Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (362 page)

“Yes, unless she is at Pavlovsk, as the weather is so fine, at Darya Aiexeyevna’s villa. ‘I am still perfectly free,’ she says. She was boasting only yesterday of her freedom to Nikolay Ardalionovitch.-A bad sign!”

And Lebedyev grinned.

“Is Kolya often with her?”

“He is a heedless, unaccountable fellow; he doesn’t keep things secret.”

“Is it long since you have been there?”

“Every day — every day.”

“Then you were there yesterday?”

“N-no, three days ago.”

“What a pity you’ve been drinking, Lebedyev. Or I might have asked you something.”

“No, no, no, not a bit of it!” Lebedyev positively pricked up his ears.

“Tell me, how did you leave her?”

“S-searching.”

“Searching?”

“As though she were always searching for something, as though she had lost something. She is sick at the thought of the marriage and looks upon it as an insult. She thinks no more of him than of a bit of orange peel. “Vfes, she does though, for she thinks of him with fear and trembling; she won’t hear his name, even, and they don’t meet if it can be helped . . . and he feels it only too well. But there’s no getting out of it. She is restless, sarcastic, double-tongued, violent....

“Yes, violent; for she almost pulled my hair last time over one conversation. I tried to bring her round with the Apocalypse.”

“What do you say?” Myshkin asked, thinking he had not heard him rightly.

“By reading the Apocalypse. She is a lady with a restless imagination. He-he! And I’ve noticed too that she has a great partiality for serious subjects, however remote they may be. She likes such talk — she likes it and takes it as a mark of special respect. “Vfes, I am a great hand at interpreting the Apocalypse; I’ve been interpreting it for the last fifteen years. She agreed with me that we are living in the age of the third horse, the black one, and the rider who has the balance in his hand, seeing that everything in the present age is weighed in the scales and by agreement, and people are seeking for nothing but their rights—’a measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley for a penny”; and yet they want to keep a free spirit and a pure heart and a sound body and all the gifts of God. But by rights alone they won’t keep them, and afterwards will follow the pale horse and he whose name was Death and with whom hell followed. . . . We talk about that when we meet and ... it has had a great effect on her.”

“Do you believe that yourself?” asked Myshkin, scanning Lebedyev with a strange expression.

“I believe it and explain it so. I am naked and a beggar and an atom in the vortex of humanity. No one respects Lebedyev; he is fair game for every one’s wit, and they are all ready to give him a kick. But in interpreting revelation I am equal to the foremost in the land, for I am clever at it. And a grand gentleman trembled before me, sitting in his armchair, as he took it in. His illustrious Excellency Nil Alexeyevitch sent for me the year before last, just before Easter — when I was serving in his department — and purposely sent Pyotr Zaharitch to fetch me from the office to his study. And he asked me when we were alone, ‘Is it true that you expound Anti-christ?’ And I made no secret of it. ‘I do,’ said 1.1

explained and interpreted, and did not soften down the horror, but intentionally increased it, as I unfolded the allegory and fitted dates to it. And he laughed, but he began trembling at the dates and correspondences, and asked me to close the book and go away. He rewarded me at Easter, but the week after he gave up his soul to God.”

“How so, Lebedyev?”

“He did. He fell out of his carriage after dinner. . . knocked his head against a post, and on the spot he passed away like a babe — a little babe. Seventy-three years old he was. He had a red face, grey hair, and was sprinkled all over with scent, and he was always smiling — smiling like a child. Then Pyotr Zaharitch remembered. ‘You foretold it,’ he said.”

Myshkin began getting up. Lebedyev was surprised and positively puzzled at his moving.

“You don’t take much interest in things now. He-he!” he ventured to observe obsequiously.

“I really don’t feel quite well; my head is heavy from the journey, perhaps,” answered Myshkin, frowning.

“You ought to be out of town,” Lebedyev hazarded timidly.

Myshkin stood pondering.

“In another three days I am going out of town with all my family, for the sake of my newborn nestling, and to have this house done up. We are going to Pavlovsk, too.”

“You are going to Pavlovsk too?” asked Myshkin suddenly. “How is it everyone here is going to Pavlovsk? And you have a villa of your own there, you say?”

“Not every one is going to Pavlovsk. Ivan Petrovitch Ptitsyn has let me have one of the villas he has bought up cheap. It’s nice and high up, and green and cheap and bon ton and musical — and that’s why every one goes to Pavlovsk. I am living in a little lodge, however, and the villa itself is ...”

“Let?”

“N-no ... not quite.”

“Let it to me,” Myshkin proposed suddenly.

That seemed to be all Lebedyev had been working up to. The idea had entered his head three minutes before. And yet he had no need of a tenant, for he already had found some one who had told him he might perhaps take the villa. Lebedyev knew for a fact that it was not a question of “perhaps,” and that he certainly would take the villa. But now he was struck by the idea, likely by his reckoning to be a profitable one, that he might let the villa to Myshkin, taking advantage of the fact that the previous tenant had not been quite definite. “A regular coincidence and quite a new turn of affairs,” rose before his imagination suddenly. He received Myshkin’s proposition with enthusiasm, and at his direct question as to terms he simply waved his hands.

“Well, as you like. I’ll make inquiries; you shan’t be a loser.”

They were both coming out of the garden.

“And I could ... I could . . . if you liked, I could tell you something very interesting, highly honoured prince, relating to the same subject,” muttered Lebedyev, wriggling gleefully on one side of the prince.

Myshkin stopped.

“Darya Alexeyevna has a villa at Pavlovsk too.”

“Well?”

“And a certain person is a friend of hers and evidently intends to visit her frequently there, with an object.”

“Well?”

“Aglaia Ivanovna....”

“Ach, that’s enough, Lebedyev!” Myshkin interrupted, with an unpleasant sensation, as though he had been touched on a tender spot. “All that’s . . . a mistake. I’d rather you’d tell me when are you moving? The sooner the better for me, as I am at a hotel....”

As they talked, they had left the garden and, without going back into the house, crossed the yard and reached the gate.

“Well, what could be better?” Lebedyev suggested at last. “Come straight here to me from the hotel to-day, and the day after to-morrow we will all move to Pavlovsk together.”

“I’ll see,” said Myshkin thoughtfully, and he went out at the gate.

Lebedyev looked after him. He was struck by Myshkin’s sudden absentmindedness. He had forgotten even to say good-bye as he went out; he did not even nod, which seemed out of keeping with what Lebedyev knew of Myshkin’s graciousness and courtesy.

CHAPTER 3

It WAS past eleven. Myshkin knew that he could find at the Epanchins’ house no one but the general himself, who might be kept in town by his duties and yet not be at home. He thought that the general might perhaps take him at once to Pavlovsk, but he particularly wanted to make one call before then. At the risk of missing Epanchin and putting off his visit to Pavlovsk till the next day, Myshkin decided to look for the house to which he so particularly wished to go.

This visit was, however, risky for him in one respect. He was perplexed and hesitated. He knew he would find the house in Gorohovy Street, not far from Sadovy Street, and decided to go there, hoping that on his way there he would succeed in making up his mind.

As he approached the point where the two streets intersect, he was surprised himself at his extraordinary emotion; he had not expected his heart to throb so painfully. One house attracted his attention in the distance, no doubt from its peculiar appearance, and Myshkin afterwards remembered saying to himself, “That must be the very house!” With great curiosity he walked towards it to verify his conjecture; he felt that he would for some reason particularly dislike to have guessed right. It was a large gloomy house of three stories, of a dirty green colour and no pretensions to architecture. A few houses of this kind, built at the end of the last century, are still standing almost unchanged in those streets of Petersburg (where everything changes so quickly). They are built solidly with thick walls and very few windows, often with gratings on the ground-floor windows. Usually there is a money-changer’s shop below, and the owner, of the sect of Skoptsy,-serves in the shop and lodges above it. Without and within, the house is somehow inhospitable and frigid; it seems to be keeping something dark and hidden; and why it seems so from the mere look of the house it would be hard to explain. Architectural lines have, of course, a secret of their own. These houses are occupied almost entirely by tradespeople.

Going up to the gate and examining the inscription on it, Myshkin read, “The house of the hereditary and honourable citizen Rogozhin.” Hesitating no longer, he opened the glass door, which slammed noisily behind him, and went up the great staircase to the first floor. It was a roughly made stone staircase and dark; the walls were painted red. He knew that Rogozhin with his mother and brother occupied the whole second floor of this dreary house. The servant who opened the door to Myshkin admitted him without taking his name, and led him a long way. They passed through one grand drawing-room with walls painted to look like marble, an oak block floor, and furniture of 1820, coarse and heavy; they passed through some tiny rooms, winding and turning, mounting two or three steps and going down as many, till at last they knocked at a door. The door was opened by Parfyon Semyonovitch himself. Seeing Myshkin, he turned so pale and was so petrified that for a time he stood like a statue, gazing with fixed and frightened eyes and twisting his mouth into a strange smile of utter bewilderment, as though he felt the prince’s visit something incredible and almost miraculous. Though Myshkin had expected something of the sort, he was surprised.

“Parfyon, perhaps I’ve come at the wrong moment? I can go away, you know,” he said at last with embarrassment.

“Not at all — not at all!” said Parfyon, recovering himself at last. “You are welcome. Come in.”

They addressed one another like intimate friends. In Moscow they had often spent long hours together, and there had been meetings, moments of which had left a lasting memory in their hearts. Now they had not met for over three months.

Rogozhin’s face did not lose its pallor and there still was a faint spasmodic twitching to be seen in it. Though he welcomed his guest, his extraordinary confusion still persisted. While he led Myshkin in and had made him sit down in an easy chair, the latter happened to turn to him and stood still, impressed by his strange and heavy gaze. Something seemed to transfix Myshkin, and at the same time some memory came back to him — something recent, painful, and gloomy. Not sitting down but standing motionless, he looked Rogozhin straight in the eyes for some time: at the first moment they seemed to gleam more brightly. At last Rogozhin smiled, though still rather disconcerted and hardly knowing what he was doing.

“Why do you stare so?” he muttered. “Sit down.”

Myshkin sat down.

“Parfyon,” he said, “tell me plainly, did you know that I was coming to Petersburg to-day or not?”

“I thought you were coming, and, you see, I was not mistaken,” Rogozhin added, smiling sarcastically. “But how could I tell you would come today?”

Myshkin was even more struck by a certain harsh abruptness and strange irritability in the question.

“Even if you had known I should come to-day, why be so cross about it?” murmured Myshkin gently, in confusion.

“But why do you ask?”

“As I got out of the train this morning, I saw two eyes that looked at me just as you did just now from behind.”

“You don’t say so! Whose eyes were they?” Rogozhin muttered suspiciously.

Myshkin fancied that he shuddered.

“I don’t know; I almost think I fancied it in the crowd. I begin to be always fancying things. Do you know, Parfyon, my friend, I feel almost as I did five years ago, when I used to have fits.”

“Well, perhaps it was your fancy; I don’t know,” muttered Parfyon.

The friendly smile on his face was very unbecoming to him at that moment, as though there were something disjointed in it, and however much he tried he could not put it together.

“Are you going abroad again?” he asked, and suddenly added: “And do you remember how we came from Pskov in the same carriage together last autumn? I was coming here, and you ... in your cloak, do you remember, and the gaiters?”

And Rogozhin suddenly laughed, this time with open malice, as though relieved that he had succeeded in expressing it in some way.

“Are you settled here for good?”

“Yes, I am at home. Where else should I be?”

“It’s a lonq time since we’ve met. I’ve heard such things about you, not like yourself.”

“People will say anything.” Rogozhin observed drily.

“You’ve turned off all your followers, and you stay in your old home and live quietly. Well, that’s a good thing. Is it your own house, or does it belong to all of you in common?”

“The house is my mother’s. That’s the way to her rooms across the corridor.”

“And where is your brother living?”

“My brother Semyon Semyonovitch is in the lodge.”

“Is he married?”

“He is a widower. Why do you want to know?”

Myshkin looked at him and did not answer; he was suddenly thoughtful and seemed not to have heard the question. Rogozhin waited and did not insist. They were silent for a little.

“I guessed it was your house a hundred paces away, as I came along,” said Myshkin.