The Idiot (Vintage Classics)
Page 75
“Yes, yes; yes, yes,” the prince was shaking his head and beginning to blush, “yes, it was almost so; and, you know, I actually hardly slept all the previous night, on the train, or the night before, and I was very disconcerted …”
“Well, of course, that’s what I’m driving at,” Evgeny Pavlovich went on vehemently. “It’s clear that, drunk with rapture, you fell upon the opportunity of publicly proclaiming the magnanimous thought that you, a born prince and a pure man, did not find dishonorable a woman who had been disgraced through no fault of her own, but through the fault of a loathsome high-society debaucher. Oh, Lord, it’s so understandable! But that’s not the point, my dear Prince, the point is whether there was truth here, whether your feeling was genuine, was it natural, or was it only a cerebral rapture? What do you think: a woman was forgiven in the Temple,46 the same sort of woman, but was she told that she had done well and was worthy of all honor and respect? Didn’t common sense whisper to you, after three months, telling you what it was about? Let her be innocent now—I don’t insist, because I have no wish to—but can all her adventures justify such unbearable demonic pride as hers, such insolent, such greedy egoism? Forgive me, Prince, I’m getting carried away, but …”
“Yes, that all may be; it may be that you’re right …” the prince began to murmur again, “she really is very edgy, and you’re right, of course, but …”
“She deserves compassion? Is that what you want to say, my good Prince? But for the sake of compassion and for the sake of her good pleasure, was it possible to disgrace this other, this lofty and pure girl, to humiliate her before those arrogant, before those hateful eyes? How far can compassion go, then? That is an incredible exaggeration! Is it possible, while loving a girl, to humiliate her so before her rival, to abandon her for the other one, right in front of that other one, after making her an honorable proposal yourself … and you did make her a proposal, you said it to her in front of her parents and sisters! Are you an honorable man after that, Prince, may I ask? And … and didn’t you deceive a divine girl, after assuring her that you loved her?”
“Yes, yes, you’re right, ah, I feel I’m to blame!” the prince said in inexpressible anguish.
“But is that enough?” Evgeny Pavlovich cried in indignation. “Is it sufficient merely to cry out: ‘I’m to blame!’ You’re to blame, and yet you persist! And where was your heart then, your ‘Christian’ heart! You saw her face at that moment: tell me, did she suffer less than that one, than your other one, her rival? How could you see it and allow it? How?”
“But … I didn’t allow it …” murmured the unhappy prince.
“What do you mean you didn’t?”
“By God, I didn’t allow anything. I still don’t understand how it all came about … I—I ran after Aglaya Ivanovna then, and Nastasya Filippovna fainted; and since then I haven’t been allowed to see Aglaya Ivanovna.”
“All the same! You should have run after Aglaya, even though the other one fainted!”
“Yes … yes, I should have … but she would have died! She would have killed herself, you don’t know her, and … all the same, I’d have told everything to Aglaya Ivanovna afterwards, and … You see, Evgeny Pavlych, I can see that you don’t seem to know everything. Tell me, why won’t they let me see Aglaya Ivanovna? I’d have explained everything to her. You see: neither of them talked about the right thing, not about the right thing at all, that’s why it turned out like this … There’s no way I can explain it to you; but I might be able to explain it to Aglaya … Ah, my God, my God! You speak of her face at the moment she ran out … oh, my God, I remember! Let’s go, let’s go!” he suddenly pulled Evgeny Pavlovich’s sleeve, hurriedly jumping up from his seat.
“Where?”
“Let’s go to Aglaya Ivanovna, let’s go right now!…”
“But I told you, she’s not in Pavlovsk, and why go?”
“She’ll understand, she’ll understand!” the prince murmured, pressing his hands together in entreaty. “She’ll understand that it’s all not that, but something completely, completely different!”
“How is it completely different? Aren’t you getting married all the same? That means you persist …Are you getting married or not?”
“Well, yes … I am; yes, I am getting married!”
“Then how is it not that?”
“Oh, no, not that, not that! It makes no difference that I’m getting married, it doesn’t matter!”
“It makes no difference and doesn’t matter? It’s not a trifling thing, is it? You’re marrying a woman you love in order to make her happiness, and Aglaya Ivanovna sees and knows it, so how does it make no difference?”
“Happiness? Oh, no! I’m simply getting married; she wants it; and so what if I’m getting married, I … Well, it makes no difference! Only she would certainly have died. I see now that this marriage to Rogozhin was madness! I now understand everything I didn’t understand before, and you see: when the two of them stood facing each other, I couldn’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face then … You don’t know, Evgeny Pavlych” (he lowered his voice mysteriously), “I’ve never spoken to anyone about this, not even Aglaya, but I can’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face … You spoke the truth earlier about that evening at Nastasya Filippovna’s; but there was one thing you left out, because you don’t know it: I was looking at her face! That morning, in her portrait, I already couldn’t bear it … Take Vera, Vera Lebedev, she has completely different eyes; I … I’m afraid of her face!” he added with extreme fear.
“Afraid?”
“Yes; she’s—mad!” he whispered, turning pale.
“You know that for certain?” Evgeny Pavlovich asked with extreme curiosity.
“Yes, for certain; now it’s certain; now, in these days, I’ve learned it quite certainly!”
“But what are you doing to yourself?” Evgeny Pavlovich cried out in alarm. “It means you’re marrying out of some sort of fear? It’s impossible to understand anything here … Even without loving her, perhaps?”
“Oh, no, I love her with all my soul! She’s … a child; now she’s a child, a complete child! Oh, you don’t know anything!”
“And at the same time you assured Aglaya Ivanovna of your love?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“How’s that? So you want to love them both?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“Good heavens, Prince, what are you saying? Come to your senses!”
“Without Aglaya I … I absolutely must see her! I … I’ll soon die in my sleep; I thought last night that I was going to die in my sleep. Oh, if Aglaya knew, knew everything … that is, absolutely everything. Because here you have to know everything, that’s the first thing! Why can we never know everything about another person when it’s necessary, when the person is to blame!… However, I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m confused; you struck me terribly … Can she really still have the same face as when she ran out? Oh, yes, I’m to blame! Most likely I’m to blame for everything! I still don’t know precisely for what, but I’m to blame … There’s something in it that I can’t explain to you, Evgeny Pavlych, I lack the words, but … Aglaya Ivanovna will understand! Oh, I’ve always believed she would understand.”
“No, Prince, she won’t understand! Aglaya Ivanovna loved as a woman, as a human being, not as … an abstract spirit. You know, my poor Prince: most likely you never loved either of them!”
“I don’t know … maybe, maybe; you’re right about many things, Evgeny Pavlych. You’re extremely intelligent, Evgeny Pavlych; ah, my head’s beginning to ache again, let’s go to her! For God’s sake, for God’s sake!”
“I tell you, she’s not in Pavlovsk, she’s in Kolmino.”
“Let’s go to Kolmino, let’s go now!”
“That is im-pos-sible!” Evgeny Pavlovich drew out, getting up.
“Listen, I’ll write a letter; take a letter to her!”
“No, Prince, no! Spare me such errands, I cannot!”
X
THE PRINCE, HOWEVER, did not die before his wedding, either awake or “in his sleep,” as he had predicted to Evgeny Pavlovich. He may indeed have slept poorly and had bad dreams, but in the daytime, with people, he seemed kind and even content, only sometimes very pensive, but that was when he was alone. They were hurrying the wedding; it was to take place about a week after Evgeny Pavlovich’s call. Given such haste, even the prince’s best friends, if he had any, were bound to be disappointed in their efforts to “save” the unfortunate madcap. There was a rumor that General Ivan Fyodorovich and his wife Lizaveta Prokofyevna were partly responsible for Evgeny Pavlovich’s visit. But even if the two of them, in the immeasurable goodness of their hearts, might have wanted to save the pathetic madman from the abyss, they had, of course, to limit themselves to this one feeble attempt; neither their position, nor even, perhaps, the disposition of their hearts (as was natural) could correspond to more serious efforts. We have mentioned that even those around the prince partly rose up against him. Vera Lebedev, however, limited herself only to solitary tears and to staying home more and looking in on the prince less often than before. Kolya was burying his father at that time; the old man died of a second stroke eight days after the first. The prince shared greatly in the family’s grief and in the first days spent several hours a day at Nina Alexandrovna’s; he attended the burial and the church service. Many noticed that the public in the church met the prince and saw him off with involuntary whispers; the same thing happened in the streets and in the garden: when he walked or drove by, people talked, spoke his name, pointed at him, mentioned Nastasya Filippovna’s name. She was looked for at the burial, but she was not at the burial. Neither was the captain’s widow, whom Lebedev had managed to stop and cancel in time. The burial service made a strong and painful impression on the prince; he whispered to Lebedev, still in church, in reply to some question, that it was the first time he had attended an Orthodox burial service and only from childhood did he remember one other burial in some village church.
“Yes, sir, it’s as if it’s not the same man lying there in the coffin, sir, as the one we set up so recently to preside over us, remember, sir?” Lebedev whispered to the prince. “Who are you looking for, sir?”
“Never mind, I just imagined …”
“Not Rogozhin?”
“Is he here?”
“In the church, sir.”
“That’s why it seemed I saw his eyes,” the prince murmured in embarrassment. “And what … why is he here? Was he invited?”
“Never thought of it, sir. They don’t know him at all, sir. There are all sorts of people here, the public, sir. Why are you so amazed? I often meet him now; this past week I met him some four times here in Pavlovsk.”
“I haven’t seen him once … since that time,” the prince murmured.
Because Nastasya Filippovna had also never once told him that she had met him “since that time,” the prince now concluded that Rogozhin was deliberately keeping out of sight for some reason. That whole day he was in great pensiveness; but Nastasya Filippovna was extraordinarily merry all day and all evening.
Kolya, who had made peace with the prince before his father’s death, suggested (since it was an essential and urgent matter) inviting Keller and Burdovsky to be his groomsmen. He guaranteed that Keller would behave properly and might even “be of use,” and for Burdovsky it went without saying, he was a quiet and modest man. Nina Alexandrovna and Lebedev pointed out to the prince that if the wedding was already decided on, why have it in Pavlovsk of all places, and during the fashionable summer season, why so publicly? Would it not be better in Petersburg and even at home? It was only too clear to the prince what all these fears were driving at; but he replied briefly and simply that such was the absolute wish of Nastasya Filippovna.
The next day Keller also came to see the prince, having been informed that he was a groomsman. Before coming in, he stopped in the doorway and, as soon as he saw the prince, held up his right hand with the index finger extended and cried out by way of an oath:
“I don’t drink!”
Then he went up to the prince, firmly pressed and shook both his hands, and declared that, of course, at first, when he heard, he was against it, which he announced over the billiard table, and for no other reason than that he had intentions for the prince and was waiting every day, with the impatience of a friend, to see him married to none other than the Princess de Rohan;47 but now he could see for himself that the prince was thinking at least ten times more nobly than all of them “taken together!” For he wanted not brilliance, not riches, and not even honor, but only—truth! The sympathies of exalted persons were all too well known, and the prince was too exalted by his education not to be an exalted person, generally speaking! “But scum and all sorts of riffraff judge differently; in town, in the houses, at gatherings, in dachas, at concerts, in bars, over billiards, there was no other talk, no other cry than about the impending event. I hear they even want to organize a charivari under your windows, and that, so to speak, on the first night! If you need the pistol of an honest man, Prince, I’m ready to exchange a half-dozen noble shots, even before you get up the next morning from your honey bed.” He also advised having a fire hose ready in the yard, in anticipation of a big influx of thirsty people at the church door; but Lebedev objected: “They’ll smash the house to splinters,” he said, “if there’s a fire hose.”
“This Lebedev is intriguing against you, Prince, by God! They want to put you into government custody, if you can imagine that, with everything, with your free will and your money, that is, with the two things that distinguish each of us from the quadrupeds! I’ve heard it, indeed I have! It’s the real, whole truth!”
The prince remembered that he seemed to have heard something of the kind himself, but, naturally, he had paid no attention to it. This time, too, he only laughed and forgot it again at once. Lebedev actually was bustling about for a time; the man’s calculations were always conceived as if by inspiration and, from excessive zeal, grew more complex, branched out, and moved away from their starting point in all directions; that was why he had succeeded so little in life. When afterwards, almost on the day of the wedding, he came to the prince with his repentance (he had an unfailing habit of always coming with his repentance to those he had intrigued against, especially if he had not succeeded), he announced to him that he was born a Talleyrand48 and in some unknown way had remained a mere Lebedev. Then he laid out his whole game before him, which interested the prince enormously. By his own admission, he began by seeking the protection of exalted persons, in whom he might find support in case of need, and went to General Ivan Fyodorovich. General Ivan Fyodorovich was perplexed, very much wished the “young man” well, but declared that “for all his desire to save him, it was improper for him to act here.” Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not want either to see or to hear him; Evgeny Pavlovich and Prince Shch. only waved him away. But he, Lebedev, did not lose heart and consulted a clever lawyer, a venerable old man, his great friend and almost his benefactor; the man concluded that the business was perfectly possible as long as there were competent witnesses to his derangement and total insanity, and with that, above all, the patronage of exalted persons. Lebedev did not despond here either, and once even brought a doctor to see the prince, also a venerable old man, a summer person, with an Anna on his neck,49 solely in order to reconnoiter the terrain, so to speak, to get acquainted with the prince and, not yet officially but, so to speak, in a friendly way, to inform him
of his conclusions. The prince remembered the doctor calling on him; he remembered that the day before Lebedev had been nagging him about his being unwell, and when the prince resolutely rejected medicine, he suddenly showed up with the doctor, under the pretext that the two of them were just coming from Mr. Terentyev, who was very sick, and the doctor had something to tell the prince about the patient. The prince praised Lebedev and received the doctor with extreme cordiality. They at once got to talking about the sick Ippolit; the doctor asked for a more detailed account of the scene of the suicide, and the prince absolutely fascinated him with his story and his explanation of the event. They talked about the Petersburg climate, about the prince’s own illness, about Switzerland, about Schneider. The doctor was so interested in the prince’s stories and his account of Schneider’s system of treatment that he stayed for two hours; he smoked the prince’s excellent cigars all the while, and from Lebedev’s side a most tasty liqueur appeared, brought by Vera, and the doctor, a married and family man, let himself go into particular compliments before Vera, which aroused profound indignation in her. They parted friends. Having left the prince, the doctor said to Lebedev that if all such people were taken into custody, who then would be the custodians? To the tragic account, on Lebedev’s part, of the impending event, the doctor shook his head slyly and insidiously, and finally observed that, not to mention the fact that “men marry all kinds of women,” “this seductive individual, at least as far as he had heard, besides her immeasurable beauty, which in itself could attract a man of wealth, also possesses capital from Totsky and from Rogozhin, pearls and diamonds, shawls and furniture, and therefore the impending choice not only does not show any, so to speak, especially eye-striking stupidity on the dear prince’s part, but even testifies to the cleverness of a subtle, worldly intelligence and calculation, and therefore contributes to the opposite conclusion, quite favorable to the prince …” This thought struck Lebedev as well; he stayed with that, and now, he added to the prince, “now you won’t see anything from me but devotion and the shedding of blood; that’s what I’ve come to say.”