. But among all these incontrovertible facts yet one more fact emerged: suddenly, and almost quite unexpectedly (as is always the case) the eldest daughter, Alexandra, turned twenty-five. At almost the same time, Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, a man of the highest society, with the highest connections and extraordinary wealth, again disclosed his long-felt desire to marry. He was a man of about fifty-five, of exquisite character, and with uncommon refinement of taste. He wanted to marry well; he was a great connoisseur of beauty. As for some time he had been on unusually close terms of friendship with General Yepanchin, a friendship strengthened by their mutual participation in certain financial undertakings, he now, as it were, told him about it, requesting friendly advice and guidance: would it or would it not be possible for him to enter into a marriage with one of his daughters? In the quiet and splendid flow of General Yepanchin’s family life an evident upheaval was in the offing.

The undoubted beauty of the family was, as we have already said, the youngest, Aglaya. But even Totsky himself, a man of exceeding egoism, realized that there was no point in looking there, and that Aglaya was not intended for him. It is possible that the sisters’ so
mewhat blind love and overly warm friendship exaggerated the matter, but they had, in the most sincere fashion, earmarked Aglaya’s destiny to be not merely a destiny but the reachable ideal of an earthly paradise. Aglaya’s future husband was to be the holder of every perfection and success, not to mention wealth. The sisters had even agreed among themselves, and without much in the way of superfluous words, on the possibility that, if necessary, they would make sacrifices for Aglaya’s sake; her dowry was to be colossal, and out of the ordinary. The parents knew of this agreement between the two elder sisters and so, when Totsky asked for advice, they had little doubt that one of the elder sisters would certainly agree to crown their desires, all the more so as Afanasy Ivanovich could not make difficulties concerning the dowry. As for Totsky’s proposal, the general himself, with the knowledge of life that was characteristic of him, at once placed an exceedingly high value on it. Since Totsky, because of certain special circumstances, was at present observing extreme caution in the steps he took, and as yet doing no more than sounding out the matter, the parents presented it all to their daughters as only the most remote hypothesis. In response to this they issued a declaration, likewise not entirely definite, but at least reassuring, that the elder sister, Alexandra, might not refuse. She was a girl of firm character, but kind, sensible and of an exceedingly lenient disposition; might even be keen to marry Totsky and, if she gave her word, would keep it honourably. She was not fond of surface brilliance, and not only did she eschew all threats of trouble and sudden upheaval: she was even able to sweeten life and soothe it. She was very pretty, though not ostentatiously so. What could be better for Totsky?

And yet, the matter was still proceeding by tentative fits and starts. Totsky and the general had come to a mutual and friendly agreement to avoid taking any formal and irrevocable step before it was time. The parents had not yet even begun to talk quite frankly with their daughters; a kind of discord had begun to develop: for some reason Mrs Yepanchina, the mother of the family, was becoming displeased, and this was very serious. Here a circumstance was involved that interfered with everything, a tricky and bothersome incident that might cause the entire arrangement to collapse irrevocably.

This tricky and bothersome ‘incident’ (as Totsky himself expressed it) had begun a very long time ago, some eighteen years earlier. Adjoining one of Afanasy Ivanovich’s wealthiest estates, in one of the central provinces, a certain small and utterly destitute landowner lived a life of poverty. This was a man remarkable for his constant and ‘anecdotal’ failures - a retired officer, from a good family of gentlefolk, even superior to Totsky in this respect, a certain Filipp Alexandrovich Barashkov. Entirely submerged in debt and mortgages, he finally managed, after back-breaking, almost muzhik-like labours, in more or less putting his small farm in satisfactory order. The slightest success cheered him inordinately. Cheered, and glowing with hope, he absented himself for a few days on a
visit to the chief town of his district in order to meet and, if possible, come to a final agreement with one of his principal creditors. On the third day of his visit to the town the elder of his village came to see him, on horseback, his cheek and beard scorched, and announced to him that his ‘patrimony’ had ‘burned to nought’, the previous day, at the stroke of noon, in addition to which ‘herself, your wife’ had been burned to death, though ‘the little ones’ were safe. Not even Barashkov, schooled to the ‘blows of fortune’ as he was, was able to withstand this; he went mad and within a month died of a fever. The burned-down farm, with its muzhiks, who now wandered homeless, was sold to pay off the debts; as for the two little girls, six and seven years old, Barashkov’s children, they were taken as dependants to be fostered under the generous tutelage of Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky. They were brought up together with the children of Afanasy Ivanovich’s estate manager, a retired official with a large family, who was, moreover, a German. Soon only one of the little girls, Nastya, remained, the younger having died of whooping-cough; as for Totsky, he soon completely forgot about them both, spending the time in Europe. One day about five years later, Afanasy Ivanovich, passing through, thought he would drop in on his estate and his German, and suddenly noticed in his house, in his German’s family, a delightful child, a girl some twelve years old, playful, intelligent and promising unusual beauty; in this respect, Afanasy Ivanovich was an unerring connoisseur. This time he only stayed on the estate for a few days, but managed to make the necessary arrangements; and a considerable change occurred in the little girl’s upbringing: a respectable elderly governess, experienced in the higher education of young ladies, a Swiss woman, progressively educated, who in addition to French taught various sciences, was engaged. She took up residence in the house, and the education of little Nastasya acquired extraordinary dimensions. At the end of exactly four years this education was terminated; the governess departed, and a lady, who was also some sort of landowner, and one of Mr Totsky’s neighbours, but in another, far-off province, came to fetch Nastya and took her with her in accordance with Afanasy Ivanovich’s instructions and authority. On this little estate there was also a wooden house, though a small one, which had just been built; it was furnished with particular elegance, and the little village, as if on purpose, was called the hamlet of Otradnoye.
¹
The lady landowner brought Nastya straight to this quiet little house, and as she herself, a childless widow, lived only a verst
²
away, she decided to live there with Nastya. An old female housekeeper and a young, experienced chambermaid also made their appearance around Nastya. The house contained musical instruments, an exquisite young ladies’ library, pictures, prints, pencils, brushes, paints and a wonderful little greyhound, and at the end of two weeks Afanasy Ivanovich himself arrived on a visit ... Since then he had seemed to acquire a particular fondness for this far-flung little village in the steppes, and stayed there for two, even three months, and thus a rather long period of time went by, some four years, peacefully and happily, amid taste and elegance.