The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  The prince looked.

  “Look closer. Do you see the bench in the park, where those three big trees are … the green bench?”

  The prince answered that he did.

  “Do you like the setting? Sometimes I come early, at seven o’clock, when everyone is still asleep, to sit there by myself.”

  The prince murmured that it was a wonderful setting.

  “And now go away from me, I don’t want to walk arm in arm with you anymore. Or better, let’s walk arm in arm, but don’t say a word to me. I want to think alone to myself …”

  The warning was in any case unnecessary: the prince would certainly not have uttered a single word all the way even without orders. His heart began to pound terribly when he heard about the bench. After a moment he thought better of it and, in shame, drove away his absurd notion.

  As is known and as everyone at least affirms, the public that gathers at the Pavlovsk vauxhall on weekdays is “more select” than on Sundays and holidays, when “all sorts of people” arrive from the city. The dresses are not festive but elegant. The custom is to get together and listen to music. The orchestra, which may indeed be one of our best garden orchestras, plays new things. The decency and decorum are extreme, in spite of a certain generally familial and even intimate air. The acquaintances, all of them dacha people, get together to look each other over. Many do it with genuine pleasure and come only for that; but there are also those who come just for the music. Scandals are extraordinarily rare, though, incidentally, they do occur even on weekdays. But, then, there’s no doing without them.

  This time the evening was lovely, and there was a good-sized audience. All the places near the orchestra were taken. Our company sat down in chairs a little to one side, close to the far left-hand door of the vauxhall. The crowd and the music revived Lizaveta Prokofyevna somewhat and distracted the young ladies; they managed to exchange glances with some of their acquaintances and to nod their heads amiably to others from afar; managed to look over the dresses, to notice some oddities, discuss them, and smile mockingly. Evgeny Pavlovich also bowed rather often. People already paid attention to Aglaya and the prince, who were still together. Soon some young men of their acquaintance came over to the mama and the young ladies; two or three stayed to talk; they were all friends of Evgeny Pavlovich. Among them was one young and very handsome officer, very gay, very talkative; he hastened to strike up a conversation with Aglaya and tried as hard as he could to attract her attention. Aglaya was very gracious with him and laughed easily. Evgeny Pavlovich asked the prince’s permission to introduce him to this friend; the prince barely understood what they wanted to do with him, but the introductions were made, the two men bowed and shook hands with each other. Evgeny Pavlovich’s friend asked a question, but the prince seemed not to answer it, or muttered something to himself so strangely that the officer gave him a very intent look, then glanced at Evgeny Pavlovich, realized at once why he had thought up this acquaintance, smiled faintly, and turned again to Aglaya. Evgeny Pavlovich alone noticed that Aglaya unexpectedly blushed at that.

  The prince did not even notice that other people were talking and paying court to Aglaya; he even all but forgot at moments that he was sitting next to her. Sometimes he wanted to go away somewhere, to disappear from there completely, and he would even have liked some dark, deserted place, only so that he could be alone with his thoughts and no one would know where he was. Or at least to be in his own home, on the terrace, but so that nobody else was there, neither Lebedev nor his children; to throw himself on his sofa, bury his face in his pillow, and lie there like that for a day, a night, another day. At moments he imagined the mountains, and precisely one familiar spot in the mountains that he always liked to remember and where he had liked to walk when he still lived there, and to look down from there on the village, on the white thread of the waterfall barely glittering below, on the white clouds, on the abandoned old castle. Oh, how he wanted to be there now and to think about one thing—oh! all his life only about that—it would be enough for a thousand years! And let them, let them forget all about him here. Oh, it was even necessary, even better, that they not know him at all, and that this whole vision be nothing but a dream. And wasn’t it all the same whether it was a dream or a reality? Sometimes he would suddenly begin studying Aglaya and for five minutes could not tear his gaze from her face; but his gaze was all too strange: it seemed he was looking at her as if at an object a mile away, or as if at her portrait and not at herself.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Prince?” she said suddenly, interrupting her merry conversation and laughter with those around her. “I’m afraid of you; I keep thinking you want to reach your hand out and touch my face with your finger, in order to feel it. Isn’t it true, Evgeny Pavlych, that he looks like that?”

  The prince listened, seeming to be surprised that he was being addressed, realized it, though he may not quite have understood, did not reply, but, seeing that she and all the others were laughing, suddenly extended his mouth and began to laugh himself. The laughter increased around him; the officer, who must have been a man who laughed easily, simply burst with laughter. Aglaya suddenly whispered wrathfully to herself:

  “Idiot!”

  “Lord! Can she really … such a … is she going completely crazy?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna rasped to herself.

  “It’s a joke. It’s the same kind of joke as with the ‘poor knight,’ ” Alexandra whispered firmly in her ear, “and nothing more! She’s poking fun at him again, in her own way. Only the joke has gone too far; it must be stopped, maman! Earlier she was clowning like an actress, frightening us for the fun of it …”

  “It’s a good thing she landed on such an idiot,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna whispered to her. Her daughter’s observation made her feel better all the same.

  The prince, however, heard that he had been called an idiot, and gave a start, but not because he had been called an idiot. The “idiot” he forgot at once. But in the crowd, not far from where he was sitting, somewhere to the side—he would not have been able to show in what precise place and in what spot—a face flashed, a pale face with dark, curly hair, with a familiar, a very familiar, smile and gaze—flashed and disappeared. It might well have been that he only imagined it; of the whole apparition he was left with the impression of the crooked smile, the eyes, and the pale green, foppish tie that the gentleman who flashed was wearing. Whether this gentleman disappeared in the crowd or slipped into the vauxhall, the prince also could not have determined.

  But a moment later he suddenly began looking quickly and uneasily around him; this first apparition might be the herald and forerunner of a second. That was surely the case. Could he have forgotten the possibility of a meeting when they set out for the vauxhall? True, as he walked to the vauxhall, he seemed not at all aware that he was going there—he was in such a state. If he had been or could have been more attentive, he might have noticed a quarter of an hour ago that Aglaya, every so often and also as if uneasily, glanced furtively about, as though looking for something around her. Now, when his uneasiness had become quite noticeable, Aglaya’s agitation and uneasiness also grew, and each time he looked behind him, she almost at once looked around as well. The resolution of their anxiety soon followed.

  From the same side door to the vauxhall near which the prince and all the Epanchin company had placed themselves, a whole crowd, at least ten people, suddenly emerged. At the head of the crowd were three women; two of them were remarkably good-looking, and there was nothing strange in so many admirers following after them. But both the admirers and the women—all this was something peculiar, something quite unlike the rest of the public gathered for the music. Nearly everyone noticed them at once, but the greater part tried to pretend that they had not seen them at all, and perhaps only some of the young people smiled at them, commenting to each other in low voices. Not to see them at all was impossible; they made themselves conspicuous, talked loudly, laughed. One might suppose that many of
them were drunk, though by the look of it some were smartly and elegantly dressed; but alongside them there were rather strange-looking people, in strange clothes, with strangely inflamed faces; there were several military men among them; not all of them were young; some were dressed comfortably in loose and elegantly made clothes, with signet rings and cuff links, in magnificent, pitch-black wigs and side-whiskers, and with a particularly noble, though somewhat squeamish, expression on their faces—the sort of people, however, who are avoided like the plague in society. Among our suburban societies, of course, there are some that are distinguished by an extraordinary decorum and enjoy a particularly good reputation; but even the most cautious person cannot protect himself at every moment against a brick falling from a neighboring house. This brick was now preparing to fall upon the decorous public that had gathered for the music.

  To pass from the vauxhall to the green where the orchestra was playing, one had to go down three steps. The crowd stopped just at these steps; they did not venture to go down, but one of the women stepped forward; only two of her retinue dared to follow her. One was a rather modest-looking middle-aged man, of decent appearance in all respects, but having the air of a confirmed old bachelor, that is, one of those who never know anybody and whom nobody knows. The other one not to lag behind his lady was a complete ragamuffin of the most ambiguous appearance. No one else followed the eccentric lady; but, going down, she did not even turn to look back, as if it decidedly made no difference to her whether she was followed or not. She laughed and talked as loudly as before; she was dressed extremely tastefully and expensively, but somewhat more magnificently than she ought to have been. She went past the orchestra to the other side of the green, near the road, where somebody’s carriage was waiting for someone.

  The prince had not seen her for more than three months. All those days since his arrival in Petersburg, he had been preparing to call on her; but perhaps a secret foreboding had held him back. At least he could in no way anticipate what impression awaited him on meeting her, but sometimes he fearfully tried to imagine it. One thing was clear to him—that the meeting would be painful. Several times during those six months he had recalled the first sensation that the face of this woman had produced in him, when he had only seen it in a portrait; but even in the impression of the portrait, he recalled, there was a great deal of pain. That month in the provinces, when he had seen her almost every day, had had a terrible effect on him, so much so that the prince drove away even the memory of that still-recent time. For him there was something tormenting in the very face of this woman; the prince, talking with Rogozhin, had translated this feeling as one of infinite pity, and that was true: this face, ever since the portrait, had evoked in his heart all the suffering of pity; the impression of compassion and even of suffering for this being never left his heart and had not left it now. Oh, no, it was even stronger. Yet the prince remained dissatisfied with what he had said to Rogozhin; and only now, at this moment of her unexpected appearance, did he understand, perhaps through immediate sensation, what had been lacking in his words to Rogozhin. Words had been lacking expressive of horror—yes, horror! Now, at this moment, he felt it fully; he was sure, he was fully convinced, for his own special reasons, that this woman was mad. If a man, loving a woman more than anything in the world, or anticipating the possibility of such a love, were suddenly to see her on a chain, behind iron bars, under a warden’s stick—the impression would be somewhat similar to what the prince was feeling now.

  “What’s the matter?” Aglaya whispered quickly, glancing at him and naïvely tugging at his arm.

  He turned his head to her, looked at her, looked into her dark eyes, whose flashing was incomprehensible to him at that moment, tried to smile at her, but suddenly, as if instantly forgetting her, again turned his eyes to the right and again began to watch his extraordinary apparition. At that moment Nastasya Filippovna was just walking past the young ladies’ chairs. Evgeny Pavlovich went on telling Alexandra Ivanovna something that must have been very funny and interesting, speaking quickly and animatedly. The prince remembered Aglaya suddenly saying in a half-whisper: “What a …”

  The phrase was uncertain and unfinished; she instantly checked herself and did not add anything more, but that was already enough. Nastasya Filippovna, who was walking along as if not noticing anyone in particular, suddenly turned in their direction, and seemed only now to recognize Evgeny Pavlovich.

  “Hah! Here he is!” she exclaimed, suddenly stopping. “First there’s no finding him with any messengers, then, as if on purpose, he sits here where you’d never imagine … And I thought you were there, darling … at your uncle’s!”

  Evgeny Pavlovich flushed, looked furiously at Nastasya Filippovna, but quickly turned away again.

  “What?! Don’t you know? He doesn’t know yet, imagine! He shot himself! Your uncle shot himself this morning! They told me earlier, at two o’clock; half the city knows by now; they say three hundred and fifty thousand in government funds are missing, others say five hundred thousand. And here I was counting on him leaving you an inheritance; he blew it all. A most depraved old fellow he was … Well, good-bye, bonne chance!* So you really won’t go? That’s why you resigned in good time, smart boy! Oh, nonsense, you knew, you knew beforehand; maybe even yesterday …”

  Though there was certainly some purpose in this impudent pestering, this advertising of an acquaintance and an intimacy that did not exist, and there could now be no doubt of it—Evgeny Pavlovich had thought first to get rid of her somehow or other, and did his best to ignore the offender. But Nastasya Filippovna’s words struck him like a thunderbolt; hearing of his uncle’s death, he went pale as a sheet and turned to the bearer of the news. At that moment Lizaveta Prokofyevna quickly got up from her seat, got everyone up with her, and all but rushed out. Only Prince Lev Nikolaevich stayed where he was for a second, as if undecided, and Evgeny Pavlovich went on standing there, not having come to his senses. But the Epanchins had not managed to go twenty steps before a frightful scandal broke out.

  The officer, a great friend of Evgeny Pavlovich’s, who had been talking with Aglaya, was indignant in the highest degree.

  “Here you simply need a whip, there’s no other way with this creature!” he said almost aloud. (It seems he had been Evgeny Pavlovich’s confidant even before.)

  Nastasya Filippovna instantly turned to him. Her eyes flashed; she rushed to a young man completely unknown to her who was standing two steps away and holding a thin, braided riding crop, tore it out of his hand, and struck her offender across the face as hard as she could. All this occurred in a second … The officer, forgetting himself, rushed at her; Nastasya Filippovna’s retinue was no longer around her; the decent middle-aged gentleman had already managed to efface himself completely, and the tipsy gentleman stood to one side and guffawed with all his might. In a minute, of course, the police would arrive, but for that minute things would have gone badly for Nastasya Filippovna if unexpected help had not come in time: the prince, who had also stopped two paces away, managed to seize the officer by the arms from behind. Pulling his arm free, the officer shoved him hard in the chest; the prince was sent flying about three paces and fell on a chair. But by then two more defenders had turned up for Nastasya Filippovna. Before the attacking officer stood the boxer, author of the article already familiar to the reader and an active member of Rogozhin’s former band.

  “Keller! Retired lieutenant,” he introduced himself with swagger. “If you’d like to fight hand to hand, Captain, I’m at your service, to replace the weaker sex; I’ve gone through the whole of English boxing. Don’t push, Captain; I sympathize with the bloody offense, but I cannot allow for the right of fists with a woman before the eyes of the public. But if, as befits a no-o-oble person, you’d prefer it in a different manner, then—naturally, you must understand me, Captain …”

  But the captain had already recovered himself and was no longer listening to him. At that moment Rogozhin emerged from the
crowd, quickly took Nastasya Filippovna by the arm, and led her away with him. For his part, Rogozhin seemed terribly shaken, was pale and trembling. As he led Nastasya Filippovna away, he still had time to laugh maliciously in the officer’s face and say, with the look of a triumphant shopkeeper:

  “Nyah! Take that! Your mug’s all bloody! Nyah!”

  Having recovered and realizing perfectly well whom he was dealing with, the officer politely (though covering his face with a handkerchief) addressed the prince, who had gotten up from the chair:

  “Prince Myshkin, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making?”

  “She’s crazy! Mad! I assure you!” the prince replied in a trembling voice, reaching his trembling hands out to him for some reason.

  “I, of course, cannot boast of being so well informed; but I do need to know your name.”

  He bowed his head and walked off. The police arrived exactly five seconds after the last of the participants had gone. However, the scandal had lasted no more than two minutes. Some of the public got up from their chairs and left, others merely changed places; a third group was very glad of the scandal; a fourth began intensely talking and questioning. In short, the matter ended as usual. The orchestra started playing again. The prince followed after the Epanchins. If it had occurred to him or he had managed to look to the left, as he sat on the chair after being shoved away, he would have seen Aglaya, who had stopped some twenty paces from him to watch the scandalous scene and did not heed the calls of her mother and sisters, who had already moved further off. Prince Shch., running up to her, finally persuaded her to leave quickly. Lizaveta Prokofyevna remembered that Aglaya rejoined them in such agitation that she could hardly have heard their calls. But exactly two minutes later, just as they entered the park, Aglaya said in her usual indifferent and capricious voice:

  “I wanted to see how the comedy would end.”