The Idiot (45 page)

‘Even better, even better, that’s why I bought this dacha.’

‘Aha. Who was it you wouldn’t let in to see me? An hour ago.’

‘That was ... that was the general, sir. To be sure, I didn’t let him in, for he’s not the right person for you. I respect the man profoundly, prince, he’s ... he’s a great man, sir; you don’t believe it? Well, you’ll see, but all the same ... you’d do best, most illustrious Prince, not to receive him, sir.’

‘And why is that so, may I ask you? And why are you standing on tiptoe now, Lebedev, and why do you always come up to me as though you wanted to whisper a secret in my ear?’

‘I’m vile, vile, I feel it,’ Lebedev replied unexpectedly, striking his chest with emotion. ‘But wouldn’t the general be too hospitable for you, sir?’

‘Too hospitable?’

‘Yes, sir. In the first place, he wants to come and live in my house; that would be all right, sir, but he’s too excitable, he wants to be one of the family right away. He and I have worked out the genealogy several times now, it turns out that we’re related. You also turn out to be a distant nephew of his on your mother’s side, he explained to me yesterday. If you’re a nephew, then you and I, most illustrious Prince, are related. That would be nothing, sir, a small weakness, but he at once declared that throughout the whole of his life, right from the time he was an ensign until the eleventh of June last year, he never had less than two hundred people sitting down at his table every day. It finally got to the point where they didn’t get up again, so that they dined, and had supper, and drank tea for some fifteen hours out of the twenty-four for some thirty years on end without the slightest pause, there was hardly time to change the tablecloth. One would get up and leave, and another would arrive, and on feasts and public holidays there were up to three hundred people present. And on Russian Millennium Day
¹
he said he counted seven hundred there. I mean, that’s terrible, sir; stories like that are a very bad sign, sir; one’s even afraid to receive men of such hospitality in one’s house, and I thought: won’t he be too hospitable for you and me?’

‘But you and he seem to be on very good terms?’

‘On brotherly terms, and I take it all as a joke; so we’re relations: what’s it to me - the honour is all the greater. Even in spite of two hundred people and the Russian Millennium, I discern in him a most remarkable man. I speak sincerely, sir. You began to speak of secrets just now, Prince, or rather, that I came up to you as though I wanted to tell you a secret, but as it happens there is a secret: a certain person told me just now that she wanted to have a very secret rendezvous with you.’

‘Why secret? Not at all. I’ll go and see her, today, even.’

‘Not at all, not at all!’ Lebedev began to wave his arms, ‘and she isn’t afraid of what you’re thinking, either. By the way: that monster comes here absolutely every day to ask about your health, did you know that?’

‘You seem to call him a monster rather often. That makes me a bit suspicious.’

‘You need have no suspicion, none at all,’ Lebedev deflected quickly, ‘I merely wished to explain to you that the certain person is afraid not of him, but of something else entirely, something else entirely.’

‘What then? Hurry up and tell me,’ the prince questioned with impatience, watching Lebedev’s mysterious grimaces.

‘That’s the secret.’

And Lebedev gave a crooked smile.

‘Whose secret?’

‘Your secret. You yourself, most illustrious Prince, forbade me to mention in your presence ...’ Lebedev muttered and, enjoying the fact that he had roused his listener’s curiosity to an almost pathological impatience, suddenly concluded: ‘He’s afraid of Aglaya Ivanovna.’

The prince frowned, and was silent for a moment.

‘Really, Lebedev, I shall leave your dacha,’ he said suddenly. ‘Where are Gavrila Ardalionovich and the Ptitsyns? With you? You’ve lured them to your place, too.’

‘They’re coming, sir, they’re coming. And even the general is coming, after them. I’m going open all the doors, and summon all my daughters, all of them, right now, right now,’ Lebedev whispered in fear, waving his arms and lunging from one door to the next.

At that moment Kolya appeared on the veranda, entering from the street, and announced that visitors were coming, Lizaveta Prokofyevna with her three daughters.

‘Should I let the Ptitsyns and Gavrila Ardalionovich in or shouldn’t I? Should I admit the general or shouldn’t I?’ Lebedev jumped up, shocked by the news.

‘But why not? Admit them all, anyone you like! I assure you, Lebedev, that you seem to have been under a misapprehension about my situation from the very start; you constantly make the same mistake. I have not the slightest reason to conceal myself or hide from anyone,’ the prince laughed.

Looking at him, Lebedev also considered it his duty to laugh. In spite of his extreme agitation, it was clear that he was also extremely pleased.

The news brought by Kolya was correct; he was only a few steps ahead of the Yepanchins, in order to announce them, and the visitors suddenly appeared from both sides-the Yepanchins from the veranda, and the Ptitsyns, Ganya and General Ivolgin from the house itself.

Only now, from Kolya, had the Yepanchins learned of the prince’s illness, and of the fact that he was in Pavlovsk; before then, the general’s wife had been in a state of painful bewilderment. Two days earlier, the general had shown his family the prince’s visiting card; this card had aroused in Lizaveta Prokofyevna the total certainty that the prince would immediately follow his card, and arrive in Pavlovsk to see them. In vain did the girls protest that a man who had not written for half a year was, perhaps, highly unlikely to be in such a hurry now, and that perhaps he had enough to keep him busy in St Petersburg without troubling about them - how could they know his business affairs? The general’s wife decidedly took offence at these comments and was ready to wager that the prince would appear the following day at the latest, although ‘that will be too late’. The next day she waited all morning; they waited until dinner, until evening, and by the time twilight had quite fallen, Lizaveta Prokofyevna grew angry about it all and quarrelled with everyone, without, of course, mentioning the prince among the reasons for the quarrel. Not a word was said about him on the who
le of the third day, either. When it inadvertently escaped from Aglaya at dinner that
maman
was angry because the prince had not arrived, to which the general at once remarked that ‘it wasn’t
his
fault’ - Lizaveta Prokofyevna got up and left the table in anger. Finally, Kolya appeared towards evening with all the news and a description of all the prince’s adventures of which he knew. As a result, Lizaveta Prokofyevna was triumphant, but Kolya got a good telling-off all the same. ‘He hangs about here for days on end and you can’t get rid of him, but he might at least have let us know, if he didn’t consider us worthy of paying us a visit.’ Kolya at once started to lose his temper at the phrase ‘can’t get rid of him’, but postponed it for another time, and if the phrase had not been simply too offensive would probably have quite forgiven it: so pleased was he by Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s agitation and alarm about the prince’s illness. For a long time she insisted on the necessity of immediately sending a courier to St Petersburg in order to rouse a medical celebrity of the first magnitude and rush him to Pavlovsk by the first train. But her daughters dissuaded her; they did not, however, want to be left behind by their mother when she instantly made plans to visit the sick man.

‘He’s on his deathbed,’ said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, as she fussed about, ‘and yet we have to stand on ceremony here! Is he a friend of our household or not?’

‘But, as the proverb says, one should look before one leaps,’ Aglaya observed.

‘Well, don’t come, then, and a good thing too, for otherwise Yevgeny Pavlych will arrive with no one to receive him.’

After these words, Aglaya, of course, at once set off after them all, which, as a matter of fact, she had planned to do in any case. Prince Shch., who was sitting with Adelaida, at her request, immediately agreed to accompany the ladies. Even before this, on first making the Yepanchins’ acquaintance, he had been extremely interested when he heard from them about the prince. It turned out that he knew the prince, that they had recently got to know each other somewhere and had spent a couple of weeks together in some small town. This had been about three months earlier. Prince Shch. even had many things to say about the prince, and on the whole had a very sympathetic opinion of him, so that it was with genuine pleasure that he went to visit his old acquaintance. The general, Ivan Fyodorovich, was not at home on this occasion. Yevgeny Pavlovich had also not arrived yet.

Lebedev’s dacha lay not more than three hundred yards from the Yepanchins’. The first unpleasant impression Lizaveta Prokofyevna received at the prince’s was to find him surrounded by a whole company of visitors, not to mention the fact that in that company there were two or three people she perfectly detested; the second was one of surprise at the sight of the perfectly healthy-looking young man, fashionably dressed and laughing, who came to meet them, instead of the dying man on hi
s deathbed she had expected to find. She even came to a halt in astonishment, much to the extreme delight of Kolya, who could, of course, have explained to her very well, even before she had left her dacha, that absolutely no one was dying here, and there was no deathbed, but did not do so, having a sly premonition of the comical wrath of the general’s wife when, as he calculated, she would certainly lose her temper at finding the prince, her sincere friend, well. Kolya was even tactless enough to express his conjecture aloud, really in order to tease Lizaveta Prokofyevna, whom he constantly and sometimes very wickedly engaged in altercation, in spite of the friendship that bound them.

‘Wait, dear boy, don’t hurry, don’t spoil your triumph!’ replied Lizaveta Prokofyevna, sitting down in the armchair the prince had provided for her.

Lebedev, Ptitsyn and General Ivolgin rushed to fetch chairs for the girls. The general fetched a chair for Aglaya. Lebedev also provided a chair for Prince Shch., contriving even in the very flexure of his back to demonstrate an extraordinary degree of respect. Varya, as usual, greeted the young ladies with rapture, and in whispers.

‘It’s true that I almost thought I would find you in bed, Prince, so much did I exaggerate everything out of fear, and, I will not lie, I felt terribly annoyed just now at the sight of your happy face, but I swear to you, it was only for a moment, before I’d had time to reflect. I always act and talk more sensibly when I’ve had time to reflect; I think you do the same. But really, I would be less glad about the recovery of my own son, if I had one, than I am about yours; and if you don’t believe me when I tell you that, then the shame is yours, not mine. But that wicked boy takes the liberty of playing much worse tricks on me. I think he’s a protégé of yours; then I warn you that one fine morning, believe me, I shall deny myself the pleasure of enjoying the honour of his acquaintance any more.’

‘But what have I done wrong?’ cried Kolya. ‘No matter how hard I tried to assure you that the prince was almost well again, you wouldn’t have wanted to believe me, because it was far more interesting to imagine him on his deathbed.’

‘Will you be with us for long?’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna addressed the prince.

‘The whole summer and, perhaps, longer.’

‘You’re alone, aren’t you? Not married?’

‘No, I’m not married,’ the prince smiled at the naivety of the thrust.

‘No need to smile; it happens. I was referring to the dacha; why didn’t you move in with us? We have a whole vacant wing, but as you wish. Is it him you’re renting from? That man?’ she added in an undertone, nodding at Lebedev. ‘Why does he keep making faces like that?’

At that moment Vera came out of the house on to the veranda, with the baby in her arms as usual. Lebedev, who was fidgeting about by the chairs, decidedly at a loss where to put himself, but dreadfully reluctan
t to leave, suddenly turned on Vera, waved his arms at her to chase her away from the veranda, and even forgot himself, and began to stamp his feet.

‘Is he a madman?’ the general’s wife added suddenly.

‘No, he’s ...’

‘Drunk, perhaps? Not very pleasant, the company you keep,’ she snapped, taking in the other visitors with her gaze. ‘Though actually, what a charming girl! Who is she?’

‘That’s Vera Lukyanovna, the daughter of this Lebedev.’

‘Ah! ... Very charming. I want to be introduced to her.’ But Lebedev, having heard Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s praise, had already dragged his daughter out to present her.

‘Orphans, orphans!’ he melted as he approached. ‘And that child in her arms is an orphan, her sister, my daughter Lyubov, born in the most lawful wedlock by the newly deceased Yelena, my wife, who died six weeks ago, in childbirth, by the Lord’s will ... yes, ma’am ... she’s acted as a mother, though she’s only a sister and no more than a sister ... no more, no more ...’

‘And you, sir, are nothing but a fool, excuse me for saying so. Well, that will do, you know it yourself, I think,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna snapped suddenly in extreme indignation.

‘Quite true!’ Lebedev bowed low, most respectfully.

‘Listen, Mr Lebedev, is it true what they say about you, that you interpret the Book of Revelation?’ asked Aglaya.

‘Quite true ... for fifteen years now.’

‘I have heard about you. They have written about you in the newspapers, I believe?’

‘No, that was another interpreter, another one, ma’am, but he died, and I’m left in his place,’ Lebedev said, beside himself with delight.

‘Please oblige me by doing some interpreting for me some time, as we are neighbours. I know nothing of Revelation at all.’

‘I cannot but warn you, Aglaya Ivanovna, that all this is pure charlatanry on his part, believe me,’ General Ivolgin suddenly and swiftly put in, having waited on tenterhooks, desperately anxious to start a conversation somehow; he sat down beside Aglaya Ivanovna, ‘Of course, a country dacha has its own principles,’ he continued, ‘and its own pleasures, and to receive such an extraordinary
intrus
in order to interpret Revelation is a pastime like any other, and is even a remarkably intelligent pastime at that, but I ... You seem to be looking at me in surprise? General Ivolgin, I have the honour of introducing myself. I carried you in my arms, Aglaya Ivanovna.’