The Idiot (67 page)

‘You know, I’m terribly glad that your birthday’s today!’ cried Ippolit.

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see; please hurry up and sit down; in the first place, because all your ... people are here together. I somehow guessed there would be a lot of people; for the first time in my life my guess proved correct! But it’s a pity I didn’t know it was your birthday, or I’d have brought a present ... Ha-ha! But perhaps I have brought a present, after all! Will it be long until daylight?’

‘It will be dawn in less than two hours,’ observed Ptitsyn, looking at his watch.

‘But what’s the point of dawn now, when one can read outside without it?’ someone commented.

‘Because I want to see the rim of the sun. Is it possible to drink to the health of the sun, Prince, what’s your view?’

Ippolit asked his questions abruptly, addressing everyone without ceremony, as though he were giving commands, but seemingly unaware of this.

‘Let’s drink, certainly; but you ought to calm down, Ippolit, eh?’

‘You’re always talking about sleeping; Prince, you’re my nanny! As soon as the sun appears and “resounds” in the sky (who was it who said in a poem: “in the sky the sun resounded”?
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It’s nonsense, but it’s good! ) - then we shall sleep. Lebedev! After all, the sun is the spring of life,
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isn’t it? What’s the meaning of the “springs of life” in Revelation? Have you heard of the “star Wormwood”, Prince?’

‘I’ve heard that Lebedev thinks the “star Wormwood” is the network of railways that spread over Europe.’

‘No, sir, permit me, sir, that’s not fair, sir!’ cried Lebedev, jumping up and waving his arms, as though trying to stop the universal laughter that had broken out. ‘Permit me, sir! With these gentlemen ... all these gentlemen,’ he turned round suddenly to face the prince, ‘What I mean is, that in certain respects, sir ...’ and he rapped on the table twice, without ceremony, which made the laughter grow even louder.

Although Lebedev was in his usual ‘evening’ condition, on this occasion he was very excited and irritated by the long and ‘learned’ argument that had preceded this remark, and in such instances he generally treated his opponents with infinite and wholly undisguised contempt.

‘That’s not so, sir! Prince, half an hour ago we made an agreement not to interrupt; not to laugh while someone was speaking; to let him say all he had to say freely, and only then let the atheists raise their objection
s if they want to; we appointed the general as moderator, sir! Otherwise, what would happen, sir? That way anyone could lose the thread of his argument, in the middle of a lofty idea, sir, in the middle of a profound idea, sir ...’

‘But continue, continue: no one’s making you lose your thread!’ voices rang out.

‘Continue, but don’t ramble.’

‘What’s this “star Wormwood”?’ someone inquired.

‘I have no idea!’ replied General Ivolgin, resuming his recent appointment as moderator with an air of importance.

‘I really love all these arguments and states of irritation, Prince, learned ones, of course,’ Keller muttered meanwhile, squirming about on his chair in genuine rapture and impatience. ‘Learned and political ones,’ he said suddenly and unexpectedly to Yevgeny Pavlovich, who was sitting almost next to him. ‘You know, I’m awfully fond of reading the newspaper reports of proceedings in the English houses of parliament, that is, not in the sense of what’s discussed there (I’m not a politician, you know), but in the sense of how the members talk to one another, how they behave as politicians, so to speak: “the noble viscount sitting opposite”, “the noble count who shares my view”, “my noble opponent, who has astonished Europe with his proposal”, that’s to say, all those pretty expressions, all that parliamentarism of a free people - that’s what’s fascinates people like me! I’m captivated, Prince. I’ve always been an artist in the depths of my soul, I swear to you, Yevgeny Pavlych.’

‘So what follows from that?’ Ganya said heatedly from another corner of the room. ‘I suppose you think the railways are accursed, that they bring ruin to mankind, that they’re a plague fallen to earth in order to pollute the “springs of life”?’

Gavrila Ardalionovich was in a particularly excited mood that evening, and it was a cheerful, almost triumphant mood, or so it seemed to the prince. He had, of course, been making fun of Lebedev, egging him on, but soon he himself grew heated.

‘Not the railways, no, sir!’ Lebedev retorted, losing his temper at the same time, and experiencing a boundless pleasure. ‘Of themselves, the railways will not pollute the springs of life, but all of it as a whole, sir, is accursed, the whole spirit of our recent centuries, as a general scientific and practical totality, perhaps really is accursed, sir.’

‘Definitely accursed or only perhaps?’ Yevgeny Pavlovich inquired. ‘I mean, that’s important in this case.’

‘Accursed, accursed, definitely accursed!“’ Lebedev confirmed with passion.

‘Don’t go over the top, Lebedev, you’re much kinder in the mornings,’ Ptitsyn observed, smiling.

‘But at night I’m more candid! At night I’m more sincere and more candid!’ Lebedev addressed him heatedly. ‘I’m more straightforward and more definite, more honest and more decent, and although I
may make myself vulnerable as a result, I don’t care, sir; I challenge you all now, all of you atheists: how

are you going to save the world and where have you found the right road for it - you men of science, industry, associations, wages and the like? How? With credit? What is credit? Where will credit take you?’

‘I say, you are an inquisitive chap!’ observed Yevgeny Pavlovich.

‘Well, it’s my opinion that anyone who isn’t interested in such questions is a high society loafer, sir!’

‘Still, it may lead to a universal solidarity and a balancing of interests,’ observed Ptitsyn.

‘And that’s all, that’s all it will do! Without accepting any moral foundation, apart from the satisfaction of personal egoism and material necessity! Universal peace, universal happiness - from necessity! Isn’t that how it is, may I dare to inquire, my dear sir?’

‘Yes, but the universal need to live, drink and eat, and the most complete, indeed scientific conviction, that one cannot satisfy that need without universal association and a solidarity of interests, is, I think, an idea strong enough to serve as a point of support and a “spring of life” for future ages of mankind,’ observed Ganya, who was by now seriously excited.

‘The need to drink and eat, that’s to say, the instinct for self-preservati
on ...’

‘But is the instinct for self-preservation such a small thing? After all, the instinct for self-preservation is the normal law of mankind ...’

‘Who told you that?’ cried Yevgeny Pavlovich suddenly. ‘A law - that’s true, but as normal as the law of destruction, and, perhaps, of self-destruction, too. Does the whole normal law of mankind consist of self-preservation alone?’

‘Aha!’ exclaimed Ippolit, quickly turning to Yevgeny Pavlovich and studying him with wild curiosity; but having seen that he was laughing, he also began to laugh, nudged Kolya, who was standing beside him and once again asked him the time, even pulled Kolya’s silver watch towards him, casting an avid look at its hands. Then, as though oblivious to everything, he stretched out on the sofa, threw his hands behind his head and began to look at the ceiling; half a minute later he was sitting at the table again, sitting up straight and listening to the chatter of Lebedev, who was now excited beyond all bounds.

‘A perfidious and mocking idea, an insidious idea!’ Lebedev seized avidly on Yevgeny Pavlovich’s paradox, ‘an idea expressed with the aim of provoking your opponents to a fight - but an idea that is true! Because you, a high society mocker and cavalry officer (though not without talent!) don’t know yourself the degree to which your idea is a profound one, a true one! Yes, sir. The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind! The devil rules equally over mankind until the end of a time that is not yet known to us.
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You laugh? You don’t believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French idea, a frivolous idea. D
o you know who the devil is? Do you know what his name is? Without even knowing his name, you laugh at his form, like Voltaire, at his hoofs, tail, horns, which you’ve invented; for the impure spirit is a great and terrible spirit, though not with the hoofs and horns that you’ve invented for him. But we are not concerned with him just now! ...’

‘How do you know we’re not concerned with him just now?’ Ippolit cried all of a sudden, and began to laugh convulsively.

‘A clever and allusive thought!’ Lebedev interjected, ‘but again we’re not concerned with that, for our question is whether the “springs of life” have not grown feeble with the growth of...’

‘The railways?’ cried Kolya.

‘Not the lines of railway communication, young but excitable puppy, but the whole tendency of which the railways may serve, so to speak, as a picture, as an artistic expression. They speed, they thunder, they rattle and hurry for the happiness of mankind, we are told! “Mankind is becoming too noisy and industrious, there’s not enough spiritual calm,” complains one thinker who has withdrawn from the melee. “Perhaps, but the rattle of wagons bearing grain for starving mankind may be better than spiritual calm,” another thinker who is always travelling about triumphantly replies, and walks away in vanity. I, loathsome Lebedev, don’t believe in those wagons that bear grain for mankind! For the wagons that bear grain to the whole of mankind without any moral basis for their action may most cold-bloodedly exclude an important part of mankind from the enjoyment of what they bear, something that has already happened ...’

‘You mean the wagons can exclude them cold-bloodedly?’ someone interposed.

‘It’s already happened,’ Lebedev confirmed, not deeming the question worthy of attention. ‘We have already had Malthus,
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the friend of mankind. But a friend of mankind with a shaky moral foundation is a devourer of mankind, not to speak of his vanity; for if you offend the vanity of any one of those countless friends of mankind, he will instantly be ready to set fire to the world and all its four corners out of petty revenge - as a matter of fact, just like any one of us, if truth be told, like myself, who am most loathsome of all, for I would probably be the first to bring the kindling, and then run away. But again we’re not concerned with that!’

‘Well, what are we concerned with, then?’

‘We’ve heard enough of this!’

‘We are concerned with the following anecdote from ages past, for I feel a need to tell a story from ages past. In our time, in our fatherland, which I hope you love as much as I do, gentlemen, as I for my part am even ready to shed every drop of my blood ...’

‘Continue! Continue!’

‘In our fatherland, just as in Europe, universal, ubiquitous and terrible famines have visited mankind according to calculations and, as far as I remember, no more than once every quarter of a century, in
other words, once every twenty-five years. I shall not argue over the precise figure, but they are comparatively quite rare ...’

‘Comparatively with what?’

‘With the twelfth century and with the centuries that neighbour it on either side. For then, as the scribes write and confirm, universal famines in mankind visited it every two years or at least every three years, so that given such a state of affairs man even resorted to cannibalism, though keeping it a secret. One such cannibal, approaching old age, announced of his own accord and without any compulsion that throughout his long and poverty-stricken life he had killed and eaten personally and in the deepest secret sixty monks and several lay infants - about six of them, but no more, that is, very few compared to the number of clerics he had eaten. As for lay adults, as it turned out, he never set a finger on any of them with this purpose.’

‘This is impossible!’ cried the general, in his capacity of moderator, in a voice that sounded almost offended. ‘I often reason and argue with him, gentlemen, and always about ideas like that; but more often than not he comes up with such absurdities that one’s ears even start to fall off, for there’s not one copeck’s worth of plausibility in it all!’

‘General! Remember the siege of Kars, and I assure you, gentlemen, that my story is the unvarnished truth. For my part I will observe that although almost every real fact has its own immutable laws, such facts nearly always seem improbable and implausible. And the more real the fact, the more implausible it sometimes is.’

‘But could anyone possibly eat sixty monks?’ people laughed all round.

‘Though he didn’t eat them all at once - that is obvious - he may have done so in the course of fifteen or twenty years, which is quite understandable and natural.’

‘Natural?’

‘Natural!’ Lebedev ground out with pedantic obstinacy. ‘And what is more, a Catholic monk is by his nature gullible and inquisitive, and it would be all too easy to lure him into a forest or into some secluded place and there deal with him in the manner described above - but I won’t dispute that the number of eaten persons seemed inordinate, even to the point of intemperance.’

‘Perhaps it is indeed true, gentlemen,’ the prince observed suddenly.

Until now he had listened to the disputants in silence, and had not engaged in the conversation; often, after the universal explosions of laughter, he had laughed with all his heart and soul. It was plain that he was very glad everyone was so cheerful, so noisy; even that they were drinking so much. Perhaps he might not have said a word all evening, but suddenly he took it into his head to speak. He spoke with great seriousness, so that everyone suddenly turned towards him with curiosity.

‘I refer, gentlemen, to the fact that there were such frequent famines in those days. Even I have heard about that, though I have a poor know
ledge of history. But it appears that it must have been so. When I ended up in the Swiss Alps, I marvelled greatly at the ruins of the old feudal castles built on the slopes of the mountains, on steep rocks, and at least half a mile up as the crow flies (that means several miles by the mountain paths). Everyone knows what a castle is: it’s a whole mountain of stones. A terrible labour, impossible! And of course it was built by all those poor people, the vassals. What was more, they had to pay all kinds of taxes and support the clergy. How could they feed themselves and cultivate the land? There were few of them in those days, most of them must have died of hunger, and there was literally nothing to eat. I sometimes even used to think: how was it that these people had not died off altogether or something else happened to them, how could they stand their ground and endure? That there were cannibals and, possibly, a great many of them, Lebedev is doubtless right to assert; the only thing I don’t understand is why he brought the monks into it, and what he means to imply by that.’