The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “There’s nobody in the whole house now except the four of us,” he observed aloud and gave the prince a strange look.

  In the very first room, Nastasya Filippovna, too, was waiting for them, also dressed very simply and all in black; she rose to meet them, but did not smile and did not even offer the prince her hand.

  Her intent and anxious gaze impatiently turned to Aglaya. The two women sat down at some distance from each other, Aglaya on the sofa in the 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 perplexity and as if with pain, the prince again looked at Rogozhin, but the man went on smiling his former smile. The silence continued for another few moments.

  A sort of sinister feeling finally passed over Nastasya Filippovna’s face; her gaze was becoming stubborn, firm, and almost hateful, not tearing itself from her guest for a single moment. Aglaya was obviously abashed, but not intimidated. Coming in, she had barely glanced at her rival and so far had been sitting all the time with downcast eyes, as if lost in thought. Once or twice, as if by chance, she looked around the room; an obvious repugnance showed itself in her face, as if she feared soiling herself there. She mechanically straightened her clothes and once even changed her place anxiously, moving towards the corner of the sofa. She herself was hardly aware of all her movements; but the unawareness increased the offense still more. At last she looked firmly and directly into Nastasya Filippovna’s eyes, and at once clearly read everything that flashed in the incensed gaze of her rival. Woman understood woman. Aglaya shuddered.

  “You know, of course, why I asked for this meeting,” she spoke finally, but very quietly, and even pausing a couple of times in this short phrase.

  “No, I have no idea,” Nastasya Filippovna answered drily and curtly.

  Aglaya blushed. Perhaps it suddenly seemed terribly strange and incredible to her that she was now sitting with “that woman,” in “that woman’s” house, and was in need of her reply. At the first sounds of Nastasya Filippovna’s voice, it was as if a shudder passed over her body. All this, of course, was very well noted by “that woman.”

  “You understand everything … but you deliberately make it look as if you don’t,” Aglaya said almost in a whisper, looking sullenly at the ground.

  “Why would I do that?” Nastasya Filippovna smiled slightly.

  “You want to take advantage of my position … that I am in your house,” Aglaya went on absurdly and awkwardly.

  “You are to blame for that position, not I!” Nastasya Filippovna suddenly flared up. “I didn’t invite you, but you me, and so far I don’t know why.”

  Aglaya raised her head arrogantly.

  “Hold your tongue; it is not with this weapon of yours that I have come to fight with you …”

  “Ah! So you’ve come to ‘fight’ after all? Imagine, I thought that, anyhow, you were … more clever …”

  They both looked at each other, no longer concealing their spite. One of these women was the same one who had so recently written such letters to the other. And now everything scattered at their first meeting and with their first words. What then? At that moment it seemed that none of the four people in the room found it strange. The prince, who the day before would not have believed it possible even to dream of it, now stood, looked, and listened as if he had long anticipated it all. The most fantastic dream had suddenly turned into the most glaring and sharply outlined reality. One of these women despised the other so much at that moment, and wished so much to say it to her (perhaps she had come only for that, as Rogozhin put it the next day), that, however fantastic the other woman was, with her disordered mind and sick soul, it seemed no preconceived idea could withstand the venomous, purely female despite of her rival. The prince was certain that Nastasya Filippovna would not start talking about the letters on her own; by her flashing glances, he could tell what those letters might cost her now; but he would have given half his life if Aglaya, too, would not start talking about them now.

  But Aglaya suddenly seemed to make an effort and at once gained control of herself.

  “You misunderstand me,” she said. “I haven’t come … to quarrel with you, though I don’t like you. I … I’ve come to you … for a human talk. When I summoned you, I had already decided what I was going to speak about, and I will not go back on my decision, though you may misunderstand me completely. That will be the worse for you, not for me. I wanted to reply to what you wrote to me, and to reply in person, because it seemed more convenient to me. Listen, then, to my reply to all your letters: I felt sorry for Prince Lev Nikolaevich for the first time the very day I made his acquaintance and later when I learned about all that had happened at your party. I felt sorry for him because he is such a simple-hearted man and in his simplicity believed that he could be happy … with a woman … of such character. What I feared for him was just what happened: you could not love him, you tormented him and abandoned him. You could not love him because you are too proud … no, not proud, I’m mistaken, but because you are vain … and not even that: you are selfish to the point of madness, of which your letters to me also serve as proof. You could not love him, simple as he is, and may even have despised him and laughed at him to yourself; you could love only your own disgrace and the incessant thought that you had been disgraced and offended. If you had had less disgrace or none at all, you would have been unhappier …” (It was a pleasure for Aglaya to articulate these words, so hurriedly leaping out, yet long prepared and pondered, already pondered when today’s meeting could not even have been pictured in a dream; with a venomous gaze she followed their effect in Nastasya Filippovna’s face, distorted with emotion.) “You remember,” she went on, “he wrote me a letter then; he says you know about the letter and have even read it? I understood everything from that letter and understood it correctly; he recently confirmed it to me himself, that is, everything I’m telling you now, even word for word. After the letter I began to wait. I guessed that you’d have to come here, because you really can’t do without Petersburg: you’re still too young and good-looking for the provinces … However, those are also not my words,” she added, blushing terribly, and from that moment on the color never left her face to the very end of her speech. “When I saw the prince again, I felt terribly pained and offended for him. Don’t laugh; if you laugh, you’re not worthy of understanding it …”

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

  “However, it’s all the same to me, laugh as much as you like. When I asked him myself, he told me that he had stopped loving you long ago, that even the memory of you was painful for him, but that he pitied you, and that when he remembered you, his heart felt ‘pierced forever.’ I must tell you, too, that I have never met a single person in my life who is equal to him in noble simple-heartedness and infinite trustfulness. I guessed after what he said that anyone who wanted to could deceive him, and whoever deceived him he would forgive afterwards, and it was for that that I loved him …”

  Aglaya stopped for a moment, as if struck, as if not believing herself that she could utter such a word; but at the same moment an almost boundless pride flashed in her eyes; it seemed that it was now all the same for her, even if “that woman” should laugh now at the confession that had escaped her.

  “I’ve told you everything, and, of course, you’ve now understood what I want from you?”

  “Perhaps I have; but say it yourself,” Nastasya Filippovna replied quietly.

  Wrath lit up in Aglaya’s face.

  “I wanted to find out from you,” she said firmly and distinctly, “by what right do you interfere in his feelings towards me? By what right do you dare write letters to me? By what right do you declare every minute to me and to him that you love him, after you yourself abandoned him and ran away from him in such an offensive and … disgraceful way?”

  “I have never declared either to him or to you that I love him,” Nastasya
Filippovna spoke with effort, “and … you’re right, I ran away from him …” she added barely audibly.

  “What do you mean you ‘never declared either to him or to me’?” cried Aglaya. “And what about your letters? Who asked you to matchmake us and persuade me to marry him? Isn’t that a declaration? Why do you force yourself on us? At first I thought you wanted, on the contrary, to make me loathe him by meddling with us, so that I would abandon him, and only later did I guess what it was: you simply imagined that you were doing a lofty deed with all this posturing … Well, how could you love him, if you love your vanity so much? Why didn’t you simply go away, instead of writing ridiculous letters to me? Why don’t you now marry the noble man who loves you so much and has honored you by offering his hand? It’s all too clear why: if you marry Rogozhin, what sort of offense will you have left then? You’ll even get too much honor! Evgeny Pavlych said of you that you’ve read too many poems and are ‘too well educated for your … position’; that you’re a bookish woman and a lily-white; add your vanity, and there are all your reasons …”

  “And you’re not a lily-white?”

  The matter had arrived too hastily, too nakedly at such an unexpected point, unexpected because Nastasya Filippovna, on her way to Pavlovsk, had still been dreaming of something, though, of course, she anticipated it would sooner be bad than good; as for Aglaya, she was decidedly carried along by the impulse of the moment, as if falling down a hill, and could not resist the terrible pleasure of revenge. For Nastasya Filippovna it was even strange to see Aglaya like this; she looked at her and could not believe her eyes, and was decidedly at a loss for the first moment. Whether she was a woman who had read too many poems, as Evgeny Pavlovich suggested, or was simply a madwoman, as the prince was convinced, in any case this woman—who on occasion had so cynical and brazen a manner—was in reality far more shy, tender, and trustful than one might have thought. True, there was much in her that was bookish, dreamy, self-enclosed, and fantastical, but much, too, that was strong and deep … The prince understood that; suffering showed in his face. Aglaya noticed it and trembled with hatred.

  “How dare you address me like that?” she said with inexpressible haughtiness, in reply to Nastasya Filippovna’s remark.

  “You probably misheard me,” Nastasya Filippovna was surprised. “How did I address you?”

  “If you wanted to be an honest woman, why didn’t you drop your seducer Totsky then, simply … without theatrics?” Aglaya said suddenly out of the blue.

  “What do you know about my position, that you dare to judge me?” Nastasya Filippovna gave a start and turned terribly pale.

  “I know that you didn’t go to work, but went off with the rich Rogozhin, in order to present yourself as a fallen angel. I’m not surprised that Totsky wanted to shoot himself because of a fallen angel!”

  “Stop it!” Nastasya Filippovna said with repugnance and as if through pain. “You understand me as well as … Darya Alexeevna’s chambermaid, who went to the justice of the peace the other day to make a complaint against her fiancé. She’d have understood better than you …”

  “She’s probably an honest girl and lives by her own labor. Why do you have such contempt for a chambermaid?”

  “I don’t have contempt for labor, but for you when you speak about labor.”

  “If you wanted to be an honest woman, you should have gone to work as a washerwoman.”

  The two women stood up, pale-faced, and looked at each other.

  “Aglaya, stop! This is unfair,” the prince cried out like a lost man. Rogozhin was no longer smiling, but listened with compressed lips and crossed arms.

  “Here, look at her,” Nastasya Filippovna said, trembling with spite, “at this young lady! And I took her for an angel! Have you come to see me without your governess, Aglaya Ivanovna?… And do you want … do you want me to tell you straight out, here and now, without embellishments, why you came? You were scared, that’s why.”

  “Scared of you?” asked Aglaya, beside herself with naïve and impudent amazement that the woman would dare to address her that way.

  “Yes, of me! You’re afraid of me, since you decided to come and see me. If you’re afraid of someone, you don’t despise him. And to think that I respected you, even up to this very minute! But do you know why you’re afraid of me and what your main purpose is now? You wanted to find out personally whether he loves me more than you or not, because you’re terribly jealous …”

  “He has already told me that he hates you …” Aglaya barely murmured.

  “Maybe; maybe I’m not worthy of him, only … only I think you’re lying! He can’t hate me, and he couldn’t have said that! However, I’m prepared to forgive you … considering your position … only all the same I did think better of you; I thought you were more intelligent, yes, and even better-looking, by God!… Well, so take your treasure … here he is, looking at you, unable to collect his wits, take him for yourself, but on one condition: get out right now! This minute!…”

  She fell into an armchair and dissolved in tears. But suddenly something new began to gleam in her eyes; she looked intently and fixedly at Aglaya and got up from her seat:

  “Or if you like, my girl, right now … I’ll or-der him, do you hear? I’ll simply or-der him, and he’ll drop you at once and stay with me forever, and marry me, and you’ll run home alone! Would you like that, my girl, would you?” she cried like a crazy woman, perhaps almost not believing herself that she could utter such words.

  Aglaya rushed to the door in fear, but stopped in the doorway as if rooted there and listened.

  “Would you like me to throw Rogozhin out? You thought, my girl, that I was going to up and marry Rogozhin for your good pleasure? Now I’ll shout in front of you: ‘Go, Rogozhin!’ and say to the prince: ‘Remember what you promised?’ Lord! Why did I humiliate myself so before them? Didn’t you assure me yourself, Prince, that you’d follow me whatever happened and never leave me; that you loved me, and forgave me everything, and re … resp … Yes, you said that, too! And I ran away from you only in order to unbind you, but now I don’t want to! Why did she treat me like a loose woman? Ask Rogozhin how loose I am, he’ll tell you! Now, when she has disgraced me, and that right in front of you, are you going to turn away from me and go out arm in arm with her? Then may you be cursed for that, because you’re the only one I trusted. Go, Rogozhin, I don’t need you!” she cried, almost oblivious, struggling to free the words from her breast, her face distorted and her lips parched, obviously not believing one drop of her own bravado, but at the same time wishing to prolong the moment if only for a second and deceive herself. The impulse was so strong that she might have died, or so at least it seemed to the prince. “Here he is, look, my girl!” she finally cried out to Aglaya, pointing at the prince with her hand. “If he doesn’t come to me right now, if he doesn’t take me and drop you, then you can have him, I give him up, I don’t need him!…”

  Both she and Aglaya stopped as if in expectation, and they both gave him mad looks. But he may not have understood all the force of this challenge, even certainly did not, one may say. He only saw before him the desperate, insane face, because of which, as he had once let slip to Aglaya, “his heart was forever pierced.” He could no longer bear it and with entreaty and reproach turned to Aglaya, pointing to Nastasya Filippovna:

  “It’s not possible! She’s … so unhappy!”

  But that was all he managed to say, going dumb under Aglaya’s terrible look. That look expressed so much suffering, and at the same time such boundless hatred, that he clasped his hands, cried out, and rushed to her, but it was already too late! She could not bear even a moment of hesitation in him, covered her face with her hands, cried: “Oh, my God!”—and rushed out of the room, Rogozhin going after her to unlock the street door.

  The prince also ran, but arms seized him on the threshold. Nastasya Filippovna’s stricken, distorted face looked at him point-blank, and her blue lips moved, saying:
>
  “After her? After her?…”

  She fell unconscious in his arms. He picked her up, brought her into the room, laid her in an armchair, and stood over her in dull expectation. There was a glass of water on the table; Rogozhin, who had returned, snatched it up and sprinkled her face with water; she opened her eyes and for a moment understood nothing; but suddenly she looked around, gave a start, cried out, and rushed to the prince.

  “Mine! Mine!” she cried. “Is the proud young lady gone? Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed hysterically, “ha, ha, ha! I wanted to give him to that young lady! But why? What for? Madwoman! Madwoman!… Get out, Rogozhin, ha, ha, ha!”

  Rogozhin looked at them intently, did not say a word, took his hat, and left. Ten minutes later the prince was sitting beside Nastasya Filippovna, gazing at her without tearing his eyes away, and stroking her dear head and face with both hands, like a little child. He laughed when she laughed and was ready to weep at her tears. He did not say anything, but listened intently to her fitful, rapturous, and incoherent babbling, hardly understood anything, but smiled quietly, and as soon as it seemed to him that she had begun to be anguished again, or to weep, or reproach, or complain, he would at once begin again to stroke her dear head and tenderly pass his hands over her cheeks, comforting and reassuring her like a child.