The Idiot (77 page)

‘Yes ... he did. What’s so improbable about that?’

‘A whole candle, or one in a holder?’

‘Well, yes ... no ... half a candle ... a candle-end ... a whole candle - it’s all the same, stop it! ... And he brought matches, if you want to know. Lit the candle and held his finger in the flame for a whole thirty minutes; is that impossible?’

‘I saw him yesterday; his fingers are unharmed.’

Aglaya suddenly burst into laughter, just like a child.

‘Do you know why I lied just now?’ she suddenly turned to the prince with the most childish trustfulness, and still with the laughter trembling on her lips. ‘Because when one lies, if one skilfully inserts something not quite ordinary, something eccentric, well, you know, something that’s really too unusual or even doesn’t happen at all, one’s lie becomes far more plausible. That’s something I’ve noticed. Only with me it didn’t work, because I didn’t know how ...’

Suddenly she frowned again, as though recovering herself.

‘If that day,’ she addressed the prince, looking at him seriously and even sadly, ‘if that day I recited that poem about the “poor knight” to you, it was because though I wanted to ... praise you for one thing, I also wanted to put you to shame for your behaviour and to show you that I knew everything ...’

‘You’re very unfair to me ... to that unhappy woman of whom you said such dreadful things just now, Aglaya.’

‘Because I know everything, everything, that’s why I said those things! I know that six months ago you offered her your hand in marriage in front of everyone. Don’t interrupt, you see, I speak without comment. After that she ran off with Rogozhin,

then you lived with her in some village or in the city, and she left you for someone else. (Aglaya blushed dreadfully.) Then she went back to Rogozhin again, who loves her like ... like a lunatic. Then you, who are also a very clever man, went galloping off after her, as soon as you learned that she’d returned to St Petersburg. Yesterday evening you rushed to defend her, and just now you were dreaming about her ... You can see that I know everything; I mean, you came here because of her, because of her, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did,’ the prince replied quietly, inclining his head sadly and reflectively, and not suspecting the flashing gaze with which Aglaya glanced at him, ‘I came here because of her, just in order to find out ... I don’t believe she’ll be happy with Rogozhin, although ... in a word, I don’t know what I could do for her, or how I could help her, but I came.’

He started, and looked at Aglaya; she was listening to him with hatred.

‘If you came without knowing why, that means you must love her very much,’ she said quietly, at last.

‘No,’ replied the prince, ‘no, I don’t. Oh, if you only knew with what horror I remember the time I spent with her!’

A shudder even passed through his body at these words.

‘Tell me everything,’ said Aglaya.

‘There’s nothing that your ears should not hear. Why I wanted to tell this precisely to you, and you alone - I don’t know; perhaps because I really did love you very much. This unhappy woman is deeply convinced that she is the most fallen, the most depraved creature in the whole world. Oh, don’t shame her, don’t cast your stone. She has tortured herself too much with the consciousness of her own undeserved shame! And what is she guilty of, oh my goodness? Oh, every moment she cries in a frenzy that she acknowledges no guilt, that she is a victim of other people, the victim of a libertine and a villain; but whatever she may say to you, I think you should know that she herself is the first not to believe it and that, on the contrary, she believes with all her conscience that she ... she herself is to blame. When I tried to dispel this gloom, she entered upon such sufferings that my heart will never heal when I remember that dreadful time. It was as though my heart had been pierced through once and for all. She ra
n away from me, do you know why? In order to prove to me that she is base. But the most dreadful thing of all is that she herself may not have been aware that it’s only me she wanted to prove this to, and she ran away because she had a consuming inner desire to commit some shameful act, so that she could say to herself right there and then: “Now you’ve committed another shameful act, so that means you’re a base creature!” Oh, perhaps you will not understand this, Aglaya! Do you know that this constant awareness of her shame may contain for her a kind of dreadful, unnatural pleasure, as if it were a revenge on someone. Sometimes I managed to lead her to a point where she saw the light around her again, as it were; but she would immediately fly into a rage again, and she reached a point where she bitterly accused me of setting myself high above her (when this was not even in my thoughts!), and told me directly, at last, when I proposed marriage, that she did not require from anyone condescending sympathy, or help, or “being raised to anyone’s level”. You saw her yesterday; do you really suppose she’s happy with that company, that that is any kind of society for her? You don’t know how cultured she is, and the things she’s able to understand! She really used to astonish me sometimes!’

‘Did you read her such ... sermons then, too?’

‘Oh no,’ the prince continued reflectively, not noticing the tone of the question, ‘I was silent nearly all the time. I often wanted to speak, but truly I didn’t know what to say. You know, in some situations it’s best not to say anything at all. Oh, I loved her; Oh, I loved her very much ... but later ... later ... later she guessed everything.’

‘What did she guess?’

‘That I was only sorry for her, and that I ... didn’t love her.’

‘How do you know that she didn’t fall in love with that ... landowner she went away with?’

‘No, I know it all; she was just laughing at him.’

‘And she never made a laughing-stock of you?’

‘N-no. She laughed out of malice; oh, she reproached me terribly, in anger - and herself suffered at the same time! But ... later ... Oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me of it!’

He covered his face with his hands.

‘But do you know that she writes me letters almost every day?’

‘So it’s true!’ the prince exclaimed in alarm. ‘I’d heard, but still didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Who did you hear it from?’ Aglaya roused herself fearfully.

‘Rogozhin told me yesterday, only not very clearly.’

‘Yesterday? Yesterday morning? When yesterday? Before the music or after?’

‘After; in the evening, between eleven and twelve.’

‘A-ah, well, if it was Rogozhin ... But do you know what she wrote to me about in those letters?’

‘Nothing would surprise me; she’s mad.’

‘Here are those letters.’ (Aglaya took from her pocket three letters in three envelopes and threw them in front of the prince.) ‘For a whole week now she’s been imploring, coaxing, flattering me in order to make me marry you. She ... well yes, she is clever even though she’s mad, and it’s true what you say, she is far cleverer than me ... she writes to me that she’s in love with me, that every day she seeks a chance to see me, even if only from afar. She writes that you love me, that she knows this, has noticed it for a long time, and that you and she used to talk about me there. She wants to see you happy; she’s sure that only I can constitute your happiness ... She writes such wild things ... such strange things ... I haven’t shown the letters to anyone, I’ve been waiting for you; do you know what this means? Can’t you guess?’

‘It’s madness; it’s proof of her insanity,’ the prince said quietly, and his lips began to tremble.

‘You’re not crying, are you?’

“No, Aglaya, no, I’m not crying,’ the prince said, with a look at her.

‘But what am I to do now? What would you advise me? I mean, I can’t go on getting these letters!’

‘Oh, leave her, I beg you!’ exclaimed the prince. ‘What can you do in that dark morass? I’ll make every effort to see that she doesn’t write to you any more.’

‘If you do that, then you’re a man without a heart!’ exclaimed Aglaya. ‘Surely you can see that it’s not me she’s in love with, but you, she loves you alone! Can it really be that you’ve noticed everything about her, but haven’t noticed that? Do you know what those letters mean? They mean jealousy; they mean more than jealousy! She ... do you think she’s really going to marry Rogozhin, as she writes in these letters? She’d kill herself the very next day, as soon as we were joined in wedlock!’

The prince shuddered; his heart froze. But he looked at Aglaya in astonishment: it felt strange to him to admit that this child had long ago become a woman.

‘As God is my witness, Aglaya, I’d give my life in order to return her peace of mind to her and make her happy, but ... I cannot love her now, and she knows it!’

‘Then sacrifice yourself, that would be in character with you! I mean, you’re such a great benefactor, aren’t you? And don’t call me “Aglaya” ... You called me simply “Aglaya” earlier, too ... You must restore her to life, you must go away with her again, to pacify and calm her heart. Why, after all, you love her!’

‘I can’t sacrifice myself like that, though there was one occasion when I did and ... perhaps I want to now. But I know for certain that with me she would be ruined, and that’s why I am leaving her. I was supposed to see her today at seven; I may not go now. In her pride she’ll never forgive me for my love - and we shall both be ruined! It’s unnatural, but in this situation everything is unnatural. You say she loves me, but is it real
ly love? Can there be such love after what I’ve already endured? No, in this situation there’s something else, and it’s not love!’

‘How pale you’ve gone!’ Aglaya said in sudden alarm.

‘It’s all right; I didn’t sleep much; I feel weak, I ... we really did use to talk about you then, Aglaya ...’

‘So it’s true? You really
were able to talk to her about me
and ... and how could you fall in love with me when you’d only seen me once?’ ‘I don’t know. In the dark morass I was living in then I dreamed ... imagined, perhaps, a new dawn. I don’t know how it was that I thought about you first. What I wrote you at the time was the truth, that I didn’t know. All that was just a dream, caused by the horrible situation I was in ... Later I began to study; I didn’t intend to return here for three years ...’ ‘So you came back for her?’

And something in Aglaya’s voice began to tremble.

‘Yes, I did.’

Some two minutes of gloomy silence passed on both sides. Aglaya got up from her chair.

‘If you say,’ she began in a voice that lacked steadiness, ‘if you yourself believe that this ... woman of yours ... is insane, then you must see that I can have nothing to do with her insane fantasies ... I ask you, Lev Nikolaich, to take these three letters and throw them back at her from me! And if,’ Aglaya exclaimed suddenly, ‘if she has the temerity to send me another line, then tell her that I’ll complain to my father and that she’ll be hauled off to a lunatic asylum ...’

The prince leaped to his feet, observing Aglaya’s sudden fury with alarm; and suddenly a kind of mist seemed to fall before him...

‘You can’t feel like that ... It’s not true!’ he muttered.

‘It’s true! True!’ exclaimed Aglaya, almost out of her mind.

‘What is true? What?’ a frightened voice rang out beside them.

Before them stood Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

‘It’s true that I’m going to marry Gavrila Ardalionovich! That I love Gavrila Ardalionovich and am going to run away from this house with him tomorrow!’ Aglaya hurled at her. ‘Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Are you satisfied with that?’

And she ran off home.

‘No, my dear sir, don’t go away now,’ said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, stopping the prince. ‘Please be so good as to come with me and explain yourself ... What torments I must suffer, and I haven’t slept all night as
it is ...’

The prince followed her.

On entering her house, Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped in the first room; she could walk no further and dropped on to a couch, completely drained of strength, even forgetting to invite the prince to sit down. It was a rather large drawing room, with a round table in the middle, a stove, a great quantity of flowers on the chiffoniers by the windows, and another door, a glass one, set in the rear wall. Adelaida and Alexandra came in at once, looking questioningly and with bewilderment at the prince and their mother.

At the dacha the girls usually got up at about nine o‘clock; Aglaya alone, during the past two or three days, had got into the habit of getting up somewhat earlier and going out to walk in the garden, though not at seven, but rather at eight, or even a little later. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who really had not slept at all because of her various worries, rose at about eight o’clock with the express purpose of meeting Aglaya in the garden, supposing her to have already risen; but neither in the garden nor in the bedroom did she find her. At this point she became quite worried and woke her daughters. From the maid they learned that Aglaya Ivanovna had gone out into the park before seven. The girls smiled at this new, fantastical caprice of their fantastical sister and observed to their mama that Aglaya might be angry with her if she went into the park to look for her, and that she was probably sitting now with a book on the green bench she had talked about three days earlier and because of which she had almost quarrelled with Prince Shch. for not having found anything remarkable about the location of that bench. Having intercepted the tryst, and hearing her daughter’s strange words, Lizaveta Prokofyevna was dreadfully alarmed, for many reasons; but, bringing the prince back with her, regretted having started the whole thing: ‘Why couldn’t Aglaya have met the prince in the park and talked to him, if this was a rendezvous they had fixed in advance?’

‘Don’t get the idea, dear Prince,’ she braced herself at last, ‘that I’ve dragged you back here to interrogate you ... After last night, my good man, I might not have wanted to meet you again for a long time ...’