Myshkin warmly applauded his intention.
“Well, that’s all nonsense,” the general interrupted suddenly, “that’s not what I want to say, but something else, something important. I simply want to explain to you, Lyov Nikolayevitch, as a man in the sincerity of whose heart and the nobility of whose feelings I have complete confidence, as . . . as . . . You are not surprised at my words, prince?”
Myshkin observed his visitor, if not with surprise, at least with extreme attention and curiosity.
The old man was rather pale, his lips quivered slightly at times, his hands seemed unable to find a resting-place. He only remained a few minutes in his seat, and had twice already got up from his chair for some reason, and sat down again, obviously not paying the slightest attention to what he was doing. There were books lying on the table: he took up one, and still talking, glanced at the opened page, shut it again at once, and laid it back on the table, snatched up another book which he did not open, and held it all the rest of the time in his right hand, waving it continually in the air.
“Enough!” he shouted suddenly. “I see that I have been disturbing you shockingly.”
“Oh, not in the least, please go on. Quite the contrary. I’m listening and trying to guess ...”
“Prince! I am anxious to gain for myself a position of respect.... I am anxious to respect myself and ... my rights.”
“A man animated by such a desire is deserving of respect, if only on that ground.”
The prince brought out his copybook phrase in the firm conviction that it would have an excellent effect. He guessed instinctively that some such hollow but agreeable phrase uttered at the right moment might immediately have an irresistible and soothing influence on the mind of such a man, especially in such a position as the general. In any case it was necessary to send such a visitor away with a lighter heart, and that was the problem.
The phrase flattered and touched and greatly pleased General Ivolgin: he suddenly melted, instantly changed his tone, and went off into a long, enthusiastic explanation. But, however intently Myshkin listened, he could make literally nothing of it. The general talked for ten minutes, heatedly, rapidly, as though he could not get out his crowding thoughts quickly enough. Tears positively shone in his eyes towards the end, yet it was nothing but sentences without beginning or end, unexpected words and unexpected ideas, bursting out rapidly and unexpectedly and stumbling over one another.
“Enough! You have understood me, and I am satisfied,” he concluded, suddenly getting up. “A heart such as yours cannot fail to understand a suffering man. Prince, you are ideally generous. What are other men beside you? But you are young and I bless you. The long and short of it is I came to ask you to appoint an hour for an important conversation with me, and on that I rest my chief hope. I seek for nothing but friendship and sympathy, prince. I have never been able to master the yearnings of my heart.”
“But why not at once? lam ready to listen....”
“No, prince, no!” the general interrupted hotly. “Not now! Now is a vain dream! It is too, too important! Too important! The hour of that conversation will be an hour of irrevocable destiny. That will be my hour, and I should not wish it to be possible for us to be interrupted at such a sacred moment by any chance comer, any impudent fellow, and there are plenty of such impudent fellows.” He bent down suddenly to Myshkin, with a strange, mysterious, and almost frightened whisper. “Such impudent fellows, not worthy the heel.. . of your shoe, adored prince. Oh! I don’t say of my shoe. Note particularly that I don’t refer to my own shoe, for I have too much self-respect to say that straight out. . . but you alone are able to understand that in waiving my heel in such a case I show perhaps the utmost pride of worth. Except you, no one will understand it, he least of all.
He understands nothing, prince; he is utterly, utterly incapable of understanding. One must have a heart to understand!”
At last Myshkin was almost alarmed and he made an appointment with General Ivolgin for the same hour next day.
The latter went out with a confident air, greatly comforted, and almost reassured. In the evening between six and seven Myshkin sent to ask Lebedyev to come to him for a minute.
Lebedyev made his appearance with great alacrity, “esteemed it an honour,” as he began at once on entering. There was not the shadow of a hint that he’d been as it were in hiding for the last three days, and was obviously trying to avoid meeting Myshkin. He sat down on the edge of the chair, with smiles and grimaces, with laughing and watchful little eyes, rubbing his hands and assuming an air of the most naive expectation of hearing something, of receiving some communication of the first importance, long expected and guessed by every one. Myshkin winced again. It became clear to him that every one had suddenly begun to expect something of him, that every one looked at him, as though wanting to congratulate him with hints, smiles, and winks. Keller had run in two or three times for a minute already, also with an evident desire to congratulate him; each time he began vaguely and enthusiastically but did not finish, and quickly disappeared again. (He had been drinking particularly heavily of late, and making a sensation in some billiard-room.)
Even Kolya, in spite of his sadness, had also attempted once or twice to begin upon some subject with Myshkin.
Myshkin asked Lebedyev directly and somewhat irritably what he thought of General Ivolgin’s state of mind, and why the latter seemed so uneasy. In a few words he told him of the scene that morning.
“Every one has his own reasons for uneasiness, prince . . . and . . . especially in our strange and uneasy age, you know,” Lebedyev answered with a certain dryness, and relapsed into offended silence, with the air of a man deeply deceived in his expectations.
“What philosophy!” said Myshkin smiling.
“Philosophy would be useful, very useful in our age in its practical application, but it’s despised, that’s how it is. For my part, honoured prince, though I have respected your confidence to me on a certain point you know of, yet only to a certain degree, and no further than circumstances relating to that point especially . . . that I understand, and I don’t in the least complain.”
“Lebedyev, you seem to be angry about something?”
“Not at all, not in the least, honoured and resplendent prince ... not in the least!” Lebedeyev cried passionately, laying his hand upon his heart. “On the contrary, I realised at once that, neither by my position in the world, nor by the qualities of my mind or my heart, nor the amount of my fortune, nor my former behaviour, nor my knowledge — in no way do I deserve the confidence with which you honour me, so far above my hopes, and that if I can serve you it is as a slave and hireling. Nothing else. I am not angry, but I’m sad.”
“Come, come, Lukyan Timofeyitch!”
“Nothing else! So it is in the present case. Meeting you, fixing my heart and thought upon you, I said to myself: ‘I am unworthy of your confidence as a friend, but as the landlord of your house perhaps I may receive at the fitting time, before the anticipated event, so to speak, a warning, or at least an intimation in view of certain changes expected in the future.
As he uttered this, Lebedyev positively fastened his sharp little eyes on Myshkin, who was looking at him in astonishment. He was still in hopes of satisfying his curiosity.
“I don’t understand a word!” cried Myshkin, almost with anger, “and . . . you’re an awful intriguer!” he suddenly broke into a most genuine laugh. Instantly Lebedyev laughed too, and his beaming face showed clearly that his hopes were confirmed, and even redoubled.
“And do you know what I have to tell you, Lukyan Timofeyitch? Don’t be angry with me, but I wonder at your simplicity, and not only yours! You are expecting something of me with such simplicity now, at this very moment, that I feel positively ashamed and conscience-stricken at having nothing to satisfy you with; but I swear that I really have nothing. Can you fancy that?”
Myshkin laughed again.
Lebedyev put on a dignified air. It was tru
e that he was sometimes too naive and intrusive in his curiosity, but at the same time he was a rather cunning and wily man, and in some cases even too artfully silent. Myshkin had almost made an enemy of him by continually putting him off. But Myshkin put him off, not because he despised him, but because the subject of his curiosity was a delicate one. Myshkin had only a few days before looked on some of his own dreams as a crime, while Lukyan Timofeyitch took Myshkin’s rebuffs simply as a proof of personal aversion and mistrust, withdrew, cut to the heart and jealous not only of Kolya and of Keller, but even of his own daughter, Vera. Even at that very moment, he could, perhaps, have told Myshkin a piece of news of the greatest interest to him, and perhaps sincerely desired to do so, but he remained gloomily silent and did not tell him.
“In what way can I be of use to you, honoured prince, since anyway you . . . called me just now,” he said at last after a brief silence.
“Why, I asked you about the general,” Myshkin, who had been musing for a moment, too, answered hurriedly, “and ... in regard to that theft you told me about.”
“In regard to what?”
“Why, as though you don’t understand me now! Oh, dear, Lukyan Timofeyitch, you’re always acting a part! The money, the money, the four hundred roubles you lost that day in your pocket-book, and about which you came to tell me in the morning, as you were setting off for Petersburg. Do you understand at last?”
“Ah, you’re talking about that four hundred roubles!” drawled Lebedyev, as though he had only just guessed. “I thank you, prince, for your sincere sympathy; it is too flattering to me, but. . . I’ve found it some time since.”
“Found it! Ah, thank God!”
“That exclamation is most generous on your part, for four hundred roubles is no small matter for a poor man who lives by his hard work, with a large family of motherless children....”
“But I didn’t mean that! Of course, I am glad you found the money,” Myshkin corrected himself quickly, “but how did you find it?”
“Very simply. Ifound it under the chair on which my coat had been hunq, so that the pocket-book must have slipped out of the pocket on to the floor!”
“Under a chair? It’s impossible! Why, you told me yourself you had hunted in every corner. How was it you came to overlook the most obvious place?”
“I should think I did look! I remember only too well how I looked! I crawled on all fours, felt the place with my hands, moving back the chairs because I couldn’t trust my own eyes: I saw there was nothing there for the place was as smooth and empty as my hands, and yet I went on fumbling. bu always see that weakness in anyone who is very anxious to find anything, when anything serious and important has been lost. A man sees there’s nothing there, the place is empty, and yet he peeps into it a dozen times.”
“Yes, I daresay; only, how was it seen? ... I still don’t understand,” muttered Myshkin, disconcerted. “You told me before it wasn’t there, and you had looked in that place, and then it suddenly turned up!”
“And then it suddenly turned up.”
Myshkin looked strangely at Lebedyev.
“And the general?” he asked suddenly.
“What about the general? . . .” Lebedyev seemed at a loss again.
“Oh, dear! I ask you what did the general say when you found the pocket-book under the chair? You looked for it together, you know.”
“We did look together before. But that time, I confess, I held my tongue, and preferred not to tell him that the pocket-book had been found by me and alone.”
“But... why? And the money? Was it all there?”
“I opened the pocket-book. The money was untouched, every rouble of it.”
“You might have come to tell me,” Myshkin observed thoughtfully.
“I was afraid to disturb you, prince, in your personal, and so to say, absorbing interests, and besides, I made as though I had found nothing. I opened the pocket-book and looked at it, then I shut it and put it back under the chair.”
“But what for?”
“Oh, n-nothing, from curiosity,” chuckled Lebedyev, rubbing his hands.
“Then it has been lying there since the day before yesterday?”
“Oh, no; it only lay there for a day and a night. You see, it was partly that I wanted the general to find it. For since I had found it, why should not the general notice the object, which lay conspicuous under the chair, so to speak, catching the eye. I lifted that chair several times and put it so that the pocket-book was completely in view, but the general simply didn’t notice it, and so it went on for twenty-four hours. He seems to be extraordinarily unobservant now, and there’s no making him out. He talks, tells stories, laughs, chuckles, and then flies into a violent temper with me. I don’t know why. At last, as we were going out of the room, I left the door open on purpose; he hesitated, would have said something, most likely he was uneasy about the pocket-book with such a sum of money in it, but suddenly flew into an awful rage and said nothing. Before we had gone two steps in the street, he left me and walked away in the other direction. We only met in the evening in the tavern.”
“But in the end you did take the pocket-book from under the chair?”
“No, it vanished from under the chair that same night.”
“Then where is it now?”
“Oh, here,” cried Lebedyev, laughing suddenly,
drawing himself up to his full height and looking amiably at Myshkin. “It suddenly turned up, here, in the lappet of my coat. Here; won’t you look, feel.”
The left lappet of the coat had indeed been formed into something like a bag in front, in the most conspicuous place, and it was clear at once to the touch that there was a leather pocket-book there that had fallen down from a torn pocket.
“I took it out and looked. The money’s all there. I dropped it in again, and so I’ve been walking about since yesterday morning. I carried it in my coat and it knocks against my legs.”
“And you take no notice of it?”
“And I take no notice of it. He-he! And would you believe it, honoured prince, though the subject is not worthy of so much notice on your part, my pockets were always perfectly good, and then a hole like that, all of a sudden, in one night! I began to look at it more curiously; it’s as though some one had cut it with a pen-knife. Isn’t it almost incredible?”
“And ... the general?”
“He’s been angry all day; both yesterday and today; fearfully ill-humoured. At one time he’d be beaminq and hilarious till he beqan to pav me compliments, then he’d be sentimental to tears, then suddenly angry; so much so, that I’d be frightened really, for I’m not a military man, after all. We were sitting yesterday in the tavern, and the lappet of my coat stood out as though by chance, in the most prominent way; a perfect mountain. He looked at it on the sly, and was angry. He hasn’t looked me straight in the face for a long time, unless he’s very drunk or sentimental; but yesterday he gave me a look that made a shudder run down my spine. Tomorrow, though, I mean to find the pocket-book, but I shall have an evening’s fun with him before then.”
“Why are you tormenting him so?” cried Myshkin.
“I’m not tormenting him, prince, I’m not tormenting him,” Lebedyev replied with warmth. “I sincerely love and . . . respect him; and now, whether you believe it or not, he’s dearer to me than ever. I have come to appreciate him even more.”
Lebedyev said all this so earnestly and sincerely that Myshkin was positively indignant.
“You love him and you torment him like this! Why, by the very act of putting the lost pocket-book where it could be seen under the chair and in your coat, by that alone he shows you that he doesn’t want to deceive you, but with open-hearted simplicity asks your forgiveness. Do you hear? He’s asking your forgiveness! So he relies on the delicacy of your feelings, so he believes in your friendship for him. And yet you reduce to such humiliation a man like that... a most honest man!”
“Most honest, prince, most honest!” Lebedyev ass
ented, with sparkling eyes. “And you, most noble prince, are the only person capable of uttering that true word about him! For that, I am devoted to you and ready to worship you, though I am rotten to the core with vices of all sorts! That’s settled it! I will find the pocket-book now, at once, not to-morrow. Look, I take it out before your eyes; here it is. Here’s the money, untouched, here. Take it, most noble prince, take care of it till to-morrow. To-morrow or next day I’ll have it. And, do you know, prince, it’s evident that it must have been lying somewhere in my garden, hidden under some stone, the first night it was lost. What do you think?”
“Mind you don’t tell him directly to his face that you’ve found the pocket-book. Let him simply see that there’s nothing in the lappet of your coat, and he’ll understand.”
“You think so? Wouldn’t it be better to tell him I have found it, and to pretend I had not guessed about it till now?”
“N-no,” Myshkin pondered, “n-no; it’s too late for that now. That’s more risky. You’d really better not speak of it! Be kind to him, but . . . don’t show too much, and ... and ... you know....”
“I know, prince, I know. That is I know that I shan’t do it properly, perhaps. For one needs to have a heart like yours to do it. Besides, he’s irritable and prone to it himself, he has begun to treat me too superciliously sometimes of late. One minute he is whimpering and embracing me, and then he’ll suddenly begin to snub me, and sneer at me contemptuously, and then I just show him the lappet on purpose. He-he! Good-bye, prince; for it’s clear I’m keeping you and interrupting you in your most interesting feelings, so to say....”
“But for goodness’ sake, the same secrecy as before!”
“Treading softly, treading softly!”
But, though the matter was settled, Myshkin remained almost more puzzled than before. He awaited with impatience his interview with the general next day.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 324
