The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Only, of course, that’s not the worst thing you’ve done,” Darya Alexeevna said with loathing.

  “It’s a psychological case, not a deed,” observed Afanasy Ivanovich.

  “And the maid?” asked Nastasya Filippovna, not concealing the most squeamish loathing.

  “The maid was dismissed the next day, naturally. It was a strict household.”

  “And you allowed it?”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful! Should I have gone and denounced myself?” Ferdyshchenko tittered, though somewhat astounded by the generally much too unpleasant impression his story had made.

  “How dirty!” cried Nastasya Filippovna.

  “Bah! You want to hear a man’s nastiest deed and with that you ask him to shine! The nastiest deeds are always very dirty, we’ll hear that presently from Ivan Petrovich; and there are all sorts of things that shine externally and want to look like virtue, because they have their own carriage. There are all sorts that have their own carriage … And by what means …”

  In short, Ferdyshchenko was quite unable to stand it and suddenly became angry, even to the point of forgetting himself, going beyond measure; his face even went all awry. Strange as it might seem, it is quite possible that he had anticipated a completely different success for his story. These “blunders” of bad tone and a “peculiar sort of boasting,” as Totsky put it, occurred quite frequently with Ferdyshchenko and were completely in character.

  Nastasya Filippovna even shook with wrath and stared intently at Ferdyshchenko; the man instantly became cowed and fell silent, all but cold with fright: he had gone much too far.

  “Shouldn’t we end it altogether?” Afanasy Ivanovich asked slyly.

  “It’s my turn, but I shall exercise my privilege and not tell anything,” Ptitsyn said resolutely.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I can’t, Nastasya Filippovna; and generally I consider such a petit jeu impossible.”

  “General, I believe it’s your turn next,” Nastasya Filippovna turned to him. “If you decline, too, then everything will go to pieces after you, and I’ll be very sorry, because I was counting on telling a deed ‘from my own life’ at the end, only I wanted to do it after you and Afanasy Ivanovich, because you should encourage me,” she ended, laughing.

  “Oh, if you promise, too,” the general cried warmly, “then I’m ready to tell you my whole life; but, I confess, while waiting for my turn I’ve already prepared my anecdote …”

  “And by the mere look of his excellency, one can tell with what special literary pleasure he has polished his little anecdote,” Ferdyshchenko, still somewhat abashed, ventured to observe with a venomous smile.

  Nastasya Filippovna glanced fleetingly at the general and also smiled to herself. But it was obvious that anguish and irritation were growing stronger and stronger in her. Afanasy Ivanovich became doubly frightened, hearing her promise of a story.

  “It has happened to me, ladies and gentlemen, as to everyone, to do certain not entirely elegant deeds in my life,” the general began, “but the strangest thing of all is that I consider the short anecdote I’m about to tell you the nastiest anecdote in my whole life. Meanwhile some thirty-five years have passed; but I have never been able, in recalling it, to break free of a certain, so to speak, gnawing impression in my heart. The affair itself, however, was extremely stupid: at that time I had just been made a lieutenant and was pulling my load in the army. Well, everybody knows what a lieutenant is: blood boiling and just pennies to live on. I had an orderly then, Nikifor, who was terribly solicitous of my livelihood: he saved, mended, cleaned and scrubbed, and even pilfered everywhere, whatever he could to add to the household. He was a most trustworthy and honest man. I, of course, was strict but fair. At some point we were stationed in a little town. I was quartered on the outskirts, with a retired lieutenant’s wife, and a widow at that. The old hag was eighty or thereabouts. Her little house was decrepit, wretched, wooden, and she didn’t even have a serving woman, so poor she was. But the main thing about her was that she had once had the most numerous family and relations; but some had died in the course of her life, others had gone away, still others had forgotten the old woman, and her husband she had buried forty-five years earlier. A few years before then her niece had lived with her, hunchbacked and wicked as a witch, people said, and once she had even bitten the old woman’s finger, but she had died, too, so that for some three years the old woman had been getting along all by herself. My life with her was terribly boring, and she herself was so empty I couldn’t get anywhere with her. In the end she stole a rooster from me. The affair has remained cloudy to this day, but no one else could have done it. We quarreled over that rooster, and considerably, but here it so happened that, at my first request, I was transferred to other quarters on the opposite side of town, with the numerous family of a merchant with a great big beard—I remember him as if it were yesterday. Nikifor and I are joyfully moving out, we’re indignantly leaving the old woman. About three days go by, I come back from drill, Nikifor tells me, ‘You shouldn’t have left our bowl with the former landlady, Your Honor, we have nothing to serve soup in.’ I, naturally, am amazed: ‘How’s that? Why would our bowl have stayed with the landlady?’ The astonished Nikifor goes on to report that the landlady hadn’t given him our bowl when we were moving because, since I had broken a pot of hers, she was keeping our bowl in exchange for her pot, and I had supposedly suggested doing it that way. Such baseness on her part naturally drove me beyond the final limits; my blood boiled, I jumped up and flew to her. By the time I reach the old woman I’m, so to speak, already beside myself; I see her sitting all alone in the corner of the front hall, as if hiding from the sun, resting her cheek on her hand. I immediately loosed a whole thunderstorm on her: ‘You’re this,’ I said, ‘and you’re that!’—you know, in the best Russian way. Only I see something strange is happening: she sits, her face is turned to me, her eyes are popping out, and she says not a word in reply, and she looks at me so strangely, strangely, as if she’s swaying back and forth. I finally calm down, look closely at her, ask her something—not a word in reply. I stand there irresolutely; flies are buzzing, the sun is setting, silence; completely bewildered, I finally leave. Before I reached home I was summoned to the major’s, then I had to pass by my company, so that I got home quite late. Nikifor’s first words: ‘You know, Your Honor, our landlady died.’ ‘When?’ ‘This evening, an hour and a half ago.’ Which meant that, just at the time when I was abusing her, she was departing. I was so struck, I must tell you, that I had a hard time recovering. It even made its way into my thoughts, you know, even into my dreams at night. I, of course, have no prejudices, but on the third day I went to church for the funeral. In short, the more time passed, the more I thought about her. Nothing special, only I pictured it occasionally and felt rather bad. The main thing is, how did I reason in the end? First, the woman was, so to speak, a personal being, what’s known in our time as a human; she lived, lived a long time, too long finally. She once had children, a husband, a family, relations, everything around her was at the boil, there were all these smiles, so to speak, and suddenly—total zero, everything’s gone smash, she’s left alone, like … some sort of fly bearing a curse from time immemorial. And then, finally, God brings her to an end. At sunset, on a quiet summer evening, my old woman also flies away—of course, this is not without its moralizing idea; and at that very moment, instead of, so to speak, a farewell tear, this desperate young lieutenant, jaunty and arms akimbo, sees her off the face of the earth with the Russian element of riotous abuse over a lost bowl! No doubt I was at fault, and though, owing to the distance in time and to changes in my character, I’ve long regarded my deed as someone else’s, I nevertheless continue to regret it. So that, I repeat, I find it strange, the more so as, even if I am at fault, it’s not so completely: why did she decide to die precisely at that moment? Naturally, there’s some excuse here—that the deed was in a certain sense psychological—but all t
he same I never felt at peace until I began, about fifteen years ago, to keep two permanent sick old women at my expense in the almshouse, with the purpose of easing their last days of earthly life by decent maintenance. I intend to leave capital for it in perpetuity. Well, sirs, that’s all. I repeat that I may be to blame for many things in life, but I consider this occasion, in all conscience, the nastiest deed of my whole life.”

  “And instead of the nastiest, Your Excellency has told us one of the good deeds of your life. You’ve hoodwinked Ferdyshchenko!” concluded Ferdyshchenko.

  “Indeed, General, I never imagined that you had a good heart after all; it’s even a pity,” Nastasya Filippovna said casually.

  “A pity? Why is that?” asked the general, laughing amiably and sipping, not without self-satisfaction, from his champagne.

  But now it was Afanasy Ivanovich’s turn, and he, too, was prepared. They could all tell beforehand that he would not decline like Ivan Petrovich, and, for certain reasons, they awaited his story with particular curiosity and at the same time with occasional glances at Nastasya Filippovna. With extraordinary dignity, which fully corresponded to his stately appearance, in a quiet, amiable voice, Afanasy Ivanovich began one of his “charming stories.” (Incidentally speaking, he was an impressive, stately man, tall, slightly bald, slightly gray-haired, and rather corpulent, with soft, ruddy, and somewhat flabby cheeks and false teeth. He wore loose and elegant clothes, and his linen was of astonishing quality. One could not have enough of gazing at his plump white hands. On the index finger of his right hand there was an expensive diamond ring.) All the while he was telling his story, Nastasya Filippovna intently studied the lace on the ruffle of her sleeve and kept plucking at it with two fingers of her left hand, so that she managed not to glance at the storyteller even once.

  “What facilitates my task most of all,” Afanasy Ivanovich began, “is that I am duty-bound to tell nothing other than the worst thing I’ve done in my whole life. In that case, naturally, there can be no hesitation: conscience and the heart’s memory straightaway prompt one with what must be told. I confess with bitterness that numbered among all the numberless, perhaps light-minded and … flighty deeds of my life, there is one the impression of which weighs all too heavily on my memory. It happened about twenty years ago. I had gone then to visit Platon Ordyntsev on his estate. He had just been elected marshale and had come there with his young wife for the winter holidays. Anfisa Alexeevna’s birthday also fell just then, and two balls were planned. At that time an enchanting novel by Dumas fils had just become terribly fashionable and made a great deal of noise in high society—La Dame aux camélias,41 a poem which, in my opinion, will never die or grow old. In the provinces all the ladies admired it to the point of rapture, those at least who had read it. The enchanting story, the originality with which the main character is portrayed, that enticing world, so subtly analyzed, and, finally, all those charming details scattered through the book (for instance, about the way bouquets of white and pink camellias are used in turn), in short, all those enchanting details, and everything together, produced almost a shock. The flowers of the camellia became extraordinarily fashionable. Everyone demanded camellias, everyone sought them. I ask you: can one get many camellias in the provinces, when everyone demands them for balls, even though the balls are few? Petya Vorkhovskoy, poor fellow, was then pining away for Anfisa Alexeevna. I really don’t know if there was anything between them, that is, I mean to say, whether he could have had any serious hopes. The poor man lost his mind over getting camellias for Anfisa Alexeevna by the evening of the ball. Countess Sotsky, from Petersburg, a guest of the governor’s wife, and Sofya Bespalov, as became known, were certain to come with bouquets of white ones. Anfisa Alexeevna, for the sake of some special effect, wanted red ones. Poor Platon nearly broke down; a husband, you know; he promised to get the bouquet, and—what then? It was snapped up the day before by Mytishchev, Katerina Alexandrovna, a fierce rival of Anfisa Alexeevna’s in everything. They were at daggers drawn. Naturally, there were hysterics, fainting fits. Platon was lost. It was clear that if Petya could, at this interesting moment, procure a bouquet somewhere, his affairs would improve greatly; a woman’s gratitude on such occasions knows no bounds. He rushes about like crazy; but it’s an impossible thing, no use talking about it. Suddenly I run into him at eleven in the evening, the night before the birthday and the ball, at Marya Petrovna Zubkov’s, a neighbor of the Ordyntsevs. He’s beaming. ‘What’s with you?’ ‘I found it. Eureka!’ ‘Well, brother, you surprise me! Where? How?’ ‘In Ekshaisk’ (a little town there, only fifteen miles away, and not in our district), ‘there’s a merchant named Trepalov there, bearded and rich, lives with his old wife, and no children, just canaries. They both have a passion for flowers, and he’s got camellias.’ ‘Good heavens, there’s no certainty there, what if he doesn’t give you any?’ ‘I’ll kneel down and grovel at his feet until he does, otherwise I won’t leave!’ ‘When are you going?’ ‘Tomorrow at daybreak, five o’clock.’ ‘Well, God be with you!’ And I’m so glad for him, you know; I go back to Ordyntsev’s; finally, it’s past one in the morning and I’m still like this, you know, in a reverie. I was about to go to bed when a most original idea suddenly occurred to me! I immediately make my way to the kitchen, wake up the coachman Savely, give him fifteen roubles, ‘have the horses ready in half an hour!’ Half an hour later, naturally, the dogcart is at the gate; Anfisa Alexeevna, I’m told, has migraine, fever, and delirium—I get in and go. Before five o’clock I’m in Ekshaisk, at the inn; I wait till daybreak, but only till day-break; just past six I’m at Trepalov’s. ‘Thus and so, have you got any camellias? My dear, my heart and soul, help me, save me, I bow down at your feet!’ The old man, I see, is tall, gray-haired, stern—a fearsome old man. ‘No, no, never! I won’t.’ I flop down at his feet! I sprawl there like that! ‘What’s wrong, my dear man, what’s wrong?’ He even got frightened. ‘It’s a matter of a human life!’ I shout to him. ‘Take them, then, and God be with you.’ What a lot of red camellias I cut! Wonderful, lovely—he had a whole little hothouse there. The old man sighs. I take out a hundred roubles. ‘No, my dear man, kindly do not offend me in this manner.’ ‘In that case, my esteemed sir,’ I say, ‘give the hundred roubles to the local hospital, for the improvement of conditions and food.’ ‘Now that, my dear man, is another matter,’ he says, ‘good, noble, and pleasing to God. I’ll give it for the sake of your health.’ And, you know, I liked him, this Russian old man, Russian to the root, so to speak, de la vraie souche.f Delighted with my success, I immediately set out on the way back; we made a detour to avoid meeting Petya. As soon as I arrived, I sent the bouquet in to Anfisa Alexeevna, who was just waking up. You can imagine the rapture, the gratitude, the tears of gratitude! Platon, yesterday’s crushed and dead Platon, sobs on my breast. Alas! All husbands have been like that since the creation … of lawful wedlock! I won’t venture to add anything, except that Petya’s affairs collapsed definitively after this episode. At first I thought he’d put a knife in me when he found out, I even prepared myself to face him, but what happened was something I wouldn’t even have believed: a fainting fit, delirium towards evening, fever the next morning; he cried like a baby, had convulsions. A month later, having only just recovered, he asked to be sent to the Caucasus: decidedly out of a novel! He ended up by being killed in the Crimea. At that time his brother, Stepan Vorkhovskoy, commanded the regiment, distinguished himself. I confess, even many years later I suffered from remorse: why, for what reason, had I given him this blow? It would be another thing if I myself had been in love then. But it was a simple prank, out of simple dalliance, and nothing more. And if I hadn’t snatched that bouquet from him, who knows, the man might be alive today, happy, successful, and it might never have entered his head to go and get himself shot at by the Turks.”

  Afanasy Ivanovich fell silent with the same solid dignity with which he had embarked on his story. It was noticed that Nastasya Filippovna’s ey
es flashed somehow peculiarly and her lips even twitched when Afanasy Ivanovich finished. Everyone glanced with curiosity at them both.

  “Ferdyshchenko’s been hoodwinked! Really hoodwinked! No, I mean really hoodwinked!” Ferdyshchenko cried out in a tearful voice, seeing that he could and should put in a word.