The Idiot (24 page)

‘You’re a monster!’ exclaimed Nastasya Filippovna, roaring with laughter and clapping her hands like a little girl.

‘Bravo, bravo!’ cried Ferdyshchenko. Ptitsyn also smiled ironically, though he had found the general’s arrival much to his distaste; even Kolya laughed, and also cried, ‘Bravo!’

‘And I was right, I was right, right three times over!’ the triumphant general continued, with heat. ‘Because if cigars are prohibited on trains, dogs are even more so!’

‘Bravo, Papa!’ Kolya exclaimed in rapture. ‘That’s magnificent! I would certainly, certainly have done the same!’

‘But what about the lady?’ Nastasya Filippovna questioned impatiently.

‘The lady? Well, that is where the unpleasant part comes in,’ the general continued, frowning. ‘Without so much as a word, and again without the slightest warning, she slapped me on the cheek! A wild woman; quite as if she were from some savage society!’

‘And your response?’

The general lowered his eyes, raised his eyebrows, raised his shoulders, pursed his lips, spread his arms, was silent for a moment, and then suddenly said quietly:

‘I got carried away!’

‘And did you strike her hard? Hard?’

‘I swear to God, not hard! There was a scandal, but I didn’t strike her hard. I only brushed her aside once, solely in order to brush her aside. But then Satan himself took a hand: the light-blue one turned out to be an Englishwoman, a governess or even some sort of friend of Princess Belokonskaya’s family, and the one in the black dress was the eldest of the Belokonskaya daughters, an old maid of about thirty-five. And you know how close the wife of General Yepanchin is to the Belokonskaya household. All the princesses in a swoon, tears, mourning for their beloved lap-dog, the shrieking of six princesses, the shrieking of the Englishwoman - Armageddon! Well, of course, I went to tender my remorse, asked for forgiveness, wrote a letter, but they wouldn’t accept it, neither me nor the letter, and I quarrelled with the Yepanchins, was excluded, banished!’

‘But excuse me, how can this be?’ Nastasya Filippovna asked suddenly. ‘Five or six days ago I read in the
Indépendance -
I subscribe to the
Indépendance
- exactly the same story! I mean really exactly the same! It happened on one of the railways in the Rhineland, on board a train, between a Frenchman and an Englishwoman: the cigar was snatched in exactly the same way, the lap-dog was thrown out of the window in exactly the same way, and it ended exactly as you described. The dress was even light-blue!’

The general blushed horribly. Kolya also blushed, and clutched his head with his hands; Ptitsyn quickly turned away. Only Ferdyshchenko roared with laughter as before. Of Ganya there was nothing to be said: he had stood throughout, enduring a speechless and intolerable agony.

‘I assure you,’ the general muttered, ‘that exactly the same thing happened to me.’

‘Papa really did have an unpleasant encounter with Mistress Schmidt, the Belokonskayas’ governess,’ exclaimed Kolya, ‘I remember.’

‘What? Exactly the same? The same story at both ends of Europe and exactly the same in every detail, right down to the light-blue dress?’ Nastasya Filippovna insisted mercilessly. ‘I’ll send you the
Indépendance Belge
!’

‘But please observe,’ the general continued to insist, ‘that it happened to me two years earlier ...’

‘Ah, there is that, perhaps!’

Nastasya Filippovna roared with laughter, almost in hysterics.

‘Papa, I want you to come outside for a word or two,’ Ganya said in a trembling, exhausted voice, mechanically seizing his father by the shoulder. An infinite hatred boiled in his gaze.

At that same moment there was an exceptionally loud ring of the bell in the entrance hall. It was the kind of ring that might easily have pulled the bell off. It presaged an extraordinary visit. Kolya ran to open the door.

The hallway suddenly became extremely noisy and crowded; from the drawing room it seemed that several people had entered from outside and that more were still continuing to enter. Several voices were talking and shouting at once; there was also talking and shouting on the staircase, where the door from the hallway, as could be heard, had not been closed. The visit was turning out to be an exceedingly strange one. They all looked at one another; Ganya rushed into the reception room, but several people had gone in there, too.

‘Ah, there he is, the Judas!’ exclaimed a voice that was familiar to the prince. ‘Hello, Ganka, you villain!’

‘That’s him, that’s the man!’ another voice confirmed.

It was impossible for the prince to be in any doubt: one voice was that of Rogozhin, and the other that of Lebedev.

Ganya stood, almost in stupefaction, in the doorway of the drawing room and stared in silence, taking no steps to prevent the entry to the reception room of some ten or twelve people who came in one after the other, following Parfyon Rogozhin. The company was extremely diverse, and was characterized not only by diversity, but also by its disgraceful behaviour. Some came in just as they had been on the street, in topcoats and furs. None was completely drunk, however; on the other hand, they all seemed to have had a good few too many. None of them seemed able to enter without the others; not one of them would have had the boldness to enter alone, but all appeared to be pushing one another. Even Rogozhin stepped cautiously at the head of the crowd, but he had some kind of plan, and he looked gloomily and irritably preoccupied. As for the rest, they merely formed a chorus, or rather a gang, to provide support. In addition to Lebedev there was the wavy-haired Zalyozhev, who had thrown off his fur coat in the hallway and entered with the casual air of a dandy, and two or three other gentlemen like him, who were obviously merchants. There was a man in a semi-military greatcoat; there was a small and exceedingly fat man, who laughed constantly; there was an enormous gentleman, over six feet tall, who was also extraordinarily fat, extremely surly and silent, and obviously powerfully reliant on his fists. There was a medical student; there was a little Polish hanger-on. From the staircase two ladies of some kind looked into the hallway, but did not venture inside; Kolya slammed the door in their noses, and fastened the hook.

‘Hello, Ganka, you villain! Well, did you not expect Parfyon Rogozhin?’ Rogozhin repeated, reaching the drawing room and stopping in the doorway facing Ganya. But at that moment he suddenly espied in the drawing room, directly facing him, Nastasya Filippovna. He had obviously had no idea that he would encounter her here, because the sight of her had an extraordina
ry effect on him; he went so pale that his lips even turned slightly blue. ‘So it’s true!’ he said quietly and as if to himself, looking completely lost - ‘the end! Well ... You’ll answer to me now!’ he ground out suddenly, looking at Ganya with violent hostility. ‘Well... ach! ...’

He was even panting, even finding it hard to get his words out. Mechanically he advanced into the drawing room, but on crossing the threshold suddenly caught sight of Nina Alexandrovna and Varya and stopped, somewhat embarrassed, in spite of all his excitement. Behind him came Lebedev, cleaving to him like a shadow and already very drunk, then the student, the gentleman with the fists and Zalyozhev, bowing to right and left; and lastly, the short little fat man squeezed himself in. The presence of the ladies held them all back slightly, and was, of course, obviously only a severe restraint on them until the
beginning,
until the first pretext for shouting and
beginning
... After that, no ladies in the world could have got in their way.

‘What? Are you here, too, Prince?’ Rogozhin said absent-mindedly, in partial surprise at encountering the prince. ‘Still in your gaiters, e-ech!’ he sighed, now forgetting the prince and transferring his gaze back to Nastasya Filippovna, still advancing towards her as if drawn to a magnet.

Nastasya Filippovna was also staring at the visitors with uneasy curiosity.

Ganya, at last, pulled himself together.

‘But really, what’s the meaning of this?’ he began in a loud voice, sternly surveying those who had come in, and addressing himself primarily to Rogozhin. ‘This is not a horse stable, you know, gentlemen, my mother and sister are here ...’

‘We can see it’s your mother and sister,’ Rogozhin muttered through his teeth.

‘One can indeed see it’s your mother and sister,’ Lebedev confirmed, to keep himself in countenance.

The gentleman with the fists, probably supposing that his moment had come, began to growl something.

‘But I mean to say!’ Ganya’s voice rose suddenly, and somehow excessively, like an explosion. ‘In the first place, I want you all to go through to the reception room, and then I wish to know ...’

‘I like that, he doesn’t recognize me,’ Rogozhin grinned with hostility, not budging. ‘Don’t you recognize Rogozhin?’

‘I expect I have met you somewhere, but...’

‘I like that, met you somewhere! Why, only three months ago I lost two hundred roubles of my father’s money to you, and then the old man died, before he’d had time to find out; you dragged me into it, and Knif cheated. You don’t recognize me? Ptitsyn was a witness! If I were to show you three roubles, if I took them out of my pocket right now, you’d crawl on all fours all the way to Vasilevsky Island for them - that’s what you’re like! That’s what your soul is like! And now I’ve come here to buy you off for money, you don’t need to stare at the boots I’m wearing, I have money, bro
ther, lots of it, I’ll buy you, buy you up and all your living too ... if I want to, I’ll buy the lot of you! I’ll buy the lot of you!’ Rogozhin was working himself up more and more, and seemed to be getting more and more drunk. ‘E-ech!’ he cried. ‘Nastasya Filippovna! Don’t show me the door, just say one little word: are you going to marry him or not?’

Rogozhin asked the question like a man who was done for, as though addressing it to some deity, but with the boldness of one sentenced to execution, who no longer had anything to lose. In deathly anguish he awaited her reply.

Nastasya Filippovna measured him with a mocking and haughty gaze, but glanced at Varya and at Nina Alexandrovna, looked at Ganya and suddenly changed her tone.

‘Of course not, what has got into you? And what makes you ask such a question?’ she replied quietly and earnestly and as if with a certain surprise.

‘No? No?’ Rogozhin shouted, almost in an ecstasy of joy. ‘So you’re not going to? And they told me ... Oh! Well! Nastasya Filippovna! They say that you’re engaged to Ganka! To him? I mean, is it possible? (That’s what I say to them all!) And I’ll buy him out, if I gave him a thousand, no, three, to withdraw, he’d run away on the eve of his wedding, and leave his fiancée to me! It’s true, Ganya, you villain, isn’t it? I mean, you’d take the three thousand, wouldn’t you? Here it is, here! That’s why I came, to take your signature; I said: I’ll buy you - and I will!’

‘Get out of here, you’re drunk!’ cried Ganya, flushing and turning pale.

After his shout there was a sudden explosion of several voices; the whole of Rogozhin’s brigade had long been awaiting the first challenge. Lebedev was whispering something in Rogozhin’s ear with extreme alacrity.

‘True, civil servant!’ Rogozhin replied, ‘true, drunken soul! Ech, to hell with it, Nastasya Filippovna!’ he exclaimed, staring at her like a halfwit, losing his nerve and then suddenly recovering it to the point of insolence, ‘here’s eighteen thousand!’ And he slapped on to the table in front of her a white paper package tied across with string. ‘Here! And ... and there’ll be more!’

He did not dare to say what it was he wanted.

‘No, no, no!’ Lebedev began to whisper to him again, with a look of terrible alarm; one could guess that he was alarmed by the huge size of the sum and was suggesting that a much smaller one be tried.

‘No, brother, in this matter you’re a fool, and don’t know what you’re getting yourself into ... and, clearly, I’m a fool, too!’ Rogozhin said, recovering himself with a start, under the flashing gaze of Nastasya Filippovna. ‘E-ech! I should never have listened to you,’ he added with deep remorse.

Nastasya Filippovna, who had been looking narrowly at Rogozhin’s downcast features, suddenly began to laugh.

‘Eighteen thousand, for me? That’s the muzhik in you talking,’ she added suddenly, with brazen familiarity, getting up from the sofa
as though she were preparing to leave. Ganya watched the whole scene with a sinking heart.

‘Then forty thousand, forty, not eighteen!’ cried Rogozhin. ‘Vanka Ptitsyn and Biskup have promised to get forty thousand here by seven o’clock. Forty thousand! All on the table.’

The scene was becoming extremely disgraceful, but Nastasya Filippovna continued to laugh and did not leave, as though she were indeed prolonging it intentionally. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya also rose from their places and fearfully, silently waited to see what this might come to; Varya’s eyes flashed, but it all had a morbid effect on Nina Alexandrovna; she was trembling and seemed to be on the point of fainting.

‘Well, if that’s how it is - a hundred! I’ll get you a hundred thousand this very day! Ptitsyn, help me, you’ll do well out of this!’

‘You’ve taken leave of your senses!’ Ptitsyn whispered suddenly, going over to him quickly, and seizing him by the arm. ‘You’re drunk, they’ll send for the police. Where do you think you are?’

‘He’s drunk, and talking nonsense,’ said Nastasya Filippovna, as if teasing him.

‘It isn’t nonsense, the money will be here! It will be here by this evening! Ptitsyn, help me, you interest-grasping soul, take what you want, but get me a hundred thousand by this evening; I’ll prove that I stick by what I promise!’ Rogozhin suddenly grew animated to the point of ecstasy.

‘But really, what is all this?’ a wrathful Ardalion Alexandrovich exclaimed suddenly and menacingly, drawing close to Rogozhin. The suddenness of the old man’s behaviour, following upon the silence he had kept until now, made it seem very comical. Laughter was heard.