Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (425 page)

“I will wait; perhaps he will be back in the evening?”

“But he mayn’t be back for a week. There’s no telling.”

“So he had anyway been at home that night?”

“That he had, to be sure.”

All this was suspicious, and there was something queer about it. It was quite possible that the porter might have received fresh instructions in the interval: he had been quite talkative the first time, but now he simply turned his back on him. But Myshkin made up his mind to come back once more, two hours later, and even to keep watch on the house if necessary; but now there was still hope in the German lady and he drove off to Semyonovsky Polk.

But at the German lady’s they did not even understand what he wanted. From some words they let slip, he was able to guess that the German beauty had quarrelled with Nastasya Filippovna about a fortnight before, so that she had heard nothing of her of late and exerted herself to the utmost now to make him understand that she did not care to hear anything “if she had married all the princes in the world.” Myshkin made haste to get away. It occurred to him among other conjectures that she might have gone to Moscow as she had done before, and Rogozhin of course had gone after her or perhaps with her. “If I could only find any traces!” He remembered, however, that he must stop at a hotel and he hurried to Liteyny; there he was at once given a room. The waiter asked him if he would not have something to eat; he answered absent-mindedly that he would. Then, realising, was furious with himself at wasting half an hour over lunch; and only later on grasped the fact that he was not obliged to remain to eat the lunch that was served to him. A strange sensation gained possession of him in that dingy and stuffy corridor, a sensation that strove painfully to become a thought; but he still could not guess what that new struggling thought was. He went out of the hotel at last, hardly knowing what he was doing; his head was in a whirl. But where was he to go? He rushed off to Roqozhin’s aqain.

Rogozhin had not come back; there was no answer to his ring; he rang at old Madame Rogozhin’s; the door was opened and he was told that Parfyon Semyonovitch was not at home and might be away for three days. Myshkin was disconcerted at being looked at as before with such wild curiosity. This time he could not find the porter at all. He crossed over to the opposite pavement as before, gazed up at the windows and walked up and down in the stifling heat for half an hour, possibly more. This time nothing was stirring; the windows did not open, the white curtains were motionless. He made up his mind that he certainly had been mistaken before, that it was his fancy; that the windows in fact were so opaque and dirty that it would have been difficult to see, even if anyone had peeped out. Relieved by this reflection he set off to the widow lady’s at Izmailovsky Polk.

There they were already expecting him. The lady herself had already been to three or four places and had even been to Rogozhin’s; nothing was to be seen or heard there. Myshkin listened in silence, went into the room, sat down on the sofa and gazed at them all, as though he did not understand what they were talking about. Strange to say, he was at one moment keenly observant, at the rest absent-minded to an incredible degree. All the family declared afterwards that he was an extraordinarily strange person that day, so that “perhaps even then the end was clear.” At last he got up and asked them to show him the rooms which had been Nastasya Filippovna’s. They were two large, light, lofty rooms, very nicely furnished and let at a high rent. All the ladies described afterwards how Myshkin had scrutinised every object in the room, had seen on the table a French book from the library, “Madame Bovary,” lying opened, turned down the corner of the page at which the book was open, asked permission to take it with him, and not heeding the objection that it was a library book, put it in his pocket. He sat down at the open window and seeing a card-table marked with chalk, he asked who played. They told him that Nastasya Filippovna used to play every evening with Rogozhin at Fools, Preference, Millers, Whist, \bur own Trumps — all sorts of games, and that they had only taken to playing cards lately, after she came back from Pavlovsk, because Nastasya Filippovna was always complaining that she was bored, that Rogozhin would sit silent all the evening and did not know how to say a word, and she would often cry; and suddenly the next evening Rogozhin had taken a pack of cards out of his pocket; then Nastasya Filippovna had laughed, and they began playing. Myshkin asked where were the cards they used to play with? But the cards were not forthcoming; Rogozhin used to bring a new pack everyday in his pocket and took it away again with him.

The ladies advised him to go once more to Rogozhin’s and to knock loudly once more, and to go not at once but in the evening, “perhaps something will turn up.” The widow herself offered meanwhile to go to Pavlovsk, to Darya Alexeyevna’s, to find out whether anything was known of her there. They asked Myshkin to come again in any case at ten o’clock that evening, that they might agree on the plans for next day.

In spite of all their attempts to comfort and reassure him, Myshkin’s soul was overwhelmed with absolute despair. In unutterable dejection he walked to his hotel. The dusty, stifling atmosphere of Petersburg weighed on him like a press; he was jostled by morose or drunken people, stared aimlessly at the faces, and perhaps walked much farther than he need have done; it was almost evening when he went into his room. He decided to rest a little and then to go to Rogozhin’s again, as he had been advised. He sat down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table and sank into thought.

God knows how long and of what he thought. There were many things he dreaded and he felt painfully, agonisingly, that he was in terrible dread. Vera Lebedyev came into his mind; then the thought struck him that Lebedyev perhaps knew something about it, or, if he did not, might find out more quickly and easily than he could. Then he remembered Ippolit, and that Rogozhin used to visit Ippolit. Then he thought of Rogozhin, as he was lately at the funeral, then in the park, then suddenly as he was here in the corridor, when he hid and waited for him with a knife. He recalled his eyes now, his eyes as they looked at him there in the darkness. He shuddered: that thought which had been striving for expression suddenly came into his head.

He thouqht that if Roqozhin were in Petersburq,

even though he were hiding for a time, he would certainly end by coming to him, Myshkin, with good or with evil intention, as he had done then. Anyway, if Rogozhin did want to see him, there would be nowhere else for him to come but here, to this corridor. He did not know his address, so he might very well suppose that Myshkin would go to the same hotel as before; anyway, he would try looking for him here if he had great need of him. And who knows, perhaps he had great need of him?

So he mused and the idea seemed to him for some reason quite possible.

He could not have explained if he had probed his own thought why he should be suddenly so necessary to Rogozhin, and why it was so impossible that they should not meet. But the thought was an oppressive one. “If he is all right, he will not come,” Myshkin went on thinking; “he is more likely to come if he is unhappy; and he is certain to be unhappy.”

Of course, with that conviction he ought to have remained at home in his room, waiting for Rogozhin; but he seemed unable to remain with this new idea;

he snatched up his hat and went out hurriedly. It was almost dark in the corridor by now. “What if he suddenly comes out of that corner and stops me at the stairs?” flashed through his mind, as he reached the same spot. But no one came out. He passed out at the gate, went out into the street, wondered at the dense crowd of people who had flocked into the streets at sunset (as they always do in Petersburg in summer-time) and turned in the direction of Gorohovy. Fifty paces from the hotel, at the first crossing some one in the crowd suddenly touched his elbow, and in an undertone said in his ear:

“Lyov Nikolayevitch, follow me, brother, I want you.”

It was Rogozhin.

Strange to say, Myshkin began telling him joyfully, gabbling at a great rate and hardly articulating the words, how he had just expected to see him at the hotel in the corridor.

“I’ve been there,” Rogozhin unexpectedly answered. “Come along.”

Myshkin was surprised at his answer, but did not wonder till two minutes later at least, when he realised it. When he reflected on the answer, he was alarmed and began to look intently at Rogozhin, who was walking almost half a step in front of him, looking straight before him, not glancing at anyone they passed, making way for other people with mechanical care.

“Why didn’t you ask for me at my room ... if you have been at the hotel?” asked Myshkin suddenly.

Rogozhin stopped, looked at him, thought a little, and as though he did not take in the question, said:

“I say, Lyov Nikolayevitch, you go straight along, here to the house, you know? But I’ll walk on the other side. And mind that we keep together....”

Saying this, he crossed the road to the opposite pavement, stood still to see whether Myshkin were walking on and seeing that he was standing still, gazing at him open-eyed, motioned him towards Gorohovy and walked on turning every moment to look at Myshkin and sign him to follow. He was evidently reassured by Myshkin’s understanding him and followed him on the other side of the pavement. It occurred to Myshkin that Rogozhin wanted to keep a look out, and not let some one pass him on the way, and that therefore he had crossed to the other side, “only why didn’t he say whom he has to look out for?”

So they walked for five hundred paces, and all at once, for some reason, Myshkin began trembling. Rogozhin still kept looking back at him, though not so often. Myshkin could not stand it and beckoned to him. Rogozhin at once crossed the road to him.

“Is Nastasya Filippovna in your house?”

“Yes.”

“And was it you looked at me behind the curtain this morning?”

“Yes.”

“How, was it you? ...”

But Myshkin did not know what more to ask or how to finish his question. Moreover, his heart was throbbing so violently that he could scarcely speak. Rogozhin, too, was silent, and he still gazed at him as before, that is, as it were, dreamily.

“Well, I am going,” he said suddenly, preparing to cross the road again, “and you go by yourself. Let us go separately in the street. . . that’s better for us . . . on different sides.... You will see.”

When at last they turned on opposite sides of the road into Gorohovy and began to approach Roqozhin’s house, Mvshkin’s leqs beqan to qive wav under him again, so that it was almost difficult for him to walk. It was about ten o’clock in the evening. The windows in the old lady’s part of the house were still open as before; in Rogozhin’s they were all closed, and in the twilight the white curtains over them seemed still more conspicuous. Myshkin approached the house from the other side of the pavement. Rogozhin from his side of the pavement went straight up the steps and beckoned to him. Myshkin crossed over and joined him.

“The porter doesn’t know that I’ve come home now. I said this morning that I was going to Pavlovsk, and I left word at my mother’s too,” he whispered, with a sly and almost pleased smile. “We’ll go in and no one will hear.”

The key was already in his hand. As he went up the staircase, he turned round and shook his finger at Myshkin to warn him to go up quietly; quietly he opened the door of his rooms, let Myshkin in, followed him in cautiously, closed the door behind him, and put the key in his pocket.

“Come along,” he articulated in a whisper.

He had not spoken above a whisper since they were in Liteyny. In spite of all his outward composure, he was inwardly in a state of intense agitation. When they went into the drawing-room, on their way to the study, he went to the window and mysteriously beckoned to Myshkin.

“When you began ringing here this morning, I guessed at once that it was you. I went on tip-toe to the door and heard you talking to Pafnutyevna. And I gave her orders as soon as it was daylight that if you or anyone from you or anyone whatever began knocking at my door, she wasn’t to say I was here on any account, especially if you yourself came for me, and I gave her your name. And afterwards when you went out, the thought struck me, ‘What if he stands and keeps a look-out and watches in the street.’ I went up to this very window, drew aside the curtain, and there you were, standing looking straight at me.. .. That’s how it happened.”

“Where is . . . Nastasya Filippovna?” Myshkin articulated breathlessly.

“She is . . . here,” Rogozhin brought out slowly, after a moment’s delay.

“Where?”

Rogozhin raised his eyes and looked intently at Myshkin.

“Come along....”

He still talked in a whisper and not hurriedly, but deliberately, and still with the strange dreaminess. Even when he told him about the curtain, he seemed to mean something quite different by his words, in spite of the spontaneousness with which he spoke.

They went into the study. There was some change in the room since Myshkin had been in it last. A heavy green silk curtain that could be drawn at either end hung right across the room, dividing the alcove where Rogozhin’s bed stood from the rest of the apartment. The heavy curtain was closely drawn at both ends. It was very dark in the room. The white nights of the Petersburg summer were beginning to get darker and, had it not been for the full moon, it would have been difficult to make out anything in Rogozhin’s dark rooms with the windows curtained. It is true they could still see each other’s faces, though very indistinctly. Rogozhin’s face was pale as usual; his glittering eyes watched Myshkin intently with a fixed stare.

“You’d better light a candle,” said Myshkin.

“No, no need,” answered Rogozhin, and taking Myshkin’s hand he made him sit down on a chair; he sat opposite, moving his chair up so that he almost touched Myshkin with his knees. Between them, a little to one side, stood a small round table.

“Sit down, let’s stay here a bit,” he said, as though persuading Myshkin to stay. “I seemed to know that you would be staying at that hotel again,” he began, as people sometimes approach an important subject by beginning about quite irrelevant trifles. “As soon as I got into the corridor I thought, what if he is sitting waiting for me, just as I am for him at this very moment? Have you been to the teacher’s widow?”