The Idiot (52 page)

‘Stop, Gavrila Ardalionovich, stop!’ cried the prince in genuine alarm, but by now it was too late.

‘I’ve said it, I’ve said it three times,’ cried Burdovsky irritably, ‘that I don’t want money. I won’t accept it ... why ... I don’t want ... I’m going! ...’

And he almost ran from the veranda. But Lebedev’s nephew caught him by the arm and whispered something to him. Burdovsky quickly returned and, taking from his pocket a large, unsealed envelope, threw it on the table that stood next to the prince.

‘Here’s your money! ... How dare you ... how dare you! ... Money!’ ‘The two hundred roubles you dared to send him through Chebarov in the form of a handout,’ explained Doktorenko.

‘In the article it says fifty!’ cried Kolya.

‘I am to blame!’ said the prince, approaching Burdovsky. ‘I am very much to blame in your regard, Burdovsky, but I did not send it as a handout, believe me. I am to blame even now ... I was to blame just now. (The prince was very upset, looked tired and weak, and his words were incoherent.) I spoke of fraud ... but that wasn’t about you, I was wrong. I said that you ... are like me - you’re ill. But you’re not like me, you ... give lessons, you support your mother. I said that you had defamed your mother, but you love her; she says it herself ... I didn’t know ... Gavrila Ardalionovich didn’t manage to tell me earlier ... I am to blame. I dared to offer you ten thousand, but I am to blame, I shouldn’t have done it like that, but now ... it’s impossible, because you despise me ...’

‘Why, this is a madhouse!’ exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘Of course, it’s a lunatic asylum!’ Aglaya said, unable to restrain herself, but her words were lost in the general commotion; everyone was talking loudly now, discussing, some were arguing, some were laughing. Ivan Fyodorovich Yepanchin was in the last stages of indignation, waiting for Lizaveta Prokofyevna with a look of affronted dignity. Lebedev’s nephew interjected the last word:

‘Yes, Prince, one must give you your due, you certainly know how to make good use of your ... well, your illness (to put it politely); you’ve managed to offer your friendship and money in such a cunning way that it would now be impossible for a decent man to accept them under any circumstances. It’s either very innocent or very cunning ... but only you know which.’

‘I say, gentlemen,’ exclaimed Gavrila Ardalionovich, who had meanwhile opened the package of money. ‘There are only a hundred roubles here, not two hundred and fifty. I merely point it out, Prince, so there should be no misunderstanding.’

‘Never mind, never mind,’ the prince waved his hand at Gavrila Ardalionovich.

‘No, not “never mind”!’ Lebedev’s nephew pounced on this. ‘We find your “never mind” insulting, Prince. We do not conceal, we decl
are openly; yes, there are only a hundred roubles here, not two hundred and fifty, but it’s all the same, isn’t it...’

‘N-no, it’s not all the same,’ Gavrila Ardalionovich managed to insert with an air of naive bewilderment.

‘Don’t interrupt me; we are not such fools as you think, Mr Lawyer,’ Lebedev’s nephew exclaimed with vicious irritation. ‘Of course, a hundred roubles is not two hundred and fifty roubles, and it’s not all the same, but it’s the principle that’s important; here what matters is the principle, and the fact that a hundred and fifty roubles are missing is only a detail. What’s important is that Burdovsky does not accept your handout, your excellency, that he throws it in your face, and in that sense it’s all the same whether it’s a hundred or two hundred and fifty. Burdovsky has not accepted the ten thousand; you saw that; he wouldn’t have brought the hundred roubles if he were dishonest! That hundred and fifty roubles were spent on Chebarov’s expenses for his journey to see the prince. Laugh if you will at our clumsiness, at our inability to do business; you have tried with all your might to make us look ridiculous as it is; but do not dare to say that we are dishonest. My dear sir, we shall pay back that hundred and fifty roubles to the prince between us; we shall return it a rouble at a time, and return it with interest. Burdovsky is poor, Burdovsky has no millions, but Chebarov presented his bill after the journey. We had hoped to win ... Who would have acted differently in his place?’

‘Who indeed?’ exclaimed Prince Shch.

‘I shall go mad in here!’ cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘This puts me in mind,’ laughed Yevgeny Pavlovich, who had stood watching for a long time now, ‘of the recent famous defence of the lawyer who, pleading as an excuse the poverty of his client, who had murdered six people in one fell swoop,
¹
in order to rob them, suddenly concluded his speech in the following vein: “It’s natural,” he said, “that it occurred to my client, being so poor, to commit this murder of six people, and indeed is there anyone in his shoes to whom it would not have occurred?” Something in that vein, only very amusing.’

‘Enough!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna trumpeted suddenly, almost quivering with wrath. ‘It’s time to bring this rigmarole to an end! ...’

She was in the most dreadful agitation, she threw her head back menacingly and with a haughty, passionate and impatient challenge passed her flashing gaze over the whole company, at that moment not really distinguishing friends from enemies. This was that point of long suppressed but finally exploding anger when the central impulse becomes imminent battle, the imminent need to hurl oneself on someone as soon as possible. Those who knew Lizaveta Prokofyevna at once sensed that something extraordinary had happened to her. Ivan Fyodorovich told Prince Shch. the following day that ‘she has turns like that, but even with her it seldom reaches the degree it did last night, once in about three years, but no m
ore often than that! No more often than that!’ he added, with an air of instruction.

‘Enough, Ivan Fyodorovich! Leave me alone!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna exclaimed. ‘Why do you offer me your arm now? You didn’t have the wit to take me away earlier; you’re a husband, you’re the head of the household; you should have taken me out by the ear, silly woman that I am, if I didn’t obey you and leave. You might at least have shown some concern for your daughters! But now we shall find our way without you, there’s enough shame here to last a whole twelve months ... Wait, I also want to thank the prince! ... Thank you, Prince, for the entertainment ! And there was I sitting back to listen to the young men ... It is baseness, baseness! It is chaos, outrage, one could not even dream of such things! And are there really many like those young men? ... Be quiet, Aglaya! Be quiet, Alexandra! It has nothing to do with you! ... Stop hovering about me, Yevgeny Pavlych, I’m tired of you! ... So you’re asking their forgiveness, my dear,’ she caught up again, addressing herself to the prince, “‘I’m to blame,” you say, “for offering you money”... and what are you laughing at, you wretched braggart?’ she hurled herself suddenly on Lebedev’s nephew, “We refuse your money,” you say, “we demand, we don’t ask!” As though he didn’t know that this idiot will go trailing to them tomorrow to offer them his friendship and money! You’ll go to them, won’t you? Will you or won’t you?’

‘I will,’ the prince said in a quiet and submissive voice.

‘You hear? I mean, that’s what you’re counting on, isn’t it?’ she turned to Doktorenko again. ‘After all, the money’s already more or less in your pocket, and you’re boasting and bragging in order to throw dust in our eyes ... No, my dear fellow, find some other fools, for I can see right through you ... I see your game in its entirety!’

‘Lizaveta Prokofyevna!’ the prince exclaimed.

‘Let us leave here, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, it’s high time, and let us take the prince with us,’ said Prince Shch., as calmly as he could, and smiling.

The girls stood to one side, almost frightened, while the general was frightened in good earnest; everyone was in a state of astonishment. Some, who stood further away, were furtively grinning and exchanging whispers; Lebedev’s face displayed the last stages of ecstasy.

‘You will find outrage and chaos everywhere,
madame,’
Lebedev’s nephew said, though he was considerably perplexed.

‘But not like this! Not like this, sir, as with you now, not like this!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna interjected gleefully, almost in hysteria. ‘But will you leave me alone?’ she began to shout at those who were trying to persuade her. ‘No, if even you, Yevgeny Pavlych, could say just now that even the defence counsel at the trial declared that there’s nothing more natural than to murder six people because of one’s poverty, then the last days of mankind have come, and there’s an end of it. I’ve never heard anything like it. Now it’s all been explained to me! And this tongue-tied fellow, wouldn
’t he cut someone’s throat (she pointed to Burdovsky, who was looking at her in extreme bewilderment) ? Why, I bet he would! He may not take your money, the ten thousand, won’t take it out of conscience, but he’ll come at night and cut your throat, and take the money from your safe. He’ll take it out of conscience! He doesn’t think that’s dishonourable! It’s an “impulse of noble despair”, it’s a “negation”, or the devil knows what ... Fie! It’s all topsy-turvy, they’re in walking upside down land. A girl grows up in a house, suddenly in the middle of the street she jumps into a droshky: “Mama, I just got married to some Karlych or Ivanych or other, farewell!”
²
Do you think that’s a good way to behave? Worthy of respect, natural? The woman question? This urchin here’ (she pointed to Kolya), ‘he too was arguing the other day that this is what the “woman question” means. Even if the mother is a fool, you should still treat her like a human being! ... Why did you come in here with your noses in the air just now? “Don’t dare to come near us”: we’re coming in. “Give us all our rights, but don’t dare even to stammer in front of us. Give us every mark of respect, even marks that have never been heard of, but we’ll treat you worse than the lowest lackey!” They seek the truth, stand on their rights, but in their article they slandered him like infidels. “We demand, we don’t ask, and you won’t hear any gratitude from us, because you’re doing it in order to placate your own conscience!” What a morality: after all, if there’s not going to be any gratitude from you, the prince can tell you in reply that he doesn’t feel any gratitude towards Pavlishchev, because Pavlishchev also did good in order to placate his own conscience. And yet his gratitude to Pavlishchev was what you were relying on, wasn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t from you that he borrowed money, he wasn’t in debt to you, so what were you relying on if it wasn’t his gratitude? How can you refuse it yourself, then? You’re madmen! They call society savage and inhuman because it shames a girl who’s been seduced. But if you call society inhuman, you must admit that the girl suffers at the hands of that society. And if she suffers at its hands, then how can you drag her into the newspapers in front of that society and demand that she should not suffer? Madmen! Conceited! They don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Christ! Why, you’re so eaten up with vanity and pride that you’ll end by eating one another, I predict that to you. And isn’t that confusion, and chaos, and an outrage? And after that, as if it weren’t enough, this shameless man crawls to beg their forgiveness! Are there many like you? What are you grinning at? That I’ve brought shame on myself by talking to you? Well, if I have, I have, there’s nothing to be done about it! ... And you can stop grinning at me, scallywag!’ (she suddenly hurled at Ippolit). ‘He can scarcely draw breath, yet he corrupts others. You’ve corrupted that urchin of mine’ (she again pointed to Kolya); ‘all he can do is rave about you, you’re teaching him atheism, you don’t believe in God, but you can still be given a thrashing, dear sir, and fie upon you! ... So you’re going to see them tomorrow, Prince Lev Nikolayevich, are you?’ she asked the prince again, almost panting.

‘I am.’

‘Then I don’t want to know you any more!’ She was about to quickly turn and go, but suddenly came back again. ‘And you’re going to see this atheist, too?’ she pointed to Ippolit. ‘But why are you grinning at me?’ she exclaimed somehow unnaturally and suddenly rushed up to Ippolit, unable to endure his sarcastic grin.

‘Lizaveta Prokofyevna! Lizaveta Prokofyevna! Lizaveta Prokofyevna !’ was heard at once from every side.

‘Maman,
this is shameful!’ Aglaya shouted loudly.

‘Don’t worry, Aglaya Ivanovna,’ replied Ippolit, whom Lizaveta Prokofyevna, darting over to him, had seized and for some unknown reason was firmly holding by the arm; she stood in front of him, seeming to bore into him with her frenzied gaze, ‘don’t worry, your
maman
will see that it’s not done to attack a dying man ... I’m ready to explain why I was laughing ... I shall be very glad of your permission ...’

Here he suddenly began to cough and could not stop coughing for a whole minute.

‘I mean, he’s really dying, yet he keeps on making speeches!’ exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna, releasing his arm and watching almost with horror as he wiped the blood from his lips. ‘But what are you talking for? You simply must go to bed ...’

‘So it shall be,’ Ippolit replied quietly, hoarsely and almost in a whisper. ‘As soon as I get home today I shall go to bed ... in two weeks’ time, as I know, I shall die ... B-n himself
³
told me last week ... So if you will permit me, I would like to say a few words to you in farewell.’

‘But have you gone mad, or what? Nonsense! You must have treatment, now is no time for talking! Go, go, go to bed! ...’ Lizaveta Prokofyvna cried in alarm.

‘If I go to bed, then I won’t get up again until I’m dead,’ smiled Ippolit. ‘I wanted to lie down yesterday, and not get up until I’m dead, but decided to put it off until the day after tomorrow, while my legs still carry me ... so I could come here on them today ... only I’m very tired ...’

‘But sit down, sit down, why are you standing? Here’s a chair for you,’ Lizaveta Ivanovna jumped up and brought a chair for him herself.

‘Thank you,’ Ippolit continued quietly, ‘and you sit down opposite me, and we shall have a talk ... we must have a talk, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, I insist on that now ...’ he smiled to her again. ‘Just think, today is the last time I shall be out in the fresh air and among people, for in two weeks’ time I shall certainly be in the earth. That means that this will be a kind of farewell to people and nature. Though I’m not very sentimental, imagine, I’m very glad that this has all come to pass here in Pavlovsk: one can at least look at a tree in leaf.’