Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (426 page)

“Yes,” Myshkin was hardly able to articulate from the violent throbbing of his heart.

“I thought of that, too. There’ll be talk, I thought. . . and then I thought again: I’ll bring him here for the night, so that we may spend this night together.”

“Rogozhin! Where is Nastasya Filippovna?” Myshkin whispered suddenly, and he stood up trembling in every limb. Rogozhin got up, too.

“There,” he whispered, nodding towards the curtain.

“Asleep?” whispered Myshkin.

Aqain Roqozhin looked at him, intentlvas before.

“Well, come along then! . . . Only you . . . well, come along!”

He lifted the curtain, stood still, and turned to Myshkin again.

“Come in,” he nodded, motioning him to go within the curtain. Myshkin went in.

“It’s dark here,” he said.

“One can see,” muttered Rogozhin.

“I can scarcely see ... there’s a bed.”

“Go nearer,” Rogozhin suggested softly.

Myshkin took a step nearer, then a second, and stood still. He stood still and looked for a minute or two. Neither of them uttered a word all the while they stood by the bedside. Myshkin’s heart beat so violently that it seemed as though it were audible in the death-like stillness of the room. But his eyes were by now accustomed to the darkness, so that he could make out the whole bed. Some one lay asleep on it, in a perfectly motionless sleep; not the faintest stir, not the faintest breath could be heard. The sleeper was covered over from head to foot with a white sheet and the limbs were vaguely defined; all that could be seen was that a human figure lay there,

stretched at full length. All around in disorder at the foot of the bed, on chairs beside it, and even on the floor, clothes had been flung in disorder; a rich white silk dress, flowers, and ribbons. On a little table at the head of the bed there was the glitter of diamonds that had been taken off and thrown down. At the end of the bed there was a crumpled heap of lace and on the white lace the toes of a bare foot peeped out from under the sheet; it seemed as though it had been carved out of marble and it was horridly still. Myshkin looked and felt that as he looked, the room became more and more still and death-like. Suddenly there was the buzz of a fly which flew over the bed and settled on the pillow. Myshkin started.

“Let’s go.” Rogozhin touched his arm. They went out, and sat down on the same chairs, facing one another again. Myshkin trembled more and more violently, and never took his questioning eyes off Rogozhin’s face.

“I notice you are trembling, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” Rogozhin said at last, “almost as much as you did when you had your illness. Do you remember, in Moscow? Or as you had once before a fit? I can’t think what I should do with you now....”

Myshkin listened, straining every effort to understand, and still his eyes questioned him.

“Was it . . . you?” he brought out at last, nodding towards the curtain.

“It was I,” Rogozhin whispered, and he looked down.

They were si lent for five minutes.

“For if,” Rogozhin began, continuing suddenly as though his speech had not been interrupted, “you are ill, have your fit and scream, some one may hear from the street or the yard, and guess that there are people in the flat. They’ll begin knocking and come in ... for they all think I am not at home. I haven’t lighted a candle for fear they should guess from the street or the yard. For when I am away, I take the key and no one ever comes in to tidy the place for three or four days in my absence. That’s my habit. So I took care they shouldn’t find out we are here....”

“Stay,” said Myshkin. “I asked the porter and the old woman this morning whether Nastasya Filippovna hadn’t stayed the night here. So they must know already.”

“I know that you asked them. I told Pafnutyevna that Nastasya Filippovna came here yesterday and went away to Pavlovsk and that she was only here ten minutes. And they don’t know she stayed the night here — no one knows it. I came in with her yesterday quite secretly, as we did just now. I’d been thinking on the way that she wouldn’t care to come in secretly, but not a bit of it! She whispered, she walked on tip-toe, she drew her skirts round her, and held them in her hand that they might not rustle. She shook her finger at me on the stairs — it was you she was afraid of. She was mad with terror in the train, and it was her own wish to stay the night here. I thought of taking her to her lodgings at the widow’s — but not a bit of it! ‘He’ll find me there as soon as it’s daylight,’ she said, ‘but you will hide me and early to-morrow morning we’ll set off for Moscow,’ and then she wanted to go somewhere to Orel. And as she went to bed she kept saying we’d go to Orel. . .

“Stay; what are you going to do now, Parfyon. What do you want to do?”

“I wonder about you, you keep trembling. We’ll stay the night here together. There is no bed but that one, and I thought we might take the pillows off the two sofas and make up a bed here for vou and me beside the curtain, so that we can be together. For if they come in and begin looking round or searching, they’ll see her at once and take her away. They’ll begin questioning me, I shall say it was me, and they’ll take me away at once. So let her lie here now beside us, beside you and me....”

“Yes, yes!” Myshkin agreed warmly.

“So we won’t confess and let them take her away.”

“Not on any account!” Myshkin decided. “Certainly not.”

“That’s what I decided, lad, not to give her up on any account to any one! We’ll keep quiet all night. I only went out for an hour this morning, except for that I’ve been with her all the time. And then I went to find you in the evening. Another thing I am afraid of is that it’s so hot and there may be a smell. Do you notice a smell?”

“Perhaps I do, I don’t know. There certainly will be by the morning.”

“I covered her with American leather, good American leather, and put the sheet over it, and I put four jars of Zhdanov’s disinfectant there uncorked, they are standing there now.”

“Just as they did that time ... at Moscow?”

“On account of the smell, brother. And you see how she is lying. . . . You must look in the morning when it’s light. What’s the matter, can’t you stand up?” Rogozhin asked with apprehensive wonder, seeing that Myshkin was trembling so much that he could not get up.

“My legs won’t move,” muttered Myshkin, “it’s from terror, I know. . . . When the fear is over I shall get up.”

“Stay, I’ll make up our bed and you’d better lie down . . . and I’ll lie down too . .. and we’ll listen, for I don’t know yet, lad, for I don’t understand it all yet, I warn you of that beforehand, so that you may know all about it beforehand....”

Muttering these unintelligible words, Rogozhin began making up the beds. It was evident that he had thought of these beds, possibly even that morning. The previous night he had lain on the sofa. But there was not room for two on the sofa, and he was set on their sleeping side by side, that was why, with much effort, he now dragged, right across the room, the various cushions off the two sofas and laid them by the curtain. He made the bed after a fashion; he went up to Myshkin, tenderly and eagerly took him by the arm, raised him and led him to the bed, but Myshkin found he could walk by himself, so his terror was passing off, and yet he still was trembling.

“Because,” Rogozhin began making Myshkin lie down on the left on the best cushions, while without undressing he stretched himself out on the right, clasping his hands behind his head, “because it’s hot, brother, and you know there may be a smell... I am afraid to open the windows; my mother has got jars of flowers, heaps of flowers, and they have such a delicious smell; I thought of bringing them in, but Pafnutyevna would have been suspicious, she is inquisitive.”

“She is inquisitive,” Myshkin assented.

“Shall we buy nosegays and put flowers all round her? But I think, friend, it will make us sad to see her with flowers round her!”

“Listen!” said Myshkin uncertainly, as though he were looking for what he meant to ask and at once forgetting it again, “listen, tell me what did you do it with? A knife? The same one?”

“The same one.”

“There’s something else; I want to ask you something else, Parfyon ... I want to ask you a great many questions, all about it... but you had better tell me first, to begin with, so that I may know; did you mean to kill her before my wedding, at the church door... with a knife?”

“I don’t know whether I meant to or not,” Rogozhin answered drily, seeming somewhat surprised at the question and not understanding it.

“Did you ever take the knife with you to Pavlovsk?”

“No, never. All I can tell you about the knife is this, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” he added after a pause, “I took it out of a locked drawer this morning, for it all happened this morning, about four o’clock. It had been lying in a book all the time. . . . And . . . and . . . another thing seems strange: the knife went in three or four inches . . . just under the left breast . . . and there wasn’t more than half a tablespoonful of blood flowed on to her chemise, there was no more....”

“That, that, that,” Myshkin sat up suddenly in great agitation, “that I know, I’ve read about it, that’s called internal bleeding. . . . Sometimes there’s not one drop. That’s when the stab goes straight to the heart.”

“Stay, do you hear?” Rogozhin interrupted quickly, all of a sudden sitting up in terror on the cushions. “Do you hear?”

“No!” answered Myshkin, as quickly and fearfully looking at Rogozhin.

“Steps! Do you hear? In the drawing-room. . . .” They both began listening.

“I hear,” said Myshkin decidedly.

“Footsteps?”

“Footsteps.”

“Shall we shut the door or not?”

“Shut it...”

They shut the door and both lay down again.

They were silent for a long time.

“Ah, yes,” Myshkin began suddenly in the same excited and hurried whisper, as though he had caught his thought and were dreadfully afraid of losing it again; he sat up on the bed. “It’s .. . I wanted . . . those cards! cards. . . . They said you played cards with her?”

“Yes I did,” said Rogozhin, aftera brief silence.

“Where are ... the cards?”

“They are here,” Rogozhin brought out after a long silence, “here ...”

He brought a pack of cards wrapped up in paper out of his pocket and held them out to Myshkin. He took it, but with a sort of wonder. A new feeling of hopeless sadness weighed on his heart; he realised suddenly that at that moment and a long time past he had been saying not what he was wanting to say and had been doing the wrong thing, and that the cards he was holding in his hands and was so pleased to see were no help, no help now. He stood up and clasped his hand. Rogozhin lay without movement and seemed not to hear and see his action; but his eyes glittered in the darkness and were wide open and staring fixedly. Myshkin sat down on a chair and began looking at him with terror. Half an hour passed; suddenly Rogozhin cried out aloud and began laughing, as though he had forgotten they must speak in a whisper:

“That officer, that officer... do you remember how she switched that officer at the band-stand, ha-ha-ha! And there was a cadet... a cadet... a cadet, too, who rushed up ...”

Myshkin jumped up from the chair in new terror. When Rogozhin was quiet (and he suddenly ceased), Myshkin bent softly over him, sat beside him and with his heart beating violently and his breath coming in gasps, he began looking at him. Rogozhin did not turn his head towards him and seemed indeed to have forgotten him. Myshkin looked and waited; time was passing, it began to get light. From time to time Rogozhin began suddenly and incoherently muttering in a loud harsh voice, he began shouting and laughing. Then Myshkin stretched out his trembling hand to him and softly touched his head, his hair, stroking them and stroking his cheeks ... he could do nothing else! He began trembling again, and again his legs seemed suddenly to fail him. Quite a new sensation gnawed at his heart with infinite anguish. Meanwhile it had become quite light; at last he lay down on the pillow as though utterly helpless and despairing and put his face close to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes on to Rogozhin’s cheeks, but perhaps he did not notice then his own tears and was quite unaware of them.

Anyway, when after many hours the doors were opened and people came in, they found the murderer completely unconscious and raving.

Myshkin was sitting beside him motionless on the floor, and every time the delirious man broke into screaming or babble, he hastened to pass his trembling hand softly over his hair and cheeks, as though caressing and soothing him. But by now he could understand no questions he was asked and did not recognize the people surrounding him; and if Schneider himself had come from Switzerland to look at his former pupil and patient, remembering the condition in which Myshkin had sometimes been during the first year of his stay in Switzerland, he would have flung up his hands in despair and would have said as he did then, “An idiot!”

CHAPTER 12

CONCLUSION

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S widow, hurrying off to Pavlovsk, had gone straight to see Darya Alexeyevna, who was agitated by the events of the previous day, and telling her all that she knew threw her into a regular panic. The two ladies decided at once to get into communication with Lebedyev, who as a householder and a friend of his lodger, was also in agitation. Vera Lebedyev told them all that she knew. By Lebedyev’s advice they decided to set off to Petersburg all three together, in order as quickly as possible to prevent what might very easily come to pass. So it came about that at about eleven o’clock next morning Rogozhin’s flat was broken open in the presence of the police, of Lebedyev, of the ladies, and of Rogozhin’s brother, Semyon Semyonovitch, who lived in the lodge. Matters were greatly facilitated by the evidence of the porter, that he had seen Parfyon Semyonovitch the previous evening going in at the front door with a visitor and seemingly in secret.

For two months Rogozhin was prostrate with inflammation of the brain, and he was tried as soon as he recovered. He gave straightforward, exact, and fully satisfactory evidence on every point, in consequence of which from the very first Myshkin’s name was not brought into the case. Rogozhin was taciturn during his trial. He did not contradict his adroit and eloquent counsel, who proved clearly and logically that the crime committed was a consequence of the brain fever which had set in long before its perpetration, as a result of the troubles of the accused. But he added nothing of his own to confirm that contention, and as before, clearly and precisely maintained and recollected the minutest circumstances connected with the crime. In view of extenuating circumstances he was sentenced to only fifteen years penal servitude in Siberia, and heard his sentence grimly, silently, and “dreamily.” All his vast fortune, except the comparatively small part that he had squandered in the first few months of debauchery, passed to his brother, Semyon Semyonovitch, to the great satisfaction of the latter. Rogozhin’s old mother is still living, and seems from time to time to remember her favourite son, Parfyon, though only vaguely. God has saved her mind and her heart from the knowledge of the blow that has fallen on her melancholy house.