The Idiot (41 page)

‘I’m very glad about that, Parfyon,’ said the prince, with sincere feeling, ‘very glad. Who knows, perhaps God will arrange things between you.’

‘That will never happen!’ Rogozhin exclaimed hotly.

‘Listen, Parfyon, if you love her so much, surely you want to deserve her respect? And if you want that, then surely you will hope? I said earlier that it was a wondrous puzzle to me: why was she marrying you? But although I can’t solve it, I’m in no doubt that there must be a sufficient, rational reason for it. She is convinced of your love; but she must also certainly be convinced of some of your merits. I mean, it can’t be otherwise! What you said just now confirms it. You say yourself that she found it possible to talk to you in a completely different language from the one she had used and spoken before. You are suspicious and jealous, and so you exaggerated all the bad things you noticed. Of course, she doesn’t think as badly of you as you say. Why, otherwise it would mean that she was consciously risking drowning or the knife by marrying you. Is that possible? Who would consciously risk drowning or the knife?’

With a bitter smile Parfyon listened to the prince’s heartfelt words.

‘How grimly you are looking at me now, Parfyon!’ broke from the prince with grim emotion.

‘Drowning or the knife!’ said the other, at last. ‘Heh! But that’s precisely why she’s marrying me, because she surely expects the knife from me! Prince, have you really not grasped before now what all this is about?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Well, perhaps he really doesn’t understand, heh-heh! They say of you that you’re ...
you know.
She loves someone else, get that into your head! Exactly as I love her now, exactly so, she loves someone else now. And do you know who that someone else is? It’s
you!
What, you didn’t know?’

‘Me?’

‘You. She’s loved you ever since that birthday soiree. Only she thinks she can’t marry you, because she would put you into disgrace and ruin your entire life. “Everyone knows what sort of woman I am,” she says. She always says that about herself. She told me all this straight to my face. She’s afraid to ruin and disgrace you, but that means where I’m concerned it’s all right, she can marry me - that’s what she thinks of me, note that, also!’

‘But why did she run away from you to me, and ... from me...’

‘And from you to me! Heh! All kinds of things enter her head! She’s is in a kind of fever now. Now she cries to me: “I’ll marry you, though I might as well be drowning myself. Hurry up with the wedding!” She’s in a hurry herself, fixes the day, but when the time starts to approach - she takes fright, or other ideas come - Lord knows, I mean, you saw her: she weeps, laughs, thrashes about in fever. And what is so wondrous about the fact that she ran away from you? She ran away from you then because she herself had grasped how intensely she loves you. It was beyond her strength when she was with you. You said earlier that I tracked her down in Moscow; that’s not true - she herself came running to me: “Fix the day,” she said, “I’m ready! Serve champagne! Let’s go to the gypsies!” she cried! ... And if it weren’t for me, she’d have thrown herself into the water long ago; I tell you truly. She doesn’t do it because I, perhaps, am more powerful than the water. She’s marrying me from spite ... If she marries me, I tell you truly, it will be
from spite.’

‘But how can you ... how can you! ...’ exclaimed the prince and did not finish. He looked at Rogozhin with horror.

‘Why don’t you finish,’ the other added, grinning, ‘or would you like me to tell you what you’re thinking to yourself at this very moment? “Well, how can she be with him now? How can she be allowed to do that?” I know what you’re thinking.’

‘I didn’t come here for that, Parfyon, I tell you, that’s not what was on my mind ...’

‘Perhaps that’s so, only now you certainly have come here for that, heh-heh! Well, enough! Why are you so disconcerted? Did you really not know about it? You amaze me!’

‘This is all jealousy, Parfyon, it’s all an illness, you’ve exaggerated it all beyond all bounds ...’ muttered the prince in extreme agitation. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Leave that alone,’ said Parfyon, quickly tearing from the prince’s hands the small knife he had picked up from the table, beside the book, and putting it back in its former place.

‘It was as if I knew when I was entering St Petersburg, it was as if I had a foreboding ...’ the prince continued, ‘I didn’t want to come here! I wanted to forget everything here, to tear it out of my heart! Well, goodbye ... But what is it?’

As he spoke, in his absent-mindedness the prince had picked up the knife again, and again Rogozhin removed it from his hands and threw it on the table. It was a rather ordinarily shaped knife, with a deer-horn handle, not foldable, with a blade three and a half vershoks long, and of corresponding width.

Observing that the prince was directing particular attention to the fact that this knife had been torn from his hands twice, Rogozhin seized it with ill-tempered vexation, put it inside the book and flung the book on to the other table.

‘Do you cut pages with it?’ asked the prince, but somehow absent-mindedly, still as if under the pressure of intense reflectiveness.

‘Pages, yes ...’

‘It’s a garden knife, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. Can’t one cut pages with a garden knife?’

‘But it’s ... brand new.’

‘Well, what of it if it’s new? Can’t I even buy a new knife now?’ Rogozhin exclaimed in a kind of frenzy, growing more irritated with every word.

The prince gave a start and looked at Rogozhin fixedly.

‘Oh, just listen to us!’ he began to laugh suddenly, now in complete control of himself. ‘Forgive me, brother, when my head aches as it does now, and this illness ... I become quite, quite absent-minded and absurd. I didn’t mean to ask about this at all ... can’t remember what it was. Go
odbye ...’

‘Not that way,’ said Rogozhin.

‘I’ve forgotten!’

‘This way, this way, come on, I’ll show you.’

They passed through the same rooms that the prince had already traversed; Rogozhin went slightly ahead, the prince following him. They entered the large hall. Here, on the walls, were several pictures, all portraits of bishops, and landscapes in which it was impossible to make anything out. Above the door into the next room hung a painting, rather strange in shape, about two and half arshins
¹
in length and certainly no more than six vershoks in height. It depicted the Saviour, who had just been taken down from the cross. The prince gave it a fleeting glance, as though remembering something but, without stopping, made to pass through the doorway. He felt very unhappy, and wanted to get out of this house as soon as possible. But Rogozhin suddenly stopped in front of the picture.

‘All these paintings here,’ he said, ‘were bought by my late papa at auctions for a couple of roubles, he liked them. A man who knew something about it examined them all here; rubbish, he said, but this one - the painting above the door, which was also bought for two roubles, is not rubbish, he said. One man offered my father three hundred and fifty roubles for it, and Savelyev, Ivan Dmitrych, a merchant, and a great art-lover, went up to four hundred, and last week he offered my brother Semyon Semyonych five hundred. I’ve kept it for myself.’

‘Yes, it’s ... it’s a copy of a work by Hans Holbein,’ said the prince, who had now had time to study the painting, ‘and although I’m not much of an expert, it looks like a good copy. I saw this painting when I was abroad, and can’t forget it. But ... what’s wrong?’

Rogozhin suddenly turned his back on the painting and continued his earlier progress. Of course, his abrupt behaviour might have been explained by the absent-mindedness and the peculiar, strangely irritable mood that had so suddenly manifested itself in him; but the prince none the less found it somewhat odd that he so suddenly broke off a conversation he, the prince, had not begun, and that Rogozhin did not even reply to him.

‘I say, Lev Nikolayevich, I’ve long wanted to ask you, do you believe in God or not?’ Rogozhin said again, suddenly, having gone a few paces.

‘That’s a strange thing to ask, and ... a strange way to look!’ the prince observed involuntarily.

‘Well, I like looking at that painting,’ muttered Rogozhin, after a silence, as though he had forgotten his question again.

‘That painting!’ the prince exclaimed suddenly, under the impact of a sudden thought. ‘That painting! Some people might lose their faith by looking at that painting!’

‘Yes, I’m losing that, too,’ Rogozhin suddenly confirmed unexpectedly. By now they had reached the front door.

‘What?’ the prince suddenly came to a halt. ‘What’s the matter? I was almost joking, but you’re so serious! And why did you ask me if I believe in God?’

‘Oh, for no reason, I just did. I’d wanted to ask you earlier. After all, many people don’t believe nowadays. Well, is it true (you’ve lived abroad, I mean) - one drunken fellow said to me once that we in Russia have more people who don’t believe in God than in other countries? “It’s easier for us,” he said, “than it is for them, because we’ve gone fu
rther than they have ...”’

Rogozhin sneered sarcastically; having stated his question, he suddenly opened the door and, holding the handle, waited for the prince to go out. The prince was surprised, but did so. Rogozhin came out after him on to the staircase landing and closed the door behind him. They stood facing each other, looking as though they had forgotten where they were and what they were meant to do now.

‘Goodbye, then,’ said the prince, giving his hand.

‘Goodbye,’ said Rogozhin, shaking the hand extended to him with a grasp that was firm but entirely mechanical.

The prince took one step down, and then turned round.

‘Well, concerning faith,’ he began, smiling (clearly not wanting to leave Rogozhin like this) and also growing more animated under the impact of a certain memory, ‘concerning faith, last week I had four different encounters in two days. In the morning I was travelling on one
of the new railways and spent about four hours talking to a certain S —
²
in the carriage I was in, formed an acquaintance with him there. I’d heard a great deal about him earlier, among other things, that he was an atheist. He really is a very learned man, and I was glad that I was going to talk to a real man of learning. On top of that, he’s an unusually well-bred fellow, so he spoke to me entirely as though I were his equal in knowledge and ideas. He doesn’t believe in God. Only one thing struck me: that he didn’t seem to be talking about that at all, and I was struck precisely because earlier, too, when I’d encountered unbelievers and no matter how many of those books I read, it always seemed to me that in their talk and in their books they avoided discussing that at all, though they made it seem as though they were. I told him this opinion of mine at the time, but must not have expressed myself clearly or must have failed to express myself at all, for he didn’t understand any of it ... In the evening I stopped to spend the night at a local hotel in which a murder had been committed just the previous night, and everyone was talking about it when I arrived. Two peasants, getting on in years, who weren’t drunk, and had known each other for a long time, friends, had had tea and wanted to sleep in the same little room. But during the course of the past two days, one of them had spotted that the other was wearing a watch, a silver one, on a yellow bead chain, which he hadn’t seen him with before, apparently. This man was not a thief, was even honest and, by peasant standards, not at all poor. But he liked this watch s
o much and was so tempted by it that at last he could endure no more: he took a knife and, when his friend had turned away, went up to him cautiously from behind, took aim, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself and, saying a bitter prayer to himself: “Lord, forgive me in Christ’s name!”, cut his friend’s throat in one stroke, like a sheep’s, and took the watch away from him.’

Rogozhin split his sides with laughter. He roared with mirth as though he were having some kind of fit. It was positively strange to see him laughing like this after the gloomy mood he had been in so recently.

‘Now, I like that! No, that’s better than anything!’ he shouted convulsively, almost out of breath. ‘One doesn’t believe in God at all, and the other believes so much that he’ll cut people’s throats while saying a prayer ... No, brother Prince, you didn’t invent that! Ha-ha-ha! No, that’s better than anything! ...’

‘In the morning I went out to stroll about the town,’ continued the prince, as soon as Rogozhin had stopped laughing, though the laughter still quivered, convulsive and fit-like on his lips. ‘I saw a drunken soldier staggering along the wooden pavement, in a completely bedraggled condition. He came up to me: “Buy a silver cross,
barin,
I’ll let you have it for only two copecks; it’s silver!” In his hand I saw the cross, he must have just taken it off, it was on a blue, very threadbare ribbon, but it was only a tin cross, one could see that at once, large, eight-pointed, the complete Byzantine design. I fished out a two-copeck piece and gave it to him, and put the cross on right away - and by his face I could see that he was pleased, he had swindled a stupid
barin,
and at once set off to spend the money on drink, there was no doubt about that. At that time, brother, I was under the very strong impact of all the impressions that had surged upon me in Russia; before, I had understood nothing of Russia, as if I’d grown without the power of speech, and during those five years abroad I’d remembered it as a kind of fantasy. So there I was, and I thought: no, I won’t be too quick to condemn that Christ-seller. After all, God knows what’s contained in those weak and drunken hearts. An hour later, as I was returning to the hotel, I bumped into a peasant woman with a newborn baby. The woman was still young, her baby would be about six weeks old. The baby smiled at her, by the look of it, for the first time since its birth. I looked, and all of a sudden, very devoutly she crossed herself. “Why are you doing that, young lady?” I asked. (For I was always asking questions in those days.) “Well,” she said, “just as a mother rejoices when she notices the first smile from her baby, so God rejoices every time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner kneeling before him and praying with all his heart.” That was what the woman told me, almost in those very same words - such a profound, such a subtle and truly religious thought, a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was instantly expressed: the whole concept of God as our father and of God’s rejoicing in man, like the rejoicing of a father in his child - the principal idea of Christ! A simple peasant woman! To be sure, a mother ... and who knows, perhaps that woman was that soldier’
s wife. Listen, Parfyon, you asked me a question just now. Here is my answer: the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or misdemeanours, or crimes, or atheism; it’s something different, and it will always be different; it’s not that, it’s something the atheists will always avoid talking about, as they’ll always be talking about
something else.
The main thing, however, is that you can observe this most clearly and quickly in the Russian heart, and that’s my conclusion! That’s one of the most important convictions I’ve acquired in this Russia of ours. There are things to be done, Parfyon! There are things to be done in our Russian world, believe me! Remember how we used to meet in Moscow and talk together ... And I didn’t want to come back here now! Well, what does it matter ... Goodbye,
au revoir!
May God be with you!’