Ferdyshchenko rushed to support the general and led him forward.
“Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin,” the bowing and smiling general said with dignity, “an old and unfortunate soldier, and the father of a family happy in the hope of receiving into itself such a lovely …”
He did not finish. Ferdyshchenko quickly offered him a chair from behind, and the general, somewhat weak in the legs after dinner, simply flopped or, better to say, collapsed into it; however, that did not embarrass him. He sat directly facing Nastasya Filippovna and, with a pleasant little grimace, slowly and dramatically brought her fingers to his lips. On the whole, it was rather difficult to embarrass the general. His appearance, apart from a certain slovenliness, was still quite decent, as he knew very well himself. In the past he had occasionally been received in very good society, from which he had been definitively excluded only two or three years ago. It was then that he gave himself over all too unrestrainedly to some of his weaknesses; but he still retained his adroit and pleasant manner. Nastasya Filippovna, it seemed, was exceedingly delighted by the appearance of Ardalion Alexandrovich, of whom she knew, of course, by hearsay.
“I’ve heard that this son of mine …” Ardalion Alexandrovich began.
“Yes, this son of yours! And you’re a fine one, too, papa dear! Why don’t I ever see you at my place? What, are you hiding, or is your son hiding you? You, at least, can come to me without compromising anybody.”
“Nineteenth-century children and their parents …” the general tried to begin again.
“Nastasya Filippovna! Please let Ardalion Alexandrovich go for a moment, someone is asking for him,” Nina Alexandrovna said loudly.
“Let him go! Good heavens, I’ve heard so much, I’ve wanted to see him for so long! And what sort of business can he have? Isn’t he retired? You won’t leave me, General, you won’t go?”
“I give you my word that he’ll come and see you himself, but now he’s in need of rest.”
“Ardalion Alexandrovich, they say you’re in need of rest!” Nastasya Filippovna cried, making a wry and displeased face, like a flighty, foolish little girl whose toy is being taken away. The general did his best to make his own position all the more foolish.
“My friend! My friend!” he said reproachfully, turning solemnly to his wife and putting his hand to his heart.
“Won’t you leave here, mama?” Varya asked loudly.
“No, Varya, I’ll sit it out to the end.”
Nastasya Filippovna could not help hearing both the question and the answer, but it seemed to increase her gaiety still more. She immediately showered the general with questions again, and after five minutes the general was in a most triumphant mood and was oratorizing to the loud laughter of those present.
Kolya pulled the prince’s coattail.
“You at least take him away somehow! Can’t you? Please!” Tears of indignation even scalded the poor boy’s eyes. “Oh, damn you, Ganka!” he added to himself.
“Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin and I were actually great friends,” the general effused to Nastasya Filippovna’s questions. “He and I, and the late Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, whose son I embraced today after a twenty-year separation, the three of us were inseparable, a cavalcade, so to speak: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.32 But, alas, one lies in his grave, struck down by slander and a bullet, another stands before you now and is still fighting against slander and bullets …”
“Bullets!” cried Nastasya Filippovna.
“They’re here, in my breast, received at Kars,33 and in bad weather I feel them. In all other respects I live like a philosopher, go about, stroll, play checkers in my café, like a bourgeois retired from business, and read the Indépendence.34 But since that story of the lapdog on the train three years ago, my relations with our Porthos, Epanchin, have been definitively terminated.”
“A lapdog? What was that?” Nastasya Filippovna asked with particular curiosity. “With a lapdog? And on the train, if you please!…” She seemed to be remembering something.
“Oh, a stupid story, not even worth repeating: because of Mrs. Schmidt, Princess Belokonsky’s governess, but … it’s not worth repeating.”
“No, you absolutely must tell it!” Nastasya Filippovna exclaimed gaily.
“I haven’t heard it either!” observed Ferdyshchenko. “C’est du nouveau.”‖
“Ardalion Alexandrovich!” Nina Alexandrovna’s pleading voice rang out again.
“Papa, somebody’s asking for you!” cried Kolya.
“A stupid story, and briefly told,” the general began self-contentedly. “Two years ago, yes! or a bit less, just when the new —— railway line was opened, I (already in civilian dress), seeing to some extremely important matters to do with handing over my job, bought myself a first-class ticket: I got in, sat down, smoked. That is, I went on smoking, because I had lit up earlier. I was alone in the compartment. Smoking was not prohibited, but neither was it permitted; sort of half permitted, as usual; well, and depending on the person. The window’s open. Suddenly, just before the whistle, two ladies with a lapdog place themselves just opposite me; latecomers; one is most magnificently dressed in light blue; the other more modestly, in black silk with a pelerine. They’re not bad-looking, have a haughty air, talk in English. I, of course, just sit there smoking. That is, I did have a thought, but nevertheless, since the window’s open, I go on smoking out the window. The dog reposes in the light blue lady’s lap, a little thing, the size of my fist, black with white paws—even a rarity. Silver collar with a motto. I just sit there. Only I notice that the ladies seem to be angry, about the cigar, of course. One glares through a lorgnette, tortoiseshell. Again I just sit there: because they don’t say anything! If they spoke, warned, asked—for there is, finally, such a thing as human speech! But they’re silent … suddenly—without any warning, I tell you, without the slightest warning, as if she’d taken leave of her senses—the light blue one snatches the cigar from my hand and throws it out the window. The train flies on, I stare like a half-wit. A wild woman; a wild woman, as if in a totally wild state; a hefty one, though, tall, full, blond, ruddy (even much too ruddy), her eyes flashing at me. Without saying a word, with extraordinary politeness, with the most perfect politeness, with the most, so to speak, refined politeness, I reach out for the dog with two fingers, take it delicately by the scruff of the neck, and whisk it out the window in the wake of my cigar! It let out a little squeal! The train goes flying on …”
“You’re a monster!” cried Nastasya Filippovna, laughing and clapping her hands like a little girl.
“Bravo, bravo!” shouted Ferdyshchenko. Ptitsyn, for whom the general’s appearance was also extremely disagreeable, smiled as well; even Kolya laughed and also shouted, “Bravo!”
“And I’m right, I’m right, three times right!” the triumphant general went on heatedly. “Because if cigars are prohibited on trains, dogs are all the more so.”
“Bravo, papa!” Kolya cried delightedly. “Splendid! I would certainly, certainly have done the same thing!”
“And what about the lady?” Nastasya Filippovna went on questioning impatiently.
“Her? Well, there’s where the whole unpleasantness lies,” the general continued, frowning. “Without saying a word and without the slightest warning, she whacked me on the cheek! A wild woman, in a totally wild state!”
“And you?”
The general lowered his eyes, raised his eyebrows, raised his shoulders, pressed his lips together, spread his arms, paused, and suddenly said:
“I got carried away!”
“And painfully? Painfully?”
“Not painfully, by God! There was a scandal, but it wasn’t painful. I only waved my arm once, merely in order to wave her away. But Satan himself threw a twist into it: the light blue one turned out to be an Englishwoman, a governess or even some sort of friend of the house of Princess Belokonsky, and the one in the black dress was the princess’s eldest daughter, an old maid of about thirt
y-five. And we all know the relations between Mrs. Epanchin and the house of the Belokonskys. All the young princesses swoon, tears, mourning for their favorite lapdog, the six princesses shrieking, the Englishwoman shrieking—the end of the world! Well, of course, I went with my repentance, asked forgiveness, wrote a letter, was not received—neither me nor my letter—then a quarrel with Epanchin, expulsion, banishment!”
“But, excuse me, how it it possible?” Nastasya Filippovna suddenly asked. “Five or six days ago in the Indépendence—I always read the Indépendence—I read exactly the same story! But decidedly exactly the same! It happened on one of the Rhine railways, in a passenger car, between a Frenchman and an Englishwoman: the cigar was snatched in exactly the same way, the lapdog was tossed out the window in exactly the same way, and, finally, it ended in exactly the same way as with you. The dress was even light blue!”
The general blushed terribly; Kolya also blushed and clutched his head with his hands; Ptitsyn quickly turned away. Ferdyshchenko was the only one who went on laughing. There is no need to mention Ganya: he stood all the while enduring mute and unbearable torment.
“I assure you,” the general mumbled, “that exactly the same thing happened to me …”
“Papa did actually have some unpleasantness with Mrs. Schmidt, the Belokonskys’ governess,” cried Kolya, “I remember.”
“So! The very same? One and the same story at two ends of Europe and the very same in all details, including the light blue dress!” the merciless Nastasya Filippovna insisted. “I’ll send you the Indépendence Belge!”
“But notice,” the general still insisted, “that to me it happened two years earlier …”
“Ah, maybe that’s it!”
Nastasya Filippovna laughed as if in hysterics.
“Papa, I beg you to step out for a word or two,” Ganya said in a trembling, tormented voice, mechanically seizing his father by the shoulder. Boundless hatred seethed in his eyes.
At that very moment an extremely loud ringing came from the doorbell in the front hall. Such ringing might have torn the bell off. It heralded an extraordinary visit. Kolya ran to open the door.
X
THE FRONT HALL suddenly became noisy and crowded; the impression from the drawing room was as if several people had come in from outside and others were still coming in. Several voices talked and exclaimed at the same time; there was also talking and exclaiming on the stairs, the door to which, from the sound of it, had not been closed. The visit turned out to be extremely strange. Everyone exchanged glances; Ganya rushed to the large room, but several people had already entered it.
“Ah, here he is, the Judas!” cried a voice the prince knew. “Greetings, Ganka, you scoundrel!”
“Yes, it’s him himself!” another voice confirmed.
The prince could have no doubt: one voice was Rogozhin’s, the other Lebedev’s.
Ganya stood as if stupefied on the threshold of the drawing room and gazed silently, allowing some ten or twelve people to enter the room one after another unhindered, following Parfyon Rogozhin. The company was extremely motley, and was distinguished not only by its motleyness but also by its unsightliness. Some came in just as they were, in overcoats and fur coats. None of them, incidentally, was very drunk; but they all seemed quite tipsy. They all seemed to need each other in order to come in; not one of them had courage enough by himself, but they all urged each other on, as it were. Even Rogozhin stepped warily at the head of the crowd, but he had some sort of intention, and he looked gloomily and irritably preoccupied. The rest only made up a chorus, or, better, a claque of supporters. Besides Lebedev, there was also the freshly curled Zalyozhev, who flung his coat off in the front hall and walked in casually and foppishly with two or three similar gentlemen, obviously of the shopkeeper sort. Someone in a half military coat; some small and extremely fat man, ceaselessly laughing; some enormous gentleman, well over six feet tall, also remarkably fat, extremely gloomy and taciturn, who obviously put great trust in his fists. There was a medical student; there was an obsequious little Pole. Some two ladies peeped into the front hall from the stairs, hesitating to come in. Kolya slammed the door in their noses and hooked the latch.
“Greetings, Ganka, you scoundrel! What, you weren’t expecting Parfyon Rogozhin?” Rogozhin repeated, having reached the drawing room and stopped in the doorway facing Ganya. But at that moment, in the drawing room, directly facing him, he suddenly caught sight of Nastasya Filippovna. Obviously he had never thought to meet her here, because the sight of her made an extraordinary impression on him; he turned so pale that his lips even became blue. “So it’s true!” he said quietly and as if to himself, with a completely lost look. “The end!… Well … You’ll answer to me now!” he suddenly rasped, looking at Ganya with furious spite. “Well … ah!…”
He even gasped for air, he even had difficulty speaking. He was advancing mechanically into the drawing room, but, having crossed the threshold, he suddenly saw Nina Alexandrovna and Varya and stopped, slightly embarrassed, despite all his agitation. After him came Lebedev, who followed him like a shadow and was already quite drunk, then the student, the gentleman with the fists, Zalyozhev, who was bowing to right and left, and, finally, the short, fat one squeezed in. The presence of the ladies still restrained them all somewhat, and obviously hindered them greatly, only until it began, of course, until the first pretext to give a shout and begin … Then no ladies would hinder them.
“What? You’re here, too, Prince?” Rogozhin asked distractedly, somewhat surprised to meet the prince. “Still in your gaiters, ehh!” he sighed, now forgetting the prince and turning his eyes to Nastasya Filippovna, moving as if drawn to her by a magnet.
Nastasya Filippovna also looked at the visitors with uneasy curiosity.
Ganya finally came to his senses.
“Excuse me, but what, finally, is the meaning of this?” he began loudly, looking around sternly at the people coming in and mainly addressing Rogozhin. “It seems you haven’t come to a cow-barn, gentlemen, my mother and sister are here …”
“We see it’s your mother and sister,” Rogozhin said through his teeth.
“It’s clear they’re your mother and sister,” Lebedev picked up to lend it countenance.
The gentleman with the fists, probably thinking the moment had come, also began grumbling something.
“But anyhow!” Ganya raised his voice suddenly and explosively, somehow beyond measure. “First, I ask you all to go to the other room, and then I’d like to know …”
“See, he doesn’t know,” Rogozhin grinned spitefully, not budging from where he stood. “You don’t know Rogozhin?”
“I suppose I met you somewhere, but …”
“See, he met me somewhere! Only three months ago I lost two hundred roubles of my father’s money to you. The old man died and had no time to find out. You got me into it, and Kniff cheated. You don’t know me? Ptitsyn is my witness! If I was to show you three roubles, to take them out of my pocket right now, you’d crawl after them on all fours to Vassilievsky Island—that’s how you are! That’s how your soul is! I’ve come now to buy you out for money, never mind that I’m wearing these boots, I’ve got a lot of money, brother, I’ll buy you out with all you’ve got here … if I want, I’ll buy you all! Everything!” Rogozhin grew excited and as if more and more drunk. “Ehh!” he cried, “Nastasya Filippovna! Don’t throw me out, tell me one thing: are you going to marry him or not?”
Rogozhin asked his question like a lost man, as if addressing some sort of divinity, but with the boldness of a man condemned to death, who has nothing more to lose. In deathly anguish he waited for the answer.
Nastasya Filippovna looked him up and down with a mocking and haughty glance, but after glancing at Varya and Nina Alexandrovna, she looked at Ganya and suddenly changed her tone.
“Absolutely not, what’s the matter with you? And what on earth made you think of asking?” she replied softly and seriously and as if with some surpr
ise.
“No? No!!” cried Rogozhin, all but beside himself with joy. “So it’s no?! And they told me … Ah! Well!… Nastasya Filippovna! They say you’re engaged to Ganka! To him? No, how is it possible? (I tell them all!) No, I’ll buy him out for a hundred roubles, I’ll give him a thousand, say, or three thousand, to renounce her, he’ll run away on the eve of the wedding and leave his bride all to me. So it is, Ganka, you scoundrel! You’ll take three thousand. Here it is, here! This is what I came with, to get a receipt from you. I said I’d buy you—and so I will!”
“Get out of here, you’re drunk!” cried Ganya, blushing and blanching by turns.
His exclamation was followed by a sudden explosion of several voices; Rogozhin’s whole crew had long been waiting for the first challenge. Lebedev whispered something extremely assiduously into Rogozhin’s ear.
“That’s true, clerk,” replied Rogozhin. “It’s true, you drunken soul! Eh, come what may. Nastasya Filippovna!” he cried, looking at her like a half-wit, timid and suddenly taking heart to the point of insolence, “here’s eighteen thousand!” And he slapped down on the table in front of her a packet wrapped in white paper, tied crisscross with string. “There! And … and there’ll be more!”
The Idiot Page 15
