The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Wait, Prince,” said Aglaya, suddenly getting up from her chair, “you still have to write something in my album. Papa said you’re a calligrapher. I’ll bring it to you right now …”

  And she left.

  “Good-bye, Prince, I’m going, too,” said Adelaida.

  She firmly shook the prince’s hand, smiled at him affably and tenderly, and left. She did not look at Ganya.

  “It was you,” Ganya rasped, suddenly falling upon the prince once everyone had gone, “you blabbed to them that I’m getting married!” he muttered in a quick half whisper, with a furious face, flashing his eyes spitefully. “You shameless babbler!”

  “I assure you that you are mistaken,” the prince replied calmly and politely, “I didn’t even know you were getting married.”

  “You heard Ivan Fyodorovich say earlier that everything would be decided tonight at Nastasya Filippovna’s, and you told it to them! You’re lying! How could they have found out? Devil take it, who could have told them besides you? Didn’t the old lady hint to me?”

  “You ought to know better who told them, if you really think she was hinting to you. I didn’t say a word about it.”

  “Did you deliver my note? Any answer?” Ganya interrupted him with feverish impatience. But at that very moment Aglaya came back, and the prince had no time to reply.

  “Here, Prince,” said Aglaya, putting her album on the little table. “Choose a page and write something for me. Here’s a pen, a new one. Does it matter if it’s steel? I’ve heard calligraphers don’t write with steel pens.”

  Talking with the prince, she seemed not to notice that Ganya was right there. But while the prince was testing the pen, selecting a page, and preparing himself, Ganya went over to the fireplace where Aglaya was standing, to the right of the prince, and in a trembling, faltering voice said almost in her ear:

  “One word, only one word from you—and I’m saved.”

  The prince turned quickly and looked at the two. There was genuine despair in Ganya’s face; it seemed he had uttered these words somehow without thinking, as if headlong. Aglaya looked at him for a few seconds with exactly the same calm astonishment as she had looked at the prince earlier, and it seemed that this calm astonishment of hers, this perplexity, as if she totally failed to understand what had been said to her, was more terrible for Ganya at that moment than the strongest contempt.

  “What am I to write?” asked the prince.

  “I’ll dictate to you right now,” said Aglaya, turning to him. “Are you ready? Write: ‘I don’t negotiate.’ Now put the day and the month. Show me.”

  The prince handed her the album.

  “Excellent! You’ve written it amazingly well; you have a wonderful hand! Thank you. Good-bye, Prince … Wait,” she added, as if suddenly remembering something. “Come, I want to give you something as a memento.”

  The prince followed her; but having entered the dining room, Aglaya stopped.

  “Read this,” she said, handing him Ganya’s note.

  The prince took the note and looked at Aglaya in perplexity.

  “I know you haven’t read it and you cannot be in this man’s confidence. Read it, I want you to.”

  The note had obviously been written in haste.

  Today my fate will be decided, you know in what manner. Today I will have to give my word irrevocably. I have no right to your sympathy, I dare not have any hopes; but you once uttered a word, just one word, and that word lit up the whole dark night of my life and became a beacon for me. Say another such word to me now—and you will save me from disaster! Only say to me: break it all off, and I will break it all off today. Oh, what will it cost you to say it! I am asking for this word only as a sign of your sympathy and compassion for me—only, only! And nothing more, nothing! I dare not think of any hope, because I am not worthy of it. But after your word I will accept my poverty again, I will joyfully endure my desperate situation. I will meet the struggle, I will be glad of it, I will resurrect in it with new strength!

  Send me this word of compassion (of compassion only, I swear to you!). Do not be angry at the boldness of a desperate man, at a drowning man, for daring to make a last effort to save himself from disaster.

  G. I.

  “This man assures me,” Aglaya said sharply, when the prince had finished reading, “that the words break it all off will not compromise me or commit me in any way, and, as you see, he gives me a written guarantee of it by this very note. See how naïvely he hastened to underline certain words and how crudely his secret thought shows through. He knows, however, that if he broke it all off, but by himself, alone, not waiting for a word from me, and even not telling me about it, without any hope in me, I would then change my feelings for him and would probably become his friend. He knows that for certain! But his soul is dirty: he knows and yet hesitates; he knows and still asks for a guarantee. He’s unable to make a decision on faith. Instead of a hundred thousand, he wants me to give him hope in me. As for the previous word he talks about in his letter and which supposedly lit up his whole life, there he’s lying brazenly. I simply felt sorry for him once. But he’s bold and shameless: the thought of a possible hope immediately flashed in him; I realized it at once. After that he began trying to trap me; he does it still. But enough. Take the note and give it back to him, right now, when you’ve left our house, naturally, not before.”

  “And what shall I tell him in reply?”

  “Nothing, of course. That’s the best reply. So you intend to live in his house?”

  “Ivan Fyodorovich himself recommended it to me earlier,” said the prince.

  “Beware of him, I’m warning you; he won’t forgive you for giving him back the note.”

  Aglaya pressed the prince’s hand lightly and left. Her face was serious and frowning, she did not even smile as she nodded goodbye to the prince.

  “One moment, I’ll just fetch my bundle,” the prince said to Ganya, “and we can go.”

  Ganya stamped his foot in impatience. His face even darkened with rage. Finally the two men went outside, the prince carrying his bundle.

  “The reply? The reply?” Ganya fell upon him. “What did she say to you? Did you give her the letter?”

  The prince silently handed him his note. Ganya was dumbfounded.

  “What? My note?” he cried. “He didn’t give it to her! Oh, I should have guessed! Oh, cur-r-rse it … I see why she didn’t understand anything just now! But why, why, why didn’t you give it to her, oh, cur-r-rse it …”

  “Excuse me, but, on the contrary, I managed to deliver your note at once, the moment you gave it to me and exactly as you asked me to. It ended up with me again, because Aglaya Ivanovna gave it back to me just now.”

  “When? When?”

  “As soon as I finished writing in the album and she asked me to go with her. (Didn’t you hear?) We went to the dining room, she gave me the note, told me to read it, and then told me to give it back to you.”

  “To re-e-ead it!” Ganya shouted almost at the top of his lungs. “To read it! You read it?”

  And he again stood petrified in the middle of the sidewalk, so astonished that he even opened his mouth wide.

  “Yes, I read it just now.”

  “And she, she herself gave it to you to read? She herself?”

  “She herself, and, believe me, I wouldn’t have read it without her invitation.”

  Ganya was silent for a moment, making painful efforts to figure something out, but suddenly he exclaimed:

  “That can’t be! She couldn’t have told you to read it. You’re lying! You read it yourself!”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” the prince replied in the same completely imperturbable tone, “and, believe me, I’m very sorry that it makes such an unpleasant impression on you.”

  “But, you wretch, did she at least say anything as she did it? Did she respond in any way?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Speak then, speak—ah, the devil!…” />
  And Ganya stamped his right foot, shod in a galosh, twice on the sidewalk.

  “As soon as I finished reading it, she told me that you were trying to trap her; that you wished to compromise her, in order to obtain some hope from her and then, on the basis of that hope, to break without losses from the other hope for a hundred thousand. That if you had done it without negotiating with her, had broken it off by yourself without asking her for a guarantee beforehand, she might perhaps have become your friend. That’s all, I think. Ah, one more thing: when I had already taken the note and asked what the reply would be, she said that no reply would be the best reply—I think that was it; forgive me if I’ve forgotten her exact expression, but I’m conveying it as I understood it myself.”

  Boundless spite came over Ganya, and his rage exploded without restraint.

  “Ahh! So that’s how it is!” he rasped. “She throws my notes out the window! Ahh! She doesn’t negotiate—then I will! We’ll see! There’s a lot about me … we’ll see!… I’ll tie them in little knots!…”

  He grimaced, turned pale, frothed, shook his fist. They went a few steps like that. He was not embarrassed in the least by the prince’s presence, as if he were alone in his room, because he regarded him as nothing in the highest degree. But he suddenly realized something and came to his senses.

  “How did it happen,” he suddenly turned to the prince, “how did it happen that you”—“an idiot!” he added to himself—“have suddenly been taken into such confidence, after being acquainted for two hours? How is it?”

  With all his torments he only lacked envy. It suddenly stung him to the very heart.

  “I’m unable to explain it to you,” replied the prince.

  Ganya looked at him spitefully:

  “Was it her confidence she wanted to give you when she called you to the dining room? Wasn’t she going to give you something?”

  “I can’t understand it in any other way than precisely that.”

  “But why, devil take it! What did you do there? What was it they liked? Listen,” he was fussing with all his might (just then everything in him was somehow scattered and seething in disorder, so that he was unable to collect his thoughts), “listen, can’t you somehow recall and put in order precisely what you were talking about, all the words, from the very beginning? Didn’t you notice anything, can’t you recall?”

  “Oh, I recall very well,” the prince replied. “From the very beginning, when I went in and was introduced, we started talking about Switzerland.”

  “Well, to hell with Switzerland!”

  “Then about capital punishment …”

  “About capital punishment?”

  “Yes, apropos of something … then I told them how I’d lived there for three years, and also the story of a poor village girl …”

  “To hell with the poor village girl! Go on!” Ganya tore ahead impatiently.

  “Then how Schneider gave me his opinion of my character and urged me …”

  “Blast Schneider and spit on his opinion! Go on!”

  “Then, apropos of something, I started talking about faces—that is, about facial expressions, and I said that Aglaya Ivanovna was almost as good-looking as Nastasya Filippovna. It was here that I let slip about the portrait …”

  “But you didn’t repeat, you surely didn’t repeat everything you’d heard earlier in the office? Did you? Did you?”

  “I tell you again that I didn’t.”

  “Then how the devil … Bah! Maybe Aglaya showed the note to the old lady?”

  “About that I can fully guarantee you that she did not show it to her. I was there all the while; and she also didn’t have time.”

  “Or maybe you didn’t notice something … Oh! cur-r-rsed idiot,” he exclaimed, now completely beside himself, “he can’t even tell anything!”

  Once he began to swear and met no resistance, Ganya gradually lost all restraint, as always happens with certain people. A little more and he might have started spitting, so enraged he was. But, precisely because of that rage, he was blind; otherwise he would long since have paid attention to the fact that this “idiot,” whom he mistreated so, was sometimes capable of understanding everything all too quickly and subtly, and of giving an extremely satisfactory account of it. But suddenly something unexpected happened.

  “I must point out to you, Gavrila Ardalionovich,” the prince suddenly said, “that formerly I was indeed unwell, so that in fact I was almost an idiot; but I have been well for a long time now, and therefore I find it somewhat unpleasant when I’m called an idiot to my face. Though you might be excused, considering your misfortunes, in your vexation you have even abused me a couple of times. I dislike that very much, especially the way you do it, suddenly, from the start. And since we’re now standing at an intersection, it might be better if we parted: you go home to the right, and I’ll go left. I have twenty-five roubles, and I’m sure I’ll find furnished rooms.”

  Ganya was terribly embarrassed and even blushed with shame.

  “Forgive me, Prince,” he cried hotly, suddenly changing his abusive tone to extreme politeness, “for God’s sake, forgive me! You see what trouble I’m in! You know almost nothing yet, but if you knew everything, you would probably excuse me at least a little; though, naturally, I’m inexcusable …”

  “Oh, but I don’t need such big excuses,” the prince hastened to reply. “I do understand that you’re very displeased and that’s why you’re abusive. Well, let’s go to your place. It’s my pleasure …”

  “No, it’s impossible to let him go like that,” Ganya thought to himself, glancing spitefully at the prince as they went. “The rogue got it all out of me and then suddenly took off his mask … That means something. We’ll see! Everything will be resolved, everything, everything! Today!”

  They were already standing outside his house.

  VIII

  GANECHKA’S APARTMENT was on the third floor, up a rather clean, bright, and spacious stairway, and consisted of six or seven rooms, large and small, quite ordinary, incidentally, but in any case not at all what the pocket of an official with a family, even on a salary of two thousand roubles, could afford. But it was intended for keeping tenants with board and services, and had been taken by Ganya and his family no more than two months earlier, to the greatest displeasure of Ganya himself, on the insistent demand of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna, who wished to be useful in their turn and to increase the family income at least a little. Ganya scowled and called keeping tenants an outrage; after that it was as if he began to be ashamed in society, where he was in the habit of appearing as a young man of a certain brilliance and with prospects. All these concessions to fate and all this vexatious crowding—all of it deeply wounded his soul. For some time now, every little thing had begun to annoy him beyond measure or proportion, and if he still agreed for a time to yield and endure, it was only because he had already resolved to change and alter it all within the shortest space of time. And yet this very change, this way out that he had settled on, was no small task—a task the imminent solution of which threatened to be more troublesome and tormenting than all that had gone before it.

  The apartment was divided by a corridor that started right from the front hall. On one side of the corridor were the three rooms that were to be let to “specially recommended” tenants; besides that, on the same side of the corridor, at the very end of it, near the kitchen, was a fourth room, smaller than the others, which housed the retired General Ivolgin himself, the father of the family, who slept on a wide couch and was obliged to go in and out of the apartment through the kitchen and the back door. The same little room also housed Gavrila Ardalionovich’s thirteen-year-old brother, the schoolboy Kolya. He, too, was destined to be cramped, to study and sleep there on another very old, narrow, and short couch, covered with a torn sheet, and, above all, to tend to and look after his father, who was more and more unable to do without that. The prince was given the middle one of the three rooms; the f
irst, to the right, was occupied by Ferdyshchenko, and the third, to the left, was still vacant. But first of all Ganya took the prince to the family side. This family side consisted of a large room that was turned, when needed, into a dining room, of a drawing room, which was, however, a drawing room only during the daytime, but in the evening turned into Ganya’s study and bedroom, and, finally, of a third room, small and always closed: this was the bedroom of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna. In short, everything in this apartment was cramped and squeezed; Ganya only gritted his teeth to himself; though he may have wished to be respectful to his mother, it was evident the moment one stepped into the place that he was the great tyrant of the family.

  Nina Alexandrovna was not alone in the drawing room, Varvara Ardalionovna was sitting with her; they were both busy knitting as they talked with a visitor, Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn. Nina Alexandrovna seemed to be about fifty, with a thin, pinched face and a deep darkness under her eyes. She looked sickly and somewhat woebegone, but her face and gaze were quite pleasant; her first words betokened a serious character and one filled with genuine dignity. Despite her woebegone look, one could sense firmness and even resolution in her. She was dressed extremely modestly, in something dark and quite old-womanish, but her ways, her conversation, her whole manner betrayed a woman who had seen better society.

  Varvara Ardalionovna was a young lady of about twenty-three, of average height, rather thin, with a face which, while not really beautiful, contained in itself the mystery of being likable without beauty and of attracting to the point of passion. She resembled her mother very much, and was even dressed almost like her mother, from a total indifference to dressing up. The look of her gray eyes could on occasion be very gay and tender, though it was most often grave and pensive, sometimes even too much so, especially of late. Firmness and resolution could be seen in her face, too, but one sensed that this firmness could be even more energetic and enterprising than in her mother. Varvara Ardalionovna was rather hot-tempered, and her brother sometimes even feared that hot-temperedness. Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn, the visitor who was now sitting with them, also feared it. He was still a rather young man, under thirty, modestly but finely dressed, with pleasant but somehow much too staid manners. His dark blond beard indicated that he was not in government service.27 He was capable of intelligent and interesting conversation, but was more often silent. Generally he even made an agreeable impression. He was clearly not indifferent to Varvara Ardalionovna and did not hide his feelings. Varvara Ardalionovna treated him amiably, but delayed in answering some of his questions, and even disliked them; Ptitsyn, however, was far from discouraged. Nina Alexandrovna was affectionate with him, and lately had even begun to trust him in many things. It was known, however, that his specific occupation was making money by giving short-term loans at interest on more or less sure pledges. He and Ganya were great friends.