The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  The meeting with Kolya induced the prince to accompany the general to Marfa Borisovna’s as well, but only for a minute. The prince needed Kolya; as for the general, he decided to abandon him in any case, and could not forgive himself for venturing to trust him earlier. They climbed up for a long time, to the fourth floor, and by the back stairs.

  “You want to introduce the prince?” Kolya asked on the way.

  “Yes, my friend, I want to introduce him: General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin, but what … how … Marfa Borisovna …”

  “You know, papa, it would be better if you didn’t go in. She’ll eat you up! It’s the third day you haven’t poked your nose in there, and she’s been waiting for money. Why did you promise her money? You’re always like that! Now you’ll have to deal with it.”

  On the fourth floor they stopped outside a low door. The general was visibly timid and shoved the prince forward.

  “And I’ll stay here,” he murmured. “I want it to be a surprise …”

  Kolya went in first. Some lady, in heavy red and white makeup, wearing slippers and a jerkin, her hair plaited in little braids, about forty years old, looked out the door, and the general’s surprise unexpectedly blew up. The moment the lady saw him, she shouted:

  “There he is, that low and insidious man, my heart was expecting it!”

  “Let’s go in, it’s all right,” the general murmured to the prince, still innocently laughing it off.

  But it was not all right. As soon as they went through the dark and low front hall into the narrow drawing room, furnished with a half-dozen wicker chairs and two card tables, the hostess immediately started carrying on as if by rote in a sort of lamenting and habitual voice:

  “And aren’t you ashamed, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, barbarian and tyrant of my family, barbarian and fiend! He’s robbed me clean, sucked me dry, and he’s still not content! How long will I put up with you, you shameless and worthless man!”

  “Marfa Borisovna, Marfa Borisovna! This … is Prince Myshkin. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin,” the general murmured, trembling and at a loss.

  “Would you believe,” the captain’s widow suddenly turned to the prince, “would you believe that this shameless man hasn’t spared my orphaned children! He’s stolen everything, filched everything, sold and pawned everything, left nothing. What am I to do with your promissory notes, you cunning and shameless man? Answer, you sly fox, answer me, you insatiable heart: with what, with what am I to feed my orphaned children? Here he shows up drunk, can’t stand on his feet … How have I angered the Lord God, you vile and outrageous villain, answer me?”

  But the general had other things on his mind.

  “Marfa Borisovna, twenty-five roubles … all I can do, with the help of a most noble friend. Prince! I was cruelly mistaken! Such is … life … And now … forgive me, I feel weak,” the general went on, standing in the middle of the room and bowing on all sides, “I feel weak, forgive me! Lenochka! a pillow … dear!”

  Lenochka, an eight-year-old girl, immediately ran to fetch a pillow and put it on the hard and ragged oilcloth sofa. The general sat down on it with the intention of saying much more, but the moment he touched the sofa, he drooped sideways, turned to the wall, and fell into a blissful sleep. Marfa Borisovna ceremoniously and ruefully showed the prince to a chair by a card table, sat down facing him, propped her right cheek in her hand, and silently began to sigh, looking at the prince. The three small children, two girls and a boy, of whom Lenochka was the oldest, came up to the table; all three put their hands on the table, and all three also began to gaze intently at the prince. Kolya appeared from the other room.

  “I’m very glad to have met you here, Kolya,” the prince turned to him. “Couldn’t you help me? I absolutely must be at Nastasya Filippovna’s. I asked Ardalion Alexandrovich earlier, but he’s fallen asleep. Take me there, because I don’t know the streets or the way. I have the address, though: near the Bolshoi Theater, Mrs. Mytovtsev’s house.”

  “Nastasya Filippovna? But she’s never lived near the Bolshoi Theater, and my father has never been to Nastasya Filippovna’s, if you want to know. It’s strange that you expected anything from him. She lives off Vladimirskaya, near the Five Corners, it’s much nearer here. Do you want to go now? It’s nine-thirty. I’ll take you there, if you like.”

  The prince and Kolya left at once. Alas! The prince had no way to pay for a cab, and they had to go on foot.

  “I wanted to introduce you to Ippolit,” said Kolya. “He’s the oldest son of this jerkined captain’s widow and was in the other room; he’s unwell and stayed in bed all day today. But he’s so strange; he’s terribly touchy, and it seemed to me that you might make him ashamed, coming at such a moment … I’m not as ashamed as he is, because it’s my father, after all, not my mother, there’s still a difference, because in such cases the male sex isn’t dishonored. Though maybe that’s a prejudice about the predominance of the sexes in such cases. Ippolit is a splendid fellow, but he’s the slave of certain prejudices.”

  “You say he has consumption?”

  “Yes, I think it would be better if he died sooner. In his place I’d certainly want to die. He feels sorry for his brother and sisters, those little ones. If it was possible, if only we had the money, he and I would rent an apartment and renounce our families. That’s our dream. And, you know, when I told him about that incident with you, he even got angry, he says that anyone who ignores a slap and doesn’t challenge the man to a duel is a scoundrel. Anyhow, he was terribly irritated, and I stopped arguing with him. So it means that Nastasya Filippovna invited you to her place straight off?”

  “The thing is that she didn’t.”

  “How can you be going, then?” Kolya exclaimed and even stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “And … and dressed like that, and to a formal party?”

  “By God, I really don’t know how I’m going to get in. If they receive me—good; if not—then my business is lost. And as for my clothes, what can I do about that?”

  “You have business there? Or is it just so, pour passer le tempsb in ‘noble society’?”

  “No, essentially I … that is, I do have business … it’s hard for me to explain it, but …”

  “Well, as for what precisely, that can be as you like, but the main thing for me is that you’re not simply inviting yourself to a party, to be in the charming company of loose women, generals, and usurers. If that were so, excuse me, Prince, but I’d laugh at you and start despising you. There are terribly few honest people here, so that there’s nobody at all to respect. You can’t help looking down on them, while they all demand respect—Varya first of all. And have you noticed, Prince, in our age they’re all adventurers! And precisely here, in Russia, in our dear fatherland. And how it has all come about, I can’t comprehend. It seemed to stand so firmly, and what is it now? Everybody talks and writes about it everywhere. They expose. With us everybody exposes. The parents are the first to retreat and are ashamed themselves at their former morals. There, in Moscow, a father kept telling his son to stop at nothing in getting money; it got into print.b Look at my general. What’s become of him? But, anyhow, you know, it seems to me that my general is an honest man; by God, it’s so! All that is just disorder and drink. By God, it’s so! It’s even a pity; only I’m afraid to say it, because everybody laughs; but by God, it’s a pity. And what about them, the smart ones? They’re all usurers, every last one. Ippolit justifies usury; he says that’s how it has to be, there’s economic upheaval, some sort of influxes and refluxes, devil take them. It vexes me terribly to have it come from him, but he’s angry. Imagine, his mother, the captain’s widow, takes money from the general and then gives him quick loans on interest. It’s terribly shameful! And, you know, mother, I mean my mother, Nina Alexandrovna, the general’s wife, helps Ippolit with money, clothes, linen, and everything, and sometimes the children, too, through Ippolit, because the woman neglects them. And Varya does the same.”

&nbs
p; “You see, you say there are no honest and strong people, that there are only usurers; but then strong people turn up, your mother and Varya. Isn’t it a sign of moral strength to help here and in such circumstances?”

  “Varka does it out of vanity, out of boastfulness, so as not to lag behind her mother. Well, but mama actually … I respect it. Yes, I respect it and justify it. Even Ippolit feels it, though he’s almost totally embittered. At first he made fun of it, called it baseness on my mother’s part; but now he’s beginning to feel it sometimes. Hm! So you call it strength? I’ll make note of that. Ganya doesn’t know about it, or he’d call it connivance.”

  “And Ganya doesn’t know? It seems there’s still a lot that Ganya doesn’t know,” escaped the prince, who lapsed into thought.

  “You know, Prince, I like you very much. I can’t stop thinking about what happened to you today.”

  “And I like you very much, Kolya.”

  “Listen, how do you intend to live here? I’ll soon find myself work and earn a little something. Let’s take an apartment and live together, you, me, and Ippolit, the three of us; and we can invite the general to visit.”

  “With the greatest pleasure. We’ll see, though. Right now I’m very … very upset. What? We’re there already? In this house … what a magnificent entrance! And a doorkeeper! Well, Kolya, I don’t know what will come of it.”

  The prince stood there like a lost man.

  “You’ll tell me about it tomorrow! Don’t be too shy. God grant you success, because I share your convictions in everything! Goodbye. I’ll go back now and tell Ippolit about it. And you’ll be received, there’s no doubt of that, don’t worry! She’s terribly original. This stairway, second floor, the doorkeeper will show you!”

  XIII

  THE PRINCE WAS very worried as he went upstairs and tried as hard as he could to encourage himself. “The worst thing,” he thought, “will be if they don’t receive me and think something bad about me, or perhaps receive me and start laughing in my face … Ah, never mind!” And, in fact, it was not very frightening; but the question: “What would he do there and why was he going?”—to this question he was decidedly unable to find a reassuring answer. Even if it should be possible in some way to seize an opportunity and tell Nastasya Filippovna: “Don’t marry this man and don’t ruin yourself, he doesn’t love you, he loves your money, he told me so himself, and Aglaya Epanchin told me, and I’ve come to tell you”—it would hardly come out right in all respects. Yet another unresolved question emerged, and such a major one that the prince was even afraid to think about it, could not and dared not even admit it, did not know how to formulate it, and blushed and trembled at the very thought of it. But in the end, despite all these anxieties and doubts, he still went in and asked for Nastasya Filippovna.

  Nastasya Filippovna occupied a not very large but indeed magnificently decorated apartment. There had been a time, at the beginning of those five years of her Petersburg life, when Afanasy Ivanovich had been particularly unstinting of money for her; he was then still counting on her love and thought he could seduce her mainly by comfort and luxury, knowing how easily the habits of luxury take root and how hard it is to give them up later, when luxury has gradually turned into necessity. In this case Totsky remained true to the good old traditions, changing nothing in them, and showing a boundless respect for the invincible power of sensual influences. Nastasya Filippovna did not reject the luxury, even liked it, but—and this seemed extremely strange—never succumbed to it, as if she could always do without it; she even tried several times to declare as much, which always struck Totsky unpleasantly. However, there was much in Nastasya Filippovna that struck Afanasy Ivanovich unpleasantly (later even to the point of scorn). Not to mention the inelegance of the sort of people she occasionally received, and was therefore inclined to receive, into her intimate circle, there could also be glimpsed in her certain utterly strange inclinations: there appeared a sort of barbaric mixture of two tastes, an ability to get along and be satisfied with things and ways the very existence of which, it seemed, would be unthinkable for a decent and finely cultivated person. Indeed, to give an example, if Nastasya Filippovna had suddenly displayed some charming and graceful ignorance, such as, for instance, that peasant women could not wear cambric undergarments such as she wore, Afanasy Ivanovich would probably have been extremely pleased with it. This was the result towards which Nastasya Filippovna’s entire education had originally been aimed, according to Totsky’s program, for he was a great connoisseur in that line; but alas! the results turned out to be strange. In spite of that, there nevertheless was and remained in Nastasya Filippovna something that occasionally struck even Afanasy Ivanovich himself by its extraordinary and fascinating originality, by some sort of power, and enchanted him on occasion even now, when all his former expectations with regard to Nastasya Filippovna had fallen through.

  The prince was received by a maid (Nastasya Filippovna always kept female servants), who, to his surprise, listened to his request to be announced without any perplexity. Neither his dirty boots, nor his broad-brimmed hat, nor his sleeveless cloak, nor his embarrassed look caused the slightest hesitation in her. She helped him off with his cloak, asked him to wait in the front hall, and went at once to announce him.

  The company that had gathered at Nastasya Filippovna’s consisted of her most usual and habitual acquaintances. There were even rather few people compared with previous years’ gatherings on the same day. Present first and foremost were Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky and Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin; both were amiable, but both were in some repressed anxiety on account of the poorly concealed expectation of the promised announcement about Ganya. Besides them, naturally, there was Ganya as well—also very gloomy, very pensive, and even almost totally “unamiable”—who for the most part stood to one side, separately, and kept silent. He had not ventured to bring Varya, but Nastasya Filippovna made no mention of her; instead, as soon as she greeted Ganya, she reminded him of the scene with the prince. The general, who had not heard about it yet, began to show interest. Then Ganya drily, restrainedly, but with perfect frankness, told everything that had happened earlier, and how he had already gone to the prince to apologize. With that he warmly voiced his opinion that the prince, quite strangely and for God knows what reason, was called an idiot, that he thought completely the opposite of him, and that he was most certainly a man who kept his own counsel. Nastasya Filippovna listened to this opinion with great attention and followed Ganya curiously, but the conversation immediately switched to Rogozhin, who had taken such a major part in that day’s story and in whom Afanasy Ivanovich and Ivan Fyodorovich also began to take an extremely curious interest. It turned out that specific information about Rogozhin could be supplied by Ptitsyn, who had been hard at work on his business until nearly nine o’clock that evening. Rogozhin had insisted with all his might that he should get hold of a hundred thousand roubles that same day. “True, he was drunk,” Ptitsyn observed with that, “but, difficult as it is, it seems he’ll get the hundred thousand, only I don’t know if it will be today and the whole of it. Many people are working on it—Kinder, Trepalov, Biskup; he’s offering any interest they like, though, of course, it’s all from drink and in his initial joy …” Ptitsyn concluded. All this news was received with a somewhat gloomy interest. Nastasya Filippovna was silent, obviously unwilling to speak her mind; Ganya also. General Epanchin was almost more worried than anyone else: the pearls he had already presented earlier in the day had been received with a much too cool politeness, and even with a sort of special smile. Ferdyshchenko alone of all the guests was in jolly and festive spirits, and guffawed loudly, sometimes for no known reason, only because he had adopted for himself the role of buffoon. Afanasy Ivanovich himself, reputed to be a fine and elegant talker, who on previous occasions had presided over the conversation at these parties, was obviously in low spirits and even in some sort of perplexity that was quite unlike him. The remainder of the guests, of whom, inc
identally, there were not many (one pathetic little old schoolteacher, invited for God knows what purpose, some unknown and very young man, who was terribly timid and kept silent all the time, a sprightly lady of about forty, an actress, and one extremely beautiful, extremely well and expensively dressed, and extraordinarily taciturn young lady), were not only unable to enliven the conversation especially, but sometimes simply did not know what to talk about.

  Thus, the prince’s appearance was even opportune. When he was announced, it caused bewilderment and a few strange smiles, especially as it was evident from Nastasya Filippovna’s surprised look that she had never thought of inviting him. But after her surprise, Nastasya Filippovna suddenly showed such pleasure that the majority prepared at once to meet the unexpected guest with laughter and merriment.

  “I suppose it comes of his innocence,” Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin concluded, “and to encourage such inclinations is in any case rather dangerous, but at the present moment it’s really not bad that he has decided to come, though in such an original manner. He may even amuse us a bit, at least so far as I can judge about him.”

  “The more so as he’s invited himself!” Ferdyshchenko put in at once.

  “So what of it?” the general, who hated Ferdyshchenko, asked drily.

  “So he’ll have to pay at the door,” the latter explained.

  “Well, all the same, sir, Prince Myshkin isn’t Ferdyshchenko,” the general could not help himself, having been so far unable to accept the thought of being in the same company and on an equal footing with Ferdyshchenko.

  “Hey, General, spare Ferdyshchenko,” the latter said, grinning. “I’m here under special dispensation.”

  “What is this special dispensation of yours?”

  “Last time I had the honor of explaining it to the company in detail; I’ll repeat it once more for Your Excellency. Kindly note, Your Excellency: everybody else is witty, but I am not. To make up for it, I asked permission to speak the truth, since everybody knows that only those who are not witty speak the truth. Besides, I’m a very vindictive man, and that’s also because I’m not witty. I humbly bear with every offense, until the offender’s first misstep; at his first misstep I remember at once and at once take my revenge in some way—I kick, as Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn said of me, a man who, of course, never kicks anybody. Do you know Krylov’s fable, Your Excellency: ‘The Lion and the Ass’?39 Well, that’s you and me both, it was written about us.”