The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Whom?!” exclaimed the prince.

  “Aglaya.”

  “I don’t believe it! It can’t be! With what purpose?”

  He jumped up from the chair.

  “I don’t believe it either, though there’s evidence. She’s a willful girl, a fantastic girl, a crazy girl! A wicked, wicked, wicked girl! For a thousand years I’ll go on insisting that she’s wicked! They’re all that way now, even that wet hen Alexandra, but this one has already gotten completely out of hand. But I also don’t believe it! Maybe because I don’t want to believe it,” she added as if to herself. “Why didn’t you come?” she suddenly turned to the prince again. “Why didn’t you come for all these three days?” she impatiently cried to him a second time.

  The prince was beginning to give his reasons, but she interrupted him again.

  “Everyone considers you a fool and deceives you! You went to town yesterday; I’ll bet you got on your knees and begged that scoundrel to accept the ten thousand!”

  “Not at all, I never thought of it. I didn’t even see him, and, besides, he’s not a scoundrel. I received a letter from him.”

  “Show me the letter!”

  The prince took a note from his briefcase and handed it to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. The note read:

  My dear sir,

  I, of course, do not have the least right in people’s eyes to have any self-love. In people’s opinion, I am too insignificant for that. But that is in people’s eyes, not in yours. I am only too convinced that you, my dear sir, are perhaps better than the others. I disagree with Doktorenko and part ways with him in this conviction. I will never take a single kopeck from you, but you have helped my mother, and for that I owe you gratitude, even though it comes from weakness. In any case, I look upon you differently and consider it necessary to let you know. And with that I assume there can be no further contacts between us.

  Antip Burdovsky.

  P.S. The rest of the two hundred roubles will be faithfully paid back to you in time.

  “What a muddle!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna concluded, tossing the note back. “Not worth reading. What are you grinning at?”

  “You must agree that you enjoyed reading it.”

  “What! This vanity-eaten galimatias! But don’t you see they’ve all lost their minds from pride and vanity?”

  “Yes, but all the same he apologized, he’s broken with Doktorenko, and the vainer he is, the dearer the cost to his vanity. Oh, what a little child you are, Lizaveta Prokofyevna!”

  “Are you intent on getting a slap in the face from me finally, or what?”

  “No, not at all. It’s because you’re glad of the note, but you conceal it. Why are you ashamed of your feelings? You’re like that in everything.”

  “Don’t you dare set foot in my house now,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna jumped up, turning pale with wrath, “from now on I don’t want to hear a peep from you ever again!”

  “But in three days you’ll come yourself and invite me … Well, aren’t you ashamed? These are your best feelings, why be ashamed of them? You only torment yourself.”

  “I’ll die before I ever invite you! I’ll forget your name! I have forgotten it!”

  She rushed for the door.

  “I’ve already been forbidden to visit you anyway!” the prince called after her.

  “Wha-a-at? Who has forbidden you?”

  She instantly turned around, as if pricked by a needle. The prince hesitated before answering; he felt he had made an accidental but serious slip.

  “Who forbade you?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried furiously.

  “Aglaya Ivanovna did …”

  “When? Well, spe-e-eak!!!”

  “This morning she sent to tell me that I must never dare come to see you.”

  Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood like a post, but she was thinking it through.

  “What did she send? Whom did she send? Through that brat? Verbally?” she suddenly exclaimed again.

  “I received a note,” said the prince.

  “Where? Give it to me! At once!”

  The prince thought for a moment, but nevertheless took from his waistcoat pocket a careless scrap of paper on which was written:

  Prince Lev Nikolaevich!

  If, after all that has happened, you intend to surprise me by visiting our dacha, then you may be assured that you will not find me among the delighted.

  Aglaya Epanchin.

  Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought for a moment; then she suddenly rushed to the prince, seized him by the arm, and dragged him with her.

  “Now! Go! On purpose, now, this minute!” she cried out in a fit of extraordinary excitement and impatience.

  “But you’re subjecting me to …”

  “To what? Innocent simpleton! As if he’s not even a man! Well, now I’ll see it all for myself, with my own eyes …”

  “Let me at least take my hat …”

  “Here’s your wretched little hat, let’s go! He couldn’t even choose the fashion tastefully!… She did it … She did it after today’s … it’s delirium,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna was muttering, dragging the prince with her and not letting go of his arm even for a moment. “Earlier today I defended you, I said aloud that you were a fool, because you didn’t come … otherwise she wouldn’t have written such a witless note! An improper note! Improper for a noble, educated, intelligent, intelligent girl!… Hm,” she went on, “of course, she herself was vexed that you didn’t come, only she didn’t reckon that she ought not to write like that to an idiot, because he’d take it literally, which is what happened. What are you doing eavesdropping?” she cried, catching herself in a slip. “She needs a buffoon like you, it’s long since she’s seen one, that’s why she wants you! And I’m glad, glad that she’s now going to sharpen her teeth on you! You deserve it. And she knows how, oh, she does know how!…”

  * Intruder, outsider, or impostor.

  † To Russia.

  PART THREE

  I

  THEY CONSTANTLY complain that in our country there are no practical people; that of political people, for example, there are many; of generals there are also many; of various managers, however many you need, you can at once find any sort you like—but of practical people there are none. At least everybody complains that there are none. They say that on certain railway lines there are even no decent attendants; to set up a more or less passable administration for some steamship company is, they say, quite impossible. In one place you hear that on some newly opened line the trains collided or fell off a bridge; in another they write that a train nearly spent the winter in a snowy field: people went on a few hours’ journey and got stuck for five days in the snow. In another they tell about many tons of goods rotting in one place for two or three months, waiting to be transported, and in yet another they claim (though this is even hard to believe) that an administrator, that is, some supervisor, when pestered by some merchant’s agent about transporting his goods, instead of transporting the goods, administered one to the agent’s teeth, and proceeded to explain his administrative act as the result of “hot temper.” It seems there are so many offices in the government service that it is frightening to think of it; everybody has served, everybody is serving, everybody intends to serve—given such material, you wonder, how can they not make up some sort of decent administration for a steamship company?

  To this an extremely simple reply is sometimes given—so simple that it is even hard to believe such an explanation. True, they say, in our country everybody has served or is serving, and for two hundred years now this has been going on in the best German fashion, from forefathers to great-grandchildren—but it is the serving people who are the most impractical, and it has gone so far that abstractness and lack of practical knowledge were regarded even among civil servants themselves, still recently, as almost the greatest virtues and recommendations. However, we are wrong to have begun talking about civil servants; in fact, we wanted to talk about practical people. Here there is no doubt that timidity and a tot
al lack of personal initiative have always been regarded among us as the chiefest and best sign of the practical man—and are so regarded even now. But why blame only ourselves—if this opinion can be considered an accusation? Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man, and at least ninety-nine out of a hundred people (at least that) have always held to that notion, and only perhaps one out of a hundred people has constantly looked and still looks at it differently.

  Inventors and geniuses, at the beginning of their careers (and very often at the end as well), have almost always been regarded in society as no more than fools—that is a most routine observation, well known to everyone. If, for instance, in the course of decades everyone dragged his money to the Lombard and piled up billions there at four percent, then, naturally, when the Lombards ceased to exist and everyone was left to his own initiative, the greater part of those millions ought certainly to have perished in stock-market fever and in the hands of swindlers—decency and decorum even demanded it. Precisely decorum; if decorous timidity and a decent lack of originality have constituted among us up to now, according to a generally accepted conviction, the inalienable quality of the sensible and respectable man, it would be all too unrespectable and even indecent to change quite so suddenly. What mother, for instance, tenderly loving her child, would not become frightened and sick with fear if her son or daughter went slightly off the rails: “No, better let him be happy and live in prosperity without originality,” every mother thinks as she rocks her baby to sleep. And our nannies, rocking babies to sleep, from time immemorial have cooed and crooned: “You shall go all dressed in gold, you shall be a general bold!” And so, even among our nannies, the rank of general was considered the limit of Russian happiness and, therefore, was the most popular national ideal of beautiful, peaceful felicity. And, indeed, who among us, having done a mediocre job on his exams and served for thirty-five years, could not finally make a general of himself and squirrel away a certain sum with a Lombard? Thus the Russian man, almost without any effort, finally attained the title of a sensible and practical man. In essence, the only one among us who cannot make a general of himself is the original—in other words, the troublesome—man. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here, but, generally speaking, that seems to be so, and our society has been fully just in defining its ideal of the practical man. Nevertheless, we have still said much that is superfluous; we wanted, in fact, to say a few clarifying words about our acquaintances the Epanchins. These people, or at least the more reasoning members of the family, constantly suffered from one nearly general family quality, the direct opposite of those virtues we have discussed above. Without fully understanding the fact (because it is very difficult to understand), they occasionally suspected all the same that in their family somehow nothing went the way it did with everyone else. With everyone else things went smoothly, with them unevenly; everyone else rolled along the rails—they constantly went off the rails. Everyone else became constantly and decorously timid, but they did not. True, Lizaveta Prokofyevna could even become too frightened, but all the same this was not that decorous social timidity they longed for. However, perhaps only Lizaveta Prokofyevna was worried: the girls were still young—though very perspicacious and ironic folk—and the general, though he could perspicate (not without effort, however), in difficult cases only said “Hm!” and in the end placed all his hopes in Lizaveta Prokofyevna. Therefore the responsibility lay with her. And it was not, for instance, that the family was distinguished by some initiative of their own, or went off the rails by a conscious inclination for originality, which would have been quite improper. Oh, no! There was, in reality, nothing of the sort, that is, no consciously set goal, but all the same it came out in the end that the Epanchin family, though very respectable, was still not quite the way all respectable families in general ought to be. Recently Lizaveta Prokofyevna had begun to find only herself and her “unfortunate” character to blame for everything—which added to her suffering. She constantly scolded herself with being a “foolish, indecent eccentric” and suffered from insecurity, was continually at a loss, could not find her way out of some most ordinary concurrence of things, and constantly exaggerated her trouble.

  We already mentioned at the beginning of our story that the Epanchins enjoyed universal and genuine respect. Even General Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a man of obscure origin, was received everywhere indisputably and with respect. And this respect he deserved, first, as a wealthy man and “not one of the least” and, second, as a fully respectable man, though none too bright. But a certain dullness of mind, it seems, is almost a necessary quality, if not of every active man, at least of every serious maker of money. Finally, the general had respectable manners, was modest, could keep his mouth shut and at the same time not let anyone step on his foot—and not only because of his generalship, but also as an honest and noble man. Most important of all, he was a man with powerful connections. As for Lizaveta Prokofyevna, she, as has been explained above, was of good family, though with us origin is not so highly regarded if it does not come with the necessary connections. But it turned out in the end that she also had connections; she was respected and, in the end, loved by such persons that, after them, naturally, everyone had to respect and receive her. There is no doubt that her family sufferings were groundless, had negligible cause, and were ridiculously exaggerated; but if you have a wart on your nose or forehead, it seems to you that all anyone in the world does and has ever done is to look at your wart, laugh at it, and denounce you for it, though for all that you may have discovered America. Nor is there any doubt that in society Lizaveta Prokofyevna was indeed considered an “eccentric”; but for all that she was indisputably respected; yet Lizaveta Prokofyevna began in the end not to believe that she was respected—that was her whole trouble. Looking at her daughters, she was tormented by the suspicion that she was continually hindering their careers in some way, that her character was ridiculous, indecent, and unbearable—for which, naturally, she continually accused her daughters and Ivan Fyodorovich, and spent whole days quarreling with them and at the same time loving them to distraction and almost to the point of passion.

  Most of all she was tormented by the suspicion that her daughters were becoming the same sort of “eccentrics” as she, and that no such girls existed in the world, or ought to exist. “They’re growing up into nihilists, that’s what!” she constantly repeated to herself. Over the last year and especially most recently this sad thought had grown stronger and stronger in her. “First of all, why don’t they get married?” she constantly asked herself. “So as to torment their mother—in that they see the whole purpose of their life, and that is so, of course, because there are all these new ideas, this whole cursed woman question! Didn’t Aglaya decide half a year ago to cut off her magnificent hair? (Lord, even I never had such hair in my day!) She already had the scissors in her hand, I had to go on my knees and beg her!… Well, I suppose she did it out of wickedness, to torment her mother, because she’s a wicked, willful, spoiled girl, but above all wicked, wicked, wicked! But didn’t this fat Alexandra also follow her to cut off that mop of hers, and not out of wickedness, not out of caprice, but sincerely, like a fool, because Aglaya convinced her that she’d sleep more peacefully and her head wouldn’t ache? And they’ve had so many suitors—it’s five years now—so many, so many! And really, there were some good, even some excellent people among them! What are they waiting for? Why don’t they get married? Only so as to vex their mother—there’s no other reason! None! None!”

  Finally, the sun also rose for her maternal heart; at least one daughter, at least Adelaida, would finally be settled. “That’s at least one off my back,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna used to say, when she had to express herself aloud (to herself she expressed it much more tenderly). And how nicely, how decently the whole thing got done; even in society it was spoken of r
espectfully. A known man, a prince, with a fortune, a nice man, and on top of that one pleasing to her heart: what, it seemed, could be better? But she had feared less for Adelaida than for her other daughters even before, though the girl’s artistic inclinations sometimes greatly troubled Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s ceaselessly doubting heart. “But, then, she’s of cheerful character and has much good sense to go with it—which means that the girl won’t be lost,” she used to comfort herself in the end. She feared most of all for Aglaya. Incidentally, with regard to the eldest, Alexandra, Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not know whether to fear for her or not. Sometimes it seemed to her that “the girl was completely lost”; twenty-five years old—meaning she would be left an old maid. And “with such beauty!…” Lizaveta Prokofyevna even wept for her at night, while Alexandra Ivanovna spent those same nights sleeping the most peaceful sleep. “But what is she—a nihilist, or simply a fool?” That she was not a fool—of that, incidentally, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had no doubt: she had extreme respect for Alexandra Ivanovna’s opinions and liked to consult her. But that she was a “wet hen”—of that there was no doubt: “So placid, there’s no shaking her up!” However, “wet hens aren’t placid either—pah! They’ve got me totally confused!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna had some inexplicable commiserating sympathy with Alexandra Ivanovna, more even than with Aglaya, who was her idol. But her acrimonious outbursts (in which her maternal care and sympathy chiefly expressed itself), her taunts, such names as “wet hen,” only made Alexandra laugh. It would reach the point where the most trifling things would anger Lizaveta Prokofyevna terribly and put her beside herself. Alexandra Ivanovna liked, for instance, to sleep long hours and usually had many dreams; but her dreams were always distinguished by a sort of extraordinary emptiness and innocence—suitable for a seven-year-old child; and so even this innocence of her dreams began for some reason to annoy her mother. Once Alexandra Ivanovna saw nine hens in a dream, and this caused a formal quarrel between her and her mother—why?—it is difficult to explain. Once, and only once, she managed to have a dream about something that seemed original—she dreamed of a monk, alone, in some dark room, which she was afraid to enter. The dream was at once conveyed triumphantly to Lizaveta Prokofyevna by her two laughing sisters; but the mother again became angry and called all three of them fools. “Hm! She’s placid as a fool, and really a perfect ‘wet hen,’ there’s no shaking her up, yet she’s sad, there are times when she looks so sad. What, what is she grieving about?” Sometimes she put this question to Ivan Fyodorovich, hysterically, as was usual with her, threateningly, expecting an immediate answer. Ivan Fyodorovich would hem, frown, shrug his shoulders, and, spreading his arms, finally decide: