The Idiot (48 page)

‘So he knows what it’s about!’ thought the prince.

‘Pavlishchev’s son - who is he? And ... how can Pavlishchev have a son?’ Ivan Fyodorovich, the general, asked in bewilderment, surveying every face, and realizing with astonishment that he was the only person who knew nothing of this affair.

Indeed, the commotion and expectancy were universal. The prince was profoundly astonished that his completely private concern should have aroused such intense interest.

‘It would be very good if you yourself were to put an end to this matter right now,’ said Aglaya, approaching the prince with particular seriousness, ‘and allow us all to be your witnesses. They want to sully your good name, Prince, you must vindicate yourself triumphantly, and I am terribly glad for you in advance.’

‘I also want this loathsome claim brought to an end once and for all,’ exclaimed the general’s wife. ‘Give it to them good and proper, Prince, don’t have any mercy on them! This affair has been constantly dinned into my ears, and I’ve worried myself sick because of you. In any case, I’ll be interested to take a look at them. Call them in, and we’ll sit down. Aglaya has the right idea. Have you heard anything about this, Prince?’ she addressed Prince Shch.

‘Of course I have, and in your house, too. But I particularly want to take a look at these young men,’ replied Prince Shch.

‘They’re nihilists, aren’t they?’

‘No, ma’am, they’re not really nihilists,’ Lebedev stepped forward, almost quivering with excitement, ‘they’re different, ma‘am, peculiar, my nephew says they’ve gone further than the nihilists, ma’am. It’s no good thinking you’ll confound them by being a witness, your excellency; they don’t get confounded, ma‘am. In spite of it all, nihilists are somet
imes well-versed people, even learned, but these have gone further, ma’am, because above all they’re men of practical action, ma‘am. It’s really a kind of extension of nihilism, though not by a straight route, but by hearsay and obliquely, and they don’t declare themselves in some little newspaper article, but directly in action, ma’am; it’s not a question, for example, of the senselessness of some Pushkin or another, and doesn’t concern, for example, the need to break Russia up into pieces;
²
no, ma‘am, now it’s considered a positive right that if someone wants something very much, he should let no barriers stop him, even if it means killing eight people, ma’am. But Prince, all the same I wouldn’t advise you ...’

But the prince was already going off to open the door to the visitors.

‘That’s slander, Lebedev,’ he said, smiling. ‘Your nephew must really have upset you a great deal. Don’t believe him, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I assure you that the Gorskys and Danilovs are merely exceptions, and these people are simply ... wrong ... But I would prefer it not to be in here, in front of everyone. You will forgive me, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, but when they come in I’ll show them to you and then take them away. Come in, gentlemen!’

He was more troubled by another thought that tormented him. He had a feeling that this affair had been arranged in advance, for now, for precisely this hour and time, for precisely these witnesses and, perhaps, in order to bring about his expected disgrace, and not his triumph. But he was very sad about his ‘monstrous and wicked suspiciousness’. He would have died, he thought, if anyone had learned that he had such a thought in his mind, and at the moment his new visitors entered, he was sincerely ready to consider himself, of all those who were around him, the lowest of the low in a moral regard.

Five people entered: four new visitors followed by General Ivolgin, who was flushed, excited and in a most intense fit of eloquence. ‘He’s certainly on my side!’ the prince thought with a smile. Kolya slipped through together with them all; he was talking heatedly to Ippolit, who was one of the visitors; Ippolit was listening with an ironic smile.

The prince bade his visitors be seated. They all looked so young, so far from grown up that one might well have marvelled at the occasion and the ceremonious way in which they were received. Ivan Fyodorovich Yepanchin, for example, who knew and understood nothing of this ‘new affair’, even grew indignant at the sight of such young people and would probably have made some kind of protest if he had not been stopped by his wife’s zeal, which he found strange, with regard to the particular interests of the prince. However, he stayed partly out of curiosity, and partly out of the kindness of his heart, even hoping that he might be able to offer some help or at any rate be useful with his authority; but the bow he received from General Ivolgin as the latter entered made him indignant once again; he frowned, and decided to stay stubbornly silent.

Of the four young visitors one, however, was about thirty, the ‘retired lieutenant from Rogozhin’s company, the boxer, who gave beggars fifteen roubles at a time’. One could guess that he was accompanying the others to give them courage, in the capacity of a true friend and, should the need arise, to offer support. Among the rest, the first place and leading role was taken by the visitor who was known as ‘Pavlishchev’s son’, though he introduced himself as Antip Burdovsky. He was a fair-haired young man, poorly and untidily dressed, in a frock coat with sleeves that were stained to a mirror-like gloss, a greasy waistcoat buttoned to the top, with no sign of any linen, a black silk scarf, impossibly greasy and twisted to a plait, his hands unwashed, his face covered in pimples, and, if one may express it thus, with a gaze that was both innocent and insolent. He was not short of stature, thin, about twenty-two. Not the slightest irony, not the slightest reflection was expressed in his face; on the contrary, it expressed a complete and unquestioning intoxication with his own rights, and at the same time something approaching a strange and unceasing need to be, and to feel, constantly insulted. He spoke with agitation, hurrying and stammering, seeming not quite to finish his words, as though he were inarticulate or even a foreigner, though as a matter of fact he was completely Russian in his origins.

He was accompanied, in the first place, by Lebedev’s nephew, already known to the reader, and in the second, by Ippolit. Ippolit was a very young man, about seventeen, or perhaps eighteen, with an intelligent but constantly irritated expression on his face, where disease had placed its terrible marks. He was as thin as a skeleton, pale yellow, his eyes glittered, and two red spots burned on his cheeks. He coughed without cease; his every word, every breath, almost, was accompanied by a wheezing. He was clearly in a very advanced stage of consumption. It looked as though he had no more than two or three weeks left to live. He was very tired, and was the first to sink on to a chair. The others stood on ceremony somewhat as they entered, and were almost embarrassed, but looked solemn and were evidently afraid of losing their dignity in some way, which was strangely out of harmony with their reputation of being the spurners of all useless worldly trivia, prejudices and almost everything else in the world except their own interests.

‘Antip Burdovsky,’ ‘Pavlishchev’s son’ announced, hurrying and stammering.

‘Vladimir Doktorenko,’ Lebedev’s nephew introduced himself, clearly, distinctly, and as if he were boasting that he was Doktorenko,

‘Keller,’ muttered the retired lieutenant.

‘Ippolit Terentyev,’ the last one squeaked in an unexpectedly shrill voice.

They all, at last, sat down on chairs facing the prince, and all, having introduced themselves at once, frowned, and, to keep their spirits up, moved their peaked caps from one hand to another, kept preparing to speak, but then remained silent, waiting for something with a
challenging look, in which one could unmistakably read: ‘No, brother, it’s no good, you won’t pull the wool over our eyes!’ One felt that as soon as one of them uttered a word they would all start talking at once, interrupting and running ahead of one another.

‘Gentlemen, I wasn’t expecting any of you,’ the prince began. ‘I’ve been ill until today, and at least a month ago I entrusted your case (he turned to Antip Burdovsky) to Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, as I informed you at the time. However, I don’t object to having a face-to-face discussion, though you will agree that at such an hour ... I suggest you come with me to another room, if it won’t take long ... My friends are here now, and believe me ...’

‘Your friends ... as many as you like, but permit us,’Lebedev’s nephew suddenly interrupted in a very sententious tone, though still not raising his voice very much, ‘permit us to declare that you could have shown us a little more politeness, and not made us wait two hours in your lackeys’ hall ...’

‘And, of course! ... and I ... and it’s just what a prince would do! And it ... you must be a general! And I’m no lackey of yours! And I, I ...’ Antip Burdovsky suddenly began to mutter in extraordinary agitation, his lips trembling, a tremor of outrage in his voice, spittle flying from his mouth, as if he had burst, or erupted, but was in such a hurry that after a dozen words it was no longer possible to understand him.

‘It was just what a prince would do!’ Ippolit cried in a shrill, cracked voice.

‘If it had happened to me,’ growled the boxer, ‘that’s to say, if I’d been directly concerned with this, as a man of honour, if I’d been in Burdovsky’s shoes ... I’d have ...’

‘Gentlemen, I only learned a moment ago that you were here, and that’s the honest truth,’ the prince repeated again.

‘We’re not afraid of your friends, no matter who they may be, because we are within our rights,’ Lebedev’s nephew declared again.

‘But what right did you have, permit me to ask you,’ Ippolit squeaked again, growing extremely heated now, ‘what right did you have to submit Burdovsky’s case to the judgement of your friends? We may not wish the judgement of your friends; it’s all too easy to understand what the judgement of your friends might signify! ...’

‘But Mr Burdovsky, if you don’t want to talk here,’ the prince managed to interject, at last, extremely taken aback by such a beginning, ‘then, as I say, let us go to another room right away. I repeat that I only heard about you a moment ago...’

‘But you have no right, you have no right, you have no right ... your friends ... Look! ...’ Burdovsky began to babble again, staring about him with wild apprehension, and growing more excited the greater his suspicion and shyness became. ‘You have no right!’ Having said this he stopped abruptly, as though he had been cut short and, silently focusing his short-sighted, goggling eyes with their thick red veins, stared questi
oningly at the prince, leaning his whole torso forward. This time the prince was so astonished that he also fell silent and stared back at him, his eyes also a-goggle, and not saying a word.

‘Lev Nikolayevich!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna called suddenly. ‘Read this at once, this very minute, it directly concerns your business.’

She hurriedly held out to him a weekly humorous paper
¹
and pointed her finger at an article. While the visitors were entering, Lebedev had obliquely approached Lizaveta Prokofyevna, whose favour he was trying to curry, and, without saying a word, had taken this paper from his pocket and placed it straight before her eyes, indicating a marked column. What Lizaveta Prokofyevna had so far managed to read had shocked and disturbed her terribly.

‘Wouldn’t it be better not to read it aloud?’ mouthed the prince, greatly embarrassed. ‘I’d rather read it alone ... later ...’

‘Then you’d better read it, read it right now, out loud! Out loud!’ Lizaveta turned to Kolya, snatching the paper from the hands of the prince, who had barely managed to touch it. ‘Out loud to everyone, so that everyone can hear.’

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was a hot-blooded woman, easily carried away, who suddenly and on the spur of the moment, without deliberating long about it, would sometimes raise all her anchors and launch herself upon the open sea, no matter what the weather. Ivan Fyodorovich stirred uneasily. But while in that first moment they all involuntarily stopped and waited in bewilderment, Kolya unfolded the newspaper and began to read aloud from the place indicated by Lebedev, who had leaped to his side:

‘Strange things are taking place in our so-called Holy Russia, in our age of reforms and company initiatives, an age of national awareness and hundreds of millions exported abroad each year, an age of the encouragement of industry and the paralysis of working hands, etcetera, etcetera, the list is too long to be enumerated, gentlemen, and therefore let us come straight to the point. A strange anecdote occurred with one of the scions of our obsolete landowning gentry
(de profundis!),
one of those scions, however, whose grandfathers lost everything they had at roulette, whose fathers were forced to serve as cadets and lieutenants and usually died while facing trial for some innocent mistake in a calculation of public finances, and whose children, like the hero of our tale, either grow up as idiots, or even become involved in criminal activities, of which, however, in the interests of edification and correction, they are acquitted by our juries; or, at last, they end by embarking upon one of those incidents that amaze the public and disgrace our already sufficiently dishonourable age. Our scion, some six months ago, shod in foreign fashion, in gaiters, and shivering in his wretched little overcoat without any lining, returned in winter to Russia from Switzerland, where he had been treate
d for idiocy (sic!). It must be admitted that fortune was on his side, as quite apart from the interesting illness for which he had been treated in Switzerland (well, can one be treated for idiocy, imagine that?!), he could prove the verity of the Russian saying: ‘some people have all the luck‘! Judge for yourselves: left a babe in arms after the death of his father, a lieutenant, it is said, who died while facing trial for the sudden disappearance, at cards, of the entire funds of his company, and perhaps also for giving an excessive number of strokes of the birch to a subordinate (remember the good old days, gentlemen?), our baron was taken, out of charity, to be brought up by one of the very rich Russian landowners. This Russian landowner - let us call him P. - in the former golden age the owner of four thousand bonded serfs (bonded serfs! Do you understand such an expression, gentlemen? I do not. I will have to resort to the dictionary: “fresh is the
legend, but hard to believe”),
²
was evidently one of those Russian lazy-bones and parasites who spent their idle lives abroad, in summer at the spas, and in winter at the Chateau des Fleurs in Paris where, in their day, they left immense sums. It could be positively stated that at least one-third of the quit-rent paid under the former system of serfdom was received by the owner of the Chateau des Fleurs in Paris (lucky man!). However that may be, the carefree P. brought up the
barin’s
orphaned son like a prince, hired tutors and governesses (doubtless pretty ones) for him, whom, incidentally, he brought from Paris himself. But the
barin’s
scion, the last in his line, was an idiot. The Chateau des Fleurs governesses were of no assistance, and until the age of twenty our protégé had not even learned to speak any language at all, including Russian. This latter circumstance was excusable, however. Finally, the fantastic notion entered P.’s feudal head that the idiot might be taught some sense in Switzerland - a fantastic notion that was, however, a logical one: a parasite and
proprietaire
would naturally imagine that even intelligence could be purchased on the market, especially in Switzerland. Five years of treatment in Switzerland with some professor went by, and thousands were spent: the idiot did not acquire intelligence, of course, but it is said that none the less he began to resemble a human being, though doubtless only just. Suddenly, P. died. There was, of course, no will; his affairs were, as usual, in disorder, there was a host of greedy heirs who could not care less about the last scions of the line being cured of the idiocy of the line, on charity, in Switzerland. The scion, though he was an idiot, none the less tried to swindle the professor, it is said, managed to have two years’ treatment with him, concealing from his doctor the death of his benefactor. But the professor was himself a formidable charlatan; alarmed, at last, by the penury and above all the appetite of his twenty-five-year-old parasite, he shod him in his wretched old gaiters, gave him his tattered overcoat and, out of charity, sent him, third-class,
nach Russland -
to get him off his back, and out of Switzerland. It might appear that fortune had turned its back on our hero. But not so, gentlemen: fortune, which kills whole provinces with famine, pours out all her gifts at once on a little aristocrat, like Krylov
’s Cloud,
³
which sailed over the dried-up fields and emptied its contents over the ocean. Almost at the very moment he appeared from Switzerland in St Petersburg, a relative of his mother’s (who was, of course, from a merchant’s family) died in Moscow, a childless old bachelor, a merchant, bearded, a Schismatic, leaving an inheritance of several millions, incontestable, in ready cash, and (if only it were you and I, reader!) all to our scion, all to our baron, who had been treated for idiocy in Switzerland! Well, now it was a different kettle of fish. Around our baron in gaiters, who had started to run after a certain well-known beauty and kept woman, there suddenly gathered a whole crowd of friends and companions; there were even relatives, and above all whole crowds of well-brought-up girls hungering and thirsting for lawful wedlock - all the qualities at once, you would not find such a husband even with a lantern, and you couldn’t have such a one made to order! ...’