The Idiot (53 page)

‘But this is no time for talk,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna grew more and more alarmed, ‘you’re all in a fever. Just now you were squeaking and squealing, and now you can hardly draw breath, you’re choking!’

‘I shall be better in a moment. Why do you want to deny me my last wish? ... But you know, I have long dreamed of somehow meeting you, Lizaveta Prokofyevna; I have heard a lot about you ... from Kolya; I mean, he’s almost the only person who does not leave my side ... You’re an original woman, an eccentric woman, I have seen that for myself now ... you know, I think I even fell in love with you a little.’

‘Merciful Lord, and I really was just about to hit him.’

‘Aglaya Ivanovna stopped you; I’m not wrong, am I? That’s your daughter, Aglaya Ivanovna? She is so pretty that I guessed who she was at first sight, though I had never seen her before. At least let me look at a beautiful woman for the last time in my life,’ Ippolit smiled with a kind of awkward, crooked smile. ‘The prince is here, and your husband, and the whole company. Why do you deny me my last wish?’

‘A chair!’ cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna, but seized one herself and sat down facing Ippolit. ‘Kolya,’ she ordered, ‘go with him right now, accompany him, and tomorrow I shall certainly come myself ...’

‘If you will permit it, then I should like to ask the prince for a cup of tea ... I am very tired. You know what, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, I think you were going to take the prince home with you to drink tea, but stay here, let’s spend the time together, and I’m sure the prince will give us all tea. Forgive me for ordering you around like this ... But I mean, I know you, you are kind, the prince, too ... we are all the most kind people, to the point of comic absurdity.’

The prince was startled, Lebedev rushed from the room as fast as his legs would carry him, Vera ran after him.

‘It’s true,’ the general’s wife decided, sharply. ‘Talk, only quietly, and don’t get carried away. You’ve moved me to pity ... Prince! You are not worthy to have me drink tea with you, but so let it be, I shall stay, though I ask forgiveness of no one! No one! Nonsense! ... However, if I scolded you, Prince, forgive me - if, that is, you want to. However, I’m not detaining anyone,’ she suddenly addressed her husband and daughters with a look of extraordinary anger, as though it were they who were dreadfully guilty of something in her regard. ‘I can get home on my own...’

But they did not let her finish. They all came up and gathered round her readily. The prince at once began to implore everyone to stay and have tea, and apologized for not having thought of this before now. Even the general was polite enough to mutter something reassuring, and politely asked Lizaveta Prokofyevna whether she was not too cold on the veranda. He even nearly asked Ippolit how long he had been at the university, but did not. Yevgeny Pavlych and Prince Shch. suddenly became extremely polite and cheerful, the faces of Adelaida and Alexandra even expressed pleasure through their continuing astonishment, in a word, everyone was visibly pleased that the crisis with Lizaveta Prokofyevna was over. Aglaya alone frowned and sat down in silence, at a distance. All the rest of the company stayed too; no one wanted to leave, not even General Ivolgin
, to whom Lebedev, however, whispered something in passing, probably something not very pleasant, because the general at once retired into a corner. The prince also went up to Burdovsky and company with an invitation, leaving no one out. They muttered with a stiff look that they would wait for Ippolit, and at once withdrew to the very furthest corner of the veranda, where they all again sat down side by side. Lebedev had probably had the tea made long ago for himself, for it appeared immediately. It struck eleven o’clock.

Ippolit moistened his lips with the cup of tea handed to him by Vera Lebedeva, placed the cup on the little table and suddenly, as though he had begun to lose his nerve, looked around him almost in embarrassment.

‘Look, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, these cups,’ he said quickly in a strange patter, ‘these porcelain cups, excellent porcelain, too, I think, Lebedev always keeps them in the chiffonier under glass, locked up; they’re never used ... that’s the family custom, they were part of his wife’s dowry ... it’s the family custom ... and now he’s used them for us, in your honour, of course, he was so pleased ...’

He was about to add something else, but could not find the right words.

‘Lost his nerve, I knew he would!’ Yevgeny Pavlovich suddenly whispered in the prince’s ear. ‘Dangerous, don’t you think? The surest sign that now, out of spite, he’ll throw some eccentric tantrum so extreme that Lizaveta Prokofyevna probably won’t be able to tolerate it.’

The prince gave him an inquiring look.

‘You’re not afraid of eccentricity?’ added Yevgeny Pavlovich. ‘Well, neither am I, I would even like it; all I want is for our dear Lizaveta Prokofyevna to be punished, and that it should be this evening, without fail; I don’t want to leave until it’s happened. You look as though you have a fever.’

‘Later, don’t agitate me. Yes, I’m not well,’ the prince replied absent-mindedly and even impatiently. He had heard his name; Ippolit was talking about him.

‘You don’t believe it?’ Ippolit laughed hysterically. ‘I suppose that’s bound to be so, but the prince will believe it at once, and won’t be surprised at all.’

‘You hear, Prince?’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned round to him. ‘You hear?’

There was laughter all round. Lebedev was busily showing off and hovering around Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘He says that this poseur, your landlord ... corrected that gentleman’s article, the article about you that was read just now.’

The prince gave Lebedev a look of surprise.

‘Why don’t you say anything?’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna even stamped her foot.

‘Well,’ muttered the prince, continuing to study Lebedev. ‘I can see now that he did correct it.’

‘Is it true?’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna quickly turned round to face Lebedev.

‘It’s the honest truth, your excellency!’ Lebedev replied firmly and unshakably, putting his hand to his heart.

‘It’s as if he were boasting about it!’ she nearly leaped up from her chair.

‘I’m vile, vile!’ Lebedev began to mutter, starting to beat his breast and inclining his head lower and lower.

‘Oh, what do I care that you’re vile! He thinks that if he says “vile” he’ll get out of it. And aren’t you ashamed, Prince, to associate with such wretched people, I ask you again? I shall never forgive you!’

‘The prince will forgive me!’ Lebedev said with conviction and tender emotion.

‘Solely out of generosity,’ came the sudden loud and resonant voice of Keller, who had jumped up and was addressing Lizaveta Prokofyevna directly, ‘solely out of generosity and so as not to betray a compromised friend, I said nothing just now about the corrections, in spite of the fact that he proposed to kick us downstairs, as you yourself heard. In order to establish the truth, I admit that I really did turn to him, for six roubles, but not in any way for the style, but in order to learn facts that were mostly unknown to me, and because he’s a competent person. About the gaiters, about the appetite at the Swiss professor’s, about the fifty roubles instead of two hundred and fifty, about that entire grouping, in short: it’s all his, for six roubles, but he didn’t correct the style.’

‘I’m bound to observe,’ Lebedev interrupted him with feverish impatience and in a kind of grovelling voice, to the accompaniment of increasingly rising laughter, ‘that I only corrected the first half of the article, but since when we got to the middle we didn’t agree and quarrelled over a certain idea, I didn’t correct the second half, ma’am, so anything that’s illiterate there (and there’s much that is!) cannot be ascribed to myself, ma‘am ...’

‘That’s all he cares about!’ exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘Permit me to inquire,’ Yevgeny Pavlovich turned to Keller, ‘when the article was corrected?’

‘Yesterday morning,’ Keller reported. ‘We had a meeting, with a promise on our word of honour to keep it a secret on both sides.’

‘That was when he grovelled in front of you and assured you of his devotion! Oh, wretched people! I don’t want your Pushkin, and I don’t want your daughter to come visiting me!’

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was about to get up, but suddenly addressed the laughing Ippolit in irritation:

‘Really, my dear fellow, was it your idea to hold me up to ridicule?’

‘God forbid,’ Ippolit smiled crookedly, ‘but what strikes me most of all is your extreme eccentricity, Lizaveta Prokofyevna; I confess that I brought up the subject of Lebedev deliberately, I knew it would make an impression on you, on you alone, because the prince really would forgive you and has probably already forgiven you ... has even, perhaps, found an excuse for him in his mind, that’s so, Prince, isn’t it?’

He was gasping for breath, and his terrible agitation was growing with each word.

‘Well? ...’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna said angrily, astonished at his tone. ‘Well?’

‘I have already heard much about you, in this same vein ... with much gladness ... and have learned to respect you exceedingly,’ Ippolit continued.

He said one thing, but it was as though with these words he wanted to say quite another. He spoke with a tinge of mockery and was at the same time disproportionately agitated, looking around him suspiciously, visibly confused and lost at every word, and all this, together with his consumptive look and strange, glittering and almost frenzied gaze, continued to attract involuntary attention to him.

‘It would have quite surprised me, however, as I don’t know the ways of society (I admit that), that you not only remained with our company just now, something not proper for you, but that you also left these ... girls to hear the whole scandalous business, though they have already read it all in novels. Perhaps, however, I don’t know ... because I am muddled, but at any rate who, but you, could remain ... at the request of a boy (yes, a boy, I again admit) to spend the evening with him and take part ... in everything and ... so that the next day you felt ashamed ... (though actually I agree that I’m not expressing myself well), I praise all that exceedingly, and I deeply respect it, though from the look on the face of his excellency, your husband, alone I can see how unpleasant he finds it all ... He-he!’ he began to giggle, quite confused, and all of a sudden began to cough so violently that it was some two minutes before he could continue.

‘He’s even choked himself!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna said coldly and sharply, studying him with stern curiosity. ‘Well, my dear boy, that’s enough from you. It’s time!’

‘Permit me also, for my part, to observe to you, dear sir,’ Ivan Fyodorovich said suddenly in irritation, having lost the last of his patience, ‘that my wife is here as a guest of Lev Nikolayevich, our common friend and neighbour, and that in any case it is not for you, young man, to make judgements about the actions of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, nor to make loud pronouncements to my face about what is written on it. No, sir. And if my wife has remained here,’ he continued, growing more and more irritated almost with every word, ‘it was more, good sir, from astonishment and the modern interest, which everyone will understand, in such strange young people. I too remained, just as occasionally I stop in the street when I see something that may be viewed as ... as ... as ...’

‘As a curiosity,’ prompted Yevgeny Ivanovich.

‘Excellently put, and correct,’ said his excellency in relief, having become somewhat bogged down in his comparison, ‘precisely: as a curiosity. But at any rate, what is most astonishing and even vexing to me, if it is grammatical so to express oneself, is that you, young man, were not even able to grasp that Lizaveta Prokofyevna has remained with you now because you are ill - if you really are dying, that’s to say - so to speak, out of compassion, because of your piteous words, good sir, and that
no mud can importune her name, qualities and importance in any way ... Lizaveta Prokofyevna!’ the flushed general concluded, ‘if you want to go, then let us say farewell to our kind prince and ...’

‘I thank you for the lesson, general,’ Ippolit interrupted seriously and unexpectedly, looking at him reflectively.

‘Let us go,
Maman,
how much longer is this to continue? ...’ Aglaya said impatiently and angrily, getting up from her chair.

‘Another two minutes, dear Ivan Fyodorovich, if you please,’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned round to face her husband with dignity. ‘I think he’s altogether in a fever, and is simply raving; I’m convinced of that by his eyes; we can’t leave him like that. Lev Nikolayevich! Could he spend the night here with you, so that he doesn’t have to drag himself to St Petersburg tonight?
Cher Prince,
are you bored?’ she suddenly addressed Prince Shch. for some reason. ‘Come here, Alexandra, straighten your hair, my dear.’

She straightened her hair, which did not need straightening, and gave her a kiss; that was the only reason she had summoned her.

‘I believed you were capable of development...’ Ippolit began again, emerging from his reflection. ‘Yes! That’s what I wanted to say,’ he said in relief, as though suddenly remembering: ‘Burdovsky genuinely wants to protect his mother, doesn’t he? But it turns out that he’s disgraced her. The prince wants to help Burdovsky, is offering him his tender friendship and capital and is perhaps alone among you all in feeling no revulsion towards him, and yet here they are facing each other like real enemies... Ha-ha-ha! You all hate Burdovsky because, in your opinion, he has an unpleasant and graceless attitude towards his mother, that’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it? I mean, you’re all dreadfully fond of the beauty and elegance of social manners, they’re all you live for, aren’t they? (I suspected that long ago!) Well, let me tell you then that probably not one of you has loved his mother as Burdovsky has! I know that you, Prince, sent money on the sly, via Ganya, to Burdovsky’s mother, and I bet (he-he-he! he laughed hysterically), I bet that Burdovsky will now accuse you of lack of tactful manners and of disrespect for his mother, by God, I bet you, ha-ha-ha!’