Текст книги "The Idiot"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Joseph frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous fears, 1865-1871,Princeton University Press, 1995. The volume of Frank's major five-volume literary-historical study that covers the period of composition of The Idiot.
bruce a. French, Dostoevsky's "Idiot": Dialogue and the Spiritually Good Life,Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 2001. rené Girard, Fyodor Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground,tr. J. Williams, Crossroads, New York, 1997. An English translation of Girard's 1963 essay Dostoïevski: du double à l'unité,indispensable for its commentary on the erotic/mimetic aspects of Dostoevsky's work. romano guardini, Der Mensch und der Glaube: Versuche iiber die religiose Existenz in Dostojewskijsgrossen Romanen,Hegner, Leipzig, 1932. (French translation: L'Univers religieux de Dostoïevski,Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1947.) An important interpretation of the Christian structure of Dostoevsky's work as a whole, never translated into English. vyacheslav ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky,tr. Norman Cameron, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1968. A classic study of Dostoevsky by one of the major Russian symbolist poets.
liza knapp (éd.), Dostoevsky's "The Idiot": A Critical Companion,Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1998.
olga meerson, Dostoevsky's Taboos,Studies of the Harriman Institute, Dresden University Press, Dresden-Munich, 1998. study of the meta-psychology of tabooing and the meanings of the unsaid in Dostoevsky.
robin feuer miller, Dostoevsky and "The Idiot": Author, Narrator, and Reader,Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1981.
Konstantin mochulsky, Dostoevsky, His Life and Work,tr. Michael A. Minihan, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1967. The work of a distinguished émigré scholar, first published in 1947 and still the best critical biography of Dostoevsky.
Harriet murav, Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky's Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique,Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992. george pattison and diane OENNING Thompson, Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001.
edward wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Notebooks for "The Idiot",tr. Katherine Strelsky, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967. Dostoevsky's notebooks and drafts in preparation for writing The Idiot.
CHRONOLOGY
DATE
AUTHOR'S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1821
Born in Moscow.
1823-31
Pushkin: Evgeny Onegin.
1825
1830
Stendhal: Le Rouge et le Noir.
1833-7
At school in Moscow.
1834
Family purchases estate of Darovoe.
Pushkin: The Queen of Spades.
1835
Balzac: Le Père Goriot.
1836
Gogol: The Government Inspector.
l837
Death of mother.
Enters St Petersburg Academy
of Military Engineering.
Dickens: Pickwick Papers.Death of Pushkin in duel.
1839
Death of father, assumed murdered by serfs.
Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme.
1840
Lermontov: A Hero of Our Time.
1841
Death of Lermontov in duel.
1842
Gogol: Dead Soulsand The Overcoat.
1844
Graduates, but resigns commission in order to pursue literary career.
1845
Completes Poor Folk– acclaimed by the critic Belinsky.
1846
Publication of Poor Folkand The Double.
1847
Breaks with Belinsky. Joins Petrashevsky circle. "The Landlady", "A Novel in Nine Letters", "A Petersburg Chronicle".
Herzen: Who is to Blame?Herzen leaves Russia. Goncharov: An Ordinary Story.
1848
"A Faint Heart" and "White
Nights".
Death of Belinsky. Thackeray: Vanity Fair.
1849
Netochka Nezvanova.Arrested and imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress. Mock execution. Sentenced to hard labour and Siberian exile.
DATE
AUTHOR'S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1850
Arrives at Omsk penal colony.
Turgenev: A Month in the Country.Herzen: From the Other Shore.Dickens: David Copperfield.
1851
1852
Tolstoy: Childhood.Turgenev: A Sportsman's Notebook.Death of Gogol.
1853-6
1854
Posted to Semipalatinsk.
1855
1856
Turgenev: Rudin.
1857
Marries Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva.
Flaubert: Madame Bovary.Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal.
1859
The Friend of the Family.Returns to St Petersburg.
Turgenev: A Nest of Gentlefolk.Goncharov: Oblomov.Tolstoy: Family Happiness.Darwin: The Origin of Species.
1860
Starts publication of House of the Dead.
Turgenev: On the Eve.
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss.
Birth of Chekhov.
1861
Timecommences publication. The Insulted and Injured.
Dickens: Great Expectations.
1862
Travels in Europe. Affair with Polina Suslova.
Turgenev: Fathers and Children.Hugo: Les Misérables.Chernyshevsky arrested.
1863
Further travel abroad. Timeclosed. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.
Tolstoy: The Cossacks.Chernyshevsky: What is to be . Done?
1864
Launch of The Epoch.Death of wife and brother. Notes from Underground.
1865
The Epochcloses. Severe financial difficulties.
Dickens: Our Mutual Friend.
1865-9
Tolstoy: War and Peace.
1866
(Mme and Punishment. The Gambler.
1867
Marries Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Flees abroad to escape creditors.
Turgenev: Smoke.
1868
The Idiot.Birth and death of daughter, Sonya. Visits Switzerland and Italy.
1869
Birth of daughter Liubov.
Flaubert: L'Education sentimentale.
DATE
AUTHOR'S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1870
The Eternal Husband.
Death of Dickens and Herzen.
1871
Returns to St Petersburg. ' Birth of son, Fyodor.
1871-
Demons (The Devils/The Possessed).
1872
Summer in Staraia Russa -becomes normal summer residence. Becomes editor of The Citizen.
Marx's Das Kapitalpublished
in Russia.
George Eliot: Middlemarch.
1873
Starts Diary of a Writer.
1874
Resigns from The Citizen.Seeks treatment for emphysema in Bad Ems.
1875
A Raw Youth.
1875-8
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina.
1876
1877
Turgenev: Virgin Soil.
1878
Birth and death of son, Alexey. Visits Optina monastery with Vladimir Solovyov.
1879
1879-80
The Brothers Karamazov.
Tolstoy's religious crisis, during which he writes A Confession.
1880
Speech at Pushkin celebrations in Moscow.
Death of Flaubert and George Eliot.
1881
Dies of lung haemorrhage. Buried at Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St Petersburg.
TRANSLATORS' NOTES
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father's first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic. Diminutives are commonly used among family and intimate friends; they have two forms, the familiar and the casual or disrespectful; thus Varvara Ivolgin is called Varya in her family, but Varka by her little brother. A shortened form of the patronymic (i.e., Ivanych for Ivanovich, or Pavlych for Pavlovich), used only in speech, also suggests a certain familiarity. In the following list, stressed syllables are marked. In Russian pronunciation, the stressed vowel is always long, and the unstressed vowels are very short.
Myshkin, Prince Lev Nikoláevich
Baráshkov, Nastásya Filippovna (Nâstya)
Rogôzhin, Parfyôn Semyônovich
Epanchin, General Iván Fyódorovich
_______, Elizavéta (Lizavéta) Prokófyevna
_______, Alexándra Ivánovna
_______, Adelaída Ivánovna
_______, Agláya Ivanovna
Ívolgin, General Ardalión Alexándrovich
_______, Nína Alexándrovna
_______, Gavríla Ardaliónovich (Gánya, Gánechka, Gánka)
_______, Varvára Ardaliónovna (Várya, Várka)
_______, Nikolái Ardaliónovich (Kólya)
Lébedev, Lukyân Timoféevich
_______,Véra Lukyânovna
Teréntyev, Ippolit (no patronymic)
Ptítsyn, Ivân Petrôvich (Vánka)
Radômsky, Evgény Pávlovich
Shch., Prince (no first name, patronymic, or last name)
Tótsky, Afanâsy Ivanovich
Ferdyshchenko (no first name or patronymic)
Keller, Lieutenant, ret. ("the fist gentleman"; no first name
or patronymic) Pavlishchev, Nikolái Andréevich
Dárya Alexéevna ("the sprightly lady"; no last name) Burdôvsky, Antip (no patronymic) Belokónsky, Princess ("old Belokonsky"; no first name or
patronymic)
A NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ST PETERSBURG
The city was founded in the early eighteenth century by a decree of the emperor Peter the Great. It is built on the delta of the river Neva, which divides into three main branches: the Big Neva, the Little Neva, the Nevka. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, where the government buildings, the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Summer Palace and Summer Garden, the theaters, and the main thoroughfares such as Nevsky Prospect and Liteiny Prospect (Liteinaya Street in Dostoevsky's time) are located. Here, too, were the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky quarters, named for army regiments stationed there. On the right bank of the Neva before it divides is the area known as the Vyborg side; on the right bank between the Nevka and the Little Neva is the Petersburg side, where the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest structure of the city, stands; between the Little Neva and the Big Neva is Vassilievsky Island. Further north are smaller islands such as Kamenny Island and Elagin Island, which were then mainly garden suburbs. To the south, some fifteen or twenty miles from the city, are the suburbs of Tsarskoe Selo ("the Tsar's Village") and Pavlovsk, where much of the action of The Idiottakes place.
THE IDIOT
PART ONE
I
Towards the end of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o'clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows. Among the passengers there were some who were returning from abroad; but the third-class compartments were more crowded, and they were all petty business folk from not far away. Everyone was tired, as usual, everyone's eyes had grown heavy overnight, everyone was chilled, everyone's face was pale yellow, matching the color of the fog.
In one of the third-class carriages, at dawn, two passengers found themselves facing each other just by the window—both young men, both traveling light, both unfashionably dressed, both with rather remarkable physiognomies, and both, finally, willing to get into conversation with each other. If they had known what was so remarkable about the one and the other at that moment, they would certainly have marveled at the chance that had so strangely seated them facing each other in the third-class carriage of the Petersburg-Warsaw train. One of them was of medium height, about twenty-seven years old, with curly, almost black hair, and small but fiery gray eyes. He had a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones; his thin lips were constantly twisting into a sort of impudent, mocking, and even malicious smile; but his forehead was high and well formed and made up for the lack of nobility in the lower part of his face. Especially notable was the deathly pallor of his face, which gave the young man's whole physiognomy an exhausted look, despite his rather robust build, and at the same time suggested something passionate, to the point of suffering, which was out of harmony with his insolent and coarse smile and his sharp, self-satisfied gaze. He was warmly dressed in an ample lambskin coat covered with black cloth and had not been cold during the night, while his neighbor had been forced to bear on his chilled back all the sweetness of a damp Russian November
night, for which he was obviously not prepared. He was wearing a rather ample and thick sleeveless cloak with an enormous hood, the sort often worn by winter travelers somewhere far abroad, in Switzerland or northern Italy, for instance, certainly not reckoning on such long distances as from Eydkuhnen 1to Petersburg. But what was proper and quite satisfactory in Italy turned out to be not entirely suitable to Russia. The owner of the cloak with the hood was a young man, also about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, slightly taller than average, with very blond, thick hair, sunken cheeks, and a sparse, pointed, nearly white little beard. His eyes were big, blue, and intent; their gaze had something quiet but heavy about it and was filled with that strange expression by which some are able to guess at first sight that the subject has the falling sickness. The young man's face, however, was pleasant, fine, and dry, but colorless, and now even blue with cold. From his hands dangled a meager bundle made of old, faded foulard, containing, apparently, all his traveling possessions. On his feet he had thick-soled shoes with gaiters—all not the Russian way. His black-haired companion in the lambskin coat took all this in, partly from having nothing to do, and finally asked, with that tactless grin which sometimes expresses so unceremoniously and carelessly people's pleasure in their neighbor's misfortunes:
"Chilly?"
And he hunched his shoulders.
"Very," his companion replied with extreme readiness, "and note that this is a warm spell. What if it were freezing? It didn't even occur to me that it was so cold at home. I'm unaccustomed to it."
"Coming from abroad, are you?"
"Yes, from Switzerland."
"Whew! Fancy that! ..."
The black-haired man whistled and laughed.
They got to talking. The readiness of the blond young man in the Swiss cloak to answer all his swarthy companion's questions was astonishing and betrayed no suspicion of the utter carelessness, idleness, and impropriety of some of the questions. In answering them he said, among other things, that he had indeed been away from Russia for a long time, more than four years, that he had been sent abroad on account of illness, some strange nervous illness like the falling sickness or St. Vitus's dance, some sort of trembling and convulsions. Listening to him, the swarthy man grinned several
times; he laughed particularly when, to his question: "And did they cure you?" the blond man answered: "No, they didn't."
"Heh! Got all that money for nothing, and we go believing them," the swarthy man remarked caustically.
"That's the real truth!" a poorly dressed gentleman who was sitting nearby broke into the conversation—some sort of encrusted copying clerk, about forty years old, strongly built, with a red nose and a pimply face, "the real truth, sir, they just draw all Russian forces to themselves for nothing!"
"Oh, you're quite wrong in my case," the Swiss patient picked up in a soft and conciliatory voice. "Of course, I can't argue, because I don't know everything, but my doctor gave me some of his last money for the trip and kept me there for almost two years at his own expense."
"What, you mean there was nobody to pay?" asked the swarthy man.
"Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported me there, died two years ago. Then I wrote here to General Epanchin's wife, my distant relation, but I got no answer. So with that I've come back."
"Come back where, though?"
"You mean where will I be staying? ... I don't really know yet . . . so . . ."
"You haven't decided yet?"
And both listeners burst out laughing again.
"And I supppose that bundle contains your whole essence?" the swarthy man asked.
"I'm ready to bet it does," the red-nosed clerk picked up with an extremely pleased air, "and that there's no further belongings in the baggage car—though poverty's no vice, that again is something one can't help observing."
It turned out to be so: the blond young man acknowledged it at once and with extraordinary alacrity.
"Your bundle has a certain significance all the same," the clerk went on after they had laughed their fill (remarkably, the owner of the bundle, looking at them, finally started laughing himself, which increased their merriment), "and though you can bet it doesn't contain any imported gold packets of napoleondors or fried-richsdors, or any Dutch yellow boys, 2a thing that might be deduced merely from the gaiters enclosing your foreign shoes, but ... if to your bundle we were to add some such supposed relation as General Epanchin's wife, then your bundle would take on a
somewhat different significance, naturally only in the case that General Epanchin's wife is indeed your relation, and you didn't make a mistake out of absentmindedness . . . which is quite, quite human . . . well, say . . . from an excess of imagination."
"Oh, you've guessed right again," the blond young man picked up. "I am indeed almost mistaken, that is, she's almost not my relation; so that I really wasn't surprised in the least when they didn't answer me there. I even expected it."
"Wasted your money franchising the letter for nothing. Hm . . . but at any rate you're simple-hearted and sincere, which is commendable! Hm . . . and General Epanchin we know, sir, essentially because he's a generally known man. And the late Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported you in Switzerland, we also knew, sir, if it was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev, because there were two cousins. The other one is still in the Crimea, but the deceased Nikolai Andreevich was a respectable man, and with connections, and owned four thousand souls 3in his time, sir . . ."
"Just so, his name was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev," and, having responded, the young man looked intently and inquisitively at Mr. Know-it-all.
These Mr. Know-it-alls are occasionally, even quite frequently, to be met with in a certain social stratum. They know everything, all the restless inquisitiveness of their minds and all their abilities are turned irresistibly in one direction, certainly for lack of more important life interests and perspectives, as a modern thinker would say. The phrase "they know all" implies, however, a rather limited sphere: where so-and-so works, who he is acquainted with, how much he is worth, where he was governor, who he is married to, how much his wife brought him, who his cousins are, who his cousins twice removed are, etc., etc., all in the same vein. For the most part these know-it-alls go about with holes at the elbows and earn a salary of seventeen roubles a month. The people whose innermost secrets they know would, of course, be unable to understand what interests guide them, and yet many of them are positively consoled by this knowledge that amounts to a whole science; they achieve self-respect and even the highest spiritual satisfaction. Besides, it is a seductive science. I have known scholars, writers, poets, political activists who sought and found their highest peace and purpose in this science, who positively made their careers by it alone. During this whole conversation the swarthy young man kept yawning, looking aimlessly out of the window and waiting
impatiently for the end of the journey. He seemed somehow distracted, very distracted, all but alarmed, was even becoming somehow strange: sometimes he listened without listening, looked without looking, laughed without always knowing or understanding himself why he was laughing.
"But, excuse me, with whom do I have the honor . . ." the pimply gentleman suddenly addressed the blond young man with the bundle.
"Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin," the other replied with full and immediate readiness.
"Prince Myshkin? Lev Nikolaevich? Don't know it, sir. Never even so much as heard it, sir," the clerk replied, pondering. "I don't mean the name, the name's historical, it can and should be found in Karamzin's History, 4 I mean the person, sir, there's no Prince Myshkins to be met with anywhere, and even the rumors have died out."
"Oh, that's certain!" the prince answered at once. "There are no Prince Myshkins at all now except me; it seems I'm the last one. And as for our fathers and grandfathers, we've even had some farmers among them. My father, however, was a second lieutenant in the army, from the junkers. 5But I don't know in what way Mrs. Epanchin also turns out to be Princess Myshkin, also the last in her line . . ."
"Heh, heh, heh! The last in her line. Heh, heh! What a way to put it," the clerk tittered.
The swarthy man also smiled. The blond man was slightly surprised that he had managed to make a pun, though a rather bad one.
"And imagine, I never thought what I was saying," he finally explained in surprise.
"That's clear, that's clear, sir," the clerk merrily agreed.
"And say, Prince, did you do any studying there at your professor's?" the swarthy man suddenly asked.
"Yes . . . I did . . ."
"And me, I never studied anything."
"Well, I only did a little of this and that," the prince added, almost apologetically. "They found it impossible to educate me systematically because of my illness."
"You know the Rogozhins?" the swarthy man asked quickly.
"No, not at all. I know very few people in Russia. Are you a Rogozhin?"
"Yes, I'm Parfyon Rogozhin."
"Parfyon? You're not from those same Rogozhins . . ." the clerk began with increased importance.
"Yes, the same, the very same," the swarthy man interrupted quickly and with impolite impatience; he had, incidentally, never once addressed the pimply clerk, but from the very beginning had talked only to the prince.
"But . . . can it be?" The clerk was astonished to the point of stupefaction, his eyes nearly popped out, and his whole face at once began to compose itself into something reverent and obsequious, even frightened. "Of that same Semyon Parfyonovich Rogozhin, the hereditary honorary citizen 6who died about a month ago and left two and a half million in capital?"
"And how do you know he left two and a half million in pure capital?" the swarthy man interrupted, this time also not deigning to glance at the clerk. "Just look!" he winked at the prince. "And what's the good of them toadying like that straight off? It's true my parent died, and I'm coming home from Pskov a month later all but bootless. Neither my brother, the scoundrel, nor my mother sent me any money or any notice—nothing! Like a dog! Spent the whole month in Pskov in delirium ..."
"And now you've got a nice little million or more coming, and that's at the least—oh, Lord!" the clerk clasped his hands.
"Well, what is it to him, pray tell me!" Rogozhin nodded towards him again irritably and spitefully. "I won't give you a kopeck, even if you walk upside down right here in front of me."
"And I will, I will."
"Look at that! No, I won't give you anything, not even if you dance a whole week for it!"
"Don't give me anything! Don't! It serves me right! But I will dance. I'll leave my wife, my little children, and dance before you. Be nice, be nice!"
"Pah!" the swarthy man spat. "Five weeks ago," he turned to the prince, "I ran away from my parent to my aunt in Pskov, like you, with nothing but a little bundle; I fell into delirium there, and while I was gone he up and died. Hit by a stroke. Memory eternal to the deceased, 7but he almost did me in before then! By God, Prince, believe me! If I hadn't run away, he'd have done me to death."
"Did you do something to make him angry?" the prince responded, studying the millionaire in the lambskin coat with some special curiosity. But though there might well have been something
noteworthy in the million itself and in receiving an inheritance, the prince was surprised and intrigued by something else; besides, Rogozhin himself, for some reason, was especially eager to make the prince his interlocutor, though the need for an interlocutor seemed more mechanical than moral; somehow more from distraction than from simple-heartedness; from anxiety, from agitation, just to look at someone and wag his tongue about something. It seemed he was still delirious, or at least in a fever. As for the clerk, the man simply hovered over Rogozhin, not daring to breathe, catching and weighing every word as if searching for diamonds.
"Angry, yes, he was angry, and maybe rightly," Rogozhin replied, "but it was my brother who really got me. About my mother there's nothing to say, she's an old woman, reads the Menaion, 8sits with the old crones, and whatever brother Senka decides, so it goes. But why didn't he let me know in time? We understand that, sir! True, I was unconscious at the time. They also say a telegram was sent. But the telegram happened to come to my aunt. And she's been widowed for thirty years and sits with the holy fools 9from morning till evening. A nun, or not a nun but worse still. She got scared of the telegram and took it to the police station without opening it, and so it's been lying there ever since. Only Konev, Vassily Vassilyich, rescued me. He wrote about everything. At night my brother cut the gold tassels off the brocade cover on the old man's coffin: 'They cost a whole lot of money,' he says. But for that alone he could go to Siberia if I want, because that's a blasphemy. Hey, you, scarecrow!" he turned to the clerk. "What's the law: is it a blasphemy?"
"A blasphemy! A blasphemy!" the clerk agreed at once.
"Meaning Siberia?"
"Siberia! Siberia! Straight off to Siberia!"
"They keep thinking I'm still sick," Rogozhin continued to the prince, "but without saying a word, secretly, I got on the train, still sick, and I'm coming. Open the gates, brother Semyon Semyonych! He said things to the old man about me, I know it. And it's true I really irritated the old man then, on account of Nastasya Filippovna. That's my own doing. Sin snared me."
"On account of Nastasya Filippovna?" the clerk said obsequiously, as if realizing something.
"You don't know her!" Rogozhin shouted at him impatiently.
"Or maybe I do!" the clerk replied triumphantly.
"Well, now! As if there's so few Nastasya Filippovnas! And what
a brazen creature you are, I tell you! I just knew some creature like him would cling to me at once!" he continued to the prince.
"Or maybe I do know her, sir!" the clerk fidgeted. "Lebedev knows! You, Your Highness, are pleased to reproach me, but what if I prove it? It's the same Nastasya Filippovna on account of whom your parent wanted to admonish you with a blackthorn stick, and Nastasya Filippovna is Barashkov, she's even a noble lady, so to speak, and also a sort of princess, and she keeps company with a certain Totsky, Afanasy Ivanovich, exclusively with him alone, a landowner and a big capitalist, a member of companies and societies, and great friends on that account with General Epanchin . . ."
"Aha, so that's how you are!" Rogozhin was really surprised at last. "Pah, the devil, so he does know."
"He knows everything! Lebedev knows everything! I, Your Highness, spent two months driving around with Alexashka Likhachev, and also after your parent's death, and I know everything, meaning every corner and back alley, and in the end not a step is taken without Lebedev. Nowadays he's abiding in debtor's prison, but before that I had occasion to know Armance, and Coralie, and Princess Patsky, and Nastasya Filippovna, and I had occasion to know a lot more besides."
"Nastasya Filippovna? Are she and Likhachev ..." Rogozhin looked at him spitefully, his lips even turned pale and trembled.
"N-nothing! N-n-nothing! Nothing at all!" the clerk caught himself and quickly hurried on. "That is, Likhachev couldn't get her for any amount of money! No, it's not like with Armance. There's only Totsky. And in the evening, at the Bolshoi or the French Theater, 10she sits in her own box. The officers say all kinds of things among themselves, but even they can't prove anything: 'There's that same Nastasya Filippovna,' they say, and that's all; but concerning the rest—nothing! Because there's nothing to say."
"That's how it all is," Rogozhin scowled and confirmed gloomily. "Zalyozhev told me the same thing then. That time, Prince, I was running across Nevsky Prospect in my father's three-year-old coat, and she was coming out of a shop, getting into a carriage. Burned me right through. I meet Zalyozhev, there's no comparing me with him, he looks like a shopkeeper fresh from the barber's, with a lorgnette in his eye, while the old man has us flaunting tarred boots and eating meatless cabbage soup. That's no match for you, he says, that's a princess, and she's called Nastasya Filippovna, family name
Barashkov, and she lives with Totsky, and now Totsky doesn't know how to get rid of her, because he's reached the prime of life, he's fifty-five, and wants to marry the foremost beauty in all Petersburg. And then he let on that I could see Nastasya Filippovna that night at the Bolshoi Theater, at the ballet, in her own box, in the baignoire, sitting there. With our parent, just try going to the ballet—it'll end only one way—he'll kill you! But, anyhow, I ran over for an hour on the quiet and saw Nastasya Filippovna again; didn't sleep all that night. The next morning the deceased gives me two five percent notes, five thousand roubles each, and says go and sell them, take seven thousand five hundred to the Andreevs' office, pay them, and bring me what's left of the ten thousand without stopping anywhere; I'll be waiting for you. I cashed the notes all right, took the money, but didn't go to the Andreevs' office, I went to the English shop without thinking twice, chose a pair of pendants with a diamond almost the size of a nut in each of them, and left owing them four hundred roubles—told them my name and they trusted me. I went to Zalyozhev with the pendants. Thus and so, brother, let's go and see Nastasya Filippovna. Off we went. What was under my feet then, what was in front of me, what was to the sides—I don't know or remember any of it. We walked right into her drawing room, she came out to us herself. I didn't tell her then that it was me, but Zalyozhev says, 'This is for you from Parfyon Rogozhin, in memory of meeting you yesterday. Be so good as to accept it.' She opened it, looked, smiled: 'Thank your friend Mr. Rogozhin for his kind attention,' she said, bowed, and went out. Well, why didn't I die right then! If I went at all, it was only because I thought, 'Anyway, I won't come back alive!' And what offended me most was that that beast Zalyozhev had it all for himself. I'm short and dressed like a boor, and I stand silently staring at her because I'm embarrassed, and he's all so fashionable, pomaded and curled, red-cheeked, in a checkered tie—fawning on her, bowing to her, and it's sure she took him for me! 'Well,' I say when we've left, 'don't you go getting any ideas on me, understand?' He laughs: And what kind of accounting will you give Semyon Parfyonych now?' The truth is I wanted to drown myself right then, without going home, but I thought: 'It makes no difference,' and like a cursed man I went home."
