The Idiot (36 page)

So the Yepanchins prepared to go abroad for the summer. Then suddenly something happened that altered everything again, and again the trip was postponed, to the great delight of the general and his wife. There arrived in St Petersburg from Moscow a certain prince, Prince Shch., a man who was well known, and well known in a very, very good sense. He was one of those men, or even, one might say, men of action of our modern age, decent, modest, who sincerely and consciously desire the useful, are always working and are distinguished by the rare and happy quality of always finding work to do. Not parading himself, avoiding the bitterness and empty
talk of the political parties, not considering himself among the leaders, the prince was none the less very thoroughly acquainted with much that had taken place in recent times. He had earlier been in government service, then began to take part in the running of the
zemstva.
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In addition, he was a useful corresponding member of several Russian learned societies. Together with an engineer of his acquaintance he had made possible, by the information they collected and the surveys they had made, an improved route for one of the most important railways then being planned. He was about thirty-five years of age. He was a man of the ‘very highest society’ and, moreover, with a ‘good, serious, indisputable’ fortune, as the general, who in connection with a rather serious matter had had occasion to meet him and make his acquaintance at the house of the count, his superior, put it. The prince, out of a certain special curiosity, never avoided the acquaintance of Russian ‘men of business’. It happened that the prince also became acquainted with the general’s family. Adelaida Ivanovna, the middle of the three sisters, made a rather strong impression on him. Towards the spring, the prince proposed to her. He liked Adelaida very much, and also liked Lizaveta Prokofyevna. The general was very pleased. Naturally, the trip abroad was postponed. The wedding was set for the spring.

As a matter of fact, the trip might still have taken place either towards the middle or the end of the summer, though only in the form of an excursion lasting a month or two by Lizaveta Prokofyevna and the two daughters remaining to her, in order to dispel the sadness caused by Adelaida leaving them. But again something happened: in late spring (Adelaida’s wedding was slightly delayed and was postponed until the middle of the summer) Prince Shch. introduced to the house of the Yepanchins one of his distant relatives, who was, however, rather well known to him. This was a certain Yevgeny Pavlovich R., a man still young, about twenty-eight, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, a picture of handsomeness, ‘of noble birth’, a man who was witty, brilliant, ‘new’, ‘extremely well-educated’, and possessed of some truly unheard-of wealth. Concerning this last point, the general was invariably cautious. He made inquiries: ‘There does indeed turn out to be something of the kind - however, one must check further.’ This young aide-de-camp ‘with a future’ was much elevated by a recommendation from old Princess Belokonskaya from Moscow. Only one aspect of his glory was slightly ticklish: there had been several liaisons and, it was asserted, ‘conquests’ of unfortunate hearts. Having set eyes on Aglaya, he became uncommonly assiduous in his visits to the house of the Yepanchins. While it was true that nothing had yet been said, no hints had even yet been made, to the parents it none the less seemed that a trip abroad that summer was out of the question. Aglaya herself was possibly of a different opinion.

This happened just before the second appearance of our hero on the scene of our narrative. By this time, to judge by appearances, people in St Petersburg had managed to completely forget about poor Prince Myshk
in. If now he appeared among those who knew him, it was as if he had fallen from the sky. But meanwhile we shall report one more fact and with it conclude our introduction.

After the prince’s departure, Kolya Ivolgin at first continued to lead the life he had led previously, that is, he attended school, visited his friend Ippolit, looked after the general and helped Varya with the running of the household, going out on errands for her. But the lodgers quickly disappeared: Ferdyshchenko went off somewhere three days after the adventure at Nastasya Filippovna’s and rather soon vanished from sight, so that every rumour about him died away; he was said to be drinking somewhere, but this could not be verified. The prince went away to Moscow; that was the end of the lodgers. Later, after Varya had got married, Nina Alexandrovna and Ganya moved together with her to Ptitsyn’s quarters in Izmailovsky Regiment;
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as for General Ivolgin, almost at the same time an entirely unforeseen circumstance befell him: he was put in the debtors’ prison. He was dispatched there by his friend the captain’s widow because of documents he had issued to her at various times, to the value of some two thousand roubles. All this came as a complete surprise to him, and the poor general was ‘decidedly a victim of his own immoderate faith in the nobleness of the human heart, broadly speaking’. Having acquired the reassuring habit of signing IOUs and promissory notes, he had never even dreamed of the possibility that this might have any effect, even in the distant future, and went on thinking that it was
all right.
It turned out not to be. ‘How can one trust people after this, how can one show them a noble trust?’ he explained in sorrow, as he sat with his new friends in Tarasov House (the debtors’ prison), over a bottle of wine, telling them anecdotes about the siege of Kars and the soldier who came back from the dead. He began a new life, and for him it was, moreover, an excellent one. Ptitsyn and Varya said it was the best place for him; Ganya was in thorough agreement on this. Only poor Nina Alexandrovna wept bitterly to herself (which rather astonished the rest of the family) and, eternally ailing, dragged herself to see her husband as often as she could.

But ever since ‘the incident with the general’, as Kolya expressed it, and indeed ever since his sister’s marriage, Kolya had got almost completely out of hand, and it had even got to the point that he seldom appeared in the household and spent the night there. According to rumours, he had made a great many new friends; in addition, he had become all too familiar a face at the debtors’ prison. Nina Alexandrovna was unable to manage there without him; while at home he was no longer even troubled by the curiosity of the others. Varya, who had treated him so strictly before, now did not subject him to the slightest interrogation about his wanderings; while Ganya, to the family’s great astonishment, spoke to him and sometimes treated him in quite a friendly manner, in spite of all his hypochondria, something that had never happened earlier, as the twenty-seven-year-old Ganya had naturally never paid his fifteen-year-old brother the slightest frien
dly attention, dealing roughly with him, demanding that all the members of the household be strict with him, and constantly threatening to ‘take him by the ears’, which drove Kolya ‘beyond the final limits of human endurance’. One could almost suppose that now Kolya was sometimes even indispensable to Ganya. He had been greatly struck when Ganya returned the money that day; for that, he was prepared to forgive him many things.

Some three months had passed since the prince’s departure, and news reached the Ivolgins’ household that Kolya had suddenly got to know the Yepanchins and was very well received by the girls. Varya soon found out about this; however, Kolya had made their acquaintance not through Varya, but ‘on his own account’. Little by little, the Yepanchins grew fond of him. At first the general’s wife was very displeased with him, but soon she began to show him affection ‘for his openness, and because he doesn’t flatter anyone’. That Kolya did not flatter anyone was perfectly true; he was able to be on a completely equal and independent footing with them, though he sometimes read books and newspapers to the general’s wife - but then, he was always helpful and obliging. On a couple of occasions he had, however, fiercely quarrelled with Lizaveta Prokofyevna, told her that she was a despot and that he would not set foot in her house again. On the first occasion the argument had stemmed from the ‘woman question’, and on the second from the question of the best time of year for catching siskins. However improbable it might seem, on the third day after the quarrel she sent a lackey with a note asking him to visit her without fail; Kolya did not make difficulties, and at once presented himself. Only Aglaya was for some reason forever ill-disposed towards him, and treated him condescendingly. She it was, however, who was destined to receive something of a surprise from him. One day - it was in Holy Week - having snatched a moment when they were alone, Kolya handed Aglaya a letter, saying merely that he had been told to deliver it to her in person. Aglaya looked the ‘conceited urchin’ sternly up and down, but Kolya did not wait, and left the room. She unfolded the note and read:

As she read this short and rather incoherent note, Aglaya suddenly flushed all over and began to reflect. It would be hard for us to describe the current of her thoughts. Among other things, she asked herself:
‘Should I show this to anyone?’ She somehow felt ashamed. In the end, however, with a strange, mocking smile she threw the letter into her writing desk. The next day, she took it out and put it into a thick book with a strong binding (she always did this with her papers, in order to locate them more quickly when she needed them). And only a week later she happened to notice what book it was. It was
Don Quixote.
Aglaya burst into peels of laughter - for no reason that is known.

Nor is it known if she showed her acquisition to either of her sisters.

But when she read the letter again, the thought suddenly entered her mind: had that conceited urchin and wretched little braggart really been chosen by the prince as his correspondent - and, for all she knew, his only correspondent here? Though she did so with an air of great disdain, she none the less subjected Kolya to questioning. On this occasion, however, the ever touchy ‘urchin’ paid not the slightest attention to the disdain; in very brief and rather dry terms, he explained to Aglaya that although he had told the prince his permanent address just in case, before the prince’s departure from St Petersburg, and had at the same time offered him his services, this was the first commission and the first note he had been given by him, while as a proof of his words he presented the letter he had himself received. Aglaya had no scruples about reading it. The letter to Kolya said:

‘But it’s absurd to confide in a little brat like you,’ Aglaya said huffily, handing the note back to Kolya, and walking contemptuously past him.

This was more than Kolya could endure: for this occasion, without explaining the reason, he had especially asked Ganya to let him wear Ganya’s brand new green scarf. He was deeply offended.

It was early June, and the weather in St Petersburg had been unusually fine for a whole week. The Yepanchins owned a splendid dacha in Pavlovsk, and Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly got excited and burst into action; before two days of bustle hadpassed, they had moved.

On the second or third day after the Yepanchins’ move, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin arrived from Moscow by the morning train. No one met him at the station, but while disembarking from the carriage the prince suddenly fancied that he saw the strange, hot gaze of someone’s eyes,
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in the crowd, importuning the arrivals from the train. Taking a closer look, he could make out nothing more. Of course, he had only fancied it; but it left an unpleasant impression. Moreover, the prince was in any case sad and reflective, and seemed to be preoccupied about something.

A cab took him to a hotel not far from Liteinaya. The hotel was an inferior one. The prince took two small rooms, dark and poorly furnished, washed, dressed, asked for nothing, and hurriedly left, as though afraid of wasting time, or of not finding someone at home.

If any of those who had known him six months earlier in St Petersburg, on his first arrival, had glanced at him now they might have concluded that his appearance had altered considerably for the better. But this was not really true. In his dress alone was there a complete change: all his clothes were different, cut in Moscow by a good tailor; but even in his clothes there was something not quite right: they were cut too fashionably (as conscientious but not very talented tailors always cut them) and in addition they were worn by a man who had no interest in such things at all, so that on a close look at the prince, someone rather too fond of a chuckle might perhaps have found something to smile about. But many things are a source of amusement, are they not?

The prince took a cab and set off for Peski.
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In one of the Rozhdestvensky streets he soon located a small wooden house. To his astonishment, this house turned out to be attractive to the eye, well kept, in good order, with a front garden in which grew flowers. The windows facing the street were open, and from them came a strident, unbroken stream of talk, of shouting, almost, as though someone were reading aloud or even giving a speech; the voice was interrupted from time to time by the laughter of several resonant voices. The prince entered the courtyard, climbed the front steps, and asked for Mr Lebedev.

‘He’s in there,’ replied the cook who opened the door, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, poking her finger towards the ‘drawing room’.