After a thorough but curt introduction from Ganya (who greeted his mother rather drily, did not greet his sister at all, and immediately took Ptitsyn somewhere out of the room), Nina Alexandrovna said a few kind words to the prince and told Kolya, who peeped in at the door, to take him to the middle room. Kolya was a boy with a merry and rather sweet face, and a trustful and simple-hearted manner.
“Where’s your luggage?” he asked, leading the prince into his room.
“I have a little bundle; I left it in the front hall.”
“I’ll bring it right away. All we have for servants are the cook and Matryona, so I have to help, too. Varya supervises everything and gets angry. Ganya says you came today from Switzerland?”
“Yes.”
“Is it nice in Switzerland?”
“Very.”
“Mountains?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll lug your bundles here right away.”
Varvara Ardalionovna came in.
“Matryona will make your bed now. Do you have a suitcase?”
“No, a bundle. Your brother went to get it; it’s in the front hall.”
“There’s no bundle there except this little one; where did you put it?” asked Kolya, coming back into the room.
“But there’s nothing except that,” announced the prince, taking his bundle.
“Aha! And I thought Ferdyshchenko might have filched it.”
“Don’t blather,” Varya said sternly. She also spoke quite drily with the prince and was barely polite with him.
“Chère Babette, you might treat me a little more gently, I’m not Ptitsyn.”
“You still ought to be whipped, Kolya, you’re so stupid. You may address all your needs to Matryona. Dinner is at half-past four. You may dine with us or in your room, whichever you prefer. Let’s go, Kolya, stop bothering him.”
“Let’s go, decisive character!”
On their way out they ran into Ganya.
“Is father at home?” Ganya asked Kolya and, on receiving an affirmative reply, whispered something in his ear.
Kolya nodded and went out after Varvara Ardalionovna.
“A couple of words, Prince, I forgot to tell you, what with all these … doings. A request: do me a favor—if it’s not too much of a strain for you—don’t babble here about what just went on between me and Aglaya, or there about what you find here; because there’s also enough ugliness here. To hell with it, though … But control yourself, at least for today.”
“I assure you that I babbled much less than you think,” said the prince, somewhat annoyed at Ganya’s reproaches. Their relations were obviously becoming worse and worse.
“Well, I’ve already suffered enough on account of you today. In short, I beg you.”
“Note this, too, Gavrila Ardalionovich, that I was not bound in any way earlier and had no reason not to mention the portrait. You didn’t ask me not to.”
“Pah, what a vile room,” Ganya observed, looking around disdainfully, “dark and windows on the courtyard. You’ve come to us inopportunely in all respects … Well, that’s none of my business; I don’t let rooms.”
Ptitsyn looked in and called Ganya. He hastily abandoned the prince and went out, though he had wanted to say something more, but was obviously hesitant and as if ashamed to begin; and he had also denounced the room as if from embarrassment.
The prince had just managed to wash and to straighten his clothes a bit when the door opened again and a new figure appeared in it.
This was a gentleman of about thirty, rather tall, broad-shouldered, with an enormous, curly, red-haired head. His face was fleshy and ruddy, his lips thick, his nose broad and flattened, his eyes small, puffy, and jeering, as if constantly winking. The whole of it made a rather insolent picture. His clothes were on the dirty side.
At first he opened the door just enough to thrust his head in. This thrust-in head surveyed the room for about five seconds, then the door slowly began to open, the whole figure was outlined on the threshold, but the visitor did not come in yet, but squinted and went on studying the prince from the threshold. Finally he closed the door behind him, approached, sat down on a chair, took the prince firmly by the hand and seated him at an angle to himself on the sofa.
“Ferdyshchenko,” he said, peering intently and questioningly into the prince’s face.
“What about it?” the prince replied, almost bursting into laughter.
“A tenant,” Ferdyshchenko spoke again, peering in the same way.
“You want to become acquainted?”
“Ehh!” said the visitor, ruffling up his hair and sighing, and he started looking into the opposite corner. “Do you have any money?” he asked suddenly, turning to the prince.
“A little.”
“How much, precisely?”
“Twenty-five roubles.”
“Show me.”
The prince took a twenty-five-rouble note from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Ferdyshchenko. The man unfolded it, looked at it, turned it over, then held it up to the light.
“Quite strange,” he said, as if pondering. “Why do they turn brown? These twenty-fivers sometimes get terribly brown, while others, on the contrary, fade completely. Take it.”
The prince took the note from him. Ferdyshchenko got up from the chair.
“I came to warn you: first of all, don’t lend me any money, because I’m sure to ask.”
“Very well.”
“Do you intend to pay here?”
“I do.”
“Well, I don’t, thank you. Mine’s the first door to your right, did you see? Try not to visit me too often; I’ll come to you, don’t worry about that. Have you seen the general?”
“No.”
“Heard him?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, you will see and hear him. Besides, he even asks me to lend him money! Avis au lecteur.† Good-bye. Is it possible to live with a name like Ferdyshchenko? Eh?”
“Why not?”
“Good-bye.”
And he went to the door. The prince learned later that this gentleman, as if out of duty, had taken upon himself the task of amazing everyone by his originality and merriment, but it somehow never came off. He even made an unpleasant impression on some people, which caused him genuine grief, but all the same he would not abandon his task. In the doorway he managed to set things right, as it were, by bumping into a gentleman coming in; after letting this new gentleman, who was unknown to the prince, enter the room, he obligingly winked several times behind his back by way of warning, and thus left not without a certain aplomb.
This new gentleman was tall, about fifty-five years old or even a little more, rather corpulent, with a purple-red, fleshy and flabby face framed by thick gray side-whiskers, with a moustache and large, rather protruding eyes. His figure would have been rather imposing if there had not been something seedy, shabby, even soiled about it. He was dressed in an old frock coat with nearly worn-through elbows; his shirt was also dirty—in a homey way. There was a slight smell of vodka in his vicinity; but his manner was showy, somewhat studied, and with an obvious wish to impress by its dignity. The gentleman approached the prince unhurriedly, with an affable smile, silently took his hand and, holding it in his own, peered into his face for some time, as if recognizing familiar features.
“Him! Him!” he said softly but solemnly. “As if alive! I heard them repeating the familiar and dear name and recalled the irretrievable past … Prince Myshkin?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“General Ivolgin, retired and unfortunate. Your name and patronymic, if I dare ask?”
“Lev Nikolaevich.”
“So, so! The son of my friend, one might say my childhood friend, Nikolai Petrovich?”
“My father’s name was Nikolai Lvovich.”
“Lvovich,” the general corrected himself, but unhurriedly and with perfect assurance, as if he had not forgotten in the least but had only made an accidental
slip. He sat down and, also taking the prince’s hand, sat him down beside him. “I used to carry you about in my arms, sir.”
“Really?” asked the prince. “My father has been dead for twenty years now.”
“Yes, twenty years, twenty years and three months. We studied together. I went straight into the military …”
“My father was also in the military, a second lieutenant in the Vasilkovsky regiment.”
“The Belomirsky. His transfer to the Belomirsky came almost on the eve of his death. I stood there and blessed him into eternity. Your mother …”
The general paused as if in sad remembrance.
“Yes, she also died six months later, of a chill,” said the prince.
“Not of a chill, not of a chill, believe an old man. I was there, I buried her, too. Of grief over the prince, and not of a chill. Yes, sir, I have memories of the princess, too! Youth! Because of her, the prince and I, childhood friends, nearly killed each other.”
The prince began listening with a certain mistrust.
“I was passionately in love with your mother while she was still a fiancée—my friend’s fiancée. The prince noticed it and was shocked. He comes to me in the morning, before seven o’clock, wakes me up. I get dressed in amazement; there is silence on both sides; I understand everything. He takes two pistols from his pocket. Across a handkerchief.† Without witnesses. Why witnesses, if we’ll be sending each other into eternity in five minutes? We loaded the pistols, stretched out the handkerchief, put the pistols to each other’s hearts, and looked into each other’s faces. Suddenly tears burst from our eyes, our hands trembled. Both of us, both of us, at once! Well, naturally, then came embraces and a contest in mutual magnanimity. The prince cries: ‘She’s yours!’ I cry: ‘She’s yours!’ In short … in short … you’ve come … to live with us?”
“Yes, for a while, perhaps,” said the prince, as if stammering slightly.
“Prince, mama wants to see you,” cried Kolya, looking in at the door. The prince got up to leave, but the general placed his right hand on his shoulder and amiably forced him back down on the couch.
“As a true friend of your father’s I wish to warn you,” said the general, “I have suffered, as you can see yourself, owing to a tragic catastrophe—but without a trial! Without a trial! Nina Alexandrovna is a rare woman. Varvara Ardalionovna, my daughter, is a rare daughter! Owing to certain circumstances, we let rooms—an unheard-of degradation! I, for whom it only remained to become a governor-general!… But we’re always glad to have you. And meanwhile there’s a tragedy in my house!”
The prince looked at him questioningly and with great curiosity.
“A marriage is being prepared, a rare marriage. A marriage between an ambiguous woman and a young man who could be a kammerjunker.29 This woman will be introduced into the house in which my daughter and wife live! But as long as there is breath in me, she will not enter it! I’ll lie down on the threshold, and just let her step over me!… I almost don’t speak with Ganya now, I even avoid meeting him. I’m warning you on purpose, though if you live with us you’ll witness it anyway without that. But you are my friend’s son, and I have the right to hope …”
“Prince, be so kind as to come to me in the drawing room,” Nina Alexandrovna called, appearing in the doorway herself.
“Imagine, my friend,” cried the general, “it appears I dandled the prince in my arms!”
Nina Alexandrovna looked reproachfully at the general and searchingly at the prince, but did not say a word. The prince followed her; but they had only just come to the drawing room and sat down, and Nina Alexandrovna had only just begun telling the prince something hastily and in a half-whisper, when the general himself suddenly arrived in the drawing room. Nina Alexandrovna fell silent at once and bent over her knitting with obvious vexation. The general may have noticed her vexation, but he continued to be in the most excellent spirits.
“My friend’s son!” he cried, addressing Nina Alexandrovna. “And so unexpectedly! I’d long ceased imagining. But, my dear, don’t you remember the late Nikolai Lvovich? Wasn’t he still in Tver … when you …?”
“I don’t remember Nikolai Lvovich. Is that your father?” she asked the prince.
“Yes. But I believe he died in Elisavetgrad, not in Tver,” the prince observed timidly to the general. “I heard it from Pavlishchev …”
“In Tver,” the general confirmed. “Just before his death he was transferred to Tver, and even before the illness developed. You were still too little and wouldn’t remember either the transfer or the trip. And Pavlishchev could have made a mistake, though he was a most excellent man.”
“You knew Pavlishchev, too?”
“He was a rare man, but I was a personal witness. I blessed him on his deathbed …”
“My father died while he was on trial,” the prince observed again, “though I could never find out precisely for what. He died in the hospital.”
“Oh, it was that case to do with Private Kolpakov, and without doubt the prince would have been vindicated.”
“Really? You know for certain?” the prince asked with particular curiosity.
“What else?” cried the general. “The court recessed without any decision. An impossible case! A mysterious case, one might say: Staff-captain Larionov, the commander of the detachment, dies; the prince is assigned to perform his duties temporarily. Good. Private Kolpakov commits a theft—of footgear from a comrade—and drinks it up. Good. The prince—and, mark you, this was in the presence of a sergeant-major and a corporal—reprimands Kolpakov and threatens him with a birching. Very good. Kolpakov goes to the barracks, lies down on his bunk, and a quarter of an hour later he dies. Splendid, but it’s an unexpected, almost impossible case. Thus and so, Kolpakov is buried; the prince makes a report, after which Kolpakov is struck from the rolls. What could be better, you might think? But exactly six months later, at a brigade review, Private Kolpakov turns up, as if nothing had happened, in the third detachment of the second battalion of the Novozemlyansky infantry regiment,30 same brigade and same division!”
“How’s that?” cried the prince, beside himself with astonishment.
“It’s not so, it’s a mistake!” Nina Alexandrovna turned to him suddenly, looking at him almost in anguish. “Mon mari se trompe.”‡
“But, my dear, se trompe is easy to say, but try and decide such a case yourself! They were all deadlocked. I’d be the first to say qu’on se trompe. But, to my misfortune, I was a witness and served personally on the commission. All the confrontations showed that this was the very same, absolutely the very same Private Kolpakov who had been buried six months earlier with the routine ceremony and to the roll of drums. The case is indeed a rare one, almost impossible, I agree, but …”
“Papa, your dinner is ready,” Varvara Ardalionovna announced, coming into the room.
“Ah, that’s splendid, excellent! I’m really hungry … But this case, you might say, is even psychological …”
“The soup will get cold again,” Varya said impatiently.
“Coming, coming,” the general muttered, leaving the room. “And despite all inquiries …” could still be heard in the corridor.
“You’ll have to excuse Ardalion Alexandrovich a great deal if you stay with us,” Nina Alexandrovna said to the prince, “though he won’t bother you very much; and he dines by himself. You must agree, each of us has his own shortcomings and his own … special features—some, perhaps, still more than those at whom fingers are habitually pointed. There’s one thing I want very much to ask you: if my husband ever addresses you concerning the payment of the rent, tell him you have given it to me. That is, whatever you might give to Ardalion Alexandrovich would go on your account in any case, but I ask you only for the sake of accuracy … What is it, Varya?”
Varya came back into the room and silently handed her mother the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna. Nina Alexandrovna gave a start and began studying it as if in fright, but then wit
h an overwhelmingly bitter feeling. In the end she looked questioningly at Varya.
“She made him a present of it herself today,” said Varya, “and this evening everything is to be decided.”
“This evening!” Nina Alexandrovna repeated in a half-whisper, as if in despair. “So, then? There are no more doubts here, nor any hopes: she has announced it all by the portrait … And what, did he show it to you himself?” she added in surprise.
“You know we’ve hardly said a word to each other for a whole month now. Ptitsyn told me about it all, and the portrait was lying there on the floor by the table. I picked it up.”
“Prince,” Nina Alexandrovna suddenly turned to him, “I wanted to ask you—in fact, that’s why I invited you here—have you known my son for a long time? He told me, I believe, that you arrived from somewhere only today?”
The prince explained briefly about himself, omitting the greater part. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya heard him out.
“I’m not trying to ferret out anything about Gavrila Ardalionovich in asking you,” observed Nina Alexandrovna, “you must make no mistake on that account. If there is anything that he cannot tell me himself, I have no wish to try and find it out behind his back. What I mean, in fact, is that earlier, in your presence and after you left, Ganya said in answer to my question about you: ‘He knows everything, no need for ceremony!’ Now, what does that mean? That is, I’d like to know to what extent …”
The Idiot (Vintage Classics) Page 13