The Idiot (30 page)

‘You may never have stolen anything, Darya Alexeyevna; but what will the prince say, who has suddenly blushed all over?’

‘I think what you say is true, but you exaggerate too much,’ said the prince, who really had begun to blush for some reason.

‘Well, Prince, have you never stolen anything?’

‘Fie! How ridiculous this is! Remember where you are, Mr Ferdyshchenko,’ the general intervened.

‘It’s plain to see that when it comes down to it, you’re ashamed to tell your story, so you try to drag the prince with you, because he’s so meek and mild,’ Darya Alexeyevna rapped out.

‘Ferdyshchenko, either tell your story or be quiet and mind your own business. You’re exhausting our patience,’ Nastasya Filippovna said sharply and with annoyance.

‘At once, Nastasya Filippovna; but if the prince has confessed, for I insist all the same that the prince has confessed, then what, for example, would someone else (I mention no names) say, if he wanted to tell the truth? With regard to myself, gentlemen, there’s really nothing more to tell: it’s all very simple, stupid, and bad. But I assure you that I’m not a thief; I just stole something, I don’t know why. It was the year before last, at the dacha of Semyon Ivanovich Ishchenko, on a Sunday. He had some guests to dinner. After dinner the gentlemen sat on over their wine. I had the idea of asking Marya Semyonovna, his daughter, a young lady, to play something on the piano. I passed through the corner room, and there was a green three-rouble note lying on Marya Ivanovna’s work box: she had got it out to pay some household expense. There was no one in the room. I picked up the note and put it in my pocket. I don’t know what got into me. But I quickly went back and sat down at the table. I continued to sit and wait, in a state of rather violent agitation, talking without cease, telling anecdotes, lau
ghing; then I went in and sat with the ladies. Approximately half an hour later, the absence of the money was noticed, and they began to question the maids. The maid Darya was suspected of having taken it. I displayed extraordinary curiosity and sympathy, and I remember that when Darya completely broke down, I even began to try to persuade her that she should confess her guilt, staking everything on Marya Ivanovna’s kindness, and this out loud, in everyone’s presence. They all stared at me, and I felt extraordinary satisfaction because I was preaching while the note was in my pocket. That evening I spent the three roubles in a restaurant, on drink. Went in and asked for a bottle of Lafite; never before had I asked for a bottle of wine on its own like that, without anything else; I wanted to spend the money quickly. Neither then nor later did I feel any particular qualms of conscience. I probably wouldn’t have done it a second time; you may believe it or not, as you will, but it doesn’t interest me. Well, gentlemen, that is all.’

‘Except, of course, that it’s not the worst thing you’ve ever done,’ said Darya Alexeyevna, with disgust.

‘It’s a psychological case, not something you did,’ observed Afanasy Ivanovich.

‘And the maid?’ asked Nastasya Filippovna, not trying to conceal a most fastidious distaste.

‘The maid was dismissed the very next day, of course. It’s a strict household.’

‘And you allowed it to happen?’

‘I like that! You really think I should have gone and owned up?’ giggled Ferdyshchenko, struck, however, by the very unpleasant impression his story had left.

‘What a filthy thing to do!’ exclaimed Nastasya Filippovna.

‘Bah! You want to hear about the worst thing a man has done, and demand brilliance at the same time! The worst actions are always filthy, we shall hear it from Ivan Petrovich in a moment; and there are not a few people who show a brilliant exterior and think they look virtuous because they own their own carriage. There are not a few people who own their own carriage ... Though by what means ...’

In a word, Ferdyshchenko was quite unable to control himself, and suddenly lapsed into a frantic rage, even to the point of forgetting himself and going beyond all limits; his whole face was positively contorted. However strange it might seem, it was very possible that he had expected quite a different response to his story. These ‘blunders’ of taste and this ‘special kind of boasting’, as Totsky had expressed it, happened very often with Ferdyshchenko and were an integral part of his character.

Nastasya Filippovna even shuddered with anger, and stared intently at Ferdyshchenko; in an instant he lost his nerve and fell silent, almost turning cold with fright; for he had gone too far.

‘Don’t you think we ought to give this up?’ Afanasy Ivanovich asked, slyly.

‘It’s my turn now, but I’m going to claim my privilege, and shall not tell a story,’ Ptitsyn said resolutely.

‘You don’t want to?’

‘I can’t, Nastasya Filippovna; and in any case, I consider a
petit
jeu
of this kind impossible and out of the question.’

‘General, it seems that you are next in our line,’ Nastasya Filippovna said, turning to him. ‘If you refuse, the whole thing will fall apart in our hands, and I shall be sorry, as I’d been planning to round things off by telling something “from my own life”, but wanted to do so after you and Afanasy Ivanovich, because I need you to give me courage,’ she concluded, bursting into laughter.

‘Oh well, if that’s what you’re promising,’ the general exclaimed warmly, ‘I’m willing to tell you my entire life story, but I must confess that while waiting for my turn I’ve already prepared my own anecdote ...’

‘And by his excellency’s look alone one may conclude with what literary satisfaction he has worked out his little anecdote,’ the still somewhat flustered Ferdyshchenko summoned up the boldness to observe, smiling poisonously.

Nastasya Filippovna glanced briefly at the general, and also smiled to herself. But it was evident that
ennui
and irritation were intensifying in her more and more. Afanasy Ivanovich was doubly alarmed at her promise to tell a story of her own.

‘It has happened, gentlemen, to me as to everyone else, that in the course of my life I have done some things that were not very pretty,’ began the general, ‘but the strangest aspect of it is that I myself consider the short little anecdote I shall tell you in a moment the ugliest one of my entire existence. Moreover, almost thirty-five years have passed since it took place; but when I remember it I can never free myself from a certain, as it were, clawing sensation in my heart. It was, however, an exceedingly stupid affair: I was then only an ensign, drudging my way through the army. Well, you know what an ensign is like: blood at boiling point and housekeeping run on copecks; in those days I had a batman, Nikifor, who took a keen concern for my housekeeping, saving, sewing, scrubbing and cleaning, and even stealing anything he could get his hands on just in order to add a few items to the house; he was the most loyal and honest of men. I, of course, was strict but fair. For a while, we happened to be stationed in a small town. I was billeted in a suburb with a second lieutenant’s wife, who was in fact a widow. The old woman must have been about eighty, or at least something approaching it. Her little house was tumbledown, wretched, made of timber, and she even had no maid, because she was so poor. She was mainly distinguished, however, by once having had a numerous family and relatives; but during the course of her life some had died, others had gone their separate ways, others still had forgotten about the old
woman, and she had buried her husband some forty-five years earlier. A few years before this a niece had lived with her, hunchbacked and as nasty as a witch, who had even once bitten the old woman’s finger, but she too had died, and the old woman had now been struggling along all on her own for some three years. It was pretty boring at her place, and the old woman was so senile that one couldn’t get anything out of her. At last she stole a cockerel from me. It was an obscure business, but it could only have been her. We quarrelled about the cockerel, and considerably so, and then it so happened that right on my first application I was transferred to another billet, in a suburb on the other side of the town, in the numerous family of a merchant with a very large beard, as I remember him now. Nikifor and I were glad to move, but we left the old woman in a state of indignation. Some three days went by, I came back from drill, and Nikifor announced that “we shouldn’t have left our tureen at the old landlady’s, sir, there’s nothing to serve the soup in now”. I was taken aback, of course: “How can it be, how did our tureen get left behind at the landlady’s?” The astonished Nikifor continued to report that while we were moving out the landlady had refused to give him our tureen, on the grounds that, as I had broken a pot of hers, she was going to keep our tureen, and that I had offered it to her. Such meanness on her part, of course, drove me beyond the limit; my blood began to boil, I leaped to my feet, went rushing off. I arrived at the old woman’s place practically beside myself; I saw her sitting in the passage all on her own, in the corner, as though she were hiding from the sun, propping her cheek in her hand. Well, I at once brought a thunderbolt down on her, telling her she was “this” and “that”, you know, in the Russian way. But then I looked, and saw something strange: she sat staring with her face towards me, her eyes bulged, and she said not a word in reply, looking so strangely, strangely, and as if she were rocking to and fro. At last I calmed down, took a closer look, asked her some questions: not a word in reply. I stood for a while, undecided; flies were buzzing, the sun was setting, silence; at last, completely baffled, I went away. I hadn’t yet reached home when I was summoned to the major, then I had to look in at company headquarters, so I didn’t get home until far into the evening. The first thing Nikifor said was: “You know, sir, our landlady has died.” “When?” “This evening, about an hour and a half ago.” This meant that at the very time I had been shouting at her, she had been departing this world. This gave me such a shock, I tell you, I could barely pull myself together. You know, I even began to brood about it, even dreamed about it at night. Of course, I’m not superstitious, but on the third day I went to church for the funeral. In short, the more time passes, the more I think about it. Not that it really worries me, but sometimes I imagine it, and it doesn’t feel good. I’ve worked out what the main point of it is. In the first place, she was a woman, so to speak, a human being, as it’s called in our time,
être
humain,
she had lived, lived a long time, and had finally come to the end of her life. Once she had had children, a husband, a family, relatives, all that had effervesced around her, so to speak, all those smiles, and suddenly — a total void, everything flown up the chimney, she was left alone, like ... some kind of housefly, bearing a curse from time immemorial. And now, at last, God had led her to the end. With the setting of the sun, on a quiet summer evening, my old woman also flew away — of course, there’s a certain moral to be drawn here; and then at that very moment, instead of tears of farewell, so to speak, there’s a desperate young ensign, with his hands on his hips and a self-satisfied look, seeing her off from the crust of the earth with a stream of Russian curses about a missing tureen! There’s no doubt, I was guilty, and although, because of the remoteness of the years and the change in my nature, I have long viewed my action as that of another man, I none the less continue to be sorry. So that, I repeat, it even seems strange to me, and all the more so since, if I was to blame, I was not so entirely: I mean, why did she decide to die at that particular moment? There is, of course, an excuse: that my action was in some sense a psychological one, but all the same I could find no rest until, about fifteen years ago, at my own expense I settled two chronically ill old women in the almshouse, with the object of softening the last days of their earthly life by having them decently looked after. I plan to turn it into a permanent one, and have left capital in my will. Well, gentlemen, that is all, gentlemen. I repeat that although I may have been guilty of very many things in my life, I consider that incident to be the worst action of my whole life.’

‘And instead of the worst action of your life, your excellency has told us one of your good deeds; you’ve cheated Ferdyshchenko!’ said Ferdyshchenko.

‘Indeed, general, I never imagined that you had a kind heart in spite of it all; I’m almost sorry,’ Nastasya Filippovna said carelessly.

‘Sorry? But why?’ the general asked with a polite laugh, and took a sip of his champagne, not without self-satisfaction.

But now it was the turn of Afanasy Ivanovich, who had also prepared himself. Everyone had guessed that, unlike Ivan Petrovich, he would not refuse, and for several reasons, they awaited his story with particular curiosity, looking at Nastasya Filippovna now and then. With extraordinary dignity, quite in harmony with his portly appearance, and in a courteous voice, Afanasy Ivanovich began one of his ‘charming stories’. (Incidentally, he was a man imposing in his presence, portly, tall of stature, slightly balding, slightly greying, and rather stout, with soft, rubicund, slightly flabby cheeks, and false teeth. He dressed in loose, elegant clothes, and wore magnificent linen. His plump white hands made one want to stare in wonderment. On the index finger of his right hand there was an expensive diamond ring.) Throughout the whole of his story, Nastasya Filippovna fixedly studied the lace of the frill on her sleeve, pinching it with two fingers of her left hand, so that never once did she so much as glance at the story’s teller.

‘What makes my task easier, above all,’ Afanasy Ivanovich began, ‘is the absolute obligation to describe the very worst thing I have ever done in my whole life. In such a case, there can, of course, be no hesitation: one’s conscience and the memory of the heart at once tell one exactly what to say. I confess with sorrow that among all the countless possibly frivolous and ... fickle actions of my life there is one that has imprinted itself all too painfully on my memory. It was about twenty years ago; at the time I was staying on Platon Ordyntsev’s country estate. He had just been elected marshal of nobility and had arrived with his young wife to spend the winter holidays. Anfisa Alexeyevna’s birthday happened to fall at the same time, and two balls were arranged. In those days the height of fashion was represented by the delightful novel of Dumas
fils, La Dame aux camélias,
a poem which had taken society by storm and which, in my opinion, is destined neither to die nor to grow old. In the provinces all the ladies, or at least, those ladies who had read it, were in raptures of ecstasy over it. The delightful quality of the narrative, the originality of the main character’s presentation, that alluring world, analysed to the point of subtlety, and, of course, all those enchanting details that are scattered through the book (concerning, for example, the circumstances in which bouquets of white and pink camellias are to be used in turn),
¹
in short, all those delightful details, and the whole thing together, caused a virtual earthquake. The flowers of the camellia enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. Everyone wanted camellias, everyone was looking for them. I ask you, how many camellias could one hope to obtain in the district of a province when everyone wanted them for balls, even though there weren’t many balls? At the time, Petya Vorkhovskoy, poor fellow, was pining away for Anfisa Alexeyevna. To be sure, I don’t know whether there was anything between them, that is, I mean, whether he could have entertained any serious hope. The poor man was going out of his mind in an effort to get hold of some camellias in time for the night of Anfisa Alexeyevna’s ball. Countess Sotskaya from St Petersburg, a guest of the governor’s wife, and Sofya Bespalova, it became known, would certainly be bringing bouquets, white ones. Anfisa Alexeyevna, for the sake of special effect, wanted red ones. Poor Platon was nearly driven frantic; naturally — he was her husband; he undertook to get a bouquet for her, and — what do you suppose? On the eve of the ball he was beaten to it by Mytyshcheva, Katerina Alexandrovna, a fierce rival of Anfisa Alexeyevna in everything; they were at daggers drawn. Of course there were hysterics, fainting fits. Platon was done for. It wasn’t hard to see that if Petya were able to produce a bouquet from somewhere at that interesting moment, his chances would be greatly improved; in such situations, a woman’s gratitude knows no bounds. He rushed about like a madman; but, needless to say, it was an impossible task. I suddenly bumped into him at eleven o’clock the night before the birthday and the ball, at the house of Marya Petrovna Zubkova, a neighbour of Ordyntsev’s. He was beaming with smiles. “What’s up?” “I’ve found them!
Eureka!”
“Well, brother, that’s a surprise! Where? How?” “In Yekshaisk (there is a little town of that name there, about twenty versts away, in another district), there’s a merchant called Trepalov, with a big beard and bags of money, lives with his old woman, and canaries instead of children. They’re both crazy about flowers, and he has camellias.” “For heaven’s sake, but it’s not certain, I mean, what if he won’t give you them?” “I’ll get down on my knees and grovel at his feet until he does, or I won’t go away.” “When are you going, then?” “At first light tomorrow, at five.” “Well, good luck!” And I really was so glad for him, you know; I returned to Ordyntsev’s house; by now it was already two in the morning, but you know, my mind kept racing. Just as I was about to go to bed, I suddenly had a most original idea! I immediately made my way to the kitchen, roused Savely the coachman and gave him fifteen roubles: “Have the horses ready in half an hour!” Half an hour later, of course, the sleigh was at the gates; Anfisa Alexeyevna, I was told, had a migraine, fever and delirium — I got in and drove. Before five I was in Yekshaisk, at the coaching inn; I waited until dawn, and only until dawn; by seven I was at Trepalov‘s, “Have you any camellias? Little Father, dear Father of mine, help me, save me, I’ll get down at your feet!” I saw him, an old man, tall, grey-haired, stern — a terrifying old chap. “No, no, on no account! I won’t consent!” Down I went, bang, at his feet! Fairly stretched myself out! “What’s up, little Father, what’s up, Father of mine?” — he was frightened, even. “Why, there’s a man’s life at stake!” I shouted to him. “If that’s so, then take them, may God go with you.” Then I cut red camellias, as many as I wanted! Wonderful, lovely ones, he had a whole little greenhouse full of them. The old man sighed. I took out a hundred roubles. “No, little Father, please don’t insult me like this.” “Well, if that’s how it is, dear sir,” I said, “donate the hundred roubles to the local hospital to improve the upkeep and food.” “Now that, little Father,” he said, “is a different cause, and a good one, a noble one and one that is pleasing to God; I’ll donate it in the name of your health and welfare.” And I liked him, you know, that old Russian fellow, so to speak, a real “Russky”,
de lavraie souche.
²
Delighted by my success, I at once went back; returning by a circuitous route so as not to encounter Petya. When I got there, I sent the bouquet so it would be there for Anfisa Alexeyevna when she woke up. You can imagine the delight, the gratitude, the tears of gratitude! Platon, yesterday’s crushed and annihilated Platon — sobbing on my chest. Alas! All husbands have been like that since the creation ... of lawful wedlock! I don’t dare to add any more, except that with this episode poor Petya’s chances were finally destroyed. At first I thought he would kill me when he found out, I even got ready for an encounter with him, but then something happened, something which I would not have believed was possible: he fell down in a swoon, by evening he was in delirium, and by morning had a fever of the blood; he was sobbing like a child, in convulsions. A month later, when he had only just recovered, he asked to be posted to the Crimea; it became a real roman
tic novel! In the end he was killed in the Crimea. At the time his brother, Stepan Vorkhovskoy, was in command of a regiment, and distinguished himself in action. I will confess that I was tormented by pangs of conscience for many years afterwards: why, for what purpose had I struck him such a blow? There might have been some excuse had I been in love myself at the time. I mean, it was just plain mischief, nothing more. And had I not outbid him for that bouquet, who knows, the man might still be alive, happy and successful, and it would never have crossed his mind to go and fight the Turks.’