The Idiot (46 page)

‘Delighted, I’m sure. I know Varvara Ardalionovna and Nina Alexandrovna,’ Aglaya muttered, trying her utmost not to burst into laughter.

Lizaveta Prokofyevna flared with anger. Something that had long been accumulating within her soul suddenly demanded release. S
he could not abide General Ivolgin, whose friend she had once been, though very long ago.

‘My dear, you’re lying as usual: you never carried her in your arms,’ she snapped at him in indignation.

‘You’ve forgotten,
Maman,
he did carry me, honestly he did, in Tver,’ Aglaya suddenly said, in support of the general’s claim.

‘We were living in Tver at the time. I was six years old then, I remember. He made me a bow and arrow, and taught me to shoot, and I killed a pigeon. Do you remember, we killed a pigeon, you and I?’

‘And he brought me a cardboard helmet and a wooden sword, I remember, too!’ exclaimed Adelaida.

‘I remember it, too,’ Alexandra confirmed. ‘You also quarrelled over the wounded pigeon at the time, and you were made to stand in corners of the room; Adelaida stood in her helmet, holding her sword.’

In telling Aglaya that he had carried her in his arms, the general had said this
for its own sake,
merely in order to start a conversation, and solely because he almost always began a conversation like this with all young people if he wanted to make their acquaintance. On this occasion, however, as luck would have it, he happened to have told the truth and, as luck would have it, he himself had forgotten that truth. So that, when Aglaya suddenly confirmed that they had shot a pigeon together, his memory was instantly restored, and he remembered it all right down to the last detail, as those in their declining years not infrequently remember something from the distant past. It was hard to tell what there might be in this memory that could have had such a powerful effect on the poor and, as usual, somewhat intoxicated general; but he was suddenly extraordinarily moved.

‘I remember, I remember it all!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was a staff-captain at the time. You were a tiny little thing, so pretty. Nina Alexandrovna ... Ganya ... I was ... often received in your house. Ivan Fyodorovich ...’

‘And now look what you’ve come to!’ the general’s wife retorted. ‘At any rate, it means you haven’t drunk away your decent feelings, if it’s had such an effect on you! But you’ve worn your wife out with worry. You should have been giving your children guidance, but you’re in the debtors’ prison. Leave this place, my dear, find somewhere to go, stand behind the door in a corner and shed a few tears, remember your earlier innocence, and perhaps God will forgive you. Off you go, now, go, I mean it seriously. There is nothing better for correcting the soul than remembering the past with contrition.’

But it was not necessary for her to repeat that she meant it seriously: the general, like all drunkards, was very sensitive and, like all drunkards who have fallen too far, found it hard to endure memories from a happier past. He got up and meekly set off towards the door, so that Lizaveta Prokofyevna at once felt sorry for him.

‘Ardalion Alexandrych, dear!’ she cried after him. ‘Stop for a moment; we’re all sinners; when you feel that your conscienc
e is reproaching you less, come and see me, we shall sit and chat about the past. I myself am possibly fifty times more of a sinner than you are; well, and now goodbye, off you go, there’s nothing more for you here ...’ she said, suddenly frightened that he would come back.

‘Don’t go after him just now,’ the prince stopped Kolya, who was running after his father. ‘Or else in a moment he’ll get annoyed, and the whole moment will be spoiled.’

‘That’s true, leave him alone; go in half an hour,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna decided.

‘That’s what it means to tell the truth at least once in one’s life - it’s moved him to tears!’ Lebedev ventured to interject.

‘Well, you’re a fine one to talk, my dear, if what I’ve heard is true,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna beleaguered him at once.

The interrelationship of all the visitors who had gathered around the prince gradually defined itself. The prince, of course, was able to appreciate and did appreciate the whole degree of sympathy extended to him by the general’s wife and her daughters and, of course, told them sincerely that, before their visit, he had planned to present himself to them that very day, in spite of both his illness and the late hour. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, casting a glance at his visitors, replied that he could do that even now. Ptitsyn, a polite and extremely easy-going man, very soon got up and retired to Lebedev’s wing of the house, and was very desirous of taking Lebedev with him. The latter promised to come soon; meanwhile Varya talked with the girls and stayed. She and Ganya were very glad of the general’s absence; Ganya himself also soon set off after Ptitsyn. For the few minutes he had spent on the veranda in the presence of the Yepanchins he had comported himself modestly, with dignity, and was not at all disconcerted by the determined stares of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who twice looked him over from head to foot. Really, anyone who had known him earlier would have thought him greatly changed. Aglaya found this much to her liking.

‘I say, was that Gavrila Ardalionovich leaving?’ she asked suddenly, as she was sometimes fond of doing, loudly and sharply, interrupting the conversation of others with her question and not addressing anyone in person.

‘Yes, it was,’ replied the prince.

‘I hardly recognized him. He has greatly changed and ... much for the better.’

‘I’m very glad for him,’ said the prince.

‘He was very ill,’ added Varya with joyful commiseration.

‘What do you mean, he’s changed for the better?’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked in angry bewilderment and almost in fright. ‘Where did you get that from? There’s nothing that’s better. What precisely seems better to you?’

‘There’s nothing better than the “poor knight”!’ proclaimed Kolya suddenly, who had been standing all the time beside Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s chair.

‘I also think so,’ said Prince Shch., and began to laugh.

‘I am quite of the same opinion,’ Adelaida solemnly proclaimed.

‘What “poor knight”?’ asked the general’s wife, surveying all the speakers with vexation, but, on seeing that Aglaya had flared up, added angrily: ‘Some nonsense, I daresay! What “poor knight” is this?’

‘It’s not the first time that urchin, your favourite, has distorted other people’s words!’ Aglaya replied with haughty indignation.

In each of Aglaya’s angry outbursts (and she was angry very often), all her evident seriousness and implacability notwithstanding, there invariably peeped through something so childish, impatiently schoolgirl-like and poorly concealed that it was sometimes impossible, looking at her, not to laugh, to the extreme annoyance of Aglaya, however, who could not understand what people were laughing at and ‘how can they, how dare they laugh?’ Now her sisters and Prince Shch. began to laugh, and even Prince Lev Nikolayevich smiled, also red in the face for some reason. Kolya laughed loudly and enjoyed his triumph. Aglaya lost her temper in earnest and grew twice as pretty. Her confusion greatly became her, and also her annoyance at herself for this confusion.

‘He’s distorted your words plenty of times,’ she added.

‘I base my assertion on something you yourself exclaimed!’ cried Kolya. ‘A month ago you were looking through
Don Quixote
and exclaimed those words, that there was nothing better than the “poor knight”. I don’t know who you were talking about then: Don Quixote or Yevgeny Pavlych, or someone else, but you were talking about someone, and it was a long conversation ...’

‘I think you allow yourself too many liberties with your guesses, young man,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped him with annoyance.

‘But am I the only one?’ Kolya would not be silenced. ‘Everyone said it at the time, and they’re saying it now; Prince Shch. just now, and Adelaida Ivanovna, and all of them declared they were in favour of the “poor knight”, so the “poor knight” must exist, and certainly so, and I think that if it weren’t for Adelaida Ivanovna, we would all have known long ago who the “poor knight” is.’

‘Why is it my fault?’ laughed Adelaida.

‘You wouldn’t paint his portrait - that’s why it’s your fault! Aglaya Ivanovna asked you to paint the portrait of a “poor knight” and even gave you the subject of the painting, which she’d thought of herself, do you remember? You wouldn’t do it...’

‘But how could I have painted it? Who would I have painted? According to the subject, this “poor knight”

Whose face would it have been, then? What would I have painted: the visor? An anonymous figure?’

‘I don’t understand any of this, what visor?’ the general’s wife said in irritation, though she had begun to have a very good idea of who was being referred to under the name (one probably agreed on long before) of “poor knight”. But it particularly irked her that Prince Lev Nikolayevich was also embarrassed and in the end completely covered in confusion, like a boy of ten years old. ‘Well, is it going to end soon, this nonsense? Is someone going to explain this “poor knight” business, or not? Is it such a dreadful secret that one can’t even begin to comprehend it?’

But they all just went on laughing.

‘It’s quite simple: there’s a strange Russian poem,’ Prince Shch. intervened at last, obviously wishing to kill this conversation and change the topic, ‘about a “poor knight”, it’s a fragment without a beginning or an end. About a month ago, we were all laughing after dinner and, as usual, trying to think of a subject for Adelaida Ivanovna’s next painting. You know, it’s long been a family tradition to find subjects for Adelaida’s paintings. Well, someone had the idea of the “poor knight”. Who thought of it first, I don’t remember ...’

‘Aglaya Ivanovna!’ exclaimed Kolya.

‘You may well be right, but I don’t remember,’ Prince Shch. went on. ‘Some people laughed at this subject, others avowed that there could be nothing more lofty, but that in order for the “poor knight” to be depicted, he had to have a face; we began to go over the faces of everyone we knew, but none of them was suitable, so the matter remained there; that’s all; I don’t know why Nikolai Ardalionovich thought of remembering all this and bringing it up now. What seemed amusing and appropriate at the time is now quite uninteresting.’

‘Because there’s some new nonsense at the back of it, something sarcastic and offensive, I expect,’ snapped Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘There’s no nonsense, just the most profound respect,’ quite unexpectedly, in a solemn and serious voice, pronounced Aglaya, who had managed to recover herself and suppress her earlier confusion. Not only that, but by certain signs one could suppose, looking at her, that she was happy now that the joke was going further and further, and this change took place in her precisely at the moment when the prince’s embarrassment, which had been all too noticeably and steadily increasing, reached a pitch of extremity.

‘One moment they’re laughing like scalded cats, and then suddenly they’re talking about the most profound respect! They’re mad! What’s all this about respect? Tell me right now why out of the blue you’re suddenly talking about respect?’

‘The most profound respect,’ Aglaya went on just as seriously and solemnly in response to the almost malicious question from her mother, ‘because that poem directly portrays a man who is capable of having an ideal, and in the second place, having set himself his ideal, of believing in it, and believing in it, blindly devoting the whole o
f his life to it. In our time, that doesn’t always happen. The poem doesn’t actually say what the “poor knight’s” ideal is, but it’s clear that it’s some ki
nd of radiant image, an “image of pure beauty”,
²
and the lovesick knight even wears a rosary round his neck instead of a scarf. It’s true that there’s some sort of obscure, enigmatic device, the letters A.N.B, which he inscribes on his shield ...’

‘A.N.D.’ Kolya corrected.

‘Well, I say A.N.B., and that’s what I meant to say,’ Aglaya interrupted with annoyance. ‘Whatever it was, it’s clear that by now it was all the same to this “poor knight” who his lady was and what she did. It was enough that he chose her and believed in her “pure beauty”, and then worshipped her for ever; that was its merit, that even if later she became a thief, he would still be bound to believe in her and break a lance for her pure beauty. It seems that the poet wanted to unite in one extreme image the whole enormous concept of medieval chivalrous platonic love in a pure and lofty knight; of course, all that is an ideal. In the “poor knight” this emotion has reached its ultimate degree, asceticism; it must be admitted that to be capable of such an emotion signifies a great deal and that such emotions leave behind them a deep mark and one that is from one point of view most praiseworthy, not to mention Don Quixote. The “poor knight” is Don Quixote, but a serious, not a comical one. At first I didn’t understand this, and laughed, but now I love the “poor knight”, and, more than that, admire his exploits.’

Thus did Aglaya conclude and, looking at her, it was actually hard to know whether she was serious or laughing.

‘Well, it’s some fool and his exploits!’ the general’s wife decided. ‘And you, mademoiselle, have been talking a lot of nonsense, a whole lecture; it’s not even suitable on your part, in my opinion. At any rate, it’s improper. What poem is it? Recite it, I’m sure you know it! I absolutely insist on knowing this poem. I’ve never been able to stand poetry, it’s as though I’d had a premonition. For God’s sake - Prince, have patience, it seems that you and I will have to endure this together,’ she addressed Prince Lev Nikolayevich. She was extremely annoyed.

Prince Lev Nikolayevich wanted to say something, but could get nothing out because of his continuing embarrassment. Only Aglaya, who had taken so many liberties in her ‘lecture’, was not at all embarrassed, and even seemed pleased. She at once got up, still serious and solemn as before, looking as though she had prepared herself for this beforehand, and had only been waiting to be asked, came out to the middle of the veranda and stood facing the prince, who continued to sit in his armchair. They all looked at her with some surprise, and almost all of them, Prince Shch., her sisters and mother, gazed with an unpleasant sensation on this new mischief in the making, which had at any rate gone rather too far. It was plain, however, that what Aglaya found enjoyable was precisely the affectation with which she had ceremonially begun the reciting of the poem. Lizaveta Prokofyevna very nearly chased her back to her seat, but at the very moment that Aglaya began to declaim the well-known ba
llad, two new visitors, talking loudly, entered the veranda from the street. They were General Ivan Fyodorovich Yepanchin and, following him, a young man. This caused a small commotion.