The Idiot (21 page)

After a detailed but jerky introduction from Ganya (who greeted his mother very coldly, did not greet his sister at all and at once led Ptitsyn out of the room somewhere) Nina Alexandrovna said a few words of welcome to the prince and told Kolya, who emerged through the do
or, to take him to the middle room. Kolya was a boy with a cheerful and rather sweet face, and a trusting and straightforward manner.

‘But where’s your luggage?’ he asked, leading the prince into the room.

‘I have a bundle; I left it in the vestibule.’

‘I’ll bring it to you at once. Our only servants are the cook and Matryona, so I help as well. Varya inspects everything and gets cross. Ganya says you came from Switzerland today?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is it nice in Switzerland?’

‘Very.’

‘Mountains?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll go and get your bundles at once.’

Varvara Ardalionovna came in.

‘Matryona will make your bed in a moment. Have you a trunk?’

‘No, a bundle. Your brother has gone to get it; it’s in the vestibule.’

‘There are no bundles there apart from this little one; where did you put them?’ asked Kolya, returning to the room again.

‘That’s the only one there is,’ the prince announced, taking his bundle.

‘Aha! And I thought Ferdyshchenko might have walked off with them.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Varya said in a stern tone of voice - even to the prince she spoke very coldly, in a tone that was only just polite.

‘Chère Babette,
you could treat me a little more kindly, I’m not Ptitsyn, after all.’

‘Why, Kolya, you need a thrashing, you’re so stupid. You may ask Matryona for anything you require; dinner is at half-past four. You may dine with us, or in your room, as you please. Come along, Kolya, don’t get in his way.’

‘Let us go, O woman of determined character!’

On their way out they collided with Ganya.

‘Is father at home?’ Ganya asked Kolya, and in answer to Kolya’s affirmative reply whispered something in his ear.

Kolya nodded, and followed Varvara Ardalionovna out.

‘Prince, there is something I forgot to say to you about all this ... business. One request: please do me the favour - if it won’t be too much of a strain for you - of not blabbing here either about what passed between Aglaya and myself just now, or there about what you find here; because there are also enough disgraceful things happening here. To the devil with it, though ... At least restrain yourself for today.’

‘But I assure you that I’ve blabbed far less than you think,’ said the prince with a certain irritation, in answer to Ganya’s reproaches. Relations between them were clearly deteriorating.

‘Well, I’ve endured enough on your account today. In short, I request this of you.’

‘Please note, Gavrila Ardalionovich, that I was in no way bound not to mention the portrait earlier today. I mean, you didn’t ask me.’

‘Ugh, what a foul room,’ Ganya observed, looking round contemptuously, ‘dark, and windows facing the courtyard. In all respects you’ve come to our place at the wrong time ... Well, that’s not my business; I’m not the one who lets the apartments.’

Ptitsyn looked in and called Ganya; the latter hastily abandoned the prince and went out even though there was still something he wanted to say, but was apparently hesitant, and seemingly afraid to broach the matter; and he had cursed the room in a way that suggested embarrassment.

No sooner had the prince washed, and managed to smarten himself up a little, than the door opened again, and a new figure emerged.

He was a gentleman of about thirty, of considerable stature, broad-shouldered, with an enormous head of reddish, curly hair. His face was fleshy and rubicund, his lips thick, his nose broad and flat, his eyes small, with swollen lids, and mocking, as though he were constantly winking. The general impression he made was one of insolence. His clothes were slightly dirty.

At first, he opened the door just wide enough to thrust his head through. For about five seconds, the inserted head looked round the room, and then the door slowly began to open, and the whole of his figure appeared in the doorway, yet still the visitor did not enter, but continued to study the prince from the doorway, narrowing his eyes as he did so. At last he closed the door behind him, approached, sat down on a chair, took the prince firmly by the arm and made him sit down on the sofa, at an angle to him.

‘Ferdyshchenko,’ he said, looking the prince in the face intently and questioningly.

‘Very well - and?’ the prince replied, almost bursting into laughter.

‘Lodger,’ Ferdyshchenko said softly again, lost in contemplation of the prince as before.

‘Do you want to make my acquaintance?’

‘E-ech!’ the visitor said, rumpling his hair and sighing, and began to look at the opposite corner. ‘Have you any money?’ he asked suddenly, turning to the prince.

‘A little.’

‘How much?’

‘Twenty-five roubles.’

‘Show me.’

The prince fished the twenty-five-rouble note out of his waistcoat pocket and gave it to Ferdyshchenko. The latter unfolded it, looked at it, then turned it over, and held it up to the light.

‘It’s strange,’ he said as if in reflection. ‘Why do they go brown? These twenty-five-rouble notes sometimes go awfully brown, while others lose their colour altogether. Here.’

The prince took his note back. Ferdyshchenko got up from the chair.

‘I’ve come to warn you: above all, don’t lend me money, because I’ll certainly ask you to.’

‘Very well.’

‘Do you intend to pay while you’re here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I don’t; thank you. I’m the first door on your right here, did you see? Try not to come and see me very often; I’ll come and see you, don’t worry. Have you seen the general?’

‘No.’

‘And you haven’t heard him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well, you’ll see him and hear him; what’s more, he even tries to bo
rrow money from me!
Avis au lecteur.
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Goodbye. Do you think a man can live with a name like Ferdyshchenko? Eh?’

‘But why not?’

‘Goodbye.’

And he walked to the door. The prince later discovered that this gentleman had taken upon himself, as if it were an obligation, the task of astonishing everyone with his eccentricity and joviality, though it somehow never worked properly. On some people he even made a rather unpleasant impression, something that sincerely grieved him, though it did not lead him to abandon his task. In the doorway he almost succeeded in regaining his composure, colliding with a gentleman who was on his way in; having admitted to the room this new visitor, whom the prince did not know, he gave the prince several warning winks from behind his back and thus made a tolerable exit, not without aplomb.

The new gentleman was tall of stature, about fifty-five or even a little more, rather corpulent, with a purplish-red, fleshy and flaccid face, framed in thick grey side-whiskers, moustached, with large, rather protuberant eyes. His figure would have been rather dignified, had there not been something seedy, shabby, even soiled about it. He was dressed in a little old frock coat, with elbows that were nearly worn through; his linen was also stained with grease - in a homely sort of way. If one got near him there was a slight smell of vodka; but his manner was calculated for effect, slightly studied and with an obvious fervent desire to impress by his dignity. The gentleman approached the prince slowly, with a cordial smile, silently took his hand and, keeping it in his own, looked into his face for some time, as if discerning familiar features.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’ he said quietly, but solemnly. ‘To the life! I hear the familiar, beloved name repeated, and I remember the irretrievable past ... Prince Myshkin?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘General Ivolgin, retired and unfortunate. Your name and patronymic, if I may make so bold to ask?’

‘Lev Nikolayevich.’

‘That’s it, that’s it! The son of my friend, my childhood companion, Nikolai Petrovich?’

‘My father’s name was Nikolai Lvovich.’

‘Lvovich,’ the general corrected himself, but without haste, and with complete confidence, as though he had not forgotten at all, but had merely made an inadvertent slip of the tongue. He sat down and, taking the prince by the hand, seated him beside him. ‘I carried you in my arms, sir.’

‘Really?’ asked the prince. ‘My father died a good twenty years ago.’

‘Yes; twenty years; twenty years and three months. We were at school together; I went straight into the army ...’

‘My father was in the army, too, as a second lieutenant in the Vasilkovsky regiment.’

‘The Belomirsky. He was transferred to the Belomirsky almost the day before he died. I stood there and blessed him into eternity. Your dear mother ...’

The general paused, as if struck by a sad memory.

‘She also died, six months later, from a chill,’ said the prince.

‘It wasn’t a chill. Not a chill, believe what an old man tells you. I was there, and I helped to see her into the ground. It was grief for her prince, and not from a chill. Yes, sir, I remember the princess too! Youth! Because of her, the prince and I, friends from childhood, very nearly became each other’s murderer.’

The prince was beginning to listen with some distrust.

‘I was passionately in love with your mother when she was engaged to be married - married to my friend. The prince noticed it and was
frappé
. He came to me in the morning, between six and seven, woke me up. I got dressed in amazement; silence on both sides; I understood everything. From his pocket he took two pistols. Across a handkerchief. Without witnesses. What did we need witnesses for, when in five minutes’ time we would send each other into eternity? We loaded, spread the handkerchief, stood, put the pistols to each other’s heart and looked into each other’s faces. Suddenly a flood of tears came to the eyes of us both, our hands shook. Both of us, both of us at once! Well, of course, there were embraces, and we tried to outdo each other in generosity. The prince cried: “She’s yours!” I cried: “She’s yours!” So ... so ... you’ve come to ... stay with us?’

‘Yes, for a time, perhaps,’ the prince said with a slight stammer.

‘Prince, Mama wants you to go and see her,’ Kolya shouted, looking in at the doorway. The prince half rose to go, but the general put his right palm on his shoulder and pressed him down to the sofa again in friendly fashion.

‘As a true friend of your father I want to warn you,’ said the general. ‘You can see for yourself that I have suffered a tragic misfortune; but there was no trouble with the law! No trial, or anything like that! Nina Aleksandrovna is a rare woman. Varvara Alexandrovna, my daughter, is a rare daughter! Because of our circumstances, we rent out
lodgings- a disgraceful fall! For me, who might have been a governor-general! ... But you, you we are always glad to see. Yet there is tragedy in my house! ...’

The prince looked at him questioningly and with great curiosity.

‘A matrimonial union is being prepared, and it’s a rare union. The union of a woman of easy virtue and a young man who might have become a gentleman of the royal bedchamber. This woman will be brought into the house where my daughter and my wife are living! But while yet I breathe, she shall not enter! I’ll lie down on the threshold, and she’ll have to step over my body! ... I hardly speak to Ganya now, I even avoid meeting him. I warn you in advance: if you’re going to stay with us, you will be a witness to it all in any case. But you are the son of my friend, and I have a right to rely...’

‘Prince, please be so good as to come and see me in the drawing room,’ called Nina Alexandrovna, appearing in the doorway.

‘Imagine, my dear,’ the general exclaimed. ‘It turns out that I dandled the prince in my arms!’

Nina Alexandrovna gave the general a reproachful look and the prince a searching one, but did not say a word. The prince set off after her; but no sooner had they arrived in the drawing room and sat down, and Nina Alexandrovna had begun to tell the prince something in a great hurry, and in an undertone, than the general himself suddenly appeared in the room. Nina Alexandrovna at once fell silent and bent over her knitting in evident vexation. It was possible that the general noticed this vexation, but he continued to be in a most excellent mood.

‘The son of my friend!’ he exclaimed, turning to Nina Alexandrovna. ‘And so unexpected, too! I had long ago ceased even to imagine such a thing. But, my dear, don’t you remember the late Nikolai Lvovich? You met him in ... Tver, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t remember any Nikolai Lvovich. Was he your father?’ she asked the prince.

‘Yes, he was; but I think he died in Yelisavetgrad, not in Tver,’ the prince observed to the general, timidly. ‘I heard it from Pavlishchev...’

‘Yes, it was Tver,’ the general confirmed, ‘his transfer to Tver came through just before his death, and even before he developed his illness. You were too young then to remember either the transfer or the journey; but Pavlishchev could sometimes be mistaken, though he was a most excellent man.’

‘You knew Pavlishchev, too?’

‘He was a rare fellow, but I was a personal witness. I blessed your father on his deathbed...’

‘You see, my father died awaiting trial,’ the prince observed again, ‘though I was never able to find out precisely what for; he died in the military hospital.’

‘Oh, it concerned the case of Private Kolpakov, and the prince would have been acquitted, without a doubt.’

‘Is that so? Do you know for sure?’ the prince asked with particular curiosity.

‘Most certainly I do!’ the general exclaimed. ‘The trial broke up without resolving anything. An impossible case! A case that was even, one may say, mysterious: Staff-captain Larionov, the company commander, dies; the prince is temporarily appointed in his place; very well. Private Kolpakov commits a theft- some boots from a comrade- and sells them for drink; very well. The prince- and observe, this was in the presence of a sergeant major and a corporal- hauls Kolpakov over the coals and threatens him with a flogging. Very well, indeed. Kolpakov goes to the barracks, lies down on his bunk, and a quarter of an hour later dies. Splendid, but it’s an unexpected incident, impossible, almost. One way or another, Kolpakov is given a funeral; the prince files a report, and then Kolpakov is removed from the lists. What could be better, you might think? But just six months later, at a brigade inspection, Private Kolpakov turns up, as though nothing were the matter, in the third company of the second battalion of the Novaya Zemlya infantry regiment,
³
in the same brigade and the same division!’