The Idiot (9 page)

It was already nearly eleven o’clock when the prince rang the bell of the general’s apartment. The general lived on the first floor and occupied quarters that were as modest as possible, though in keeping with his social station. A liveried servant opened the door to the prince, who was obliged to explain himself for a long time to this man: right from the outset the servant looked suspiciously at him and his bundle. At last, after repeated and precise declarations that he really was Prince Myshkin and needed to see the general on urgent business, the perplexed servant took him into a small vestibule, right outside the reception room, next to the study, handing him into the charge of another servant who was usually on duty in this vestibule in the mornings and who announced visitors to the general. This second servant, over forty, in a frock coat, with a preoccupied mien, was his excellency’s special study-attendant and announcer, and consequently aware of his own worth.

‘Wait in the reception room and leave your bundle here,’ he said, seating himself unhurriedly in his armchair and looking with stern astonishment at the prince, who had instantly disposed himself on a chair beside him, his little bundle in his arms.

‘If you please,’ said the prince, ‘I’d rather wait here with you, for what would I do alone in there?’

‘You can’t wait in the vestibule as you’re a visitor, a guest, in other words. You wish to see the general himself?’

It was plain that the lackey could not reconcile himself to the idea of admitting a visitor such as this, and he decided to put the question to him yet again.

‘Yes, I have business ...’ the prince began.

‘I do not inquire as to the precise nature of your business - my task is merely to announce you. And I have said that I will not do so until the secretary arrives.’

This servant’s mistrust seemed to be increasing more and more; the prince was too unlike the usual run of daily visitors, and although at a certain hour the general quite often, very nearly every day, had to receive, especially on ‘business’, guests who were sometimes even very multifarious, in spite of custom and rather broad instructi
ons the valet was doubtful in the extreme: for an announcement to be made the secretary’s permission was indispensable.

‘Have you really ... come from abroad?’ he asked, almost in spite of himself, at last - and grew embarrassed; perhaps he had wanted to ask: ‘Are you really Prince Myshkin?’

‘Yes, straight off the train. I think you wanted to ask if I’m really Prince Myshkin, but didn’t, out of politeness.

‘Hmm ...’ the astonished lackey grunted.

‘I assure you that I haven’t lied to you, and you will not be held responsible for me. And as for my looking like this and carrying a bundle, there’s no need for it to surprise you: my circumstances aren’t much to boast about at present.’

‘Hmm. That is not what disturbs me. You see, I’m obliged to announce you, and the secretary will come out to you, unless you ... And that’s the sticking point - unless ... You haven’t come to ask the general for money, if I may make so bold as to ask?’

‘Oh, no, you may be quite assured of that. I’m here on a different matter.’

‘You must forgive me, I merely asked because of your appearance. Wait for the secretary; the general is busy with the colonel at present, and then the secretary will be here ... the company secretary.’

‘Well, if I shall have to wait a long time, I have a request: is there anywhere here where I could smoke? I’ve a pipe and tobacco with me.’

‘Sm-o-ke?’ the valet hurled him a glance of bewildered contempt, as though he still could not believe his ears. ‘Smoke? No, here you may not smoke, and what is more you ought to be ashamed to even think of such a thing. Heh ... extraordinary, sir!’

‘Oh, I wasn’t asking to smoke in this room; I mean, I know what’s right and proper; but I could go outside somewhere, if you’d show me where, because I have the habit, and I haven’t smoked my pipe for about three hours. However, as you please, and there’s a proverb, you know: “When in Rome ...”’

‘Well, how am I to announce someone like you?’ the valet muttered almost in spite of himself. ‘For one thing, you oughtn’t to be here, you should be sitting in the reception room, because you’re in the way of being a visitor, or a guest, in other words, and I shall have to answer for it ... You’re not planning to stay with us, are you?’ he added, once again taking a sidelong look at the prince’s bundle, which was obviously giving him no rest.

‘No, I don’t think so. Even were I to be invited, I shouldn’t stay. I’ve simply come to introduce myself, no more than that.’

‘What? To introduce yourself?’ the valet asked, surprised and doubly suspicious. ‘Then why did you say at first that you were here on business?’

‘Oh, hardly on business at all! That’s to say, if you will, I do have a certain item of business, but it’s simply about asking for advice, and the main reason I’m here is to present myself, because I’m
Prince Myshkin, and Mrs Yepanchin is the last of the Princess Myshkins, and, apart from her and myself there aren’t any Myshkins left.’

‘So you’re a relation, too?’ the lackey, by now almost thoroughly alarmed, asked with a start.

‘Hardly that, either. As a matter of fact, if one stretches a point, we are, of course, relations, but so distant that it doesn’t really count. I once wrote a letter to Mrs Yepanchin from abroad, but she didn’t reply to me. I nonetheless considered it necessary to initiate contact on my return. I’m explaining all this to you now so that you shouldn’t be in any doubt, for I see that you’re still uneasy: if you’ll just announce that Prince Myshkin is here, the very announcement itself will explain the reason for my visit. If they receive me - well and good, if they don’t - also, perhaps, well and good. But I think they will receive me: the general’s wife will of course want to see the eldest and only representative of her family, for I’ve heard it said of her, and reliably so, that she attaches great value to her descent.’

The prince’s conversation was, to all appearances, very simple; but the simpler it was, the more absurd did it become in the present situation, and the experienced valet could not but feel that what was completely appropriate between one man and another was completely inappropriate between a guest and a manservant. And as servants are generally much more intelligent than their masters suppose them to be, it occurred to the valet that there were two possibilities here: either the prince was some kind of vagrant who had come to ask for money, or he was simply an imbecile with no ambition, because a clever prince with ambition would not sit in a vestibule telling a lackey about his business - and so, in either case, would he not be held responsible for him?

‘All the same, you really would do better to wait in the reception room,’ he observed as pressingly as he could.

‘But if I’d sat in there I wouldn’t have explained it all to you,’ the prince laughed cheerfully, ‘and so you’d still be worried by the sight of my cloak and bundle. Anyway, perhaps there’s no need for you to wait for the secretary now - you can just go and announce me yourself.’

‘I can’t announce a visitor such as yourself without the secretary’s permission, especially as the general himself gave orders a short time ago that they were not to be disturbed for any reason while the colonel is there, and only Gavrila Ardalionych may go in unannounced.’

‘An official?’

‘Gavrila Ardalionych? No. He works for the company in a private capacity. At least put your bundle over there.’

‘I’d already thought of doing so, if you’ll let me. And I tell you what, may I take off my cloak as well?’

‘Of course, why, you can hardly go in there wearing a cloak.’

The prince got up, hurriedly removed his cloak and proved to be wearing a fairly respectable and smartly cut, though now somew
hat threadbare, jacket. His waistcoat bore a steel chain. The chain turned out to have a silver Geneva watch on the end of it.

Though the prince was an imbecile - the lackey had already decided this - to a general’s valet it none the less seemed improper to prolong any further a conversation between himself and a visitor, even though for some reason he liked the prince, in his own way, of course. From another point of view, however, the prince aroused in him a pronounced and gross indignation.

‘And when does Mrs Yepanchin receive guests, sir?’ the prince asked, sitting down again in his previous place.

‘That’s not my business, sir. She receives at different times, depending on who it is. The milliner is admitted at eleven. Gavrila Ardalionych is admitted earlier than anyone else, even for breakfast.’

‘It’s warmer here in your rooms than it would be in winter abroad,’ the prince observed, ‘and although over there it’s warmer out in the streets than it is in our country, a Russian finds it hard to live in their houses in winter because he isn’t used to it.’

‘They don’t heat them?’

‘No, and their houses are arranged differently, the stoves and windows, that is.’

‘Hmm! And were you away for a long time, sir?’

‘Four years. As a matter of fact, I stayed in one place, in the country.’

‘Our way of life grew foreign to you?’

‘That’s also true. You know, I marvel at myself for not having forgotten how to speak Russian. Here I am talking to you now, and all the time I’m thinking: “I say, I speak the language quite well after all.” Perhaps that’s why I’m talking such a lot. It’s true that since yesterday I’ve wanted to speak Russian all the time.’

‘Hmm! Heh! Did you live in St Petersburg before, then?’ (Try as he might, the lackey found it impossible not to sustain such a courteous and polite conversation. )

‘In St Petersburg? Hardly at all, I only stayed here when passing through. Even before, I didn’t know anything of the place, and now I hear so much is new that they say those who did know are learning it all over again. There’s a lot of talk here just now about the courts.’

‘Hmm! ... The courts. Courts, yes, there certainly are courts. Well, and how is it over there, are their courts fairer than ours?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot that is good about ours. And then again, we don’t have capital punishment.’
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‘Do they have it over there?’

‘Yes. I saw it in France, at Lyons. Schneider took me with him to see it.’

‘Do they hang them?’

‘No, in France they cut off their heads.’

‘Does the fellow yell, then?’

‘Oh no! It takes only a single instant. The man is put in place, and a sort of broad knife falls on him, it’s part of a machine called a guillotine, it’
s a heavy thing, powerful ... The head flies off so quickly you don’t have time to blink. The preparations are hideous. It’s when they read out the sentence, set up the machine, bind the man, lead him out to the scaffold, that’s the dreadful part! People gather round, even women, though they don’t like women to watch.’

‘Not the sort of thing for them.’

‘No, of course not! Of course not! Such torment! ... The criminal was an intelligent man, fearless, strong, getting on in years, Legros by name. Well, I’ll tell you, believe it or not, when he mounted the scaffold he wept, with a face as white as a sheet. Is it possible? Isn’t it horrible? Whoever weeps from fear? I’d never imagined that a man could weep from fear - not a child, after all, but a man who’d never wept in his life, a man of forty-five. What must be happening in his soul at that moment, for a man to be brought to such convulsions? An outrage on the soul, nothing less! It is said: “Thou shalt not kill” — so does that mean because he has killed he, too, must be killed? No, it’s wrong. I saw it a month ago, and I can still see it even now. I’ve dreamed about it repeatedly.’

The prince grew more animated as he spoke, and a faint flush emerged on his pale face, though his voice was quiet as before. The valet followed his words with sympathetic interest, reluctant, it appeared, to tear himself away; he was also, perhaps, a man with imagination who made some attempt to think for himself.

‘It’s a good thing at least that the suffering is short,’ he observed, ‘when the head flies off.’

‘Do you know what?’ the prince broke in heatedly. ‘You’ve made that observation, it’s exactly the same observation that everyone makes, and that’s why this machine, the guillotine, was invented. But then a thought came into my head: what if it’s even worse? You may find this ridiculous, it may seem outrageous to you, but if you’ve any imagination, an idea like this will leap into your head. Just think: if there was torture, for example, it would involve suffering and injuries, physical torment and all that would probably distract you from the mental suffering, so that your injuries would be all that you’d suffer, right up to the time you died. For after all, perhaps the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment - your soul will fly out of your body, and you’ll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it’s certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it’s that quarter of a second that’s most terrible of all. This isn’t my imagination, you know, many people have said the same thing.
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I believe this so strongly that I’ll tell you my opinion straight out. To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by judicial sentence is immeasurably more horrible than murder committed by a bandit. The person who’s murdered by a bandit has his throat cut at night, in a forest, or so
mewhere like that, and he certainly hopes to be rescued, right up to the very last moment. There have been examples of people whose throats have been cut still hoping, or running away, or begging for their lives. But here, all this final hope, with which it’s ten times easier to die, is taken away for certain; the terrible torment remains, and there’s nothing in the world more powerful than that torment. Take a soldier and put him right in front of a cannon in a battle and fire it at him, and he’ll go on hoping, but read out a certain death sentence to that same soldier, and he’ll go mad, or start to weep. Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery - ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: “Off you go, you’ve been pardoned.” A man like that could tell us, perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of.
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No, a human being should not be treated like that!’