Текст книги "The Idiot"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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never noticed before. The man was not a thief, he was even honest, and not all that poor as peasant life goes. But he liked the watch so much and was so tempted by it that he finally couldn't stand it: he pulled out a knife and, while his friend was looking the other way, went up to him cautiously from behind, took aim, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself and, after praying bitterly to himself: 'Lord, forgive me for Christ's sake!'—killed his friend with one blow, like a sheep, and took his watch." ²⁰

Rogozhin rocked with laughter. He guffawed as if he was in some sort of fit. It was even strange to look at this laughter coming right after such a gloomy mood.

"Now that I like! No, that's the best yet!" he cried out spasmodically, nearly breathless. "The one doesn't believe in God at all, and the other believes so much that he even stabs people with a prayer . . . No, that, brother Prince, couldn't have been made up! Ha, ha, ha! No, that's the best yet! . . ."

"The next morning I went out for a stroll about town," the prince went on, as soon as Rogozhin paused, though laughter still twitched spasmodically and fitfully on his lips, "and I saw a drunken soldier staggering along the wooden sidewalk, all in tatters. He comes up to me: 'Buy a silver cross, master. I'm asking only twenty kopecks. It's silver!' I see a cross in his hand—he must have just taken it off—on a worn light blue ribbon, only it's a real tin one, you could see it at first glance, big, eight-pointed, of the full Byzantine design. I took out twenty kopecks, gave them to him, and put the cross on at once—and I could see by his face how pleased he was to have duped the foolish gentleman, and he went at once to drink up his cross, there's no doubt of that. Just then, brother, I was under the strongest impression of all that had flooded over me in Russia; before I understood nothing of it, as if I'd grown up a dumb brute, and I had somehow fantastic memories of it during those five years I spent abroad. So I went along and thought: no, I'll wait before condemning this Christ-seller. God knows what's locked away in these drunken and weak hearts. An hour later, going back to my hotel, I ran into a peasant woman with a nursing baby. She was a young woman, and the baby was about six weeks old. And the baby smiled at her, as far as she'd noticed, for the first time since it was born. I saw her suddenly cross herself very, very piously. 'What is it, young woman?' I say. (I was asking questions all the time then.) 'It's just that a mother rejoices,' she says, 'when she notices her baby's first smile, the same as God

rejoices each time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner standing before him and praying with all his heart.' The woman said that to me, in almost those words, and it was such a deep, such a subtle and truly religious thought, a thought that all at once expressed the whole essence of Christianity, that is, the whole idea of God as our own father, and that God rejoices over man as a father over his own child—the main thought of Christ! A simple peasant woman! True, she's a mother . . . and, who knows, maybe this woman was that soldier's wife. Listen, Parfyon, you asked me earlier, here is my answer: the essence of religious feeling doesn't fit in with any reasoning, with any crimes and trespasses, or with any atheisms; there's something else here that's not that, and it will eternally be not that; there's something in it that atheisms will eternally glance off, and they will eternally be talking not about that.But the main thing is that one can observe it sooner and more clearly in a Russian heart, and that is my conclusion! That is one of the first convictions I've formed about our Russia. There are things to be done, Parfyon! There are things to be done in our Russian world, believe me! Remember, there was a time in Moscow when we used to get together and talk . . . And I didn't want to come back here at all now! And this is not at all, not at all how I thought of meeting you! . . . Well, no matter! . . . Farewell, goodbye! God be with you!"

He turned and went down the stairs.

"Lev Nikolaevich!" Parfyon cried from above, when the prince had reached the first landing. "That cross you bought from the soldier, are you wearing it?"

"Yes."

And the prince stopped again.

"Show me."

Again a new oddity! The prince thought a little, went back up, and showed him the cross without taking it from his neck.

"Give it to me," said Rogozhin.

"Why? Or do you ..."

The prince seemed unwilling to part with this cross.

"I'll wear it, and you can wear mine, I'll give it to you."

"You want to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfyon, if so, I'm glad; we'll be brothers!" ²¹

The prince took off his tin cross, Parfyon his gold one, and they exchanged them. Parfyon was silent. With painful astonishment the prince noticed that the former mistrust, the former bitter and

almost derisive smile still did not seem to leave the face of his adopted brother—at least it showed very strongly at moments. Finally Rogozhin silently took the prince's hand and stood for a while, as if undecided about something; in the end he suddenly drew the prince after him, saying in a barely audible voice: "Come on." They crossed the first-floor landing and rang at the door facing the one they had just come out of. It was promptly opened. An old woman, all bent over and dressed in black, a kerchief on her head, bowed silently and deeply to Rogozhin. He quickly asked her something and, not waiting for an answer, led the prince further through the rooms. Again there were dark rooms, of some extraordinary, cold cleanness, coldly and severely furnished with old furniture in clean white covers. Without announcing himself, Rogozhin led the prince into a small room that looked like a drawing room, divided by a gleaming mahogany partition with doors at either end, behind which there was probably a bedroom. In the corner of the drawing room, near the stove, in an armchair, sat a little old woman, who did not really look so very old, even had a quite healthy, pleasant, and round face, but was already completely gray-haired and (one could tell at first sight) had fallen into complete senility. She was wearing a black woolen dress, a big black kerchief around her neck, and a clean white cap with black ribbons. Her feet rested on a footstool. Next to her was another clean little old woman, a bit older, also in mourning and also in a white cap, apparently some companion, who was silently knitting a stocking. The two looked as if they were always silent. The first old woman, seeing Rogozhin and the prince, smiled at them and inclined her head affectionately several times as a sign of pleasure.

"Mama," said Rogozhin, kissing her hand, "this is my great friend, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin; he and I have exchanged crosses; he was like a brother to me in Moscow for a time, and did a lot for me. Bless him, mama, as you would your own son. Wait, old girl, like this, let me put your hand the right way . . ."

But before Parfyon had time to do anything, the old woman raised her right hand, put three fingers together, and piously crossed the prince three times. Then once more she nodded her head gently and tenderly.

"Well, let's go, Lev Nikolaevich," said Parfyon, "I only brought you for that..."

When they came back out to the stairs, he added:

"See, she doesn't understand anything people say, and she didn't

understand any of my words, yet she blessed you. That means she wanted to herself. . . Well, good-bye, it's time for us both."

And he opened his door.

"But let me at least embrace you as we part, you strange man!" cried the prince, looking at him with tender reproach and trying to embrace him. But Parfyon no sooner raised his arms than he lowered them again at once. He could not resolve to do it; he turned away so as not to look at the prince. He did not want to embrace him.

"Never fear! Maybe I did take your cross, but I won't kill you for your watch!" he muttered unintelligibly, suddenly laughing somehow strangely. But suddenly his whole face was transformed: he turned terribly pale, his lips quivered, his eyes lit up. He raised his arms, embraced the prince tightly, and said breathlessly:

"Take her, then, if it's fate! She's yours! I give her up to you! . . . Remember Rogozhin!"

And, leaving the prince, not even looking at him, he hastily went to his rooms and slammed the door behind him.

V

It was late, almost half-past two, and the prince did not find Epanchin at home. Having left his card, he decided to go to the Scales Hotel and ask there for Kolya; if he was not there, he would leave him a note. At the Scales he was told that Nikolai Ardalionovich "had left in the morning, sir, but on his way out had alerted them that, if someone should ask for him, they should tell him that he might be back at three o'clock, sir. And if he was not there by half-past three, it would mean that he had taken the train to Pavlovsk, to Mrs. Epanchin's dacha, sir, and would be having dinner there." The prince sat down to wait and meanwhile ordered dinner for himself.

Kolya did not come back either by half-past three or even by four o'clock. The prince went out and walked mechanically wherever his eyes took him. At the beginning of summer in Petersburg there occasionally occur lovely days—bright, hot, still. As if on purpose, this day was one of those rare days. For some time the prince strolled about aimlessly. He was little acquainted with the city. He stopped occasionally at street corners in front of some houses, on the squares, on the bridges; once he stopped at a pastry shop to

rest. Occasionally he would start peering at passersby with great curiosity; but most often he did not notice either the passersby or precisely where he was going. He was tormentingly tense and uneasy, and at the same time felt an extraordinary need for solitude. He wanted to be alone and to give himself over to all this suffering tension completely passively, without looking for the least way out. He was loath to resolve the questions that overflowed his soul and heart. "What, then, am I to blame for it all?" he murmured to himself, almost unaware of his words.

By six o'clock he found himself on the platform of the Tsarskoe Selo railway. Solitude quickly became unbearable to him; a new impulse ardently seized his heart, and for a moment a bright light lit up the darkness in which his soul anguished. He took a ticket for Pavlovsk and was in an impatient hurry to leave; but something was certainly pursuing him, and this was a reality and not a fantasy, as he had perhaps been inclined to think. He was about to get on the train when he suddenly flung the just-purchased ticket to the floor and left the station again, confused and pensive. A short time later, in the street, it was as if he suddenly remembered, suddenly realized, something very strange, something that had long been bothering him. He was suddenly forced to catch himself consciously doing something that had been going on for a long time, but which he had not noticed till that minute: several hours ago, even in the Scales, and perhaps even before the Scales, he had begun now and then suddenly searching for something around him. And he would forget it, even for a long time, half an hour, and then suddenly turn again uneasily and search for something.

But he had only just noted to himself this morbid and till then quite unconscious movement, which had come over him so long ago, when there suddenly flashed before him another recollection that interested him extremely: he recalled that at the moment when he noticed that he kept searching around for something, he was standing on the sidewalk outside a shopwindow and looking with great curiosity at the goods displayed in the window. He now wanted to make absolutely sure: had he really been standing in front of that shopwindow just now, perhaps only five minutes ago, had he not imagined it or confused something? Did that shop and those goods really exist? For indeed he felt himself in an especially morbid mood that day, almost as he had felt formerly at the onset of the fits of his former illness. He knew that during this time before a fit he used to be extraordinarily absentminded and often

even confused objects and persons, unless he looked at them with especially strained attention. But there was also a special reason why he wanted very much to make sure that he had been standing in front of the shop: among the things displayed in the shopwindow there had been one that he had looked at and that he had even evaluated at sixty kopecks, he remembered that despite all his absentmindedness and anxiety. Consequently, if that shop existed and that thing was actually displayed among the goods for sale, it meant he had in fact stopped for that thing. Which meant that the thing had held such strong interest for him that it had attracted his attention even at the very time when he had left the railway station and had been so painfully confused. He walked along, looking to the right almost in anguish, his heart pounding with uneasy impatience. But here was the shop, he had found it at last! He had been five hundred paces away from it when he decided to go back. And here was that object worth sixty kopecks. "Of course, sixty kopecks, it's not worth more!" he repeated now and laughed. But he laughed hysterically; he felt very oppressed. He clearly recalled now that precisely here, standing in front of this window, he had suddenly turned, as he had earlier, when he had caught Rogozhin's eyes fixed on him. Having made sure that he was not mistaken (which, incidentally, he had been quite sure of even before checking), he abandoned the shop and quickly walked away from it. All this he absolutely had to think over quickly; it was now clear that he had not imagined anything at the station either, and that something absolutely real had happened to him, which was absolutely connected with all his earlier uneasiness. But some invincible inner loathing again got the upper hand: he did not want to think anything over, he did not think anything over; he fell to thinking about something quite different.

He fell to thinking, among other things, about his epileptic condition, that there was a stage in it just before the fit itself (if the fit occurred while he was awake), when suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of soul, the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as it were, and all his life's forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self-awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitation, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in a sort of sublime tranquillity, filled with serene, harmonious joy, and hope, filled with reason and

ultimate cause. But these moments, these glimpses were still only a presentiment of that ultimate second (never more than a second) from which the fit itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable. Reflecting on that moment afterwards, in a healthy state, he had often said to himself that all those flashes and glimpses of a higher self-sense and self-awareness, and therefore of the "highest being," were nothing but an illness, a violation of the normal state, and if so, then this was not the highest being at all but, on the contrary, should be counted as the very lowest. And yet he finally arrived at an extremely paradoxical conclusion: "So what if it is an illness?" he finally decided. "Who cares that it's an abnormal strain, if the result itself, if the moment of the sensation, remembered and examined in a healthy state, turns out to be the highest degree of harmony, beauty, gives a hitherto unheard-of and unknown feeling of fullness, measure, reconciliation, and an ecstatic, prayerful merging with the highest synthesis of life?" These vague expressions seemed quite comprehensible to him, though still too weak. That it was indeed "beauty and prayer," that it was indeed "the highest synthesis of life," he could not doubt, nor could he admit of any doubts. Was he dreaming some sort of abnormal and nonexistent visions at that moment, as from hashish, opium, or wine, which humiliate the reason and distort the soul? He could reason about it sensibly once his morbid state was over. Those moments were precisely only an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness– if there was a need to express this condition in a single word– self-awareness and at the same time a self-sense immediate in the highest degree. If in that second, that is, in the very last conscious moment before the fit, he had happened to succeed in saying clearly and consciously to himself: "Yes, for this moment one could give one's whole life!"—then surely this moment in itself was worth a whole life. ²²However, he did not insist on the dialectical part of his reasoning: dullness, darkness of soul, idiocy stood before him as the clear consequence of these "highest moments." Naturally, he was not about to argue in earnest. His reasoning, that is, his evaluation of this moment, undoubtedly contained an error, but all the same he was somewhat perplexed by the actuality of the sensation. What, in fact, was he to do with this actuality? Because it had happened, he had succeeded in saying to himself in that very second, that this second, in its boundless happiness, which he fully experienced, might perhaps be worth his whole life. "At that moment," as he had once said to Rogozhin in Moscow, when

they got together there, "at that moment I was somehow able to understand the extraordinary phrase that time shall be no more. ²³Probably," he had added, smiling, "it's the same second in which the jug of water overturned by the epileptic Muhammad did not have time to spill, while he had time during the same second to survey all the dwellings of Allah." ²⁴Yes, in Moscow he and Rogozhin had often gotten together and talked not only about that. "Rogozhin just said I was like a brother to him then; he said it today for the first time," the prince thought to himself.

He thought about that, sitting on a bench under a tree in the Summer Garden. It was around seven o'clock. The garden was deserted; something dark veiled the setting sun for a moment. It was sultry; it was like the distant foreboding of a thunderstorm. There was a sort of lure in his contemplative state right then. His memories and reason clung to every external object, and he liked that: he kept wanting to forget something present, essential, but with the first glance around him he at once recognized his dark thought again, the thought he had wanted so much to be rid of. He remembered talking earlier with a waiter in the hotel restaurant, over dinner, about an extremely strange recent murder, which had caused much noise and talk. But as soon as he remembered it, something peculiar suddenly happened to him again.

An extraordinary, irrepressible desire, almost a temptation, suddenly gripped his whole will. He got up from the bench and walked out of the garden straight to the Petersburg side. Earlier, on the Neva embankment, he had asked some passerby to point out to him the Petersburg side across the river. It had been pointed out to him, but he had not gone there then. And in any case there was no point in going today; he knew that. He had long known the address; he could easily find the house of Lebedev's relation; but he knew almost certainly that he would not find her at home. "She must have gone to Pavlovsk; otherwise Kolya would have left something at the Scales, as we arranged." And so, if he set off now, it was not, of course, in order to see her. A different, dark, tormenting curiosity tempted him. A new, sudden idea had come into his head . . .

But for him it was all too sufficient that he had set off and knew where he was going: a moment later he was walking along again, almost without noticing the way. It at once became terribly disgusting and almost impossible for him to think further about his "sudden idea." With tormentingly strained attention, he peered into

everything his eyes lighted upon, he looked at the sky, at the Neva. He addressed a little child he met. It may have been that his epileptic state was intensifying more and more. The thunderstorm, it seemed, was actually approaching, though slowly. Distant thunder had already begun. It was becoming very sultry . . .

For some reason, just as one sometimes recalls an importunate musical tune, tiresome to the point of silliness, he now kept recalling Lebedev's nephew, whom he had seen earlier. The strange thing was that he kept coming to his mind as the murderer Lebedev had mentioned when introducing the nephew to him. Yes, he had read about that murderer very recently. He had read and heard a great deal about such things since his arrival in Russia; he followed them persistently. And earlier he had even become much too interested in his conversation with the waiter about that murder of the Zhemarins. The waiter had agreed with him, he remembered that. He remembered the waiter, too. He was by no means a stupid fellow, grave and cautious, but "anyhow, God knows what he is. It's hard to figure out new people in a new land." He was beginning, however, to believe passionately in the Russian soul. Oh, he had endured so much, so much that was quite new to him in those six months, and unlooked-for, and unheard-of, and unexpected! But another man's soul is murky, and the Russian soul is murky; it is so for many. Here he had long been getting together with Rogozhin, close together, together in a "brotherly" way—but did he know Rogozhin? And anyhow, what chaos, what turmoil, what ugliness there sometimes is in all that! But even so, what a nasty and all-satisfied little pimple that nephew of Lebedev's is! But, anyhow, what am I saying? (the prince went on in his reverie). Was it he who killed those six beings, those six people? I seem to be mixing things up . . . how strange it is! My head is spinning . . . But what a sympathetic, what a sweet face Lebedev's elder daughter has, the one who stood there with the baby, what an innocent, what an almost childlike expression, and what almost childlike laughter! Strange that he had almost forgotten that face and remembered it only now. Lebedev, who stamps his feet at them, probably adores them all. But what is surest of all, like two times two, is that Lebedev also adores his nephew!

But anyhow, what was he doing making such a final judgment of them—he who had come only that day, what was he doing passing such verdicts? Lebedev himself had set him a problem today: had he expected such a Lebedev? Had he known such a

Lebedev before? Lebedev and Du Barry—oh, Lord! Anyhow, if Rogozhin kills, at least he won't kill in such a disorderly way. There won't be this chaos. A tool made to order from a sketch and six people laid out in complete delirium! ²⁵Does Rogozhin have a tool made from a sketch . . . does he have . . . but . . . has it been decided that Rogozhin will kill?! The prince gave a sudden start. "Isn't it a crime, isn't it mean on my part to make such a supposition with such cynical frankness?" he cried out, and a flush of shame all at once flooded his face. He was amazed, he stood as if rooted to the road. He remembered all at once the Pavlovsk station earlier, and the Nikolaevsk station earlier, and his direct question to Rogozhin about the eyes,and Rogozhin's cross that he was now wearing, and the blessing of his mother, to whom Rogozhin himself had brought him, and that last convulsive embrace, Rogozhin's last renunciation earlier on the stairs—and after all that to catch himself constantly searching for something around him, and that shopwindow, and that object. . . what meanness! And after all that he was now going with a "special goal," with a specific "sudden idea"! Despair and suffering seized his whole soul. The prince immediately wanted to go back to his hotel; he even turned around and set off; but a minute later he stopped, pondered, and went back the way he had been going.

Yes, and now he was on the Petersburg side, he was near the house; it was not with the former goal that he was going there now, not with any "special idea"! And how could it be! Yes, his illness was coming back, that was unquestionable; the fit might certainly come on him today. It was from the fit that all this darkness came, from the fit that the "idea" came as well! Now the darkness was dispersed, the demon was driven away, doubts did not exist, there was joy in his heart! And—it was so long since he had seen her,he had to see her, and . . . yes, he wished he could meet Rogozhin now, he would take him by the hand, and they would walk together . . . His heart was pure; was he any rival of Rogozhin? Tomorrow he would go himself and tell Rogozhin he had seen her; had he not flown here, as Rogozhin put it earlier, only in order to see her? Maybe he would find her at home, it was not certain that she was in Pavlovsk!

Yes, all this had to be clearly set down now, so that they could all clearly read in each other, so that there would be none of these dark and passionate renunciations, like Rogozhin's renunciation earlier, and let it all come about freely and . . . brightly. Is Rogozhin

not capable of brightness? He says he loves her in a different way, that there is no compassion in him, "no such pity." True, he added later that "your pity is maybe still worse than my love"—but he was slandering himself. Hm, Rogozhin over a book—isn't that already "pity," the beginning of "pity"? Isn't the very presence of this book a proof that he is fully conscious of his relations with her?And his story today? No, that's deeper than mere passion. Does her face inspire mere passion? And is that face even capable of inspiring passion now? It inspires suffering, it seizes the whole soul, it . . . and a burning, tormenting memory suddenly passed through the prince's heart.

Yes, tormenting. He remembered how he had been tormented recently, when for the first time he began to notice signs of insanity in her. What he experienced then was nearly despair. And how could he abandon her, when she then ran away from him to Rogozhin? He ought to have run after her himself, and not waited for news. But . . . can it be that Rogozhin still hasn't noticed any insanity in her? . . . Hm . . . Rogozhin sees other reasons for everything, passionate reasons! And what insane jealousy! What did he mean to say by his suggestion today? (The prince suddenly blushed and something shook, as it were, in his heart.)

Anyhow, why recall it? There was insanity on both sides here. And for him, the prince, to love this woman passionately—was almost unthinkable, would almost be cruelty, inhumanity. Yes, yes! No, Rogozhin was slandering himself; he has an immense heart, which is capable of passion and compassion. When he learns the whole truth and when he becomes convinced of what a pathetic creature this deranged, half-witted woman is—won't he then forgive her all the past, all his suffering? Won't he become her servant, her brother, friend, providence? Compassion will give meaning and understanding to Rogozhin himself. Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind. Oh, how unpardonably and dishonorably guilty he was before Rogozhin! No, it's not that "the Russian soul is murky," but the murkiness was in his own soul, if he could imagine such a horror. For a few warm and heartfelt words in Moscow, Rogozhin called him brother, while he . . . But this is illness and delirium! It will all be resolved! . . . How gloomily Rogozhin said today that he was "losing his faith"! The man must be suffering greatly. He says he "likes looking at that painting"; he doesn't like it, it means he feels a need. Rogozhin is not only a passionate soul; he's a fighter after all: he wants to

recover his lost faith by force. He needs it now to the point of torment. . . Yes! to believe in something! to believe in somebody! But still, how strange that Holbein painting is . . . Ah, this is the street! And this should be the house, yes, it is, No. 16, "house of Mrs. Filissov, collegiate secretary's widow." Here! The prince rang and asked for Nastasya Filippovna.

The woman of the house herself told him that Nastasya Filippovna had left for Darya Alexeevna's place in Pavlovsk that morning "and it may even happen, sir, that the lady will stay there for several days." Mrs. Filissov was a small, sharp-eyed, and sharp-faced woman of about forty, with a sly and intent gaze. To her question as to his name—a question to which she seemed intentionally to give a tinge of mysteriousness—the prince at first did not want to reply; but he came back at once and insisted that his name be given to Nastasya Filippovna. Mrs. Filissov received this insistence with increased attention and with an extraordinarily secretive air, which was evidently intended to indicate that "you needn't worry, I've understood, sir." The prince's name obviously impressed her greatly. The prince looked at her distractedly, turned, and went back to his hotel. But he left looking not at all the same as when he had rung at Mrs. Filissov's door. Again, and as if in one instant, an extraordinary change came over him: again he walked along pale, weak, suffering, agitated; his knees trembled, and a vague, lost smile wandered over his blue lips: his "sudden idea" had suddenly been confirmed and justified, and—again he believed in his demon!

But had it been confirmed? Had it been justified? Why this trembling again, this cold sweat, this gloom and inner cold? Was it because he had just seen those eyesagain? But had he not left the Summer Garden with the sole purpose of seeing them? That was what his "sudden idea" consisted in. He insistently wanted to see "today's eyes," so as to be ultimately certain that he would meet them therewithout fail, near that house. That had been his convulsive desire, and why, then, was he so crushed and astounded now, when he really saw them? As if he had not expected it! Yes, they were those sameeyes (and there was no longer any doubt that they were the same!)that had flashed at him that morning, in the crowd, as he was getting off the train at the Nikolaevsk station; the same eyes (perfectly the same!) whose flashing gaze he had caught later that day behind his back, as he was sitting in a chair at Rogozhin's. Rogozhin had denied it; he had asked with a twisted,