The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  A last explanation: I am by no means dying because I cannot endure these three weeks; oh, I would have strength enough, and if I wanted to, I could be sufficiently comforted by the very consciousness of the offense done to me; but I am not a French poet and do not want such comforting. Finally, there is the temptation: nature has so greatly limited my activity by her three-week sentence that suicide may be the only thing I still have time to begin and end of my own will. So, maybe I want to use my last opportunity of doing something? A protest is sometimes no small matter …

  The “Explanation” was over; Ippolit finally stopped …

  There is in extreme cases that degree of ultimate cynical frankness, when a nervous man, irritated and beside himself, no longer fears anything and is ready for any scandal, even glad of it; he throws himself at people, having at the same time an unclear but firm goal of certainly leaping from a belfry a minute later and thus resolving at once all misunderstandings, in case they turn up along the way. An imminent exhaustion of physical strength is usually an indication of this state. The extreme, almost unnatural tension that had so far sustained Ippolit had reached that ultimate degree. In himself this eighteen-year-old boy, exhausted by illness, seemed as weak as a trembling leaf torn from a tree; but he no sooner looked around at his listeners—for the first time during the last hour—than the same haughty, almost contemptuous and offensive revulsion showed at once in his eyes and smile. He hurried with his defiance. But his listeners were also totally indignant. They were all getting up from the table with noise and vexation. Fatigue, wine, and tension had heightened the disorderliness and, as it were, the filth of the impressions, if it may be so expressed.

  Suddenly Ippolit jumped quickly from his chair, as if torn from his place.

  “The sun has risen!” he cried, seeing the glowing treetops and pointing them out to the prince like a miracle. “It’s risen!”‖

  “And did you think it wouldn’t, or what?” observed Ferdyshchenko.

  “Another whole day of torrid heat,” Ganya muttered with careless vexation, hat in hand, stretching and yawning. “Well, there may be a month of drought like this!… Are we going or not, Ptitsyn?”

  Ippolit listened with an astonishment that reached the point of stupefaction; suddenly he turned terribly pale and began to shake all over.

  “You’re very clumsily affecting your indifference in order to insult me,” he addressed Ganya, looking at him point-blank. “You’re a scoundrel!”

  “Well, devil knows, a man shouldn’t unbutton himself like that!” shouted Ferdyshchenko. “What phenomenal weakness!”

  “Simply a fool,” said Ganya.

  Ippolit restrained himself somewhat.

  “I understand, gentlemen,” he began, trembling and faltering at each word as before, “that I may deserve your personal vengeance and … I’m sorry that I wore you out with this raving” (he pointed to the manuscript), “though I’m sorry I didn’t wear you out completely …” (he smiled stupidly). “Did I wear you out, Evgeny Pavlych?” he suddenly jumped over to him with the question. “Did I wear you out, or not? Speak!”

  “It was a bit drawn out, but anyhow …”

  “Say it all! Don’t lie for at least once in your life!” Ippolit commanded, trembling.

  “Oh, it decidedly makes no difference to me! Do me a favor, I beg you, leave me in peace,” Evgeny Pavlovich squeamishly turned away.

  “Good night, Prince,” Ptitsyn went over to the prince.

  “But he’s going to shoot himself now, don’t you see? Look at him!” cried Vera, and she rushed to Ippolit in extreme fright and even seized his hands. “He said he’d shoot himself at sunrise, don’t you see?”

  “He won’t shoot himself!” several voices muttered gloatingly, Ganya’s among them.

  “Watch out, gentlemen!” Kolya cried, also seizing Ippolit by the hand. “Just look at him! Prince! Prince, don’t you see?”

  Vera, Kolya, Keller, and Burdovsky crowded around Ippolit; all four seized him with their hands.

  “He has the right, the right!…” muttered Burdovsky, who nevertheless looked quite lost.

  “Excuse me, Prince, what are your orders?” Lebedev went up to the prince, drunk and spiteful to the point of impudence.

  “What orders?”

  “No, sir; excuse me, sir; I’m the host, sir, though I do not wish to show a lack of respect for you. Let’s grant that you, too, are the host, but I don’t want any of that in my own house … So there, sir.”

  “He won’t shoot himself; it’s a boyish prank,” General Ivolgin cried unexpectedly with indignation and aplomb.

  “Bravo, General!” Ferdyshchenko picked up.

  “I know he won’t shoot himself, General, my much-esteemed General, but all the same … for I’m the host.”

  “Listen, Mr. Terentyev,” Ptitsyn said suddenly, having taken leave of the prince and holding his hand out to Ippolit, “in your notebook I believe you mention your skeleton and bequeath it to the Academy? It’s your skeleton, your very own, that is, your own bones, that you’re bequeathing?”

  “Yes, my own bones …”

  “Aha. Because there might be a mistake: they say there already was such a case.”

  “Why do you tease him?” the prince cried suddenly.

  “You’ve driven him to tears,” added Ferdyshchenko.

  But Ippolit was not crying at all. He tried to move from his place, but the four people standing around him suddenly all seized him by the arms. There was laughter.

  “That’s what he was getting at, that people should hold him by the arms; that’s why he read his notebook,” observed Rogozhin. “Good-bye, Prince. We’ve sat enough; my bones ache.”

  “If you actually intended to shoot yourself, Terentyev,” laughed Evgeny Pavlovich, “then if I were in your place, after such compliments, I would deliberately not shoot myself, so as to tease them.”

  “They want terribly to see how I shoot myself!” Ippolit reared up at him.

  He spoke as if he were attacking him.

  “They’re vexed that they won’t see it.”

  “So you, too, think they won’t see it?”

  “I’m not egging you on; on the contrary, I think it’s quite possible that you will shoot yourself. Above all, don’t get angry …” Evgeny Pavlovich drawled, drawing the words out patronizingly.

  “Only now do I see that I made a terrible mistake in reading them this notebook!” said Ippolit, looking at Evgeny Pavlovich with such an unexpectedly trusting air as if he were asking friendly advice from a friend.

  “The situation is ridiculous, but … really, I don’t know what to advise you,” Evgeny Pavlovich replied, smiling.

  Ippolit sternly looked at him point-blank, not tearing his eyes away, and said nothing. One might have thought he was totally oblivious at moments.

  “No, excuse me, sir, look at the way he does it, sir,” said Lebedev. “ ‘I’ll shoot myself,’ he says, ‘in the park, so as not to trouble anybody’! So he thinks he won’t trouble anybody if he goes three steps down into the garden.”

  “Gentlemen …” the prince began.

  “No, sir, excuse me, sir, my much-esteemed Prince,” Lebedev latched on furiously, “since you yourself are pleased to see that this is not a joke and since at least half of your guests are of the same opinion and are sure that now, after the words that have been spoken here, he certainly must shoot himself out of honor, then I, being the host, announce in front of witnesses that I am asking you to be of assistance!”

  “What needs to be done, Lebedev? I’m ready to assist you.”

  “Here’s what: first of all, he should immediately hand over his pistol, which he boasted about to us, with all the accessories. If he hands it over, then I agree to allow him to spend this one night in this house, in view of his ill condition, and, of course, under supervision on my part. But tomorrow let him go without fail wherever he likes—forgive me, Prince! If he doesn’t hand over his weapon, then I at once, immedia
tely, seize him by one arm, the general by the other, and also at once send somebody to notify the police, and then the matter passes over to the police for consideration, sir. Mr. Ferdyshchenko will go, sir, being an acquaintance.”

  Noise broke out; Lebedev was excited and already overstepping the limits; Ferdyshchenko was preparing to go to the police; Ganya furiously insisted that no one was going to shoot himself. Evgeny Pavlovich was silent.

  “Prince, have you ever leaped from a belfry?” Ippolit suddenly whispered to him.

  “N-no …” the prince answered naïvely.

  “Do you really think I didn’t foresee all this hatred?” Ippolit whispered again, flashing his eyes, and looking at the prince as if he indeed expected an answer from him. “Enough!” he cried suddenly to the whole public. “I’m to blame … most of all! Lebedev, here’s the key” (he took out his wallet and from it a steel ring with three or four little keys on it), “this one, the next to last … Kolya will show you … Kolya! Where’s Kolya?” he cried, looking at Kolya and not seeing him, “yes … he’ll show you; he and I packed my bag yesterday. Take him, Kolya; in the prince’s study, under the table … my bag … with this key, at the bottom, in the little box … my pistol and the powder horn. He packed it himself yesterday, Mr. Lebedev, he’ll show you; so long as you give me back the pistol early tomorrow, when I go to Petersburg. Do you hear? I’m doing it for the prince, not for you.”

  “Well, that’s better!” Lebedev snatched the key and, smiling venomously, ran to the other room.

  Kolya stopped, was about to say something, but Lebedev pulled him after him.

  Ippolit was looking at the laughing guests. The prince noticed that his teeth were chattering as if in a most violent chill.

  “What scoundrels they all are!” Ippolit again whispered frenziedly to the prince. When he spoke to the prince, he kept leaning towards him and whispering.

  “Let them be; you’re very weak …”

  “One moment, one moment … I’ll go in a moment.”

  He suddenly embraced the prince.

  “Maybe you find me crazy?” He looked at him, laughing strangely.

  “No, but you …”

  “One moment, one moment, be quiet; don’t say anything; stand there … I want to look in your eyes … Stand like that, let me look. Let me say good-bye to Man.”

  He stood and looked at the prince motionlessly and silently for about ten seconds, very pale, his temples moist with sweat, and somehow clutching at the prince strangely with his hand, as if afraid to let him go.

  “Ippolit, Ippolit, what’s the matter?” cried the prince.

  “One moment … enough … I’ll lie down. I’ll drink one gulp to the sun’s health … I want to, I want to, let me be!”

  He quickly snatched a glass from the table, tore from the spot, and an instant later was on the steps of the terrace. The prince was about to run after him, but it so happened that, as if on purpose, at that same moment Evgeny Pavlovich held out his hand to say good-bye. A second passed, and suddenly a general cry arose on the terrace. Then came a moment of extreme disarray.

  Here is what happened:

  Having gone right to the steps of the terrace, Ippolit stopped, holding the glass in his left hand, his right hand thrust into the right side pocket of his coat. Keller insisted later that Ippolit had kept that hand in his right pocket before as well, while he was talking with the prince and clutching at his shoulder and collar with his left hand, and this right hand in the pocket, Keller insisted, had supposedly aroused a first suspicion in him. Be that as it may, a certain uneasiness made him also run after Ippolit. But he, too, was late. He saw only how something suddenly flashed in Ippolit’s right hand, and in that same second the small pocket pistol was pressed to his temple. Keller rushed to seize his hand, but in that same second Ippolit pulled the trigger. The sharp, dry click of the trigger rang out, but no shot followed. As Keller put his arms around Ippolit, the latter collapsed as if unconscious, perhaps indeed imagining that he was killed. The pistol was already in Keller’s hand. Ippolit was picked up, a chair was brought, he was seated, and everyone crowded around, everyone shouted, everyone asked questions. Everyone had heard the click of the trigger and now saw the man alive, not even scratched. Ippolit himself sat, not understanding what was happening, and looked at everyone around him with senseless eyes. Lebedev and Kolya came running at that moment.

  “A misfire?” some asked.

  “Maybe it’s not loaded?” others tried to guess.

  “It is loaded!” Keller announced, examining the pistol, “but …”

  “A misfire, then?”

  “There wasn’t any cap,” Keller declared.

  It is hard to describe the pitiful scene that followed. The initial and general alarm quickly gave way to laughter; some even guffawed, finding a malicious pleasure in it. Ippolit sobbed as if in hysterics, wrung his hands, rushed to everyone, even to Ferdyshchenko, seized him with both hands, and swore to him that he had forgotten, “had forgotten quite by chance and not on purpose” to put a cap in, that “the caps are all here in his waistcoat pocket, about ten of them” (he showed them to everyone around him), that he had not put one in earlier for fear it might accidentally go off in his pocket, that he had reckoned he would always have time to put one in when necessary, and had suddenly forgotten. He rushed to the prince, to Evgeny Pavlovich, he implored Keller to give him the pistol, so that he could prove it to them all right then, that “his honor, honor” … that he was now “dishonored forever!…”

  In the end he really fell unconscious. They carried him to the prince’s study, and Lebedev, completely sobered, immediately sent for the doctor and stayed at the sick boy’s bedside, along with his daughter, his son, Burdovsky, and the general. When the unconscious Ippolit was taken out, Keller stepped to the middle of the room and announced for everyone to hear, distinctly and emphasizing each word, in decided inspiration:

  “Gentlemen, if any of you doubts once more, aloud, in my presence, whether the cap was forgotten on purpose, and begins to maintain that the unfortunate young man was only putting on a show—that person will have to deal with me.”

  No one answered him. The guests finally left in a crowd and hurriedly. Ptitsyn, Ganya, and Rogozhin went off together.

  The prince was very surprised that Evgeny Pavlovich had changed his mind and was leaving without having a talk with him.

  “Didn’t you want to talk to me once everyone was gone?” he asked him.

  “So I did,” said Evgeny Pavlovich, suddenly sitting down on a chair and sitting the prince down next to him, “but for the time being I’ve changed my mind. I’ll confess to you that I’m somewhat perplexed, and you are, too. My thoughts are confused; besides, the matter I wanted to talk over with you is all too important for me, and for you, too. You see, Prince, I would like at least once in my life to do a completely honest deed, that is, completely without second thoughts, but I think that right now, at this moment, I’m not quite capable of a completely honest deed, and perhaps you’re not either … so … and … well, we’ll talk later. Perhaps the matter will gain in clarity, both for me and for you, if we wait those three days which I shall now be spending in Petersburg.”

  Here he got up from his chair again, which made it strange that he had sat down at all. It also seemed to the prince that Evgeny Pavlovich was displeased and irritated and looked about hostilely, and his gaze was not at all what it had been yesterday.

  “By the way, are you going to the sufferer now?”

  “Yes … I’m afraid,” said the prince.

  “Don’t be afraid; he’ll probably live another six weeks and may even recover here. But the best thing would be to send him away tomorrow.”

  “Maybe I really forced his hand by … not saying anything; maybe he thought that I, too, doubted that he would shoot himself? What do you think, Evgeny Pavlych?”

  “No, no. It’s too kind of you to be still worried. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never
seen in real life how a man can purposely shoot himself in order to be praised, or out of spite at not being praised. Above all, this sincerity of weakness is not to be believed! But you should still send him away tomorrow.”

  “You think he’ll shoot himself again?”

  “No, he won’t shoot himself now. But you should beware of these homegrown Lacenaires21 of ours! I repeat to you that crime is all too common a resort for such giftless, impatient, and greedy nonentities.”

  “Is he a Lacenaire?”

  “The essence is the same, though the line may be different. You’ll see whether this gentleman isn’t capable of doing in a dozen souls merely for a ‘joke,’ just as he read earlier in his ‘Explanation.’ Now those words won’t let me sleep.”

  “Perhaps you’re worrying too much.”

  “You’re amazing, Prince. Don’t you believe he’s capable now of killing a dozen souls?”

  “I’m afraid to answer you; it’s all very strange, but …”

  “Well, as you wish, as you wish!” Evgeny Pavlovich concluded irritably. “Besides, you’re such a brave man; only don’t get yourself included in that dozen.”

  “Most likely he won’t kill anybody,” said the prince, looking pensively at Evgeny Pavlovich.

  The man laughed maliciously.

  “Good-bye, it’s time to go! And did you notice that he bequeathed a copy of his ‘Confession’ to Aglaya Ivanovna?”

  “Yes, I did and … I’m thinking about it.”

  “Do so, in case of those dozen souls,” Evgeny Pavlovich laughed again and left.

  An hour later, already past three o’clock, the prince went down into the park. He had tried to fall asleep at home, but could not, because of the violent beating of his heart. At home, however, everything was settled and peaceful, as far as possible; the sick boy had fallen asleep, and the doctor had come and had declared that there was no special danger. Lebedev, Kolya, and Burdovsky lay down in the sick boy’s room to take turns watching over him; there was therefore nothing to fear.