The Idiot (44 page)

And why had he, the prince, not gone up to him, but turned away from him, as if he had not noticed anything, although their eyes met. (Yes, their eyes met! And they looked at each other.) Why, earlier he had wanted to take him by the arm and go
there
together with him, had he not? He had wanted to go and see him the next day and tell him he had been at her house, had he not? He had renounced his demon while on his
way there, half way, when joy had suddenly filled his soul, had he not? Or was there indeed something in Rogozhin, that is, in the whole of
that day’s
profile of the man, in the totality of his words, movements, actions, looks, that might justify the prince’s terrible forebodings and the disturbing whisperings of his demon? Something that was self-evident, but was hard to analyse and describe, impossible to justify by sufficient reasons, but which, however, in spite of all this difficulty and impossibility, produced a total and overwhelming impression that led involuntarily to the most complete conviction? ...

Conviction - of what? (Oh, how the prince was tormented by the monstrosity, the ‘humiliation’ of this conviction, ‘this base foreboding’, and how he blamed himself!) ‘Then say it, if you dare - conviction of what?’ he kept saying to himself constantly, with reproach and challenge. ’Formulate it, dare to express the whole of your thought, clearly, precisely, without hesitation! Oh, how dishonourable I am!‘ he repeated, flushing with anger. ‘How will I be able to look that man in the face for the rest of my life? Oh, what a day! O God, what a nightmare!’

There was a moment, at the end of that long and tormenting walk from the St Petersburg Side, when the prince was suddenly gripped by an irresistible desire - to go to Rogozhin’s right there and then, wait for him, embrace him with shame, with tears, tell him everything and put an end to it all at once. But he was already standing outside his hotel ... How he had disliked this hotel earlier, these corridors, the whole of this building, his room, had disliked them at first sight; several times that day he had remembered with a kind of peculiar revulsion that he would have to return here ... ‘But why, like a sick woman, do I believe today in every kind of premonition?’ he thought with an irritable, mocking smile, stopping in the gateway. A new, unbearable rush of shame - of despair, almost - rooted him to the spot, right by the entrance to the gate. He stopped for a moment. This is how it is with people sometimes: sudden, unbearable memories, especially those connected with shame, usually make them stop for a moment where they are. ‘Yes, I am a man without a heart, and a coward!’ he repeated gloomily, and jerkily moved to go, but ... stopped again.

In that gateway, dark at the best of times, it was very dark at this moment: the advancing thundercloud had devoured the evening light, and just as the prince was approaching the house, the cloud suddenly opened and released a deluge. As he jerkily resumed his progress after his momentary halt, he found himself at the very beginning of the gate, right outside the entrance from the street. And suddenly in the depths of the gateway, in the semi-darkness, right beside the entrance to the stairs, he caught sight of a man. The man seemed to be waiting for something, but then quickly flitted past and disappeared. The prince could not discern him clearly and, of course, could not possibly say for certain who he was. What was more, so many people might pass through here; there was a hotel here, and people were constantly walking or runn
ing to and fro along its corridors. But he suddenly felt utterly and totally convinced that he knew who the man was, and that the man was certainly Rogozhin. A moment later the prince rushed after him up the staircase. His heart froze. ‘It will all be decided in a moment!’ he said to himself with strange conviction.

The staircase, up which the prince ran from the gateway, led to corridors on the first and second floors, along which the hotel rooms were situated. This staircase, as in all houses that were built long ago, was of stone; it was dark, narrow and wound around a thick stone column. On the first half-landing there was a hollow in this column, a sort of niche, no more than one pace wide and half a pace deep. There was, however, room for a man there. In spite of the darkness, when he reached the half-landing the prince at once saw that a man was hiding there, in that niche, for some reason. The prince suddenly felt an urge to walk past and not look to the right. He took one more step, but could not help turning round.

The two eyes of earlier that day,
the same ones,
suddenly met his gaze. The man who was hiding in the niche also managed to take one step out of it. For a second they stood almost touching, facing each other. Suddenly the prince seized him by the shoulders and turned back towards the staircase, closer to the light: he wanted to see the face more clearly.

Rogozhin’s eyes had begun to glitter, and a rabid smile distorted his face. His right hand was raised, and something flashed in it; the prince did not think of stopping him. The only thing he seemed to remember was shouting:

‘Parfyon, I don’t believe it!’

Then suddenly something seemed to open before him: an extraordinary
inner
light illumined his soul. This moment lasted for half a second, perhaps; but he clearly and consciously remembered the beginning, the very first sound of his terrible howl, that tore from his breast of its own accord and which he could not stop by any effort. After that, his consciousness was extinguished instantaneously, and utter darkness ensued.

He had had a fit of epilepsy, the affliction that had left him a very long time ago. It is well known that fits of epilepsy, the
falling
sickness, occur instantaneously. In that instant the face is suddenly distorted to an extreme degree, especially the eyes. Convulsions and spasms take possession of the whole body and all the features of the face. A terrible, unimaginable howl, unlike anything else, tears from the breast; in that howl everything human seems to disappear, and it is in no way possible, or at least very difficult, for an observer to imagine and admit that it is the same person howling. It even seems that some other person, inside that person, is doing the howling. Many people have at any rate conveyed their impression in this way, and in many the sight of a man with the falling sickness produces a total and unendurable horror that may even contain a mystical element. One must suppose that it was this sensation of sudden horror, combined with all the other terrible impressions of the moment, that suddenly froze Rogozhin to the spot and thus saved the prince from the inevitable blow of the kni
fe that was already descending on him. Then, before he had time to realize it was a fit, seeing the prince stagger back from him and suddenly fall backwards straight down the staircase, striking the back of his head violently against the stone step, Rogozhin rushed headlong downstairs, avoided the prostrate man and, his mind almost drained to a blank, ran out of the hotel.

Convulsing and writhing in spasms the sick man’s body fell down the steps, of which there were no more than fifteen, to the very foot of the staircase. Very soon, after no more than about five minutes, the prostrate man was noticed, and a crowd gathered. A large pool of blood near his head caused perplexity: had the man sustained an injury, or had there been ‘some foul play’? Soon, however, some of them realized it was the falling sickness; one of the hotel valets recognized the prince as a recent guest. The confusion was, at last, very happily resolved because of a happy circumstance.

Kolya Ivolgin, who had promised to be at ‘The Scales’ by four o’clock, but had instead gone to Pavlovsk, had on a sudden impulse turned down the offer of lunch at Mrs Yepanchin‘s, and had come back to St Petersburg and hurried to the ‘The Scales’, where he arrived at about seven o’ clock that evening. Having learned from the note that had been left for him that the prince was in town, he rushed to see him at the address given in the note. On being informed at the hotel that the prince had gone out, he went downstairs to the buffet rooms and began to wait, having tea and listening to the organ.
²
Hearing by chance a conversation about someone who had had a fit, he rushed to the spot following a sure premonition, and recognized the prince. Proper measures were at once taken. The prince was carried to his room; though he came round, it was quite a long time before he regained full consciousness. The doctor who was summoned to examine his broken head administered a lotion and said there was not the slightest danger from the injuries. And when, an hour later, the prince had begun to be fairly well aware of what was happening around him, Kolya took him in a cab from the hotel to Lebedev’s. Lebedev greeted the sick man with uncommon warmth, and with bows. For the prince’s sake he also speeded up his move to the dacha: three days later they were all in Pavlovsk.

Lebedev’s dacha was small but comfortable and even pretty. That part of it designated to be rented out was particularly lavishly decorated. On the rather spacious veranda at the entrance to the rooms from the street some orange, lemon and jasmine trees had been placed in large green tubs, creating, in Lebedev’s opinion, a most flattering aspect. Some of these trees he had acquired together with the dacha and was so enchanted by the effect they made in the veranda that he had decided, thanks to an opportunity that presented itself, to buy a complement of similar trees at an auction. When all the trees had finally been brought to the dacha and set up, Lebedev ran down the veranda steps several times that day to admire his property from the street, each time mentally increasing the sum he intended to ask from his future dacha tenant. The prince, weakened, melancholy and physically broken as he was, found the dacha much to his liking. As a matter of fact, on the day of his move to Pavlovsk, that is, on the third day after the fit, the prince already had the outward appearance of being almost well again, though inwardly he felt he had not yet recovered. He was glad of everyone he saw around him in those three days, glad of Kolya, who almost never left his side, glad of the whole Lebedev family (without the nephew, who had vanished off somewhere), glad of Lebedev himself; he even received with pleasure a visit from General Ivolgin, who came to see him while he was still in town. On the day of the move itself, which took place towards evening, quite a lot of visitors gathered round him on the veranda: the first arrival was Ganya, whom the prince hardly recognized, so thin and altered had he become during all this time. Then Varya and Ptitsyn, who also had dachas in Pavlovsk, appeared. As for General Ivolgin, he was to be found at Lebedev’s quarters almost permanently, and even seemed to have moved with him. Lebedev tried to prevent him from going to see the prince and keep him at his house; he treated him like an old friend; they had evidently known each other for a long time. The prince noticed that during all those three days they sometimes entered into long conversations with each other, quite often shouting and arguing, even, it seemed, on learned subjects, which, it was evident, gave Lebedev pleasure. One could suppose that he even needed the general. But right from the time of the move to the dacha, Lebedev began to observe the same precautions in relation to the prince with his own family: on the pretext of not disturbing the prince, he would not let anyone go and see him, stamped his feet, rushing at his daughters and chasing them away, even Vera with her baby, at the first suspicion that she might be going to the veranda, where the prince was, in spite of all his requests that no one be chased away.

‘In the first place, they will never have any respect if they’re given their freedom like that; and in the second place, it’s even indecent for them ...’ he explained, at last, to a direct question from the prince.

‘But why?’ the prince appealed to him. ‘Really, you’re only tormenting me with all this supervision and watching over me. I get bored on my own, I’ve told you that several times, yet with your constant waving of arms and walking about on tiptoe you make my melancholy even worse.’

The prince was alluding to the fact that although Lebedev had told all the people in the house to go away on the pretext of the peace and quiet needed by the sick man, throughout these three days he himself went in to see the prince almost every minute, on each occasion opening the door, poking his head through, surveying the room, as though he wanted to check if the prince was there and had not run away, and then on tiptoe, slowly and stealthily, approaching the armchair, sometimes unwittingly giving his tenant a fright as he did so. He constantly inquired whether he needed anything, and when the prince began at last to observe to him that he would like him to leave him in peace, turned away obediently and silently, crept back on tiptoe to the door, waving his arms all the while, as though letting it be known that he had only dropped in, that he would not say a word, and that look, now he had gone out of the room, and would not come back - but ten minutes or at most a quarter of an hour later appeared again. Kolya, who had free access to the prince, by this very fact aroused in Lebedev the most profound chagrin and even a pained indignation. Kolya noticed that Lebedev stood outside the door for half an hour at a time, eavesdropping on his conversation with the prince, and of course he told the prince about it.

‘It’s as if I’d become your property and you were keeping me under lock and key,’ the prince protested. ‘At a country dacha I’d like things to be different, and please be assured that I will receive anyone I like and go out anywhere I like.’

‘Without the slightest doubt,’ Lebedev began to wave his arms.

The prince surveyed him fixedly from head to foot.

‘I say, Lukyan Timofeyevich, have you brought your safe, the little one that hangs above the head of your bed, here?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘You haven’t left it there, have you?’

‘It’s impossible to bring it, I’d have had to break it out of the wall ... It’s strong, strong.’

‘But I suppose you have another one like it here?’