“He has a handsome face....”
“Look, look!” cried “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, pulling Myshkin by the arm. “Look! ...”
Myshkin gazed at Yevgeny Pavlovitch with wonder again.
CHAPTER 5
Ippolit, who had suddenly fallen asleep on the sofa, towards the end of Lebedyev’s harangue, now as suddenly waked up, as though some one had poked him in the ribs.
He started, sat up, looked round him, and turned pale; he seemed to gaze about him as it were in alarm. There was almost a look of horror on his face when he remembered everything and reflected.
“What, are they going? Is it over? Is it all over? Has the sun risen?” he kept asking in agitation, clutching Myshkin’s hand. “What’s the time? For God’s sake, what’s the time? I’ve overslept myself. Have I been asleep long?” he added, with an almost desperate air, as though he had missed something on which his whole fate at least depended.
“You’ve been asleep seven or eight minutes,” answered Yevgeny Pavlovitch.
Ippolit looked greedily at him and reflected for some moments.
“Ah ... That’s all! Then I....”
And he drew a deep, eager breath, as though casting off some heavy weight. He realised at last that nothing “was over,” that it was not yet daybreak, that the guests had got up from the table only on account of supper, and that Lebedyev’s chatter was the only thing that was over. He smiled and a hectic flush came out in two bright spots on his cheeks.
“And you’ve been counting the minutes while I was asleep, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch,” he commented, ironically. “bu couldn’t tear yourself away from me all the evening, I’ve seen that. Ah, Rogozhin! I was dreaming about him just now,” he whispered to Myshkin, frowning, and nodding towards Rogozhin, who was sitting at the table. “Ah, yes!” he flew off to another subject, “where’s the orator? Where’s Lebedyev? Has he finished then? What was he talking about? Is it true, prince, that you said once that ‘beauty” would save the world? Gentlemen!” he shouted loudly, addressing the whole company, “the prince asserts that beauty will save the world! But I assert that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love; I was certain of it when he came in just now. Don’t blush, prince, it makes me sorry for you. What sort of beauty will save the world? Kolya told me.. .. Are you a zealous Christian? Kolya says that you say you’re a Christian yourself.”
Myshkin looked at him attentively and made no answer.
“You don’t answer? Perhaps you think I’m very fond of you?” Ippolit added suddenly, abruptly.
“No, I don’t think so. I know you don’t like me.”
“What, after yesterday? Was I honest with you yesterday?”
“I knew yesterday that you didn’t like me.”
“Is that because I envy . . . envy you? You always thought that and think so still, but . . . but why do I speak of that to you? I want some more champagne; pour some out, Keller.”
“You mustn’t drink any more, Ippolit, I won’t let you.
And Myshkin moved away the glass.
“You’re right,” he agreed immediately, as it were, dreamily. “Maybe they’ll say ... it doesn’t matter a damn to me what they say? . .. does it? Does it? Let them say so afterwards, eh, prince? What does it matter to any of us what happens aftemards? But I’m half asleep. What an awful dream I had, I’ve only just remembered it. I don’t wish you such a dream, prince, though perhaps I really don’t like you. But why should one wish a man harm, even if one doesn’t like him, eh? How is it I keep asking questions — I keep asking questions? Give me your hand; I’ll press it warmly, like this. . . . You hold out your hand to me, though! So you know that I shall shake hands sincerely. I won’t drink any more if you like. What time is it? But you needn’t tell me, I know what time it is. The hour has come! Now is the very time. Why are they laying supper over there, in the corner? This table is free, then? Good! Gentlemen, I . . . But all these gentlemen are not listening ... I intend to read an essay, prince; supper, of course, is more interesting, but...”
And suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he pulled out of his breast-pocket a large envelope, sealed with a large red seal. He laid it on the table before him.
This unexpected action produced a sensation in the company, who were unprepared for it, and were by now far from sober, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch positively started up on his chair. Ganya moved quickly to the table; Rogozhin did the same, but with a sort of peevish vexation, as though he understood what was coming. Lebedyev, who happened to be close by, came up with inquisitive eyes and stared at the envelope, trying to guess what it meant.
“What have you there?” Myshkin asked, uneasily.
“At the first peep of sunshine I shall go to rest, prince. I’ve said so; on my honour, you shall see!” cried Ippolit. “But... but... Do you imagine that I’m not capable of breaking open that envelope?” he added, turning his eyes from one to another, with a sort of challenge, and apparently addressing all without distinction.
Myshkin noticed that he was trembling all over.
“None of us imagine such a thing,” Myshkin answered for all. “And why should you suppose that anyone thinks so? And what. . . what a strange idea to read to us? What have you there, Ippolit?”
“What is it?”
“What’s happened to him now?” they were asking on all hands.
All the party came up, some of them still eating.
The envelope with the red seal drew them all like a magnet.
“I wrote it yesterday, myself, directly after I’d promised I would come to live with you, prince. I was writing it all day yesterday, and all night, and finished it this morning; in the night, towards morning, I had a dream.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to-morrow?” Myshkin interposed timidly.
“To-morrow there will be ‘no more time,’” Ippolit laughed hysterically. “But don’t be uneasy. I’ll read it in forty minutes, or, well — an hour. . . . And see how interested they all are; they’ve all come up, they’re all staring at my seal, and if I hadn’t sealed the article up in an envelope, there’d have been no sensation! Ha-ha! You see what mystery does! Shall I break the seal or not, gentlemen?” he shouted, laughing his strange laugh, and staring at them with glittering eyes. “A secret! A secret! And do you remember, prince, who proclaimed that there will be ‘no more time’? It was proclaimed by the great and mighty angel in the Apocalypse.”
“Better not read it!”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch cried suddenly, but with a look of uneasiness so unexpected in him that it struck many persons as strange.
“Don’t read it,” cried Myshkin, too, laying his hand on the envelope.
“Why read? It’s time for supper now,” observed some one.
“An article? A magazine article?” inquired another.
“Dull, perhaps,” added a third.
“What’s it all about?” inquired the rest.
But Myshkin’s timid gesture seemed to have intimidated Ippolit himself.
“So ... I’m not to read it?” he whispered to him, almost apprehensively, with a wry smile on his blue lips, “not to read it?” he muttered, scanning his whole audience, all their eyes and faces, and as it were catching at them all again, with the same aggressive effusiveness. “Are you ... afraid?” he turned again to Myshkin.
“What of?” asked the latter, his face changing more and more.
“Has any one got a twenty-kopeck piece?” Ippolit leapt up from his chair as though he had been pulled up. “Oranvcoin?”
“Here you are,” Lebedyev gave it him at once.
The idea occurred to him that the invalid had gone out of his mind.
“Vera Lukyanovna!” Ippolit hurriedly begged her, “take it, throw it on the table — heads or tails? Heads — I read it!”
Vera looked in alarm at the coin, at Ippolit, and then at her father, and awkwardly throwing back her head, as though she felt she ought not to look at the coin, she tossed it. It came up heads.
“I read it!” whispered Ippolit, as though crushed by the decision of destiny. He could not have turned more pale, if he had heard his death sentence.
“But,” he started suddenly, after half a minute’s silence, “what? Can I really have tossed up?” With the same appealing frankness he scrutinised the whole circle. “But, you know, that’s an amazing psychological fact!” he cried suddenly, addressing Myshkin in genuine astonishment. “It’s . . . it’s an incredible fact, prince,” he repeated, reviving, and seeming to recover himself. “bu must make a note of this, prince, remember it, for I believe you are collecting facts relating to capital punishment.... I’ve been told so, ha-ha! Oh, my God, what senseless absurdity!”
He sat down on the sofa, put his elbows on the table, and clutched at his head. “Why, it’s positively shameful! But what the devil do I care if it is shameful!” he raised his head almost at once. “Gentlemen, gentlemen! I will break the seal of my envelope!” he declared, with sudden determination. “I... I don’t compel you to listen though!”
With hands trembling with excitement he opened the envelope, took out several sheets of notepaper covered with small handwriting, put them before him, and began to arrange them.
“What is it? What’s the matter? What’s he going to read?” some people muttered gloomily; others were silent.
But they all sat down and stared inquisitively. Perhaps they really did expect something unusual. Vera caught hold of her father’s chair, and was almost crying with fright. Kolya was hardly less alarmed. Lebedyev, who had already sat down, rose and moved the candles nearer to Ippolit to give him more light.
“Gentlemen, this . . . you’ll see directly what it is,”
Ippolit added for some reason, and he suddenly began reading: ‘“An essential explanation! Motto: apres moi le deluge.’ Foo! damn it!” he cried out, as though he had been scalded. “Can I seriously have written such a stupid motto? . . . Listen, gentlemen! . . . I assure you that all this is perhaps after all the most fearful nonsense! It’s only some thoughts of mine. ... If you think there’s anything mysterious about it... anything prohibited ... in fact....”
“If you’d only read it without a preface!” interrupted Ganya.
“It’s affectation!” some one added.
“There’s too much talk,” put in Rogozhin, who had been silent till then.
Ippolit suddenly looked at him, and when their eyes met, Rogozhin gave a bitter and morose grin, and slowly pronounced a strange sentence.
“It’s not the way to set about this business, lad, it’s not the way....”
No one, of course, knew what Rogozhin meant, but his words made rather a strange impression on every one; every one seemed to catch a passing glimpse of a common idea. On Ippolit these words made a terrible impression; he trembled so much that Myshkin put out his arm to support him, and he would certainly have cried out but that his voice failed him. For a whole minute he could not speak, and stared at Rogozhin, breathing painfully. At last, gasping for breath, with an immense effort he articulated:
“So it was you ... you ... it was you?”
“What was I? What about me?” answered Rogozhin, amazed.
But Ippolit, firing up and suddenly seized almost with fury, shouted violently:
“You were in my room last week at night, past one o’clock, on the day I had been to you in the morning, you? Confess, it was you.”
“Last week, at night? Have you gone clean out of your senses, lad.”
The “lad” was silent again for a minute, putting his forefinger to his forehead, and seeming to reflect. But there was a gleam of something sly, almost triumphant, in his pale smile that was still distorted by fear.
“It was you!” he repeated, almost in a whisper, but with intense conviction. “You came to me and sat in my room without speaking, on the chair by the window, for a whole hour; more, between twelve and two o’clock at night. Then afterwards, between two and three, you got up and walked out. ... It was you, it was you! Why did you frighten me. Why did you come to torment me? I don’t understand it, but it was you.”
And there was a sudden flash of intense hatred in his eyes, though he was still trembling with fear.
“You shall know all about it directly, gentlemen ... I ... I... listen....”
Once more, and with desperate haste, he clutched at the sheets of paper. They had slipped and fallen apart. He attempted to put them together. They shook in his shaking hands. It was a long time before he could get them right.
“He’s gone mad, or delirious,” muttered Rogozhin, almost inaudibly.
The reading began at last. At the beginning, for the first five minutes, the author of the unexpected article still gasped for breath, and read jerkily and incoherently; but as he went on his voice grew stronger and began to express the sense of what he was reading. But he was sometimes interrupted by a violent fit of coughing; before he was half way through the article, he was very hoarse. His feverish excitement, which grew greater and greater as he read, reached an intense pitch at last, and so did the painful impression on his audience. Here is the whole article:
“An Essential Explanation.”
“Apres moi le deluge!”
“The prince was here yesterday morning. Among other things he persuaded me to move to his villa. I knew that he would insist upon this, and felt sure that he would blurt straight out that it would be ‘easier to die among people and trees,’ as he expresses it. But to-day, he did not say ‘die,’ but said ‘it will be easier to live,’ which comes to much the same thing, however, in my position. I asked him what he meant by his everlasting ‘trees,’ and why he keeps pestering me with those ‘trees,’ and learnt to my surprise that I had myself said on that evening that I’d come to Pavlovsk to look at the trees for the last time. When I told him I should die just the same,
looking at trees, or looking out of my window at brick walls, and that there was no need to make a fuss about a fortnight, he agreed at once; but the greenness and the fresh air will be sure, according to him, to produce a physical change in me, and my excitement and my dreams will be affected and perhaps relieved. I told him again, laughing, that he spoke like a materialist. He answered with his smile that he had always been a materialist. As he never tells a lie, that saying means something. He has a nice smile; I have examined him carefully now. I don’t know whether I like him or not; I haven’t time now to bother about it. The hatred I have felt for him for five months has begun to go off this last month, I must observe. Who knows, maybe I came to Pavlovsk chiefly to see him. But . . . why did I leave my room then? A man condemned to death ought not to leave his corner. And if I had not now taken my final decision, but had intended to linger on till the last minute, nothing would have induced me to leave my room, and I should not have accepted his invitation to go to him, to die in Pavlovsk. I must make haste and finish this ‘explanation’ before to-morrow, anyway. So I shan’t have time to read it over and correct it. I shall read it over to-morrow, when I’m going to read it to the prince and two or three witnesses, whom I mean to find there. Since there will not be one word of falsehood in it, but everything is the simple truth, the last and solemn truth, I feel curious to know what impression it will make on myself, at the hour and minute when I shall read it over. I was wrong in writing, though, that it was the ‘last and solemn truth’; it’s not worth telling lies for a fortnight, anyway, for it’s not worth while living a fortnight. That’s the best possible proof that I shall write nothing but the truth. (N.B. — Not to forget the thought: am I not mad at this minute, or rather these minutes? I was told positively that in the last stage consumptives sometimes go out of their minds for a time. Must verify this to-morrow from the impression made on my audience. I must settle that question absolutely, or else I cannot act.)
“I believe I have just written something awfully stupid; but as I said, I’ve no time to correct it; besides, I’ve promised myself on purpose not to correct one line in this manuscript, even if I notice th
at I contradict myself every five lines. What I want to decide after the readinq to-morrow is iust whether the logical sequence of my ideas is correct; whether I notice my mistakes, and therefore whether all I have thought over in this room for the last six months is true, or delirium.
“If I had had to leave my rooms two months ago and say good-bye to Meyer’s wall, I’m certain I should have been sorry. But now I feel nothing, yet tomorrow I am leaving my room and the wall for ever! So my conviction, that a fortnight is not worth regretting or feeling anything about, has mastered my whole nature, and can dictate to my feelings. But is it true? Is it true that my nature is completely vanquished now? If somebody began torturing me now, I should certainly begin to scream, and I shouldn’t say that it was not worth while screaming and feeling pain, because I only had a fortnight more to live.
“But is it true that I have only a fortnight left to live,
not more? I told a lie that day at Pavlovsk. B-n told me nothing, and never saw me; but a week ago they brought me a student called Kislorodov; by his convictions he is a materialist, an atheist, and a nihilist, that’s why I sent for him. I wanted a man to tell me the naked truth at last, without any softening or ado about it. And so he did, and not only readily and without any fuss, but with obvious satisfaction (which was going too far to my thinking). He blurted out that I had about a month left to live, perhaps a little more, if my circumstances were favourable, but I may die much sooner. In his opinion I might die suddenly, for instance, to-morrow. There are such cases. Only the day before yesterday in Kolumna a young lady, in consumption, whose condition was similar to mine, was just starting for the market to buy provisions, when she suddenly felt ill, lay down on the sofa, uttered a sigh and died. All this Kislorodov told me with a sort of jauntiness, carelessly and unfeelingly, as though he were doing me an honour by it, that is, as though showing me that he takes me, too, for the same sort of utterly sceptical superior creature, as himself, who, of course, cares nothing about dying. Anyway, the fact is authenticated; a month and no more! I am quite sure he’s not mistaken.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 311