The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Chilly?”

  And he hunched his shoulders.

  “Very,” his companion replied with extreme readiness, “and note that this is a warm spell. What if it were freezing? It didn’t even occur to me that it was so cold at home. I’m unaccustomed to it.”

  “Coming from abroad, are you?”

  “Yes, from Switzerland.”

  “Whew! Fancy that!…”

  The black-haired man whistled and laughed.

  They got to talking. The readiness of the blond young man in the Swiss cloak to answer all his swarthy companion’s questions was astonishing and betrayed no suspicion of the utter carelessness, idleness, and impropriety of some of the questions. In answering them he said, among other things, that he had indeed been away from Russia for a long time, more than four years, that he had been sent abroad on account of illness, some strange nervous illness like the falling sickness or St. Vitus’s dance, some sort of trembling and convulsions. Listening to him, the swarthy man grinned several times; he laughed particularly when, to his question: “And did they cure you?” the blond man answered: “No, they didn’t.”

  “Heh! Got all that money for nothing, and we go believing them,” the swarthy man remarked caustically.

  “That’s the real truth!” a poorly dressed gentleman who was sitting nearby broke into the conversation—some sort of encrusted copying clerk, about forty years old, strongly built, with a red nose and a pimply face, “the real truth, sir, they just draw all Russian forces to themselves for nothing!”

  “Oh, you’re quite wrong in my case,” the Swiss patient picked up in a soft and conciliatory voice. “Of course, I can’t argue, because I don’t know everything, but my doctor gave me some of his last money for the trip and kept me there for almost two years at his own expense.”

  “What, you mean there was nobody to pay?” asked the swarthy man.

  “Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported me there, died two years ago. Then I wrote here to General Epanchin’s wife, my distant relation, but I got no answer. So with that I’ve come back.”

  “Come back where, though?”

  “You mean where will I be staying?… I don’t really know yet … so …”

  “You haven’t decided yet?”

  And both listeners burst out laughing again.

  “And I supppose that bundle contains your whole essence?” the swarthy man asked.

  “I’m ready to bet it does,” the red-nosed clerk picked up with an extremely pleased air, “and that there’s no further belongings in the baggage car—though poverty’s no vice, that again is something one can’t help observing.”

  It turned out to be so: the blond young man acknowledged it at once and with extraordinary alacrity.

  “Your bundle has a certain significance all the same,” the clerk went on after they had laughed their fill (remarkably, the owner of the bundle, looking at them, finally started laughing himself, which increased their merriment), “and though you can bet it doesn’t contain any imported gold packets of napoleondors or friedrichsdors, or any Dutch yellow boys,2 a thing that might be deduced merely from the gaiters enclosing your foreign shoes, but … if to your bundle we were to add some such supposed relation as General Epanchin’s wife, then your bundle would take on a somewhat different significance, naturally only in the case that General Epanchin’s wife is indeed your relation, and you didn’t make a mistake out of absentmindedness … which is quite, quite human … well, say … from an excess of imagination.”

  “Oh, you’ve guessed right again,” the blond young man picked up. “I am indeed almost mistaken, that is, she’s almost not my relation; so that I really wasn’t surprised in the least when they didn’t answer me there. I even expected it.”

  “Wasted your money franchising the letter for nothing. Hm … but at any rate you’re simple-hearted and sincere, which is commendable! Hm … and General Epanchin we know, sir, essentially because he’s a generally known man. And the late Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported you in Switzerland, we also knew, sir, if it was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev, because there were two cousins. The other one is still in the Crimea, but the deceased Nikolai Andreevich was a respectable man, and with connections, and owned four thousand souls3 in his time, sir …”

  “Just so, his name was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev,” and, having responded, the young man looked intently and inquisitively at Mr. Know-it-all.

  These Mr. Know-it-alls are occasionally, even quite frequently, to be met with in a certain social stratum. They know everything, all the restless inquisitiveness of their minds and all their abilities are turned irresistibly in one direction, certainly for lack of more important life interests and perspectives, as a modern thinker would say. The phrase “they know all” implies, however, a rather limited sphere: where so-and-so works, who he is acquainted with, how much he is worth, where he was governor, who he is married to, how much his wife brought him, who his cousins are, who his cousins twice removed are, etc., etc., all in the same vein. For the most part these know-it-alls go about with holes at the elbows and earn a salary of seventeen roubles a month. The people whose innermost secrets they know would, of course, be unable to understand what interests guide them, and yet many of them are positively consoled by this knowledge that amounts to a whole science; they achieve self-respect and even the highest spiritual satisfaction. Besides, it is a seductive science. I have known scholars, writers, poets, political activists who sought and found their highest peace and purpose in this science, who positively made their careers by it alone. During this whole conversation the swarthy young man kept yawning, looking aimlessly out of the window and waiting impatiently for the end of the journey. He seemed somehow distracted, very distracted, all but alarmed, was even becoming somehow strange: sometimes he listened without listening, looked without looking, laughed without always knowing or understanding himself why he was laughing.

  “But, excuse me, with whom do I have the honor …” the pimply gentleman suddenly addressed the blond young man with the bundle.

  “Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin,” the other replied with full and immediate readiness.

  “Prince Myshkin? Lev Nikolaevich? Don’t know it, sir. Never even so much as heard it, sir,” the clerk replied, pondering. “I don’t mean the name, the name’s historical, it can and should be found in Karamzin’s History,4 I mean the person, sir, there’s no Prince Myshkins to be met with anywhere, and even the rumors have died out.”

  “Oh, that’s certain!” the prince answered at once. “There are no Prince Myshkins at all now except me; it seems I’m the last one. And as for our fathers and grandfathers, we’ve even had some farmers among them. My father, however, was a second lieutenant in the army, from the junkers.5 But I don’t know in what way Mrs. Epanchin also turns out to be Princess Myshkin, also the last in her line …”

  “Heh, heh, heh! The last in her line. Heh, heh! What a way to put it,” the clerk tittered.

  The swarthy man also smiled. The blond man was slightly surprised that he had managed to make a pun, though a rather bad one.

  “And imagine, I never thought what I was saying,” he finally explained in surprise.

  “That’s clear, that’s clear, sir,” the clerk merrily agreed.

  “And say, Prince, did you do any studying there at your professor’s?” the swarthy man suddenly asked.

  “Yes … I did …”

  “And me, I never studied anything.”

  “Well, I only did a little of this and that,” the prince added, almost apologetically. “They found it impossible to educate me systematically because of my illness.”

  “You know the Rogozhins?” the swarthy man asked quickly.

  “No, not at all. I know very few people in Russia. Are you a Rogozhin?”

  “Yes, I’m Parfyon Rogozhin.”

  “Parfyon? You’re not from those same Rogozhins …” the clerk began with increased importance.

  “Yes, the same, the very same,” the swa
rthy man interrupted quickly and with impolite impatience; he had, incidentally, never once addressed the pimply clerk, but from the very beginning had talked only to the prince.

  “But … can it be?” The clerk was astonished to the point of stupefaction, his eyes nearly popped out, and his whole face at once began to compose itself into something reverent and obsequious, even frightened. “Of that same Semyon Parfyonovich Rogozhin, the hereditary honorary citizen6 who died about a month ago and left two and a half million in capital?”

  “And how do you know he left two and a half million in pure capital?” the swarthy man interrupted, this time also not deigning to glance at the clerk. “Just look!” he winked at the prince. “And what’s the good of them toadying like that straight off? It’s true my parent died, and I’m coming home from Pskov a month later all but bootless. Neither my brother, the scoundrel, nor my mother sent me any money or any notice—nothing! Like a dog! Spent the whole month in Pskov in delirium …”

  “And now you’ve got a nice little million or more coming, and that’s at the least—oh, Lord!” the clerk clasped his hands.

  “Well, what is it to him, pray tell me!” Rogozhin nodded towards him again irritably and spitefully. “I won’t give you a kopeck, even if you walk upside down right here in front of me.”

  “And I will, I will.”

  “Look at that! No, I won’t give you anything, not even if you dance a whole week for it!”

  “Don’t give me anything! Don’t! It serves me right! But I will dance. I’ll leave my wife, my little children, and dance before you. Be nice, be nice!”

  “Pah!” the swarthy man spat. “Five weeks ago,” he turned to the prince, “I ran away from my parent to my aunt in Pskov, like you, with nothing but a little bundle; I fell into delirium there, and while I was gone he up and died. Hit by a stroke. Memory eternal to the deceased,7 but he almost did me in before then! By God, Prince, believe me! If I hadn’t run away, he’d have done me to death.”

  “Did you do something to make him angry?” the prince responded, studying the millionaire in the lambskin coat with some special curiosity. But though there might well have been something noteworthy in the million itself and in receiving an inheritance, the prince was surprised and intrigued by something else; besides, Rogozhin himself, for some reason, was especially eager to make the prince his interlocutor, though the need for an interlocutor seemed more mechanical than moral; somehow more from distraction than from simple-heartedness; from anxiety, from agitation, just to look at someone and wag his tongue about something. It seemed he was still delirious, or at least in a fever. As for the clerk, the man simply hovered over Rogozhin, not daring to breathe, catching and weighing every word as if searching for diamonds.

  “Angry, yes, he was angry, and maybe rightly,” Rogozhin replied, “but it was my brother who really got me. About my mother there’s nothing to say, she’s an old woman, reads the Menaion,8 sits with the old crones, and whatever brother Senka decides, so it goes. But why didn’t he let me know in time? We understand that, sir! True, I was unconscious at the time. They also say a telegram was sent. But the telegram happened to come to my aunt. And she’s been widowed for thirty years and sits with the holy fools9 from morning till evening. A nun, or not a nun but worse still. She got scared of the telegram and took it to the police station without opening it, and so it’s been lying there ever since. Only Konev, Vassily Vassilyich, rescued me. He wrote about everything. At night my brother cut the gold tassels off the brocade cover on the old man’s coffin: ‘They cost a whole lot of money,’ he says. But for that alone he could go to Siberia if I want, because that’s a blasphemy. Hey, you, scarecrow!” he turned to the clerk. “What’s the law: is it a blasphemy?”

  “A blasphemy! A blasphemy!” the clerk agreed at once.

  “Meaning Siberia?”

  “Siberia! Siberia! Straight off to Siberia!”

  “They keep thinking I’m still sick,” Rogozhin continued to the prince, “but without saying a word, secretly, I got on the train, still sick, and I’m coming. Open the gates, brother Semyon Semyonych! He said things to the old man about me, I know it. And it’s true I really irritated the old man then, on account of Nastasya Filippovna. That’s my own doing. Sin snared me.”

  “On account of Nastasya Filippovna?” the clerk said obsequiously, as if realizing something.

  “You don’t know her!” Rogozhin shouted at him impatiently.

  “Or maybe I do!” the clerk replied triumphantly.

  “Well, now! As if there’s so few Nastasya Filippovnas! And what a brazen creature you are, I tell you! I just knew some creature like him would cling to me at once!” he continued to the prince.

  “Or maybe I do know her, sir!” the clerk fidgeted. “Lebedev knows! You, Your Highness, are pleased to reproach me, but what if I prove it? It’s the same Nastasya Filippovna on account of whom your parent wanted to admonish you with a blackthorn stick, and Nastasya Filippovna is Barashkov, she’s even a noble lady, so to speak, and also a sort of princess, and she keeps company with a certain Totsky, Afanasy Ivanovich, exclusively with him alone, a landowner and a big capitalist, a member of companies and societies, and great friends on that account with General Epanchin …”

  “Aha, so that’s how you are!” Rogozhin was really surprised at last. “Pah, the devil, so he does know.”

  “He knows everything! Lebedev knows everything! I, Your Highness, spent two months driving around with Alexashka Likhachev, and also after your parent’s death, and I know everything, meaning every corner and back alley, and in the end not a step is taken without Lebedev. Nowadays he’s abiding in debtor’s prison, but before that I had occasion to know Armance, and Coralie, and Princess Patsky, and Nastasya Filippovna, and I had occasion to know a lot more besides.”

  “Nastasya Filippovna? Are she and Likhachev …” Rogozhin looked at him spitefully, his lips even turned pale and trembled.

  “N-nothing! N-n-nothing! Nothing at all!” the clerk caught himself and quickly hurried on. “That is, Likhachev couldn’t get her for any amount of money! No, it’s not like with Armance. There’s only Totsky. And in the evening, at the Bolshoi or the French Theater,10 she sits in her own box. The officers say all kinds of things among themselves, but even they can’t prove anything: ‘There’s that same Nastasya Filippovna,’ they say, and that’s all; but concerning the rest—nothing! Because there’s nothing to say.”

  “That’s how it all is,” Rogozhin scowled and confirmed gloomily. “Zalyozhev told me the same thing then. That time, Prince, I was running across Nevsky Prospect in my father’s three-year-old coat, and she was coming out of a shop, getting into a carriage. Burned me right through. I meet Zalyozhev, there’s no comparing me with him, he looks like a shopkeeper fresh from the barber’s, with a lorgnette in his eye, while the old man has us flaunting tarred boots and eating meatless cabbage soup. That’s no match for you, he says, that’s a princess, and she’s called Nastasya Filippovna, family name Barashkov, and she lives with Totsky, and now Totsky doesn’t know how to get rid of her, because he’s reached the prime of life, he’s fifty-five, and wants to marry the foremost beauty in all Petersburg. And then he let on that I could see Nastasya Filippovna that night at the Bolshoi Theater, at the ballet, in her own box, in the baignoire, sitting there. With our parent, just try going to the ballet—it’ll end only one way—he’ll kill you! But, anyhow, I ran over for an hour on the quiet and saw Nastasya Filippovna again; didn’t sleep all that night. The next morning the deceased gives me two five percent notes, five thousand roubles each, and says go and sell them, take seven thousand five hundred to the Andreevs’ office, pay them, and bring me what’s left of the ten thousand without stopping anywhere; I’ll be waiting for you. I cashed the notes all right, took the money, but didn’t go to the Andreevs’ office, I went to the English shop without thinking twice, chose a pair of pendants with a diamond almost the size of a nut in each of them, and left owing them four hundre
d roubles—told them my name and they trusted me. I went to Zalyozhev with the pendants. Thus and so, brother, let’s go and see Nastasya Filippovna. Off we went. What was under my feet then, what was in front of me, what was to the sides—I don’t know or remember any of it. We walked right into her drawing room, she came out to us herself. I didn’t tell her then that it was me, but Zalyozhev says, ‘This is for you from Parfyon Rogozhin, in memory of meeting you yesterday. Be so good as to accept it.’ She opened it, looked, smiled: ‘Thank your friend Mr. Rogozhin for his kind attention,’ she said, bowed, and went out. Well, why didn’t I die right then! If I went at all, it was only because I thought, ‘Anyway, I won’t come back alive!’ And what offended me most was that that beast Zalyozhev had it all for himself. I’m short and dressed like a boor, and I stand silently staring at her because I’m embarrassed, and he’s all so fashionable, pomaded and curled, red-cheeked, in a checkered tie—fawning on her, bowing to her, and it’s sure she took him for me! ‘Well,’ I say when we’ve left, ‘don’t you go getting any ideas on me, understand?’ He laughs: ‘And what kind of accounting will you give Semyon Parfyonych now?’ The truth is I wanted to drown myself right then, without going home, but I thought: ‘It makes no difference,’ and like a cursed man I went home.”

  “Ah! Oh!” the clerk went all awry and was even trembling. “And the deceased would have hounded you into the next world for ten roubles, let alone ten thousand,” he nodded to the prince. The prince studied Rogozhin with curiosity; the man seemed still paler at that moment.

  “Hounded!” Rogozhin repeated. “What do you know? He found out all about it at once,” he continued to the prince, “and Zalyozhev also went blabbing to everybody he met. The old man took me and locked me upstairs, and admonished me for a whole hour. ‘I’m just getting you prepared now,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back later to say good night.’ And what do you think? The old gray fellow went to Nastasya Filippovna, bowed to the ground before her, pleaded and wept. She finally brought the box and threw it at him: ‘Here are your earrings for you, graybeard, and now they’re worth ten times more to me, since Parfyon got them under such a menace. Give my regards to Parfyon Semyonych,’ she says, ‘and thank him for me.’ Well, and meanwhile, with my mother’s blessing, I got twenty roubles from Seryozhka Protushin and went by train to Pskov, and arrived there in a fever. The old women started reading prayers at me, and I sat there drunk, then went and spent my last money in the pot-houses, lay unconscious in the street all night, and by morning was delirious, and the dogs bit me all over during the night. I had a hard time recovering.”