The Idiot (32 page)

On Rogozhin himself, Nastasya Filippovna’s drawing room made an impression that was the reverse of that produced on all his companions. No sooner had the door curtain been raised, and he caught sight of Nastasya Filippovna, than everything else ceased to exist for him, as it had done earlier, in the morning, and even more powerfully than in the morning. He went pale, and stopped for a moment; one could guess that his heart was beating horribly. In timid perplexity he stared at Nastasya Filippovna for several seconds. Suddenly, as if he had lost all his reason, and almost staggering, he approached the table; on the way he knocked into Ptitsyn’s chair and trod with his great, dirty boots on the lace trimmings of the silent German beauty’s magnificent blue dress; did not apologize and did not notice. Approaching the table, he placed upon it the strange object with which he had stepped into the drawing room, holding it before him in both hands. It was a large paper parcel, some three vershoks
²
thick and some four vershoks long, wrapped firmly and compactly in
The Stock Exchange Gazette,
and tied very tightly on all sides and twice across the middle with string of the kind that is used for binding sugar loaves. Then he stood without saying a word, his arms at his sides, as though awaiting sentence. His clothes were just the same as they had been earlier, except for a brand new silk scarf, bright green and red, with an enormous diamond pin in the form of a beetle, and a massive diamond ring on a grimy finger of his right hand. Lebedev came to a halt about three paces from the table; the others, as mentioned, were gradually making their way into the drawing room. Katya and Pasha, Nastasya Filippovna’s room maids, also came running to stare from behind the raised door curtain, in deep bewilderment and fear.

‘What’s that?’ asked Nastasya Filippovna, surveying Rogozhin intently and curiously, and indicating the ‘object’ with her eyes.

‘A hundred thousand!’ the latter replied, almost in a whisper.

‘Ah, so you kept your word, well, well. Sit down, please, here, here on this chair; I shall tell you something later. Who is with you? The whole company who were with you earlier? Well, let them come in and sit down; they can sit on the sofa, there’s another sofa over there. There are two armchairs ... but what’s wrong, don’t they want to?’

Indeed, some were positively confounded, beat a retreat and settled down to wait in the other room, but some remained and took their seats when invited to, but as far from the table as possible, mostly in the corners, while some still wanted to merge into the background, a
nd others seemed to regain their courage with unnatural swiftness the farther away they sat. Rogozhin also sat down where he was shown to, but did not remain there for long; he soon got up, and did not sit down again. Little by little he began to survey the guests, identifying them. On seeing Ganya, he smiled poisonously and whispered to himself: ‘Just look at him!’ At the general and Afanasy Ivanovich he glanced without embarrassment and even without particular curiosity. But when he noticed the prince beside Nastasya Filippovna, for a long time he was unable to tear himself away from him, in extreme surprise and as if he were unable to admit the reality of this encounter. One could suspect that at moments he was in a genuine state of delirium. In addition to all the upheavals of this day, he had spent the whole of the night before on the train and had not slept for almost forty-eight hours.

‘This, gentlemen, is a hundred thousand,’ said Nastasya Filippovna, addressing them all with a kind of feverish, impatient challenge, ‘here, in this dirty parcel. Earlier today he shouted like a madman that he would bring me a hundred thousand in the evening, and I’ve been waiting for him. He bargained for me: began with eighteen thousand, then suddenly bumped it up to forty, and then to this hundred. He certainly kept his word! Ugh, how pale he is! ... It all happened at Ganechka’s earlier on: I arrived to see his mother on a visit, to my future family, and his sister shouted in my face: “Why don’t they throw this shameless woman out of here?”, and spat in her own brother Ganechka’s face! A girl of character!’

‘Nastasya Filippovna!’ the general said reproachfully.

He was beginning to understand the matter a little, in his own way.

‘What’s wrong, General? Indecent, is it? But enough of this showing off! The fact that I sat in a box of the French Theatre like a personification of inaccessible dress-circle virtue, avoiding like a savage all those who had been chasing me for five years, and gazing down like proud innocence itself, well, it was stupidity that made me do it! Now, right in front of your eyes, he has come and put a hundred thousand on the table, after those five years of innocence, and I bet they have a troika outside waiting for me. He has valued me at a hundred thousand! Ganechka, I see that you are still angry with me? Did you really want to take me into your family? I, who belong to Rogozhin? What did the prince say earlier?’

‘I didn’t say that you belong to Rogozhin!’ the prince got out in a trembling voice.

‘Nastasya Filippovna, enough, little mother, enough, little dove,’ Darya Alexeyevna suddenly lost patience. ‘If you’ve suffered so much because of them, why bother paying any attention to them? And do you really want to go off with a man like that, even for a hundred thousand! True, a hundred thousand is not to be sneezed at! So take the hundred thousand and chase him away, that’s how to deal with them; oh, in your place I would tell them all where to go ... so I would!’

Darya Alexeyevna had really worked herself into a state of anger. She was a good-hearted woman, and highly impressionable.

‘Don’t get angry, Darya Alexeyevna,’ Nastasya Filippovna smiled to her, thinly. ‘After all, I didn’t speak to him in anger. I mean, did I rebuke him? I really can’t understand how I could ever have been so stupid as to want to enter a decent family. I’ve seen his mother, and kissed her hand. And as for my mocking you earlier, Ganechka, I did it on purpose in order to see for the last time how far you would go. Well, and you surprised me, truly you did. I had expected many things, but not that! I mean, could you really have married me, knowing that he would give me a pearl necklace like that practically on the eve of your wedding, and that I would accept it? And Rogozhin? After all he bargained for me in your house, in the presence of your mother and sister, and yet you came to seek my hand in marriage after that, and nearly brought your sister with you? Is what Rogozhin said of you really true, that you would crawl on your hands and knees to Vasilyevsky Island for three roubles?’

‘He would,’ Rogozhin suddenly said quietly, but with a look of the utmost conviction.

‘And it would be all very well if you were dying of hunger, but after all, they say you get a good salary! And as if that weren’t enough, in addition to the disgrace, to bring a hated wife into your home! (Because you do hate me, I know that!) No, now I believe that such a man could kill for money! I mean, now they are all in the grip of such a craving, they’re so torn apart for money, that it’s as if they’d lost their minds. Just a child, but he aspires to become a moneylender! I can imagine him wrapping the silk round the razor, tightening it, and quietly cutting his friend’s throat from behind, as though he were a sheep, as I read recently. Oh, you shameless man! I’m shameless, but you’re worse. To say nothing of that bouquet-collector ...’

‘Is it you, is it you, Nastasya Filippovna?’ the general said, clasping his hands in genuine grief. ‘You, so delicate, with such refined ideas, and now! What language! What a manner of speech!’

‘I’m intoxicated now, General,’ Nastasya Filippovna laughed suddenly, ‘and I want to enjoy myself! Today is my day, my appointed day, my high holiday, I have waited for it a long time. Darya Alexeyevna, you see that bouquet-collector, that
monsieuraux camélias?
He’s sitting there laughing at us ...’

‘I’m not laughing, Nastasya Filippovna, I am merely listening with the greatest attention,’ Totsky parried with dignity.

‘Well then, so why have I tormented him for a whole five years and not let him go? Was he worth it? He’s simply the way he’s supposed to be ... He also thinks I’m guilty in his regard: after all he gave me my upbringing, kept me like a countess, and the money, the money he spent, found me a decent husband back there, and here Ganechka; and what do you suppose: I haven’t lived with him these past five years, but I’ve taken money from him and thought I was in the right! I mean, I’ve completely confused
myself! You say, take the hundred thousand and chase him away, if you find it disgusting. Yes, it’s true, it’s disgusting ... I could have got married long ago, and not to Ganechka either, but that would also have been too disgusting ... And why have I wasted five years of my life in this spite and anger? Believe it or not, but about four years ago there were times when I thought: why don’t I just marry my Afanasy Ivanovich? I thought it out of malice at the time; there were a lot of things going through my head in those days; yet, it’s true, I could have made him do it! He suggested it himself, would you believe it? He wasn’t being sincere, of course, but then he’s easy prey, has no self-control. And after that, thank God, I thought: is he worth such malice? And then I got so disgusted by him that even if he’d come and offered me his hand himself I wouldn’t have married him. And for five whole years I pranced about like this! No, better out on the street, where I ought to be! Have a fling with Rogozhin, or become a washerwoman tomorrow! Because, after all, I have nothing of my own; if I go, I’ll leave everything to him, down to my last rag, and who will take me without anything. Ask Ganya if he’ll take me. Why, not even Ferdyshchenko will take me! ...’

‘Ferdyshchenko might not take you, Nastasya Filippovna, I’m a candid fellow,’ Ferdyshchenko broke in, ‘but the prince will take you! There you sit lamenting, but just look at the prince! I’ve been watching him for a long time ...’

Nastasya Filippovna turned to the prince with curiosity.

‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Really,’ whispered the prince.

‘You’ll take me as I am, without anything?’

‘I will, Nastasya Filippovna ...’

‘Here’s another anecdote!’ muttered the general. ‘It was to be expected.’

The prince looked with a sorrowful, stern and penetrating gaze into the features of Nastasya Filippovna, who continued to survey him.

‘He always knows how to say the right thing!’ she said suddenly, addressing Darya Alexeyevna again. ‘And I mean, it really is from a kind heart, I know him. I’ve found a benefactor! Though, as a matter of fact, they do say that he’s ... you know ... What are you going to live on if you’re so in love that you’ll take Rogozhin’s woman for yourself, a prince?’

‘I’ll take you as an honest woman, Nastasya Filippovna, and not as Rogozhin’s,’ said the prince.

‘I’m an honest woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, that’s ... stuff out of novels! That’s a lot of old claptrap, Prince, dear, the world’s grown a bit wiser now, and all that is nonsense. And what would you be doing getting married when you still need a nanny to look after you?’

The prince rose, and in a trembling, timid voice, but at the same time with the look of one deeply convinced, said:

‘I don’t know anything, Nastasya Filippovna, I haven’t seen anything, you’re right, but I ... I consider that you’ll be doing me an honour, and not vice versa. I’m nothing, while you have suffered and have emerged pure from a hell like that, and that is a lot. So why are you ashamed, and planning to go with Rogozhin? It’s your fever ... You’ve given Mr Totsky his seventy thousand and say you are going to turn your back on everything, everything, and there is no one here who could do that. I ... Nastasya Filippovna ... I love you. I’ll die for you, Nastasya Filippovna. I won’t let anyone say a word against you, Nastasya Filippovna ... If we’re poor, I shall work, Nastasya Filippovna ...’

At the last words the sniggering of Ferdyshchenko and Lebedev could be heard, and even the general seemed to grunt to himself in great displeasure. Ptitsyn and Totsky could not help smiling, but restrained themselves. The rest simply opened their mouths wide with astonishment.

‘... But perhaps we shall not be poor, but very rich, Nastasya Filippovna,’ the prince continued in the same timid voice. ‘However, I don’t know for certain, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to find out anything about it all day, but in Switzerland I got a letter from a Mr Salazkin, and he informs me that I may apparently receive a very large inheritance. This is th
e letter, here ...’

And the prince actually took a letter out of his pocket.

‘He’s raving, isn’t he?’ muttered the general. ‘This is a real madhouse!’

For a moment, silence ensued.

‘Did you say that you have a letter from Salazkin, Prince?’ asked Ptitsyn. ‘He’s a man very well known in his circle; he’s a very well-known solicitor, and if the letter really is from him, you may believe him completely. Fortunately, I know his handwriting, as I recently had business with him ... If you would let me have a look, perhaps I could tell you something.’

The prince silently held out the letter to him in a trembling hand.

‘What on earth, what on earth?’ the general said, recovering himself, staring at them all like a halfwit. ‘Is it really an inheritance?’

They all fixed their eyes on Ptitsyn as he read the letter. The universal curiosity had received a new and extreme impetus. Ferdyshchenko could not sit still; Rogozhin stared in bewilderment and kept transferring his gaze now to the prince, now to Ptitsyn, with dreadful anxiety. Darya Alexeyevna looked on, in expectancy, as though she were sitting on needles. Even Lebedev was unable to hold out, emerged from his corner and, craning his neck for all he was worth, began to peer at the letter over Ptitsyn’s shoulder with the look of a man who feared he might at any moment receive a clout for doing so.

‘It’s genuine,’ Ptitsyn announced, at last, folding the letter and handing it back to the prince. ‘You will receive, under the terms of your aunt’s incontestable will, without any need for petition, an extremely large sum of capital.’