But the prince was already going to open the door for his visitors.
“You slander them, Lebedev,” he said, smiling. “Your nephew has upset you very much. Don’t believe him, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I assure you that the Gorskys and Danilovs34 are merely accidents, and these men are merely … mistaken … Only I wouldn’t like it to be here, in front of everybody. Excuse me, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, they’ll come in, I’ll show them to you and then take them away. Come in, gentlemen!”
He was sooner troubled by another thought that tormented him. He wondered whether this whole affair now had not been arranged earlier, precisely for that time and hour, precisely with these witnesses, perhaps in anticipation of his disgrace and not his triumph. But he was much too saddened by his “monstrous and wicked suspiciousness.” He would die, he thought, if anyone should learn that he had such thoughts in his mind, and at the moment when his new visitors came in, he was sincerely prepared to consider himself, among all those around him, the lowest of the low in the moral sense.
Five people came in, four of them new visitors and the fifth General Ivolgin, coming behind them, all flushed, in agitation and a most violent fit of eloquence. “That one’s certainly on my side!” the prince thought with a smile. Kolya slipped in with everyone else: he was talking heatedly with Ippolit, who was one of the visitors. Ippolit listened and grinned.
The prince seated his visitors. They were all such young, even such underage people, that one could marvel both at the occasion and at the whole ceremony that proceeded from it. Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin, for instance, who neither knew nor understood anything in this “new affair,” even waxed indignant seeing such youth, and probably would have protested in some way, had he not been stopped by what for him was the strange ardor of his spouse for the prince’s private interests. He stayed, however, partly out of curiosity, partly out of the goodness of his heart, even hoping to be of help and in any case to be on hand with his authority; but the entering General Ivolgin’s bow to him from afar made him indignant again; he frowned and resolved to remain stubbornly silent.
Of the four young visitors, however, one was about thirty years old, the retired “lieutenant from Rogozhin’s band, a boxer, who himself used to give fifteen roubles to petitioners.” It could be guessed that he had accompanied the others out of bravado, in the capacity of a good friend and, if need be, for support. Among the rest, the first place and the first role was filled by the one to whom the name of “Pavlishchev’s son” was attributed, though he introduced himself as Antip Burdovsky. This was a young man, poorly and shabbily dressed, in a frock coat with sleeves so greasy they gleamed like a mirror, in a greasy waistcoat buttoned to the top, in a shirt that had disappeared somewhere, in an impossibly greasy black silk scarf twisted into a plait, his hands unwashed, his face all covered with blackheads, fair-haired, and, if one may put it so, with an innocently impudent gaze. He was of medium height, thin, about twenty-two years old. Not the least irony, not the least reflection showed in his face; on the contrary, there was a full, dull intoxication with his own rights and, at the same time, something that amounted to a strange and permanent need to be and feel constantly offended. He spoke with agitation, hurriedly and falteringly, as if not quite enunciating the words, as if he had a speech defect or was a foreigner, though he was, incidentally, of totally Russian origin.
He was accompanied, first, by Lebedev’s nephew, already known to the reader, and, second, by Ippolit. Ippolit was a very young man, about seventeen, or perhaps eighteen, with an intelligent but constantly irritated expression on his face, on which illness had left its terrible marks. He was thin as a skeleton, pale yellow, his eyes glittered, and two red spots burned on his cheeks. He coughed incessantly; his every word, almost every breath, was accompanied by wheezing. A rather advanced stage of consumption was evident. It seemed that he had no more than two or three weeks left to live. He was very tired, and sank into a chair before anyone else. The rest made some show of ceremony on entering and were all but abashed, though they looked grave and were obviously afraid of somehow losing their dignity, which was strangely out of harmony with their reputation as negators of all useless social trivialities, prejudices, and almost everything in the world except their own interests.
“Antip Burdovsky,” proclaimed “Pavlishchev’s son,” hurriedly and falteringly.
“Vladimir Doktorenko,” Lebedev’s nephew introduced himself clearly, distinctly, and as if even boasting that he was Doktorenko.
“Keller,” the retired lieutenant muttered.
“Ippolit Terentyev,” the last one shrieked in an unexpectedly shrill voice. They all finally sat down in a row on chairs opposite the prince; having introduced themselves, they all immediately frowned and, to encourage themselves, shifted their hats from one hand to the other; they all got ready to speak, and they all nevertheless remained silent, waiting for something with a defiant air, in which could be read: “No, brother, you’re not going to hoodwink me!” One could feel that as soon as any one of them began by simply uttering a single first word, they would all immediately start talking at the same time, rivaling and interrupting each other.
VIII
“GENTLEMEN, I WASN’T expecting any of you,” began the prince. “I myself was sick till today, and as for your business” (he turned to Antip Burdovsky), “I entrusted Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin with it a month ago, of which I then informed you. However, I am not avoiding a personal discussion, only, you must agree, at such an hour … I suggest that you come with me to another room, if it won’t take long … My friends are here now, and believe me …”
“Friends … as many as you like, but nevertheless, allow us,” Lebedev’s nephew suddenly interrupted in a rather admonitory tone, though all the same without raising his voice very much, “allow us to declare to you that you might treat us more respectfully and not make us wait for two hours in your lackeys’ quarters.”
“And, of course … and I … and that’s prince-like! And that … you, it means you’re a general! And I’m not your lackey! And I, I …” Antip Burdovsky suddenly began muttering in extraordinary excitement, with trembling lips, with an offended trembling in his voice, with spit spraying from his mouth, as if he had all burst or exploded, but then hurrying so much that after a dozen words it was no longer possible to understand him.
“That was prince-like!” Ippolit cried out in a shrill, cracked voice.
“It if happened to me,” the boxer growled, “that is, if it had a direct relation to me, as a noble person, then if I was in Burdovsky’s place, I’d … I …”
“By God, gentlemen, I learned only a moment ago that you were here,” the prince repeated.
“We’re not afraid of your friends, Prince, whoever they may be, because we’re within our rights,” Lebedev’s nephew declared again.
“What right did you have, however, if I may ask,” Ippolit shrieked again, now becoming extremely excited, “to present Burdovsky’s affair for the judgment of your friends? Maybe we don’t want the judgment of your friends. It’s only too clear what the judgment of your friends may mean!…”
“But, Mr. Burdovsky, if you finally do not wish to speak here,” the prince, extremely astonished at such a beginning, finally managed to put in, “then I say to you, let us go to another room, and, I repeat, I heard about you all only this minute …”
“But you have no right, you have no right, you have no right!… your friends … There!…” Burdovsky began babbling again, looking around wildly and warily, and growing the more excited the greater his mistrust and shyness. “You have no right!” And, having uttered that, he stopped abruptly, as if breaking off, and, wordlessly goggling his nearsighted, extremely protuberant eyes with their thick red veins, he stared questioningly at the prince, leaning forward with his whole body. This time the prince was so astonished that he himself fell silent and also looked at him, goggling his eyes and saying not a word.
“Lev Nikolaevich!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna sudd
enly called out, “read this now, this very moment, it is directly concerned with your affair.”
She hastily handed him a weekly newspaper of the humoristic sort and pointed her finger at an article. While the visitors were still coming in, Lebedev had jumped over to the side of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, whose favor he was currying, and, without saying a word, had taken the newspaper from his side pocket and put it right under her eyes, pointing to a marked-off column. What Lizaveta Prokofyevna had managed to read had astounded and excited her terribly.
“Wouldn’t it be better, however, not to read it aloud?” the prince babbled, very embarrassed. “I’ll read it by myself … later …”
“Then you’d better read it, read it right now, aloud! aloud!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned to Kolya, snatching the newspaper, which the prince had barely managed to touch, out of his hands. “Read it aloud so that everybody can hear.”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna was a hotheaded and passionate lady, so that suddenly and at once, without thinking long, she would sometimes raise all anchors and set out for the open sea without checking the weather. Ivan Fyodorovich stirred anxiously. But meanwhile everyone involuntarily paused at first and waited in perplexity. Kolya unfolded the newspaper and began reading aloud from the place that Lebedev, who had jumped over to him, pointed out:
“Proletarians and Scions, an Episode from Daily and Everyday Robberies! Progress! Reform! Justice!
“Strange things happen in our so-called Holy Russia, in our age of reforms and corporate initiative, an age of nationality and hundreds of millions exported abroad every year, an age of the encouragement of industry and the paralysis of working hands! etc., etc., it cannot all be enumerated, gentlemen, and so straight to business. A strange incident occurred with one of the scions of our former landowning gentry (de profundis!),35 the sort of scion, incidentally, whose grandfathers already lost everything definitively at roulette, whose fathers were forced to serve as junkers and lieutenants and usually died under investigation for some innocent error to do with state funds, and whose children, like the hero of our account, either grow up idiots or even get caught in criminal dealings, for which, however, the jury acquits them with a view to their admonition and correction; or, finally, they end by pulling off one of those anecdotes which astonish the public and disgrace our already sufficiently disgraced time. About six months ago our scion, shod foreign-style in gaiters and shivering in his unlined little overcoat, returned during the winter to Russia from Switzerland, where he was being treated for idiocy (sic!). It must be admitted that he was fortunately lucky, so that, to say nothing of his interesting illness, for which he was being treated in Switzerland (can one really be treated for idiocy, who could imagine it?!!), he might prove in himself the truthfulness of the Russian saying: a certain category of people is lucky! Consider for yourselves: left a nursing infant after the death of his father, said to have been a lieutenant who died under investigation for the unexpected disappearance of all the company funds during a card game, or perhaps for administering an overdose of birching to a subordinate (remember the old days, gentlemen!), our baron was taken out of charity to be brought up by a certain very rich Russian landowner. This Russian landowner—let’s call him P.—in the former golden age the owner of four thousand bonded souls (bonded souls! do you understand this expression, gentlemen? I don’t. I must consult a dictionary: ‘The memory is fresh, but it’s hard to believe’36), was apparently one of those Russian lie-a-beds and parasites who spend their idle lives abroad, at spas in the summer, and in the Parisian Château des Fleurs in the winter, where they left boundless sums in their time. One may state positively that at least a third of the quitrent from all former bonded estates went to the owner of the Parisian Château des Fleurs (there was a lucky man!). Be that as it may, the carefree P. raised the orphaned young gentleman in a princely way, hired tutors for him, and governesses (pretty ones, no doubt), whom, incidentally, he brought from Paris himself. But this last scion of a noble family was an idiot. The Château des Fleurs governesses were no help, and till the age of twenty our boy never learned to speak any language, not excluding Russian. This last fact, incidentally, is forgivable. In the end, the fantasy came into P.’s Russian serf-owning head that the idiot could be taught reason in Switzerland—a logical fantasy, incidentally: as a parasite and proprietor, he would naturally imagine that even reason could be bought in the market for money, all the more so in Switzerland. Five years passed under treatment in Switzerland with some well-known professor, and the money spent was in the thousands: the idiot, naturally, did not become intelligent, but they say in any case he began to resemble a human being—only just, no doubt. Suddenly P. up and dies. There’s no will, naturally; his affairs are, as usual, in disorder; there’s a heap of greedy heirs, who don’t care a straw about the last scion of any family being treated for family idiocy in Switzerland out of charity. The scion, though an idiot, tried all the same to cheat his professor, and they say he went on being treated gratis for two years, concealing the death of his benefactor from him. But the professor was quite a charlatan himself; at last, fearing the insolvency and, worse still, the appetite of his twenty-five-year-old parasite, he shod him in his old gaiters, gave him a bedraggled overcoat, and charitably sent him, third-class, nach Russland†—off his hands and out of Switzerland. It would seem luck had turned its back on our hero. Not a whit, sir: fortune, who starves whole provinces to death, showers all her gifts at once on the little aristocrat, like Krylov’s ‘Stormcloud’† that passed over the parched field and drenched the ocean. At almost the same moment as his arrival in Petersburg from Switzerland, a relation of his mother (who, naturally, was of merchant stock), a childless old bachelor, a merchant, bearded and an Old Believer, dies, leaving an inheritance of several million, indisputable, round, in ready cash—and (oh, if only it were you and me, dear reader!) it all goes to our scion, it all goes to our baron, who was treated for idiocy in Switzerland! Well, now they started playing a different tune. Around our baron in gaiters, who was chasing after a certain kept woman and beauty, a whole crowd of friends and intimates gathered, some relations even turned up, and most of all whole crowds of noble maidens, hungering and thirsting after lawful wedlock, and what could be better: an aristocrat, a millionaire, and an idiot—all qualities at once, you wouldn’t find such a husband with a lamp in broad daylight, not even made to order!…”
“This … this I do not understand!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich in the highest degree of indignation.
“Stop it, Kolya!” the prince cried in a pleading voice. Exclamations came from all sides.
“Read it! Read it despite all!” snapped Lizaveta Prokofyevna, obviously making an extreme effort to control herself. “Prince! if the reading is stopped, we shall quarrel.”
There was nothing to be done. Kolya, all worked up, red-faced, in agitation, went on reading in an agitated voice:
“But while our fresh-baked millionaire was soaring, so to speak, in the empyrean, a completely extraneous circumstance occurred. One fine morning a visitor comes to him with a calm and stern face, with courteous but dignified and just speech, dressed modestly and nobly, with an obvious progressive tinge to his thinking, and explains in a few words the reason for his visit: he is a well-known lawyer; a certain young man has entrusted him with a case; he has come on his behalf. This young man was no more nor less than the son of the late P., though he bore a different name. The lascivious P., having seduced in his youth a poor, honest girl, a household serf but with European education (in part this was, naturally, a matter of baronial rights under the former serfdom), and having noticed the unavoidable but immediate consequences of his liaison, hastened to give her in marriage to a certain man, something of a dealer and even a functionary, of noble character, who had long been in love with this girl. At first he assisted the newlyweds; but soon the husband’s noble character denied him the acceptance of this assistance. Time passed and P. gradually forgot the girl and the son he had had by her, and then
, as we know, he died without leaving any instructions. Meanwhile his son, born in lawful wedlock, but raised under a different name and fully adopted by the noble character of his mother’s husband, who had nevertheless died in the course of time, was left with no support but himself and with an ailing, suffering, crippled mother in one of our remote provinces; he himself earned money in the capital by daily noble labor, giving lessons to merchants’ children, thus supporting himself through high school and then as an auditor at useful lectures, having a further purpose in mind. But how much can one earn from a Russian merchant for ten-kopeck lessons, and that with an ailing, crippled mother besides, whose death, finally, in her remote province, hardly made things any easier for him? Now a question: how should our scion have reasoned in all fairness? You think, of course, dear reader, that he spoke thus to himself: ‘All my life I have enjoyed all sorts of gifts from P.; tens of thousands were spent on my upbringing, on governesses, and on my treatment for idiocy in Switzerland; and here I am now with millions, while the noble character of P.’s son, in no way guilty in the trespass of his frivolous and forgetful father, is perishing giving lessons. Everything that went to me should rightfully have gone to him. Those enormous sums spent on me were essentially not mine. It was merely a blind error of fortune; they were owing to P.’s son. He should have gotten them, not I—creature of a fantastic whim of the frivolous and forgetful P. If I were fully noble, delicate, and just, I ought to give his son half of my inheritance; but since I am first of all a calculating man and understand only too well that it is not a legal matter, I will not give him half of my millions. But all the same it would be much too base and shameless (and ill calculated as well, the scion forgot that) on my part, if I did not now return to his son those tens of thousands that P. spent on my idiocy. Here it’s not only a matter of conscience and justice! For what would have happened to me if P. had not taken charge of my upbringing, but had concerned himself with his son instead of me?’
The Idiot (Vintage Classics) Page 34