The Idiot (35 page)

Little by little, the darkness of ignorance managed to obscure even the rumours that had begun to spread around the town. There was talk, it was true, of some little prince and fool (no one could put a definite name to him) who had suddenly received an enormous inheritance and married a visiting Frenchwoman, a well-known cancan artiste from the Château de Fleurs in Paris. But others said that the inheritance had been received by some general, and that the visiting Frenchwoman had been married to a young Russian merchant and unimaginably wealthy Croesus who, drunk at his own wedding, out of sheer bravado, had burned on a candle no fewer than seven hundred thousand roubles’ worth of the latest issue of lottery tickets. But all these rumours very soon died down, something that was greatly assisted by circumstances. For example, Rogozhin’s entire company, many of whom might have been able to tell something, had all set off for Moscow
en masse,
led by Rogozhin himself, almost exactly a week after the dreadful orgy in the Yekaterinhof pleasure gardens,
¹
at which Nastasya Filippovna had also been present. One or two people, the very few who were interested, learned from passing rumours that on the very next day after the incident at Yekaterinhof Nastasya Filippovna had fled, vanished, and that it was finally discovered she had set off for Moscow; the result of this was that Rogozhin’s own departure for Moscow began to be viewed as more than a coincidence.

Rumours also began to circulate about Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, who was also rather well known in his circle. But with him too something occurred, the gossip about which quickly grew cold, but which subsequently quite put to rest all the unkind stories in his regard: he became very ill and was not only unable to present himself anywhere in society, but even at work. Having been ill for a month, he recovered, but for some reason refused point blank to continue in his job at the joint-stock company, and his post was filled by someone else. He did not appear at the house of General Yepanchin even once, so that another civil servant began to visit the general instead. Gavrila Ardalionovich’s enemies might have supposed that he was so embarrassed by all that had happened to him that he was even too ashamed to leave the house; but he really did appear to be indisposed: he even fell into a state of morbid preoccupation with his health, brooded, grew irritable. That winter Varvara Ardalionovna married Ptitsyn; everyone who knew them directly ascribed this marriage to the circumstance that Ganya did not want to go back to his job and had not only ceased to support the household but had even begun to stand in need of assistance himself and almost of being looked after.

We shall note in parenthesis that Gavrila Ardalionovich was likewise never even mentioned in the house of the Yepanchins - as if there were no such person in the world, let alone in their house. And yet all the same everyone learned (and even very quickly) of a certain rem
arkable circumstance concerning him, namely, that on that same night that had been so fateful for him, after the unpleasant incident at Nastasya Filippovna’s, Ganya, returning home, did not go to bed but began to await the prince’s return with feverish impatience. The prince, who had travelled to Yekaterinhof, returned from there between five and six in the morning. Then Ganya entered his room and placed before him on the table the scorched parcel of money that had been given him by Nastasya Filippovna as he lay unconscious. He insistently begged the prince to return this gift to Nastasya Filippovna at the first opportunity. On entering the prince’s room, Ganya was in a hostile and almost desperate state of mind; but some words apparently passed between him and the prince, whereupon Ganya stayed with the prince for two hours, sobbing most bitterly all the while. They parted on friendly terms.

As subsequently confirmed, this news, which reached all the Yepanchins, was entirely correct. It was, of course, strange that news of such a kind should have reached them and become known to them all so quickly; for example, everything that had taken place at Nastasya Filippovna’s became known in the house of the Yepanchins almost on the very next day, and even in rather precise detail. As for the news about Gavrila Ardalionovich, it was not too much to suppose that it had been brought by Varvara Ardalionovna, who suddenly began to pay visits to the Yepanchin girls and was even within a very short time on the closest of terms with them, which astonished Lizaveta Prokofyevna exceedingly. But Varvara Ardalionovna, though for some reason she had found it necessary to associate so closely with the Yepanchins, would certainly not have talked to them about her brother. She was also a rather proud woman in her own way, even though she had made friends with people in a house in which her brother had almost been shown the door. Before this, though she had been acquainted with the Yepanchin girls, they had not seen one another very often. Even now, she hardly ever showed herself in the drawing room, and visited by dropping in, as it were, by way of the back staircase. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had never regarded her with favour, either before or now, though she had great respect for Nina Alexandrovna, Varvara Ardalionovna’s mother. She was surprised and angry, ascribing her daughters’ friendship with Varya to their caprice and love of power, and their tendency ‘to think of nothing but going against her wishes’; nevertheless, Varvara Ardalionovna continued to visit them before and after her marriage.

But when about a month had passed since the prince’s departure, Mrs Yepanchina received a letter from old Princess Belokonskaya, who had left some two weeks earlier for Moscow to stay with her eldest married daughter, and this letter had a visible effect on her. Though she disclosed its contents neither to her daughters nor to Ivan Fyodorovich, the family began to notice by a number of signs that she was somehow oddly excited, even agitated. She began to talk to her daughters in a very strange way, and always about most the unusual things; she clearly wis
hed to express her opinion, but was for some reason holding back. On the day she received the letter she was very affectionate to them all, even kissed Aglaya and Alexandra, was apologetic about something in their regard, though precisely what it was they could not ascertain. Even towards Ivan Fyodorovich, whom she had kept in disgrace for a whole month, she suddenly began to be indulgent. Of course, on the very next day she was dreadfully angry about her sentimentality of the day before, and even managed to quarrel with them all before dinner, but towards evening the horizon cleared once again. Indeed, for a whole week she continued to be in a rather serene frame of mind, something that had not been the case for a long time.

After another week, however, another letter arrived from Belokonskaya, and this time the general’s wife decided to make her opinion known. She solemnly declared that ‘old Belokonskaya’ (she never called the princess anything else when talking about her in her absence) had imparted to her some very comforting information about that ... ‘eccentric, oh, you know, the prince!’ The old woman had sought him out in Moscow, made inquiries about him, and learned some very good things about him; the prince, at last, had come to see her himself and had made an almost extraordinarily fine impression on her. ‘That’s clear from the fact that she’s invited him to visit her each morning from one to two, and he goes trailing over there every day and hasn’t got tired of it so far’ - the general’s wife concluded, adding that through the ‘old woman’ the prince had begun to be received in two or three good houses. ‘It’s good that he’s not just staying at home being shy like a fool.’ The girls, who were informed of all this, at once observed that their mother had concealed from them a good portion of her letter. It is possible that they discovered it through Varvara Ardalionovna, who might have known and who of course did know everything that Ptitsyn knew about the prince and his stay in Moscow. And Ptitsyn may have known even more than anyone else. However, where business was concerned he was a man of extreme reticence, though he did, of course, tell things to Varya. Because of this the general’s wife instantly took an even greater dislike to Varya.

But whatever the truth of the matter, the ice was now broken, and it suddenly began to be possible to speak of the prince out loud. In addition, it was once again clearly revealed what an extraordinary impression and exceedingly great interest the prince had awoken and left in the house of the Yepanchins. The general’s wife was positively astonished at the impression the news from Moscow made on her daughters. And the daughters were also astonished at their mother for so solemnly declaring to them that the principal feature of her life was ‘being constantly mistaken in people’, while at the same time entrusting the prince to the attention of the ‘powerful’ old Belokonskaya in Moscow, attention which she must of course have had to beg on bended knee, as the ‘old woman’ was hard to rouse in such cases.

But as soon as the ice had been broken and the wind was blowing in a new direction, the general, too, hurried to express an opinion. It turned out that he too was particularly interested. He talked, however, only about ‘the business side of the subject’. It turned out that in the prince’s interests he had appointed two very reliable gentlemen, who were in their own way influential in Moscow, to keep an eye on him, and particularly on the prince’s business attorney, Salazkin. Everything that had been said about the inheritance, ‘the fact of the inheritance, as it were’, turned out to be true, but the inheritance itself had proved to be not at all as considerable as rumour had had it at first. The estate was in something of a muddle; there proved to be debts, and claimants of various sorts, and the prince, in spite of all the guidance he had received, had behaved in the most unbusinesslike fashion. ‘God bless him, of course’; now that the ‘ice of silence’ was broken, the general was glad to announce this ‘with all the sincerity of his soul‘, for ‘although the fellow’s a little
you
know
’, he deserved the inheritance none the less. Yet all the same, he had done some foolish things: for example, the creditors of the deceased merchant had appeared, with documents that were questionable and worthless, and other creditors, having scented a prince, with no documents at all - and what had happened? The prince had met nearly all the claims, in spite of all the insistence of his friends that these wretched little people, these creditors, had no claim at all; and met them for the sole reason that, it transpired, some of them really had suffered.

The general’s wife responded to this by saying that Belokonskaya had also written to her in this vein, and that it was ‘stupid, very stupid; once a fool, always a fool’, she added sharply, though from her face it was clear that she was pleased by the actions of the ‘fool’. To conclude it all, the general observed that his wife cared for the prince as though he were her own son, and that she had begun to be very affectionate towards Aglaya; seeing this, Ivan Fyodorovich assumed a very business-like air for some time.

This pleasant atmosphere did not, however, last for long. After only two weeks had passed, something suddenly changed again; the general’s wife frowned, and the general, shrugging his shoulders a few times, again submitted to ‘the ice of silence’. The fact was that only two weeks earlier he had received a report which, though short and therefore not quite unambiguous, was none the less reliable, to the effect that Nastasya Filippovna, who had first disappeared in Moscow, and then been tracked down there by Rogozhin, then disappeared somewhere again, and again tracked down by him, had at last given him her almost certain promise to marry him. And now, only two weeks later, his excellency had suddenly received intelligence that Nastasya Filippovna had run away a third time, almost from the altar, and had this time disappeared somewhere in the surrounding province, while in the meantime Prince Myshkin had also vanished from Moscow, leaving all his business
matters in the hands of Salazkin. ‘We don’t know whether he accompanied her or just went rushing off after her, but something is going on here,’ the general concluded. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, for her part, had also received some unpleasant news. In the end, two months after the prince’s departure almost all the rumours about him had finally died away in St Petersburg, and once again the ‘ice of silence’ in the house of the Yepanchins remained unbroken. On the other hand, Varvara Ardalionovna still came to visit the girls.

In order to put an end to all these rumours and reports, we should also add that by the time spring arrived there were a great many upheavals in the Yepanchin household, so that it was hard not to forget the prince, who sent no news of himself and perhaps did not want to send any. Gradually, in the course of the winter, they decided to go abroad for the summer, Lizaveta Prokofyevna and the daughters, that is; it was, of course, out of the question for the general to waste time on ‘empty amusement’. The decision was taken at the extreme and obstinate insistence of the girls, who had become quite convinced that their parents did not want to take them abroad because of their ceaseless concern with marrying them off and finding them husbands. It is possible that the parents, too, had at last been persuaded that prospective husbands might be met abroad, and that one summer trip might not only not be harmless but might even possibly ‘facilitate matters’. Here it is relevant to note that the plans for the marriage of Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky and the eldest Yepanchin daughter had completely foundered, and no formal proposal had materialized at all. This had happened almost of its own accord, without lengthy discussions and without any family strife. Since the prince’s departure, it had all suddenly petered out on both sides. This circumstance, too, was among the reasons for the painful atmosphere in the Yepanchin household, even though the general’s wife had said at the time she was now so glad she could ‘cross herself with both hands’. Although the general was in disgrace and felt that he was to blame, for a long time he sulked; he felt sorry for Afanasy Ivanovich: ‘such a fortune and such a smart fellow!’ Not long afterwards the general learned that Afanasy Ivanovich had been captivated by a visiting Frenchwoman of high society, a marquise and legitimist, that they were going to be married and that Afanasy Ivanovich would be taken off to Paris, and then to somewhere in Brittany. ‘Well, the Frenchwoman will be his downfall,’ the general decided.