The Idiot (80 page)

‘I am, of course, always ready to help towards such an end,’ said the prince, getting up, ‘only, I will confess to you, Lebedev, I’m dreadfully anxious; tell me, I mean, you still ... in a word, you yourself say that you suspect Mr Ferdyshchenko.’

‘But who else is there? Who else is there, most sincere Prince?’ Lebedev again put his hands together in emotion, sweetly smiling.

The prince frowned and got up from his seat.

‘You see, Lukyan Timofeich, it would be terrible to make a mistake here. This Ferdyshchenko ... I don’t want to speak ill of him ... bu
t this Ferdyshchenko ... though who knows, perhaps it was him! ... I mean that perhaps he really is more capable of it than ... than anyone else.’

Lebedev’s sharpened his eyes and pricked up his ears.

‘You see,’ the prince said, becoming embarrassed, and frowning more and more, pacing up and down the room and trying not to look at Lebedev, ‘I’ve been informed ... I was told about Mr Ferdyshchenko, that he is, above all, the sort of man in whose presence one should restrain oneself and not say anything ... superfluous - you understand? What I’m getting at is that he may indeed have been more capable than anyone else ... but we mustn’t make a mistake, you understand?’

‘And who told you this about Mr Ferdyshchenko?’ Lebedev fairly hurled at him.

‘Oh, someone whispered it to me; actually, I don’t believe it myself ... I’m terribly annoyed at having had to tell you this, I assure you, I don’t believe it myself ... it’s some nonsense or other ... Ugh, what a stupid thing I did!’

‘You see, Prince,’ Lebedev even began to tremble all over, ‘it’s important, it’s very important now, that is, not with regard to Mr Ferdyshchenko, but with regard to how this information got to you.’ (As he said this, Lebedev ran to and fro after the prince, trying to keep up with him.) ‘This is what I want to tell you now, Prince: this morning the general, when we were going to see that Vilkin fellow, after he had told me about the fire and boiling with anger, of course, suddenly began to hint the same thing to me about Mr Ferdyshchenko, but so incoherently and vaguely that I found myself asking him certain questions and as a result was quite convinced that all this information was nothing but one of his excellency’s inspirations ... He really does it out of sheer good nature. For he lies solely because he can’t restrain his emotions. Now look, sir: if he lied, and I’m sure that he did, then how could you have heard about it? You must understand, Prince, that for him it was just the inspiration of the moment - so who, then, was it who told you? It’s important, sir, it’s ... it’s very important, sir and ... so to speak ...’

‘Kolya told me about it just now, and he was told this morning by his father, whom he met at six o’clock, or slightly later, in the passage, when he went out for some reason.’

And the prince recounted all the details to him.

‘Well, there we are, sir, that’s what’s called a clue, sir,’ Lebedev laughed inaudibly, rubbing his hands. ‘It’s as I thought, sir! That means his excellency deliberately interrupted his sleep of the just, between six and seven, in order to go and wake up his beloved son and tell him of the extreme danger of having anything to do with Mr Ferdyshchenko! What a dangerous man Mr Ferdyshchenko must be after that, and what must the general’s fatherly concern have been, heh-heh-heh! ...’

‘Look here, Lebedev,’ the prince said in embarrassment, at last, ‘look here, act quietly! Don’t cause a row! I beg you, Lebedev, I implore you .
.. If you’ll be reasonable, then I’ll co-operate, but no one must know of it; no one must know!’

‘Be assured, most kind-natured, most sincere and most noble Prince,’ Lebedev exclaimed in positive inspiration, ‘be assured that all this will die within my most honourable heart! With quiet steps,
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sir, together! With quiet steps, sir, together! I’ll give every drop of my blood ... Most illustrious Prince, I am base in soul and spirit, but ask anyone, even a scoundrel, whom he would rather deal with, a scoundrel like himself or a most noble man like yourself, most sincere Prince? He will reply: “with a most noble man”, and there is the triumph of virtue!
Au revoir,
much esteemed Prince! With quiet steps ... with quiet steps and ... together, sir.’

The prince understood, at last, why he went cold each time he touched these three letters, and why he was postponing the moment of reading them until late in the evening. When earlier, in the morning, he had fallen into the oblivion of a heavy slumber on his couch, still unable to bring himself to open any of these three envelopes, he again had a bad dream, and again that same ‘criminal’ woman came to him. Again she looked at him with glittering tears on long eyelids, again called him to follow her, and again he woke up, as before, remembering her face with torment. He wanted to go to
her
at once, but could not; at last, almost in despair, he opened the letters and began to read.

Those letters also resembled a dream. Sometimes one has terrible dreams, impossible and unnatural; waking up, you remember them clearly and are astonished at a strange fact: you remember above all that your reason did not desert you throughout the entire duration of your dream; you even remember that you acted with extreme cunning and logic during all this long, long time, when you were surrounded by murderers, when they practised cunning on you, concealed their intention, addressed you in a friendly manner, while they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for a sign; you remember how cunningly, at last, you deceived them, hid from them; then you guessed that they knew all of your deceit by heart and were merely not letting on that they knew where you had hidden; but you practised cunning and deceived them again, all this you remember clearly. But then why at the same time was your reason able to reconcile itself to such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, of which, by the way, your dream was full? One of your murderers turned before your very eyes into a woman, and from a woman into a small, cunning, loathsome dwarf - and you allowed all this instantly, as a fait
accompli,
almost without the slightest perplexity, and precisely at this time, when, on the other hand, your reason was in the most violent state of exertion, displaying extreme strength, cunning, guesswork, logic? Why also, waking from your dream and completely entering reality, do you feel almost every time, and sometimes with an impression that is extraordinarily strong, that together with the dream you are leaving something that, for you, is unresolved? You laugh at the absurdity of your dream and at the same time feel that in the interweaving of these absurdities there is some idea, but an idea that is now a reality, something that is part of your real life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart; it is as though what your dream has told you is something new, prophetic, something you have been waiting for; your impression is a strong one, it is a joyful or a tormenting one, but of what it consists, and what was told to you - all that you can neither understand nor remember.

Almost the same thing happened after those letters. But before he had even opened them, the prince felt that the very fact of their existence and possibility was like a nightmare. How could
she
have brought herself to write to
her,
he asked himself, as he roamed about alone in the evening (sometimes not even conscious of where he was walking). How could she write
about
that, and how could such a crazy dream be born within her head? But this dream had already come true, and for him the most surprising thing was that while he was reading those letters he himself almost believed in the possibility and even the justification of this dream. Yes, of course, it was a dream, a nightmare and a madness; but in it there was something tormentingly real and true to the point of suffering, something that justified the dream, and the nightmare and the madness. For several hours on end he seemed to be in a kind of delirium from what he had read, kept remembering fragments, paused on them, thought about them. Sometimes he even felt like telling himself that he had had a premonition of all this and had guessed it in advance; it even seemed to him that he had read it all before, some time long, long ago, and all that he had grieved about, all that had caused him suffering and fear - all that was contained in those letters he had read long ago.

‘When you open this letter,’ (thus did the first missive begin) ‘you will look first of all at the signature. The signature will explain everything to you, and so there is no need for me to justify myself, and no point in explaining. Were I in any way equal to you, you might be insulted by such insolence; but who am I, and who are you? We are two opposites, and I am so much out of your rank that I could not possibly insult you, even if I wanted to.’

Further on, in another passage, she wrote:

‘Do not consider my words the sick rapture of a sick mind, but to me you are - perfect! I have seen you, I see you every day. For I do not judge you; not through my reason did I arrive at the thought that you are perfection; I have simply come to believe it. But I am guilty of a sin before you: I love you. After all, one should not love perfection; perfection should only be viewed as perfection, shouldn’t it? And yet I am in love with you. Though love makes people equal, do not be upset, I have not placed myself on an equal level with you, not even in my most secret thought. I wrote: “do not be upset”; how could you be upset? ... If it were possible, I would kiss the imprints of your feet. Oh, I do not put myself on an equal level with you ... Look at the signature, quick, look at the signature!’

‘I notice, however,’ (she wrote in another letter) ‘that I am associating him with you without having once yet asked if you love him? He fell in love with you having seen you only once. He remembered you as “a light”; those were his own words, I heard them from him. But I understood without any need for words that you are a light for him. I lived beside him for a whole month and understood then that you also love him; for me, you and he are the same.’

‘What is this?’ (she writes again) ‘Yesterday I walked past you, and you seemed to blush? It cannot be, I must have imagined it. Even if one were to take you into the filthiest den of thieves and show you vice revealed, you could not blush; you could not possibly be angry because of an insult. You can hate all those who are vile and base, but not for yourself, but for others, for those whom they insult. But no one could insult you. You know, I think you must even love me. For me, you are the same as for him: a radiant spirit; an angel cannot hate, it cannot help loving. Can one love everyone, all human beings, all one’s neighbours? I have often asked myself that question. Of course not, and it would even be unnatural. In an abstract love of humanity it is nearly always only oneself whom one loves. But for us that is impossible, while you are a different matter: how could you not love anyone at all, when you cannot compare yourself to anyone, and when you are above all insult, above all personal anger? You alone can love without egoism, you alone can love not for your own sake, but for the sake of the one whom you love. Oh, how bitter it would be for me to learn that you feel shame or anger because of me! That would be your downfall: you would at once be on an equal level with me ...

‘Yesterday, after meeting you, I came home and devised a painting. Artists always paint Christ according to the gospel legends; I would paint him differently: I would depict him alone — after all, his disciples did leave him alone sometimes. I would leave with him only one small child. The child is playing beside him; perhaps telling him some story in his childish language. Christ is listening to him, but now falls into reflection; his hand remains unconsciously, forgetfully, on the child’s radiant little head. He is looking into the distance, at the horizon; a thought as enormous as the whole world rests in his gaze; his face is sad. The child has fallen silent, rests his elbows on his knees, and, propping his cheek in his hand, raises his head and reflectively, as children sometimes reflect, looks at him with an intent gaze. The sun is setting ... That is my painting! You are innocent, and in your innocence lies all your perfection. Oh, just remember that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, all my life I will be near you ... I shall soon be dead.’

Finally, in the very last letter, she wrote:

‘For God’s sake do not worry about me; do not think, either, that I am abasing myself by writing to you like this, or that I am one of those creatures that enjoy abasing themselves, even though they do it out of pride. No, I have my consolations; but it is hard for me to explain that to you. It would even be hard for me to say it clearly to myself, though I suffer torment because of it. But I know that I cannot abase myself even in a fit of pride. And of self-abasement I am incapable, because of the purity of my heart. So, therefore, I am not abasing myself at all.

‘Why do I want to unite the two of you: is it for you or for myself? For myself, of course, it would bring the solution to all my difficulties, I told myself that long ago ... I heard that your sister, Adelaida, said of my po
rtrait one day that with such beauty one could turn the world upside down. But I have renounced the world; do you find it comical to hear that from me, meeting me in lace and diamonds, with drunkards and scoundrels? Don’t pay any attention to that, I hardly exist any more, and I know it; God knows what lives in me instead of me. I read it every day in two dreadful eyes that constantly look at

me, even when they are not before me. Those eyes are silent now (they are always silent), but I know their secret. His house is dark and tedious, and there is a secret in it. I am certain that hidden in a drawer he has a razor wrapped in silk, like that Moscow murderer; he also lived in the same house as his mother and also bound a razor in silk, to cut someone’s throat. All the time I was in their house it seemed to me that somewhere, under a floor-board, by his father, perhaps, was hidden a corpse, covered with an oilcloth, like that Moscow fellow, and also surrounded by bottles of Zhdanov fluid,
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I could even show you the spot. He keeps his silence; but I know he loves me so much that he cannot possibly prevent himself from hating me. Your wedding and my wedding - together: that is what he and I have arranged. I have no secrets from him. I would kill him out of fear ... But he will kill me first ... he began to laugh just now and said I was raving; he knows that I am writing to you.’