The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Then why didn’t you ask for me in my room … if you were at the inn?” the prince asked suddenly.

  Rogozhin stopped, looked at him, thought, and, as if not understanding the question at all, said:

  “So, now, Lev Nikolaevich, you go straight on here, right to the house, you know? And I’ll go along the other side. And watch out that we keep together …”

  Having said this, he crossed the street, stepped onto the opposite sidewalk, looked whether the prince was following, and seeing that he was standing and staring at him, waved his hand in the direction of Gorokhovaya and went on, constantly turning to look at the prince and beckoning to him to follow. He was obviously heartened to see that the prince had understood him and did not cross the street to join him. It occurred to the prince that Rogozhin had to keep an eye out for someone and not miss him on the way, and that that was why he had crossed to the other side. “Only why didn’t he tell me who to look for?” They went some five hundred paces that way, and suddenly the prince began to tremble for some reason; Rogozhin still kept looking back, though more rarely; the prince could not help himself and beckoned to him with his hand. The man at once came across the street to him.

  “Is Nastasya Filippovna at your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was it you who looked at me from behind the curtain earlier?”

  “It was …”

  “Then why did you …”

  But the prince did not know what to ask further and how to finish the question; besides, his heart was pounding so hard that it was difficult for him even to speak. Rogozhin was also silent and looked at him as before, that is, as if pensively.

  “Well, I’m going,” he said suddenly, preparing to cross the street again, “and you go, too. Let’s stay separated in the street … it’s better for us that way … on different sides … you’ll see.”

  When they finally turned from two different sidewalks onto Gorokhovaya and approached Rogozhin’s house, the prince’s legs again began to give way under him, so that he had difficulty walking. It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening. The windows on the old lady’s side were open as before, Rogozhin’s were closed, and the drawn white blinds seemed to have become still more noticeable in the twilight. The prince came up to the house from the opposite sidewalk; Rogozhin stepped onto the porch from his sidewalk and waved his hand to him. The prince went up to him on the porch.

  “Even the caretaker doesn’t know about me now, that I’ve come back home. I told him earlier that I was going to Pavlovsk, and I said the same thing at my mother’s,” he whispered with a sly and almost contented smile. “We’ll go in and nobody’ll hear.”

  He already had the key in his hand. Going up the stairs, he turned and shook his finger at the prince to step more quietly, quietly opened the door to his rooms, let the prince in, carefully came in after him, locked the door behind him, and put the key in his pocket.

  “Let’s go,” he said in a whisper.

  He had begun speaking in a whisper still on the sidewalk in Liteinaya. Despite all his external calm, he was in some deep inner anguish. When they entered the big room, just before his study, he went up to the window and beckoned mysteriously to the prince:

  “So when you rang my bell earlier, I guessed straight off that it was you all right; I tiptoed to the door and heard you talking with Pafnutyevna, and I’d already been telling her at dawn: if you, or somebody from you, or anybody else starts knocking at my door, she shouldn’t tell about me under any pretext; and especially if you came asking for me yourself, and I told her your name. And then, when you left, it occurred to me: what if he’s standing there now and spying on me, or watching from the street? I went up to this same window, raised the curtain a bit, looked, and you were standing there looking straight at me … That’s how it was.”

  “And where is … Nastasya Filippovna?” the prince brought out breathlessly.

  “She’s … here,” Rogozhin said slowly, as if waiting a bit before he answered.

  “But where?”

  Rogozhin raised his eyes to the prince and looked at him intently:

  “Let’s go …”

  He kept speaking in a whisper and without hurrying, slowly and, as before, with some strange pensiveness. Even when he was telling about the curtain, it was as if he wanted to express something different with his story, despite all the expansiveness of the telling.

  They went into the study. A certain change had taken place in this room since the prince had been there: a green silk damask curtain was stretched across the whole room, with openings at both ends, separating the study from the alcove in which Rogozhin’s bed was set up. The heavy curtain was drawn and the openings were closed. But it was very dark in the room; the Petersburg “white” summer nights were beginning to turn darker, and if it had not been for the full moon, it would have been difficult to see anything in Rogozhin’s dark rooms with the blinds drawn. True, it was still possible to make out faces, though not very clearly. Rogozhin’s face was very pale, as usual; his eyes looked intently at the prince, with a strong gleam, but somehow motionlessly.

  “Why don’t you light a candle?” asked the prince.

  “No, better not,” Rogozhin replied and, taking the prince by the hand, he bent him down onto a chair; he sat down facing him and moved the chair so that his knees almost touched the prince’s. Between them, a little to the side, was a small, round table. “Sit down, let’s sit a while!” he said, as if persuading him to sit down. They were silent for a minute. “I just knew you’d stay in that same inn,” he began, as people sometimes do, approaching the main conversation by starting with extraneous details, not directly related to the matter. “As soon as I stepped into the corridor, I thought: maybe he’s sitting and waiting for me now, like me him, this same minute? Did you go to the teacher’s widow’s?”

  “I did,” the prince could barely speak for the strong pounding of his heart.

  “I thought about that, too. There’ll be talk, I thought … and then I thought: I’ll bring him here to spend the night, so that this night together …”

  “Rogozhin! Where is Nastasya Filippovna?” the prince suddenly whispered and stood up, trembling in every limb. Rogozhin got up, too.

  “There,” he whispered, nodding towards the curtain.

  “Asleep?” whispered the prince.

  Again Rogozhin looked at him intently, as earlier.

  “Okay, let’s go!… Only you … Well, let’s go!”

  He raised the curtain, stopped, and again turned to the prince.

  “Come in!” he nodded towards the opening, inviting him to go first. The prince went in.

  “It’s dark here,” he said.

  “You can see!” Rogozhin muttered.

  “I can barely see … the bed.”

  “Go closer,” Rogozhin suggested quietly.

  The prince took one step closer, then another, and stopped. He stood and peered for a minute or two; neither man said anything all the while they were there by the bed; the prince’s heart was pounding so that it seemed audible in the dead silence of the room. But his eyes were accustomed now, so that he could make out the whole bed; someone was sleeping there, a completely motionless sleep; not the slightest rustle, not the slightest breath could be heard. The sleeper was covered from head to foot with a white sheet, but the limbs were somehow vaguely outlined; one could only see by the raised form that a person lay stretched out there. Scattered in disorder on the bed, at its foot, on the chair next to the bed, even on the floor, were the taken-off clothes, a costly white silk dress, flowers, ribbons. On the little table by the head of the bed, the taken-off and scattered diamonds sparkled. At the foot of the bed some lace lay crumpled in a heap, and against this white lace, peeping from under the sheet, the tip of a bare foot was outlined; it seemed carved from marble and was terribly still. The prince looked and felt that the more he looked, the more dead and quiet the room became. Suddenly an awakened fly buzzed, flew over the bed, and ali
ghted by its head. The prince gave a start.

  “Let’s get out,” Rogozhin touched his arm.

  They went out, sat down again in the same chairs, again facing each other. The prince was trembling more and more, and did not take his questioning eyes off Rogozhin’s face.

  “You’re trembling, I notice, Lev Nikolaevich,” Rogozhin said at last, “almost like when your disorder comes over you, remember, how it was in Moscow? Or the way it was once before a fit. And I just can’t think what I’m going to do with you now …”

  The prince listened, straining all his powers to understand, and still asking with his eyes.

  “It was you?” he finally managed to say, nodding towards the curtain.

  “It was … me …” Rogozhin whispered and looked down.

  They were silent for about five minutes.

  “Because,” Rogozhin suddenly began to go on, as if he had not interrupted his speech, “because if it’s your illness, and a fit, and shouting now, somebody may hear it in the street or the courtyard, and they’ll figure that people are spending the night in the apartment; they’ll start knocking, they’ll come in … because they all think I’m not home. I didn’t light a candle so they wouldn’t suspect that in the street or the courtyard. Because when I’m not home, I take the key with me, and nobody comes in for three or four days, even to tidy up, that’s how I set it up. Now, so they won’t know we’re spending the night …”

  “Wait,” said the prince, “I asked the caretaker and the old woman earlier whether Nastasya Filippovna hadn’t spent the night. So they already know.”

  “I know you asked. I told Pafnutyevna that Nastasya Filippovna came yesterday and left for Pavlovsk yesterday, and that she spent ten minutes at my place. They don’t know she spent the night—nobody knows. Yesterday we came in very quietly, like you and me today. I thought to myself on the way that she’d refuse to go in quietly—forget it! She talked in a whisper, walked on tiptoe, gathered her dress up all around her so it wouldn’t rustle, and held it with her hands, she shook her finger at me on the stairs—all because she was frightened of you. On the train it was like she was completely crazy, all from fear, and she herself wanted to come here to spend the night; I first thought I’d take her to the teacher’s widow’s—forget it! ‘He’ll find me there,’ she says, ‘at dawn, but you can hide me, and tomorrow morning I’ll go to Moscow,’ and then she wanted to go to Orel somewhere. And as she was getting ready for bed, she kept saying we’d go to Orel …”

  “Wait, what about now, Parfyon, what do you want now?”

  “See, I just have doubts about you trembling all the time. We’ll spend the night here together. There’s no other bed here than that one, so I decided to take the pillows from the two sofas, and I’ll arrange them next to each other there, by the curtain, for you and me, so we’re together. Because if they come in, they’ll start looking and searching, they’ll see her at once and take her out. They’ll start questioning me, I’ll tell them it was me, and they’ll take me away at once. So let her lie here now, next to us, next to me and you …”

  “Yes, yes!” the prince agreed warmly.

  “Meaning not to confess or let them take her out.”

  “N-not for anything!” the prince decided. “No, no, no!”

  “That’s how I decided, too, so as not to give her up, man, not for anything, not to anybody! We’ll spend the night quietly. Today I left the house only for one hour, in the morning, otherwise I was always by her. And then in the evening I went to get you. I’m also afraid it’s stuffy and there’ll be a smell. Do you notice the smell or not?”

  “Maybe I do, I don’t know. By morning there will be.”

  “I covered her with oilcloth, good American oilcloth, and the sheet’s on top of the oilcloth, and I put four uncorked bottles of Zhdanov liquid there, they’re standing there now.”

  “It’s like there … in Moscow?”

  “Because of the smell, brother. But she’s lying there so … In the morning, when it’s light, have a look. What, you can’t get up?” Rogozhin asked with timorous surprise, seeing the prince trembling so much that he could not stand up.

  “My legs won’t work,” the prince murmured. “It’s from fear, I know it … The fear will pass, and I’ll get up …”

  “Wait, I’ll make up the bed meanwhile, and then you can lie down … and I’ll lie down with you … and we’ll listen … because I don’t know yet, man … I don’t know everything yet, man, so I’m telling you ahead of time, so you’ll know all about it ahead of time …”

  Muttering these vague words, Rogozhin began to make up the beds. It was clear that he had perhaps thought of these beds as early as that morning. He himself had spent the past night lying on the sofa. But two people could not lie on the sofa, and he absolutely wanted to make up beds now side by side, and that was why, with great effort, he now dragged pillows of various sizes from both sofas all the way across the room, right up to the opening in the curtain. The bed got made up anyhow; he went over to the prince, took him tenderly and rapturously by the arm, got him to his feet, and led him to the bed; but it turned out that the prince could walk by himself; which meant that “the fear was passing”; and yet he still went on trembling.

  “Because, brother,” Rogozhin began suddenly, laying the prince down on the left, better, pillows and himself stretching out on the right side, without undressing and thrusting both hands behind his head, “it’s hot now, and sure to smell … I’m afraid to open the windows; but at my mother’s there are pots of flowers, a lot of flowers, and they have such a wonderful smell; I thought I might bring them here, but Pafnutyevna would guess, because she’s a curious one.”

  “She’s a curious one,” agreed the prince.

  “We could buy some bouquets and lay flowers all around her? But I think it’d be a pity, friend, to cover her with flowers!”

  “Listen …” the prince asked, as if in confusion, as if groping for precisely what he had to ask and forgetting it at once, “listen, tell me: what did you use? A knife? That same one?”

  “That same one.”

  “Wait now! I also want to ask you, Parfyon … I have a lot to ask you, about everything … but to begin with, you’d better tell me, from the first beginning, so that I know: did you want to kill her before my wedding, before the ceremony, on the church porch, with the knife? Did you want to or not?”

  “I don’t know if I wanted to or not …” Rogozhin replied drily, as if he even marveled somewhat at the question and could not comprehend it.

  “You never brought the knife to Pavlovsk with you?”

  “I never brought it. I can only tell you this about the knife, Lev Nikolaevich,” he added, after a pause. “I took it out of the locked drawer this morning, because the whole thing happened this morning, between three and four. I kept it like a bookmark in a book … And … and this is still a wonder to me: the knife seemed to go in about three inches … or even three and a half … just under the left breast … but only about half a tablespoon of blood came out on her nightshirt; no more than that …”

  “That, that, that,” the prince suddenly raised himself up in terrible agitation, “that, that I know, that I’ve read about … it’s called an internal hemorrhage … Sometimes there isn’t even a drop. If the blow goes straight to the heart …”

  “Wait, do you hear?” Rogozhin suddenly interrupted quickly and sat up fearfully on his bed. “Do you hear?”

  “No!” the prince said quickly and fearfully, looking at Rogozhin.

  “Footsteps! Do you hear? In the big room …”

  They both began to listen.

  “I hear,” the prince whispered firmly.

  “Footsteps?”

  “Footsteps.”

  “Should we shut the door or not?”

  “Shut it …”

  They shut the door, and both lay down again. There was a long silence.

  “Ah, yes!” the prince suddenly whispered in the same agitated and hu
rried whisper, as if he had caught the thought again and was terribly afraid of losing it again, even jumping up a little on his bed, “yes … I wanted … those cards! cards … They say you played cards with her?”

  “I did,” Rogozhin said after some silence.

  “Where are … the cards?”

  “They’re here …” Rogozhin said after a still longer silence, “here …”

  He pulled a used deck, wrapped in paper, out of his pocket and handed it to the prince. The prince took it, but as if in perplexity. A new, sad, and cheerless feeling weighed on his heart; he suddenly realized that at that moment, and for a long time now, he had not been talking about what he needed to talk about, and had not been doing what he needed to do, and that these cards he was holding in his hands, and which he was so glad to have, would be no help, no help at all now. He stood up and clasped his hands. Rogozhin lay motionless, as if he did not see or hear his movements; but his eyes glittered brightly through the darkness and were completely open and motionless. The prince sat on a chair and began to look at him in fear. About half an hour went by; suddenly Rogozhin cried out loudly and abruptly and began to guffaw, as if forgetting that he had to talk in a whisper:

  “That officer, that officer … remember how she horsewhipped that officer at the concert, remember, ha, ha, ha! A cadet, too … a cadet … came running …”

  The prince jumped up from the chair in new fright. When Rogozhin quieted down (and he did suddenly quiet down), the prince quietly bent over him, sat down beside him, and with a pounding heart, breathing heavily, began to examine him. Rogozhin did not turn his head to him and even seemed to forget about him. The prince watched and waited; time passed, it began to grow light. Now and then Rogozhin sometimes suddenly began to mutter, loudly, abruptly, and incoherently; began to exclaim and laugh; then the prince would reach out his trembling hand to him and quietly touch his head, his hair, stroke it and stroke his cheeks … there was nothing more he could do! He was beginning to tremble again himself, and again he suddenly lost the use of his legs. Some completely new feeling wrung his heart with infinite anguish. Meanwhile it had grown quite light; he finally lay down on the pillows, as if quite strengthless now and in despair, and pressed his face to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin’s cheeks, but perhaps by then he no longer felt his own tears and knew nothing about them…