Текст книги "The Idiot"

shod foreign-style in gaiters and shivering in his unlined little overcoat, returned during the winter to Russia from Switzerland, where he was being treated for idiocy (sic!). It must be admitted that he was fortunately lucky, so that, to say nothing of his interesting illness, for which he was being treated in Switzerland (can one really be treated for idiocy, who could imagine it?!!), he might prove in himself the truthfulness of the Russian saying: a certain category of people is lucky! Consider for yourselves: left a nursing infant after the death of his father, said to have been a lieutenant who died under investigation for the unexpected disappearance of all the company funds during a card game, or perhaps for administering an overdose of birching to a subordinate (remember the old days, gentlemen!), our baron was taken out of charity to be brought up by a certain very rich Russian landowner. This Russian landowner—let's call him P.—in the former golden age the owner of four thousand bonded souls (bonded souls! do you understand this expression, gentlemen? I don't. I must consult a dictionary: 'The memory is fresh, but it's hard to believe' ³⁶), was apparently one of those Russian lie-a-beds and parasites who spend their idle lives abroad, at spas in the summer, and in the Parisian Château des Fleurs in the winter, where they left boundless sums in their time. One may state positively that at least a third of the quittent from all former bonded estates went to the owner of the Parisian Château des Fleurs (there was a lucky man!). Be that as it may, the carefree P. raised the orphaned young gentleman in a princely way, hired tutors for him, and governesses (pretty ones, no doubt), whom, incidentally, he brought from Paris himself. But this last scion of a noble family was an idiot. The Château des Fleurs governesses were no help, and till the age of twenty our boy never learned to speak any language, not excluding Russian. This last fact, incidentally, is forgivable. In the end, the fantasy came into P.'s Russian serf-owning head that the idiot could be taught reason in Switzerland—a logical fantasy, incidentally: as a parasite and proprietor, he would naturally imagine that even reason could be bought in the market for money, all the more so in Switzerland. Five years passed under treatment in Switzerland with some well-known professor, and the money spent was in the thousands: the idiot, naturally, did not become intelligent, but they say in any case he began to resemble a human being—only just, no doubt. Suddenly P. up and dies. There's no will, naturally; his affairs are, as usual, in disorder; there's a heap of greedy heirs, who don't care

a straw about the last scion of any family being treated for family idiocy in Switzerland out of charity. The scion, though an idiot, tried all the same to cheat his professor, and they say he went on being treated gratis for two years, concealing the death of his benefactor from him. But the professor was quite a charlatan himself; at last, fearing the insolvency and, worse still, the appetite of his twenty-five-year-old parasite, he shod him in his old gaiters, gave him a bedraggled overcoat, and charitably sent him, third-class, nach Russland*—off his hands and out of Switzerland. It would seem luck had turned its back on our hero. Not a whit, sir: fortune, who starves whole provinces to death, showers all her gifts at once on the little aristocrat, like Krylov's 'Stormcloud' ³⁷that passed over the parched field and drenched the ocean. At almost the same moment as his arrival in Petersburg from Switzerland, a relation of his mother (who, naturally, was of merchant stock), a childless old bachelor, a merchant, bearded and an Old Believer, dies, leaving an inheritance of several million, indisputable, round, in ready cash—and (oh, if only it were you and me, dear reader!) it all goes to our scion, it all goes to our baron, who was treated for idiocy in Switzerland! Well, now they started playing a different tune. Around our baron in gaiters, who was chasing after a certain kept woman and beauty, a whole crowd of friends and intimates gathered, some relations even turned up, and most of all whole crowds of noble maidens, hungering and thirsting after lawful wedlock, and what could be better: an aristocrat, a millionaire, and an idiot—all qualities at once, you wouldn't find such a husband with a lamp in broad daylight, not even made to order! . . ."

"This . . . this I do not understand!" cried Ivan Fyodorovich in the highest degree of indignation.

"Stop it, Kolya!" the prince cried in a pleading voice. Exclamations came from all sides.

"Read it! Read it despite all!" snapped Lizaveta Prokofyevna, obviously making an extreme effort to control herself. "Prince! if the reading is stopped, we shall quarrel."

There was nothing to be done. Kolya, all worked up, red-faced, in agitation, went on reading in an agitated voice:

"But while our fresh-baked millionaire was soaring, so to speak, in the empyrean, a completely extraneous circumstance occurred. One fine morning a visitor comes to him with a calm and stern face,

*To Russia.

with courteous but dignified and just speech, dressed modestly and nobly, with an obvious progressive tinge to his thinking, and explains in a few words the reason for his visit: he is a well-known lawyer; a certain young man has entrusted him with a case; he has come on his behalf. This young man was no more nor less than the son of the late P., though he bore a different name. The lascivious P., having seduced in his youth a poor, honest girl, a household serf but with European education (in part this was, naturally, a matter of baronial rights under the former serfdom), and having noticed the unavoidable but immediate consequences of his liaison, hastened to give her in marriage to a certain man, something of a dealer and even a functionary, of noble character, who had long been in love with this girl. At first he assisted the newlyweds; but soon the husband's noble character denied him the acceptance of this assistance. Time passed and P. gradually forgot the girl and the son he had had by her, and then, as we know, he died without leaving any instructions. Meanwhile his son, born in lawful wedlock, but raised under a different name and fully adopted by the noble character of his mother's husband, who had nevertheless died in the course of time, was left with no support but himself and with an ailing, suffering, crippled mother in one of our remote provinces; he himself earned money in the capital by daily noble labor, giving lessons to merchants' children, thus supporting himself through high school and then as an auditor at useful lectures, having a further purpose in mind. But how much can one earn from a Russian merchant for ten-kopeck lessons, and that with an ailing, crippled mother besides, whose death, finally, in her remote province, hardly made things any easier for him? Now a question: how should our scion have reasoned in all fairness? You think, of course, dear reader, that he spoke thus to himself: 'All my life I have enjoyed all sorts of gifts from P.; tens of thousands were spent on my upbringing, on governesses, and on my treatment for idiocy in Switzerland; and here I am now with millions, while the noble character of P.'s son, in no way guilty in the trespass of his frivolous and forgetful father, is perishing giving lessons. Everything that went to me should rightfully have gone to him. Those enormous sums spent on me were essentially not mine. It was merely a blind error of fortune; they were owing to P.'s son. He should have gotten them, not I—creature of a fantastic whim of the frivolous and forgetful P. If I were fully noble, delicate, and just, I ought to give his son half of my inheritance; but since I am first of all a calculating man and understand only too well that

it is not a legal matter, I will not give him half of my millions. But all the same it would be much too base and shameless (and ill calculated as well, the scion forgot that) on my part, if I did not now return to his son those tens of thousands that P. spent on my idiocy. Here it's not only a matter of conscience and justice! For what would have happened to me if P. had not taken charge of my upbringing, but had concerned himself with his son instead of me?'

"But no, gentlemen! Our scions do not reason that way. No matter how the lawyer presented the young man, saying that he had undertaken to solicit for him solely out of friendship and almost against his will, almost by force, no matter how he pictured for him the duties of honor, nobility, justice, and even simple calculation, the Swiss ward remained inflexible, and what then? All that would be nothing, but here is what was indeed unforgivable and inexcusable by any interesting illness: this millionaire, barely out of his professor's gaiters, could not even grasp that it was not charity or assistance that the young man's noble character, killing himself with lessons, asked of him, but his right and his due, though not juridically so, and he was not even asking, but his friends were merely soliciting for him. With a majestic air, intoxicated by the opportunity offered him to crush people with impunity by his millions, our scion takes out a fifty-rouble note and sends it to the noble young man in the guise of insolent charity. You do not believe it, gentlemen? You are indignant, you are insulted, a cry of resentment bursts from you; and yet he did do it! Naturally, the money was returned to him at once, was, so to speak, thrown in his face. What are we left with to resolve this case! The case is not a juridical one, all that is left is publicity! We convey this anecdote to the public, vouching for its veracity. They say one of our best-known humorists produced a delightful epigram on this occasion, worthy of a place not only in provincial but also in metropolitan articles on our morals:

"Little Lyova five years long In Schneider's overcoat did play, And the usual dance and song Filled his every day.

Comes home in gaiters, foreign-fashion, A million on his plate does find, So now he prays to God in Russian

And robs all student-kind." ³⁸;

When Kolya finished, he quickly handed the newspaper to the prince and, without saying a word, rushed to a corner, huddled tightly into it, and covered his face with his hands. He was unbearably ashamed, and his child's impressionability, which had not yet had time to become accustomed to filth, was upset even beyond measure. It seemed to him that something extraordinary had happened, which had destroyed everything all at once, and that he himself had almost been the cause of it by the mere fact of this reading aloud.

But it seemed they all felt something similar.

The girls felt very awkward and ashamed. Lizaveta Prokofyevna held back her extreme wrath and also, perhaps, bitterly regretted having interfered in the affair; she was now silent. What occurred with the prince was what often happens with very shy people on such occasions: he was so abashed by what others had done, he felt so ashamed for his visitors, that he was afraid at first even to look at them. Ptitsyn, Varya, Ganya, even Lebedev—they all seemed to have a somewhat embarrassed look. The strangest thing was that Ippolit and "Pavlishchev's son" were also as if amazed at something; Lebedev's nephew was also visibly displeased. Only the boxer sat perfectly calm, twirling his moustaches, with an air of importance and his eyes slightly lowered, not from embarrassment, but, on the contrary, it seemed, as if out of noble modesty and all-too-obvious triumph. Everything indicated that he liked the article very much.

"This is the devil knows what," Ivan Fyodorovich grumbled in a half-whisper, "as if fifty lackeys got together to write it and wrote it."

"But al-low me to ask, my dear sir, how can you insult people with such suggestions?" Ippolit declared and trembled all over.

"That, that, that ... for a noble man . . . you yourself must agree, General, if he's a noble man, that is insulting!" grumbled the boxer, also suddenly rousing himself, twirling his moustache and twitching his shoulders and body.

"First of all, I am not 'my dear sir' to you, and second, I have no intention of giving you any explanation," Ivan Fyodorovich, terribly worked up, answered sharply, rose from his place and, without saying a word, went to the door of the terrace and stood on the top step, his back to the public, in the greatest indignation at Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who even now did not think of budging from her place.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, let me speak, finally, gentlemen," the prince exclaimed in anguish and agitation. "And do me a favor, let's talk so that we can understand each other. I don't mind the article, gentlemen, let it be; only the thing is, gentlemen, that it's all untrue, what's written in the article: I say that because you know it yourselves; it's even shameful. So that I'm decidedly amazed if it was any one of you who wrote it."

"I knew nothing about this article till this very moment," Ippolit declared. "I don't approve of this article."

"I did know the article had been written, but ... I also would have advised against publishing it, because it's too early," Lebedev's nephew added.

"I knew, but I have the right . . . I . . ." muttered "Pavlishchev's son."

"What! You made it all up by yourself?" asked the prince, looking at Burdovsky with curiosity. "It's not possible!"

"It is possible, however, not to acknowledge your right to ask such questions," Lebedev's nephew stepped in.

"I was only surprised that Mr. Burdovsky had managed to . . . but ... I mean to say that, since you've already made this affair public, why were you so offended earlier when I began speaking with my friends about this same affair?"

"Finally!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna muttered in indignation.

"And you've even forgotten, if you please, Prince," Lebedev, unable to contain himself, suddenly slipped between the chairs, almost in a fever, "you've forgotten, if you please, sir, that it's only out of your own good will and the incomparable goodness of your heart that you have received them and are listening to them, and that they have no right to make their demands, especially since you've already entrusted Gavrila Ardalionovich with this affair, and that, too, you did in your exceeding goodness, and that now, illustrious Prince, being amongst your chosen friends, you cannot sacrifice such company for these gentlemen and could show all these gentlemen, so to speak, off the premises this very moment, sir, so that I, in the quality of landlord, even with extreme pleasure . . ."

"Quite right!" General Ivolgin suddenly thundered from the depths of the room.

"Enough, Lebedev, enough, enough . . ." the prince began, but a whole burst of indignation drowned out his words.

"No, excuse us, Prince, excuse us, but now it is not enough!"

Lebedev's nephew nearly outshouted them all. "Now this affair must be stated clearly and firmly, because it's obviously misunderstood. Juridical pettifoggery got mixed into it, and on the basis of this pettifoggery we are threatened with being chucked off the premises! But is it possible, Prince, that you consider us fools to such a degree that we ourselves do not understand to what degree our affair is not a juridical one, and that if we consider it juridically, we cannot demand even a single rouble from you according to the law? But we precisely do understand that, if there is no juridical right here, there is on the other hand a human, natural one; the right of common sense and the voice of conscience, and even if our right is not written in any rotten human code, still, a noble and honest man, that is to say, a man of common sense, must remain a noble and honest man even on points that are not written down in codes. That is why we came in here, not fearing that we would be thrown off the premises (as you just threatened) for the mere reason that we do not askbut demand,and as for the impropriety of a visit at this late hour (though we did not come at a late hour, it was you who made us wait in the lackeys' quarters), that is why, I say, we came, not fearing anything, because we supposed you were precisely a man of common sense, that is, of honor and conscience. Yes, it's true, we did not come humbly, not like your spongers and fawners, but with our heads high, like free people, and by no means asking, but freely and proudly demanding (do you hear, not asking, but demanding, mark that!). Directly and with dignity, we put before you a question: do you acknowledge yourself as in the right or in the wrong in the Burdovsky affair? Do you acknowledge that Pavlishchev was your benefactor and perhaps even saved you from death? If you do (which is obvious), then do you intend, or do you find it right in all conscience, having obtained millions in your turn, to reward Pavlishchev's needy son, even though he bears the name of Burdovsky? Yes or no? If yes,that is, in other words, if there is in you that which you, in your language, call honor and conscience, and which we designate more precisely with the name of common sense, satisfy us and that will be the end of it. Satisfy us without any requests or gratitudes on our part, do not expect them from us, because you are not doing it for us, but for the sake of justice. But if you do not want to satisfy us, that is, if your reply is no,we will leave at once, and the affair ceases; but we tell you to your face, in front of all your witnesses, that you are a man of coarse

mind and low development; that you dare not and henceforth have no right to call yourself a man of honor and conscience, that you want to buy that right too cheaply. I have finished. I have stated the question. Chase us off the premises now, if you dare. You can do it, you have the power. But remember that all the same we demand, and do not ask. Demand, and do not ask!"

Lebedev's nephew, who had become very excited, stopped.

"Demand, demand, demand, and do not ask! . . ." Burdovsky babbled and turned red as a lobster.

After Lebedev's nephew's words there followed a certain general stir and a murmur even arose, though the whole company had clearly avoided mixing into the affair, with the sole exception of Lebedev, who was as if in a fever. (Strange thing: Lebedev, who was obviously on the prince's side, now seemed to feel a certain satisfaction of family pride after his nephew's speech; at least he looked around at all the public with a certain special air of satisfaction.)

"In my opinion," the prince began rather quietly, "in my opinion, Mr. Doktorenko, half of all you have just said is completely right, and I even agree that it is the greater half, and I would be in complete agreement with you, if you hadn't left something out in your words. Precisely what you left out, I'm not able and am not in a position to say exactly, but something is certainly missing that keeps your words from being wholly fair. But better let us turn to business, gentlemen. Tell me, why did you publish this article? Every word of it is slander; therefore, in my opinion, you have done something base."