The Idiot (96 page)

But here a certain event took place, and the orator’s speech was cut short in the most unexpected manner.

All this feverish tirade, all this flow of impassioned and agitated words and rhapsodic ideas, jostling, as it were, in a kind of turmoil and skipping from one to the other, all this foretold something dangerous, something peculiar in the mood of the young man who had so suddenly boiled over, apparently for no reason. Of those who were present in the drawing room, all who knew the prince marvelled fearfully (and some with embarrassment) at his outburst, which was so little in harmony with his customary and even timid reserve, his rare and peculiar tact on certain occasions, and his instinctive sense of the higher proprieties. They could not understand what had caused it: it was surely not the news of Pavl
ishchev’s death. In the ladies’ corner he was being viewed as a madman, and Belokonskaya confessed later that ‘one more minute and she would have wanted to run away’. The ‘elderly gentlemen’ were almost dumbfounded at first; the general-superior looked with stern displeasure from his chair. The engineer-colonel sat completely immobile. The little German even turned pale, but went on smiling his false smile, casting glances at the others: how would the others respond? However, all this and the ‘whole scandal’ might have been resolved in the most ordinary and natural way, perhaps, even within a minute; Ivan Fyodorovich, who was extremely surprised, but had recovered himself earlier than the rest, also began to try to stop the prince several times; not having achieved success, he was now making his way towards him, with firm and decisive ends in view. Another minute, and if it had been necessary, then he would, perhaps, have resolved to take the prince outside, under the pretext that he was ill, which perhaps really was true and which Ivan Fyodorovich was privately very inclined to believe ... But the matter took a different turn.

Right at the outset, as soon as the prince walked into the drawing room, he had sat down as far as possible from the Chinese vase with which Aglaya had so tried to frighten him. Can one credit that after Aglaya’s words of the day before there had installed itself in him a kind of ineffaceable conviction, a kind of extraordinary and impossible presentiment he would unfailingly and on the next day break that vase, no matter how he tried to avoid the disaster? But it was so. During the course of the evening, other strong, but radiant impressions began to rush into his soul; we have already spoken of that. He forgot his presentiment. When he heard talk of Pavlishchev, and Ivan Fydorovich led him over to Ivan Petrovich and introduced him again, he changed his seat for one closer to the table, ending up in an armchair beside the enormous, beautiful Chinese vase that stood on a pedestal almost next to his elbow, very slightly behind it.

As he spoke his last words, he suddenly got up from his seat, gave an incautious wave of his hand, made some kind of movement with his shoulder, and ... a universal cry rang out! The vase swayed slightly, as if at first uncertain whether to fall on the head of one of the elderly gentlemen, but suddenly inclined in the opposite direction, towards the little German, who only just leaped out of the way in horror, and crashed to the floor. The noise, the shouting, the precious fragments scattered over the carpet, the alarm, the amazement - oh, it is hard, and indeed almost unnecessary, to portray what the prince felt then! But we cannot fail to mention another strange sensation that struck him at precisely that moment and suddenly manifested itself to him out of the throng of all the other strange and troubled sensations: it was not the shame, not the scandal, not the suddenness that struck him most of all, but the realized prophecy! Just what was so gripping about this idea he would not have been able to explain to himself; he merely felt that he had been stricken to the heart,
and stood in a state of fear that was almost mystical. Another moment, and everything around him seemed to expand, instead of horror there were light and joy, ecstasy; he began to lose his breath, and ... but the moment passed. Thank God, it wasn’t that! He got his breath back and looked around him.

For a long time he seemed not to understand the turmoil that was seething around him, or rather, he understood completely and saw everything, but stood like a man isolated, not taking part in any of it, who, like the invisible man in the fairy-tale, had made his way into the room and was observing people who had nothing to do with him, but who interested him. He saw them clearing away the fragments, heard rapid conversations, saw Aglaya, pale and looking strangely at him, very strangely: in her eyes there was almost no hatred at all, there was not a hint of anger; she was looking at him with such a frightened but sympathetic expression, but at the others with such a flashing gaze ... his heart suddenly began to sweetly ache. At last, he saw with strange amazement that they had all settled down again and were even laughing, as though nothing had happened! Another minute, and the laughter increased; now they were laughing as they stared at him, at his dumbfounded speechlessness, but laughing in a friendly, cheerful way; many of them began to talk to him and talked to him so kindly, led by Lizaveta Prokofyevna: she laughed as she spoke, saying something very, very good-natured. Suddenly he felt Ivan Fyodorovich pat him on the shoulder in a friendly manner; Ivan Petrovich was also laughing; but even better, even more attractively and sympathetically was the elderly gentleman laughing; he took the prince by the arm and, squeezing it slightly, striking it lightly with the palm of his other hand, prevailed upon him to recover himself, as though he were a frightened little boy, which pleased the prince terribly, and, at last, made him sit down right beside him. The prince studied his face with pleasure, but was still unable to begin to speak, for some reason, he had lost his breath; the old man’s face appealed to him so very much.

‘What?’ he muttered at last. ‘Do you really forgive me? And ... you, Lizaveta Prokofyevna?’

The laughter intensified; tears came to the prince’s eyes; he could not believe it, and was enchanted.

‘Of course, it was a lovely vase. I can remember it being here for the past fifteen, yes ... fifteen years,’ Ivan Petrovich ventured.

‘Well, it’s not a disaster, is it? Man, too, comes to his end, and here we are making a fuss about a clay pot!’ Lizaveta Prokfyevna said loudly. ‘Did you really get such a fright, Lev Nikolaich?’ she added, even with fear. ‘Enough, my dear fellow, enough; indeed, you frighten me.’

‘Do you forgive me for
everything?
For
everything,
not only the vase?’ the prince started to get up from his seat, but the elderly gentleman at once pulled him by the arm. He would not let him go.

‘C’est tres curieux et c’est très serieux,’
he whispered across the table to Ivan Petrovich, though rather loudly; the prince might even have heard it.

‘So I haven’t offended any of you? You won’t believe how happy that thought makes me; but that’s how it should be! Could I offend anyone here? If I thought that I could, I’d be offending you again.’

‘Calm yourself,
mon ami,
that’s an exaggeration. And you’ve no reason to thank us so; it’s a fine sentiment, but an exaggerated one.’

‘I’m not thanking you, I’m merely ... admiring you, and just looking at you makes me happy; perhaps I’m saying stupid things, but - I need to speak, I need to explain ... even if only out of self-respect.’

Everything about him was jerky, troubled and feverish; it was very possible that the words he was uttering were often not the ones he wanted to say. With his gaze he seemed to be asking: was it all right for him to speak? His gaze alighted on Belokonskaya.

‘Never mind, my dear, continue, continue, only do not gasp so,’ she observed. ‘You began quite out of breath just now, and look where it got you; but don’t be afraid to speak; these gentlemen have seen stranger sights than you, you will not astonish them, and God knows, you’re not so complicated, after all, it’s simply that you broke that vase and gave them a fright.’

The prince, smiling, heard what she had to say.

‘It was you, wasn’t it,’ he suddenly addressed the elderly gentleman, ‘it was you who saved the student Podkumov and the civil servant Shvabrin from exile three months ago?’

The elderly gentleman even blushed slightly and muttered that he should try to calm himself.

‘It was you I heard about, did I not,’ he at once turned to Ivan Petrovich, ‘in the province of — , that after a fire you gave your muzhiks free timber with which to rebuild their village, though they’d already been freed and had given you trouble?’

‘Well, that’s an ex-ag-ger-ation,’ muttered Ivan Petrovich, though he assumed a pleasantly dignified air; on this occasion he was quite correct in its being an ‘exaggeration’: it was merely a false rumour that had reached the prince.

‘And you, Princess,’ he turned suddenly to Belokonskaya with a radiant smile, ‘did not you, six months ago, receive me in Moscow like your own son, on the strength of a letter from Lizaveta Prokofyevna, and indeed, as if I were your own son, give me some advice which I shall never forget. Do you remember?’

‘Why are you in such a frenzy?’ Belokonskaya said with annoyance. ‘You’re a good man, but a ridiculous one; they give you tuppence and you thank them as though they’d saved your life. You think it’s praiseworthy, but it’s actually repugnant.’

She was on the point of losing her temper completely, but suddenly burst out laughing, and this time her laughter was good-natured. Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s face brightened too; even Ivan Fyodorovich beamed.

‘I was saying that Lev Nikolaich is a man ... a man ... in a word, if only he wouldn’t gasp, as the Princess observed ...’ muttered the general in a joyful rapture, repeating Belokonskaya’s words, which had made an impression on him.

Only Aglaya was rather sad; but her face still glowed, perhaps with indignation.

‘He is, truly, very charming,’ the elderly gentleman muttered again to Ivan Petrovich.

‘I came in here with torment in my heart,’ the prince continued, in a kind of growing confusion, more and more quickly, with increasing strangeness and animation, ‘I ... I was afraid of you, and afraid of myself. Most of all, myself. Returning here, to St Petersburg, I vowed to myself that I would without fail see the first people in our land, the seniors, the long-established, to whom I myself belong, among whom I myself am one of the first in line. After all, I’m now sitting with princes like myself, am I not? I wanted to get to know you, and that was necessary; very, very necessary! ... I have always heard so much about you that is bad, more than is good, about the pettiness and exclusiveness of your interests, about your backwardness, your poor education, your ridiculous habits - oh, I mean, they write and say so much about you! I came here today with curiosity, with confusion: I needed to see for myself and be personally convinced: is the whole of this upper stratum of Russian people really not fit for anything, has it lived out its time, exhausted its age-old life and is it capable only of dying, but still in a petty, envious struggle with the people ... of the future, getting in their way, not noticing that it’s dying? Before, I didn’t fully share that opinion, because we have never had an upper class, except at the court, according to how one dressed at court, or ... by accident, and now that has vanished completely, hasn’t it, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh, that’s not true at all,’ Ivan Petrovich burst into caustic laughter.

‘Oh no, he’s begun to chatter again,’ Belokonskaya could not restrain herself from saying.

‘Laissez-le dire,
he’s even trembling all over,’ the elderly gentleman warned again in a low voice.

The prince was well and truly beside himself.

‘And what did I see? I saw people who are elegant, open-hearted, intelligent; I saw an elder statesman who was kind and attentive to a boy like me; I saw people who are capable of understanding and forgiving, good-natured Russian people, almost as good-natured and warm-hearted as those whom I met back there, almost as good as them. So you may imagine how happily I was surprised! Oh, permit me to say this! I had heard a great deal and was very much of the conviction that in society all is style, all is decrepit formality, while the essence has dried up; but I mean, now I can see for myself that it cannot be so in our country; it may be like that in other countries, but not in ours. You can’t all be Jesuits and swindlers, can you? I heard Prince N. relating something just now: wasn’t that op
en-hearted, inspired humour, wasn’t it genuine good nature? Can such words come from the lips of a man who is ... dead, with a withered heart and talent? Would corpses treat me as you have treated me? Isn’t that material ... for the future, for hope? Could men like him fail to understand, and fall behind?’

‘I beg you again, calm yourself, my dear fellow, we’ll talk about all this another time, and I shall be delighted to ...’ the ‘dignitary’ smiled thinly.

Ivan Petrovich grunted and turned round in his armchair; Ivan Fyodorovich began to stir; the general, who was his superior, was conversing with the dignitary’s wife, no longer paying the slightest attention to the prince; but the dignitary’s wife frequently listened and looked.

‘No, you know, it’s better if I speak!’ the prince continued with another feverish burst, addressing the elderly gentleman in a somehow peculiarly trusting and even confidential manner. ‘Yesterday Aglaya Ivanovna forbade me to talk, and even named the topics about which I mustn’t talk; she knows that I’m ridiculous when I do! I’m nearly twenty-seven, yet I know I’m like a child. I don’t have the right to express my thoughts, I’ve long said that; only in Moscow, with Rogozhin, have I talked frankly ... He and I read Pushkin together, read the whole of it; he didn’t know any of it, not even Pushkin’s name ... I’m always afraid that my ridiculous appearance will compromise my thoughts and the
main idea
of what I’m trying to say. I don’t have the right gestures. I always make the gesture that has the opposite meaning to what I’m saying, and that makes people laugh, and humiliates my idea. I also have no sense of proportion, and that’s the principal thing; that’s even the principal thing before anything else ... I know it’s better for me to sit and keep quiet. When I take a firm stand and keep quiet, I even seem very reasonable, and what’s more, I reflect. But now it’s better for me to speak. I began to talk because you look at me so nicely; you have a nice face! Yesterday I promised Aglaya Ivanovna that I’d keep quiet all evening.’