The prince noticed the sweet, tender eyes of Vera Lebedev, who was also hurriedly making her way to him through the crowd. He reached past them all and gave her his hand first; she blushed with pleasure and wished him “a happy life starting this very day.” Then she rushed off to the kitchen; she was preparing the snack there; but before the prince’s arrival—the moment she could tear herself away from her work—she would come to the terrace and listen as hard as she could to the heated arguments constantly going on among the tipsy guests about things that were most abstract and strange to her. Her younger sister, the one who opened her mouth, fell asleep on a trunk in the next room, but the boy, Lebedev’s son, stood beside Kolya and Ippolit, and the very look on his animated face showed that he was prepared to stand there in the same spot, relishing and listening, for another ten hours on end.
“I’ve been especially waiting for you, and I’m terribly glad you’ve come so happy,” Ippolit said, when the prince went over to shake hands with him immediately after Vera.
“And how do you know that I’m ‘so happy’?”
“By the look on your face. Greet the gentlemen, and then quickly come to sit with us. I’ve been waiting especially for you,” he added, significantly stressing the fact that he had been waiting. To the prince’s remark that it might be bad for him to stay up so late, he replied that he was surprised at his wanting to die three days ago and that he had never felt better than that evening.
Burdovsky jumped up and murmured that he had come “just so …,” that he was with Ippolit “as an escort,” and that he was also glad; that he had “written nonsense” in his letter, and that now he was “simply glad …” He did not finish, pressed the prince’s hand firmly, and sat down on a chair.
After everyone else, the prince went over to Evgeny Pavlovich. The latter immediately took him by the arm.
“I have only a couple of words to say to you,” he whispered in a low voice, “and about an extremely important circumstance. Let’s step aside for a moment.”
“A couple of words,” another voice whispered into the prince’s other ear, and another hand took him by the arm from the other side. The prince was surprised to see a terribly disheveled, flushed, winking and laughing face, in which he instantly recognized Ferdyshchenko, who had appeared from God knows where.
“Remember Ferdyshchenko?” the man asked.
“Where did you come from?” cried the prince.
“He repents!” cried Keller, running up. “He was hiding, he didn’t want to come out to you, he was hiding there in the corner, he repents, Prince, he feels guilty.”
“But of what, of what?”
“It was I who met him, Prince, I met him just now and brought him along; he’s a rare one among my friends; but he repents.”
“I’m very glad, gentlemen. Go and sit there with everyone, I’ll be back presently.” The prince finally got rid of them and hurried to Evgeny Pavlovich.
“It’s amusing here,” Evgeny Pavlovich observed, “and it was with pleasure that I waited half an hour for you. The thing is, my most gentle Lev Nikolaevich, that I’ve settled everything with Kurmyshev and have come to put you at ease; there’s nothing to worry about, he took the matter very, very reasonably, the more so because, in my opinion, it was sooner his fault.”
“What Kurmyshev?”
“The one you seized by the arms today … He was so infuriated that he wanted to send someone to you tomorrow for explanations.”
“Come, come, what nonsense!”
“Naturally it’s nonsense and would probably have ended in nonsense; but these people …”
“Perhaps you’ve come for something else, Evgeny Pavlovich?”
“Oh, naturally there’s something else,” the man laughed. “Tomorrow at daybreak, my dear Prince, I’m going to Petersburg on this unfortunate business (I mean, about my uncle). Imagine to yourself: it’s all true and everybody already knows it except me. I was so struck that I haven’t had time to go there (to the Epanchins’); I won’t see them tomorrow either, because I’ll be in Petersburg, you understand? I may not be back for three days—in short, my affairs are in poor shape. Though the matter is not of infinite importance, I reasoned that I ought to have a most candid talk with you about certain things, and without losing time, that is, before my departure. I’ll sit here now and wait, if you tell me to, till the company disperses; besides, I have nothing else to do with myself: I’m so agitated that I won’t be able to sleep. Finally, though it’s shameless and improper to pursue a person so directly, I’ll tell you directly: I’ve come to seek your friendship, my dear Prince. You are a most incomparable man, that is, you don’t lie at every step, and maybe not at all, and there’s one matter in which I need a friend and an advisor, because I now decidedly find myself among the unfortunate …”
He laughed again.
“The trouble is,” the prince reflected for a moment, “that you want to wait till they disperse, but God knows when that will be. Wouldn’t it be better to go down to the park now? They’ll wait, really; I’ll apologize.”
“No, no, I have my reasons for not arousing the suspicion that we are having an urgent conversation with some purpose; there are people here who are very interested in our relations—don’t you know that, Prince? And it will be much better if they see that they are the most friendly relations, and not merely urgent ones—you understand? They’ll leave in a couple of hours; I’ll take about twenty minutes of your time—maybe half an hour …”
“You’re most welcome, please stay. I’m very glad even without explanations; and thank you very much for your kind words about our friendly relations. You must forgive me for being absentminded tonight; you know, I simply cannot be attentive at the moment.”
“I see, I see,” Evgeny Pavlovich murmured with a slight smile. He laughed very easily that evening.
“What do you see?” the prince roused himself up.
“And don’t you suspect, dear Prince,” Evgeny Pavlovich went on smiling, without answering the direct question, “don’t you suspect that I’ve simply come to hoodwink you and, incidentally, to worm something out of you, eh?”
“There’s no doubt at all that you’ve come to worm something out of me,” the prince finally laughed, too, “and it may even be that you’ve decided to deceive me a bit. But so what? I’m not afraid of you; what’s more, it somehow makes no difference to me now, can you believe that? And … and … and since I’m convinced before all that you are still an excellent person, we may indeed end by becoming friends. I like you very much, Evgeny Pavlych; in my opinion, you’re … a very, very decent man!”
“Well, in any case it’s very nice dealing with you, even in whatever it may be,” Evgeny Pavlovich concluded. “Come, I’ll drink a glass to your health; I’m terribly pleased to have joined you here. Ah!” he suddenly stopped, “has this gentleman Ippolit come to live with you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not going to die at once, I suppose?”
“Why?”
“No, nothing; I spent half an hour with him here …”
All this time Ippolit was waiting for the prince and constantly glancing at him and Evgeny Pavlovich, while they stood aside talking. He became feverishly animated as they approached the table. He was restless and agitated; sweat broke out on his forehead. His eyes, along with a sort of roving, continual restlessness, also showed a certain vague impatience; his gaze moved aimlessly from object to object, from person to person. Though up to then he had taken great part in the general noisy conversation, his animation was only feverish; he paid no attention to the conversation itself; his arguments were incoherent, ironic, and carelessly paradoxical; he did not finish and dropped something he himself had begun saying a moment earlier with feverish ardor. The prince learned with surprise and regret that he had been allowed, unhindered, to drink two full glasses of champagne that evening, and that the glass he had started on, which stood before him, was already the third. But he learned it only lat
er; at the present moment he was not very observant.
“You know, I’m terribly glad that precisely today is your birthday!” cried Ippolit.
“Why?”
“You’ll see. Sit down quickly. First of all, because all these … your people have gathered. I reckoned there would be people; for the first time in my life my reckoning came out right! Too bad I didn’t know about your birthday, or I’d have come with a present … Ha, ha! Maybe I did come with a present! Is it long before daylight?”
“It’s less than two hours till dawn,” Ptitsyn said, looking at his watch.
“Who needs the dawn, if you can read outside as it is?” someone observed.
“It’s because I need to see the rim of the sun. Can one drink the sun’s health, Prince, what do you think?”
Ippolit asked abruptly, addressing everyone without ceremony, as if he were in command, but he seemed not to notice it himself.
“Perhaps so; only you ought to calm down, eh, Ippolit?”
“You’re always talking about sleep; you’re my nanny, Prince! As soon as the sun appears and ‘resounds’ in the sky (who said that in a poem: ‘the sun resounded in the sky’?8 It’s meaningless, but good!)—we’ll go to bed. Lebedev! Is the sun the wellspring of life? What are the ‘wellsprings of life’ in the Apocalypse? Have you heard of ‘the star Wormwood,’9 Prince?”
“I’ve heard that Lebedev thinks this ‘star Wormwood’ is the network of railways spread over Europe.”
“No, excuse me, sir, that’s not it, sir!” Lebedev cried, jumping up and waving his arms, as if wishing to stop the general laughter that was beginning. “Excuse me, sir! With these gentlemen … all these gentlemen,” he suddenly turned to the prince, “in certain points, it’s like this, sir …” and he unceremoniously rapped the table twice, which increased the laughter still more.
Lebedev, though in his usual “evening” state, was much too agitated and irritated this time by the preceding long “learned” argument, and on such occasions his attitude towards his opponents was one of boundless and highly candid contempt.
“That’s not it, sir! Half an hour ago, Prince, we made an agreement not to interrupt; not to laugh while someone is talking; to allow him to say everything freely, and then let the atheists object if they want to; we made the general our chairman, so we did, sir! Or else what, sir? Or else anybody can get thrown off, even with the highest idea, sir, even with the deepest idea …”
“Well, speak, speak: nobody’s throwing you off!” voices rang out.
“Speak, but not through your hat.”
“What is this ‘star Wormwood’?” somebody asked.
“I have no idea!” General Ivolgin answered, taking his recently appointed place as chairman with an air of importance.
“I have a remarkable fondness for all these arguments and irritations, Prince—learned ones, naturally,” murmured Keller, meanwhile stirring on his chair in decided rapture and impatience, “learned and political ones,” he turned suddenly and unexpectedly to Evgeny Pavlovich, who was sitting almost next to him. “You know, I’m terribly fond of reading about the English Parliaments in the newspapers, that is, not in the sense of what they discuss (I’m no politician, you know), but of the way they discuss things together, and behave, so to speak, like politicians: ‘the noble viscount sitting opposite me,’ ‘the noble earl, who shares my thinking,’ ‘my noble opponent, who has astonished Europe with his proposal,’ that is, all those little expressions, all that parliamentarianism of a free nation—that’s what our sort finds attractive! I’m captivated, Prince. I’ve always been an artist in the depths of my soul, I swear to you, Evgeny Pavlych.”
“So then,” Ganya was seething in another corner, “it turns out, in your opinion, that the railways are cursed, that they’re the bane of mankind, a plague that has fallen upon the earth to muddy the ‘wellsprings of life’?”10
Gavrila Ardalionovich was in a particularly agitated mood that evening, a merry, almost triumphant mood, as it seemed to the prince. He was, of course, joking with Lebedev, egging him on, but soon he became excited himself.
“Not the railways, no, sir!” Lebedev protested, beside himself and at the same time enjoying himself tremendously. “By themselves the railways won’t muddy the wellsprings of life, but the thing as a whole is cursed, sir, all this mood of our last few centuries, as a general whole, scientific and practical, is maybe indeed cursed, sir.”
“Certainly cursed or only maybe? It’s important in this case,” inquired Evgeny Pavlovich.
“Cursed, cursed, certainly cursed!” Lebedev confirmed with passion.
“Don’t rush, Lebedev, you’re much kinder in the mornings,” Ptitsyn observed, smiling.
“But more candid in the evenings! More heartfelt and more candid in the evenings!” Lebedev turned to him heatedly. “More simple-hearted and more definite, more honest and more honorable, and though I expose myself to you in this way, I spit on it, sir. I challenge you all now, all you atheists: how are you going to save the world, and what is the normal path you’ve found for it—you men of science, industry, associations, salaries, and the rest? What is it? Credit? What is credit? What will credit lead you to?”
“Aren’t you a curious one!” observed Evgeny Pavlovich.
“My opinion is that whoever isn’t interested in such questions is a high-society chenapan,† sir!”
“At least it will lead to general solidarity and the balance of interests,” observed Ptitsyn.
“And that’s all, that’s all! Without recognizing any moral foundations except the satisfaction of personal egoism and material necessity? Universal peace, universal happiness—from necessity! May I venture to ask if I understand you correctly, my dear sir?”
“But the universal necessity to live, eat, and drink, and the full, finally scientific, conviction that you will never satisfy that necessity without universal association and solidarity of interests is, it seems, a strong enough thought to serve as a foothold and a ‘wellspring of life’ for the future ages of mankind,” observed the now seriously excited Ganya.
“The necessity to eat and drink, that is, the mere sense of self-preservation …”
“But isn’t the sense of self-preservation enough? The sense of self-preservation is the normal law of mankind …”
“Who told you that?” Evgeny Pavlovich cried suddenly. “A law it is, true, but no more normal than the law of destruction, and perhaps also of self-destruction. Can self-preservation be the only normal law of mankind?”
“Aha!” cried Ippolit, turning quickly to Evgeny Pavlovich and looking him over with wild curiosity; but seeing that the man was laughing, he laughed himself, nudged Kolya, who was standing beside him, and again asked him what time it was, even pulling Kolya’s silver watch towards him and greedily looking at the dial. Then, as if forgetting everything, he stretched out on the sofa, put his hands behind his head, and began staring at the ceiling; half a minute later he was sitting at the table again, straight-backed and listening attentively to the babble of the thoroughly excited Lebedev.
“A perfidious and derisive thought, a goading thought,” Lebedev eagerly picked up Evgeny Pavlovich’s paradox, “a thought uttered with the purpose of inciting the adversaries to fight—but a correct thought! Because, worldly scoffer and cavalier that you are (though not without ability!), you don’t know yourself to what degree your thought is a profound and correct thought! Yes, sir. The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind! The devil rules equally over mankind until a limit in time still unknown to us. You laugh? You don’t believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French notion, a frivolous notion. Do you know who the devil is? Do you know what his name is? And without even knowing his name, you laugh at his form, following Voltaire’s example,11 at his hoofs, his tail, and his horns, which you yourselves have invented; for the unclean spirit is a great and terrible spirit, and not with the hoofs and horns you have invented for
him. But he’s not the point now!…”
“How do you know he’s not the point now?” Ippolit suddenly cried, and guffawed as if in a fit.
“A clever and suggestive thought!” Lebedev praised. “But, again, that’s not the point, but the question is whether the ‘wellsprings of life’ have not weakened with the increase …”
“Of railroads?” cried Kolya.
“Not of railway communications, my young but passionate adolescent, but of that whole tendency, of which railways may serve as an image, so to speak, an artistic expression. Hurrying, clanging, banging, and speeding, they say, for the happiness of mankind! ‘It’s getting much too noisy and industrial in mankind, there is too little spiritual peace,’ complains a secluded thinker. ‘Yes, but the banging of carts delivering bread for hungry mankind may be better than spiritual peace,’ triumphantly replies another, a widely traveled thinker, and walks off vaingloriously. I, the vile Lebedev, do not believe in the carts that deliver bread to mankind! For carts that deliver bread to all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver, as has already happened …”
“So carts may quite cold-bloodedly exclude?” someone picked up.
“As has already happened,” Lebedev repeated, not deigning to notice the question. “There has already been Malthus, the friend of mankind.12 But a friend of mankind with shaky moral foundations is a cannibal of mankind, to say nothing of his vainglory; insult the vainglory of one of these numberless friends of mankind, and he is ready at once to set fire to the four corners of the world out of petty vengeance—the same, however, as any one of us, to speak fairly, as myself, the vilest of all, for I might be the first to bring wood and then run away. But again, that’s not the point!”
The Idiot Page 48