The Idiot (99 page)

One way or another, the matter was decisive, final. No, the prince did not consider Aglaya a young lady or a schoolgirl; he felt now that he had long feared something of precisely this kind; but why did she want to see him? A chill traversed the whole of his body; once again he was in a fever.

No, he did not consider her a child! Some of the looks she had given him, some of the things she had said to him of late, had filled him with horror. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was too self-controlled, too restrained, and he remembered that this alarmed him. To be sure, during all these recent days he had tried not to think of this, had driven the painful thoughts away, but what was concealed within that soul? This question had long tormented him, though it was a soul he trusted. And now everything was to be resolved and revealed this very day. A horrifying thought! And again - ‘that woman’! Why did it always seem to him that at the very last moment that woman would appear and tear his entire destiny apart, like a rotten thread? He was now ready to swear that he had always felt this, even though he was almost in semi-delirium. If he had tried to forget about her of late, it was solely because he was afraid of her. Well: did he love this woman or did he hate her? It was a question he had asked himself several times that day; in this respect his heart was unsullied: he knew whom he loved ... He was not so much afraid of the meeting of the two, of its strangeness, the reason for this meeting, a reason unknown to him, of its resolution, no matter what that might be - it was Nastasya Filippovna herself he was afraid of. He remembered later, after several days, that in those fevered hours he had almost constantly imagined her eyes, her gaze, heard her words - strange words, though little remained in his memory after those hours of fever and anguish. He hardly remembered, for example, Vera bringing him his dinner and his eating it, did not remember whether or not he had slept afterwards. All he knew was that he had begun to distinguish clearly all the events of that evening from the moment when Aglaya suddenly came out to him on the terrace and he jumped up from the sofa and walked into the middle of the room to greet her: it was a quarter past seven. Aglaya was all on her own, dressed simply and apparently in haste, in a light ‘burnous’ cloak. Her face was pale, as it had been
earlier, but her eyes glittered with a dry and brilliant lustre; he had never known such an expression in her eyes. She surveyed him attentively.

‘You’re all ready,’ she observed quietly and almost calmly, ‘dressed and hat in hand; so you were given advance warning, and I know by whom: Ippolit?’

‘Yes, he told me ...’ the prince muttered like a man more dead than alive.

‘Then let us go: you know that you must escort me there. You’re strong enough to go out, I think, are you not?’

‘Yes I am, but ... is this really possible?’

He broke off in an instant and could not get another word out. This was his only attempt at stopping the reckless girl, and thereafter he followed her like a slave. No matter how troubled his thoughts were, he none the less realized that she would go
there
without him, and so he must follow her in any case. He could guess the strength of her determination; it was not for him to stop this wild impulse. They walked in silence, hardly spoke a word all the way. He merely noticed that she knew the way well, and when he wanted to take a detour down a side-street, because it was less crowded there, and suggested this to her, she listened as though straining her attention, and abruptly replied: ‘It’s all the same!’ When they had almost gone right up to Darya Alexeyevna’s house (a large, old wooden house), an elegant lady came down the front steps, and with her a young girl; both got into a magnificent barouche that was waiting by the steps, loudly laughing and talking, never once even glancing at those who were approaching, as though they had not noticed them. No sooner had the carriage driven off than the door immediately opened a second time, and the waiting Rogozhin admitted the prince and Aglaya, closing the door behind them.

‘There’s no one in the house now but the four of us,’ he observed aloud, and gave the prince a strange look.

In the very first room they came to, Nastasya Filippovna was waiting, also dressed very simply and all in black; she rose to greet them, but did not smile, and did not even give the prince her hand.

Her fixed and anxious gaze impatiently fastened on Aglaya. They both sat down at a distance from each other: Aglaya on the sofa in a corner of the room, Nastasya Filippovna by the window. The prince and Rogozhin did not sit down, and were not invited to sit down. With bewilderment, and almost with pain, the prince again cast a glance at Rogozhin, but Rogozhin kept smiling his former smile. The silence continued for a few more moments.

At last a kind of ominous emotion passed across Nastasya Filippovna’s face; her gaze became stubborn, hard and almost hateful, and did not leave her guest for a single moment. Aglaya was plainly embarrassed, but did not quail. Entering, she barely glanced at her rival and, for the present, sat with her eyes lowered, as if in reflection. Once or twice, as if by chance, she glanced round the room; revulsion was unmistakably portrayed in her features, as though she were afraid of being besmirched
by simply being here. She mechanically adjusted her garments, and even once anxiously changed her seat, moving to the corner of the sofa. She was not really conscious of all her movements; but the fact that they were unconscious increased their offensive-ness. At last she looked Nastasya Filippovna firmly and directly in the eye, and at once clearly read all that flashed in her rival’s embittered gaze. Woman understood woman; Aglaya shuddered.

‘You know, of course, why I asked to see you,’ she uttered at last, but very quietly, and even pausing once or twice during this short sentence.

‘No, I have no idea,’ Nastasya Filippovna replied, coolly and abruptly.

Aglaya blushed. Perhaps it suddenly seemed to her dreadfully strange and improbable that she was now sitting with ‘that woman’, in the house of ‘that woman’, and required her answer. At the first sounds of Nastasya Filippovna’s voice a kind of shiver passed through her body. All this was, of course, very closely observed by ‘that woman’.

‘You understand everything ... but you purposely make it seem that you don’t,’ Aglaya almost whispered, staring moodily at the floor.

‘Why would I do that?’ said Nastasya Filippovna, with the merest hint of an ironic smile.

‘You want to take advantage of my position ... that I’m in your house,’ Aglaya continued, absurdly and awkwardly.

‘That position is your fault, not mine!’ Nastasya Filippovna flared up suddenly. ‘I didn’t ask to see you, you asked to see me, and I still don’t know why!’

Aglaya raised her head with hauteur.

‘Keep your tongue in check; I didn’t come here to fight you with that weapon of yours ...’

‘Ah! But you’ve come to “fight”, though, haven’t you? That’s funny, I thought you were ... cleverer than that ...’

They looked at each other, not trying to conceal their hostility now. One of these women was the same one who, not so long ago, had written the other such letters. And now all that had been dispersed by their very first meeting and very first words. But what was remarkable about that? At that moment, it seemed, not one of the four people in that room found it strange. The prince, who yesterday would not have believed in the possibility of this even in a dream, now stood there looking and listening, as if he had long had a presentiment of it. A most fantastic dream had suddenly turned into the most vivid and sharply defined reality. At that moment, one of these women so despised the other and so desired to tell her about it (perhaps she had only come there in order to do this, as Rogozhin expressed it the following day), that, no matter how fantastic that other woman might be, with her deranged mind and sick soul, no preconceived plan would, it seemed, have stood firm against her rival’s poisonous, purely feminine contempt. The prince was certain that Nastasya Filippovna would not mention the letters of her own accord; by her flashi
ng glance he guessed what those letters might cost her now; but he would have forfeited half of his life for Aglaya not to mention them now, either.

But Aglaya suddenly seemed to pull herself together, and at once regained her self-possession.

‘You’ve misunderstood me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t come to ... quarrel with you, though I don’t like you. I ... I’ve come to talk to you ... as one human being to another. When I asked to see you, I had already decided what I would talk to you about, and I shall adhere to that decision, even though you may not understand me at all. That will be the more unfortunate for you, not me. I wanted to reply to what you wrote to me, and to reply in person, as that seemed to me more opportune. Here, then, is my reply to all your letters: I began to feel sorry for Prince Lev Nikolayevich on the very day that I made his acquaintance, and when I later learned of all that happened at your soiree. I felt sorry for him, as he is such a simple-hearted man who, because of his simplicity, believed that he could be happy ... with a woman ... of that character. What I feared would happen to him did indeed happen: you were unable to love him, you tormented and abandoned him. You couldn’t love him because you’re too proud ... no, not proud, I was wrong, but because you’re vain ... not even that: you are self-loving to the point of ... insanity, of which your letters to me may serve as proof. You couldn’t love him, such a simple man, and you even, perhaps, privately despised and ridiculed him, could love only your own disgrace and the constant thought that you were disgraced and that you’d been humiliated. If your disgrace had been less, or none at all, you’d be more unhappy than you are ...’ (With pleasure Aglaya uttered these words, which tripped out all too swiftly, but had long been prepared and considered by her, when she had not even dreamed of the present meeting; with a poisonous gaze she watched their effect on Nastasya Filippovna’s face, which was contorted with turmoil.) ‘You remember,’ she continued, ‘he wrote me a letter at that time; he says that you know about that letter and have even read it? From this letter I understood everything, and understood it correctly; he recently confirmed this to me himself, that is, all the things I’m telling you now, word for word, even. After the letter I began to wait. I guessed that you’d be bound to come here, because you can’t live without St Petersburg: you’re still too young and pretty for the provinces ... As a matter of fact, those are not my words, either,’ she added, blushing dreadfully, and from that moment on the colour did not leave her face, all the way until the very end of her speech. ‘When I saw the prince again, I felt dreadfully hurt and offended on his behalf. Don’t laugh; if you laugh, you’re unworthy of understanding this ...’

‘You can see that I’m not laughing,’ Nastasya Filippovna said, sadly and sternly.

‘Though actually, it’s all the same to me, you may laugh as much as you wish. When I began to question him about it myself, he told me that he had stopped loving you a long time ago, that even the m
emory of you was a torment to him, but that he felt sorry for you and that when he remembered you, his heart was as if “pierced for ever”; I must also say to you that I have never in my life met a man resembling him in noble simplicity and unlimited trustfulness. I guessed after his words that anyone who wanted to could deceive him, and that whoever deceived him he would later forgive, and that was why I fell in love with him ...’

Aglaya paused for a moment, as if shocked, as if she herself did not believe she was capable of uttering that word; but at the same time an almost boundless pride began to flash in her gaze; it seemed that it was all the same to her now, even though ‘that woman’ at once began to laugh at the confession that had burst from her.

‘I’ve told you everything, and now, of course, you will understand what it is I want from you?’

‘Perhaps I do understand; but tell me yourself,’ Nastasya Filippovna replied quietly.

Anger blazed in Aglaya’s face.

‘I wanted to learn from you,’ she said firmly and clearly, ‘by what right you interfere in his feelings for me? By what right you have dared to write letters to me? By what right you keep declaring, to him and me, that you love him, after you yourself abandoned him and ran away from him so insultingly and ... disgracefully?’

‘Neither to him nor to you did I declare that I love him,’ Nastasya Filippovna articulated with an effort, ‘and ... you are right, I ran away from him ...’ she added, barely audibly.

‘What do you mean, “neither to him, nor to you”?’ exclaimed Aglaya. ‘What about your letters? Who asked you to engage in matchmaking and try to persuade me to marry him? Is that not a declaration? Why do you thrust yourself upon us? I thought at first that you wanted, on the contrary, to instil revulsion in me towards him by meddling in our affairs, so that I would give him up, and only later realized the truth: you simply imagined that by all these affectations you were performing a lofty deed ... Well, how could you have loved him, if you love your own vanity so? Why did you not simply go away from here, instead of writing me absurd letters? Why are you not now marrying the noble man who loves you so and has done you an honour by offering you his hand? It’s all too clear why: if you marry Rogozhin, what would become of the insult to you? You would even receive too much honour! Yevgeny Pavlych said of you that you’ve read too many
poemy
²
and are “too educated for your ... position”; that you’re a bookish woman and one with lily-white hands; add your vanity, and there are all your reasons ...’

‘And don’t you have lily-white hands?’

All too swiftly, all too nakedly had matters reached such an unexpected point because Nastasya Filippovna, setting off for Pavlovsk, still had dreams of something, though, of course, she assumed a bad, rather than a good outcome; as for Aglaya, she was decidedly carried a
way by impulse in a single moment, as though falling downhill, and could not restrain herself in the face of the dreadful pleasure of revenge. Nastasya Filippovna even found it strange to see Aglaya like this; she looked at her as if unable to believe it, and for an initial moment was decidedly at a loss. Whether she was a woman who had read too many
poemy,
as Yevgeny Pavlovich supposed, or was simply insane, as the prince was convinced, at any rate that woman — who sometimes had such cynical and insolent ways - was actually far more modest, tender and trusting than one might have thought. To be sure, there was much in her that was bookish, dreamy, closed off in itself and fantastic, but on the other hand much that was strong and deep ... The prince understood this; suffering was expressed in his face. Aglaya observed it and began to quiver with hatred.