Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (401 page)

“You don’t know her, do you?”

“Scarcely at all, but I should be heartily glad to, if only to justify myself to her. Nina Alexandrovna has a grievance against me, pretending that I lead her spouse astray into drunkenness. But far from leading him astray, I restrain him. I perhaps entice him away from more pernicious society. Besides, he’s my friend and, I confess it to you, I won’t desert him now. In fact, it’s like this: where he goes there I go. For you can only manage him through his sensibility. He’s quite given up visiting his captain’s widow now, though he secretly longs for her, and even sometimes moans for her, especially in the morninq when he puts on his boots. I don’t know why it’s at that time. He’s no money, that’s the trouble, and there’s no going to see her without. Hasn’t he asked you for money, honoured prince?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“He’s ashamed to. He did mean to. He owned to me, in fact, that he meant to trouble you, but he’s bashful, seeing you obliged him not long ago, and besides he thinks you wouldn’t give it him. He told me this as his friend.”

“But you don’t give him money?”

“Prince! Honoured prince! For that man I’d give not money, alone, but, so to say, my life. . . . But no, I don’t want to exaggerate, not my life, but if it were a case of fever, an abscess, or even a cough, I’d be ready to bear it for him, I really would. For I look upon him as a great, though fallen man! “Yes, indeed, not only money.”

“Then, you do give him money?”

“N-no; money I have not given him, and he knows himself that I won’t give it him. But that’s solely with a view to his elevation and reformation. Now he is insisting on coming to Petersburg with me. “You see,

I’m going to Petersburg to find Mr. Ferdyshtchenko while the tracks are fresh. For I know for a fact that he is there by now. My general is all eagerness, but I suspect that he’ll give me the slip in Petersburg to visit his widow. I’m letting him go on purpose, I must own, as we’ve agreed to go in different directions, as soon as we arrive, so as to catch Mr. Ferdyshtchenko more easily. So I shall let him go, and then fall on him all of a sudden, like snow on the head, at the widow’s — just to put him to shame, as a family man, and as a man, indeed, speaking generally.”

“Only don’t make a disturbance, Lebedyev. For goodness’ sake, don’t make a disturbance,” Myshkin said in an undertone with great uneasiness.

“Oh, no, simply to put him to shame and see what sort of a face he makes, for one can judge a great deal from the face, honoured prince, especially with a man like that! Ah, prince! Great as my own trouble is now, I cannot help thinking of him and the reformation of his morals. I have a great favour to ask of you, prince, and I must confess it was expressly for that I have come to you. You are familiar with their home, you have even lived with them; so, if you would decide to assist me, honoured prince, entirely for the sake of the general and his happiness....”

Lebedyev positively clasped his hands, as though in supplication.

“Assist you? Assist you how? Believe me, I am extremely anxious to understand you, Lebedyev.”

“It was entirely with that conviction I have come to you! We could act through Nina Alexandrovna, constantly watching over, and, so to speak, tracking his excellency in the bosom of his family. I don’t know them, unluckily. . . moreover, Nikolay Ardalionovitch adores you, so to speak, with every fibre of his youthful heart, he could help, perhaps....”

“No, to bring Nina Alexandrovna into this business . . . Heaven forbid! Nor Kolya either. . . . But perhaps I still fail to understand you, Lebedyev.”

“Why, there’s nothing to understand!” Lebedyev sprang up from his chair. “Sympathy, sympathy, and tenderness — that’s all the treatment our invalid requires. \bu, prince, will allow me to think of him as an invalid?”

“Yes, it shows your delicacy and intelligence.”

“For the sake of clearness, I will explain to you by an example taken from my practice. You see the kind of man he is: his only weakness now is for that widow, who won’t let him come without money, and at whose house I mean to discover him to-day, for his own good; but supposing it were not only the captain’s widow, supposing he had committed an actual crime, or anyway a most dishonourable action (though of course he’s incapable of it), even then, I tell you, you could do anything with him simply by generous tenderness, so to speak, for he is the most sensitive of men! Believe me, he wouldn’t hold out for five days; he would speak out of himself; he would weep and confess, especially if one went to work cleverly, and in an honourable style, by means of his family’s vigilant watch, and yours, over his comings and goings. . . . Oh, most noble-hearted prince!” Lebedyev leapt up in a sort of exaltation. “Of course I’m not asserting that he. ... I am ready to shed my last drop of blood, so to speak, for him at this moment, though his incontinence and drunkenness and the captain’s widow, and all that, taken together, may lead him on to anything.”

“In such a cause I am always ready to assist,” said Mvshkin, qettinq up. “Onlv, I confess, Lebedvev, I am dreadfully uneasy; tell me, do you still. ... In one word you say yourself that you suspect Mr. Ferdyshtchenko.”

“Why, who else? Who else, true-hearted prince?” Again Lebedyev clasped his hands ingratiatingly, with a sugary smile.

Myshkin frowned and got up from his place.

“Look here, Lukyan Timofeyitch, a mistake here would be a dreadful thing. This Ferdyshtchenko. ... I should not like to speak ill of him. . . . This Ferdyshtchenko . . . well, who knows, perhaps it is he! ... I mean to say that perhaps he really is more capable of it than ... anyone else.”

Lebedyev opened his eyes and pricked up his ears.

“You see,” said Myshkin, stumbling and frowning more and more, as he walked up and down the verandah, trying not to look at Lebedyev— “I was given to understand. ... I was told about Mr. Ferdyshtchenko that he was a man before whom one must be careful not to say anything ... too much — you understand? I say this to show that perhaps he really is more capable of it than anyone else ... so as not to make a mistake, that’s the great thing — do you understand?”

“Who told you that about Mr. Ferdyshtchenko?” Lebedyev caught him up instantly.

“Oh, it was whispered to me. I don’t believe it myself, though. ... I’m awfully vexed to be obliged to tell you. ... I assure you I don’t believe it myself . . . it’s some nonsense.... Foo! how stupid I’ve been!”

“You see, prince,” Lebedyev was positively quivering all over, “this is important. This is extremely important now. I don’t mean as to Mr. Ferdyshtchenko, but as to the way this information reached you” — saying this Lebedyev ran backwards and forwards after Myshkin, trying to keep step with him— “I’ve something to tell you now, prince: just now, when I was going with the general to Vilkin’s, after he told me about the fire, he was boiling over, of course, with anger, and suddenly began dropping the same hint to me about Mr. Ferdyshtchenko, but so strangely and incoherently that I couldn’t help asking him some questions, and in the end I was fully convinced that all the whole thing was solely an inspiration of his excellency’s, solely arising, so to speak, from his generous heart. For he lies entirely because he can’t restrain his sentimentality. Now, kindly consider this: if he told a lie, and I’m sure he did, how could you have heard of it? It was the inspiration of the moment, you understand, prince — so who could have told you? That’s important, that... . That’s very important, and ... so to say....”

“Kolya told me it just now, and he was told it this morning by his father whom he met at six o’clock — between six and seven — in the passage, when he came out for something.”

And Myshkin told the story in detail.

“Ah, well, that’s what’s called a clue.” Lebedyev laughed noiselessly, rubbing his hands. “Just as I thought! That means that his excellency waked from his sleep of innocence at six o’clock, expressly to go and wake his darling son and warn him of the great danger of associating with Mr. Ferdyshtchenko. What a dangerous man Mr. Ferdyshtchenko must be! And what parental solicitude on the part of his excellency!”

“Listen, Lebedyev,” Myshkin was utterly confused, “listen, keep quiet about it! Don’t make an uproar! I beg you, Lebedyev, I entreat you. In that case I swear I’ll help you, but on condition that nobody, nobody knows!”

“Rest assured, most noble-hearted, most sincere and generous prince,” cried Lebedyev in perfect exaltation— “rest assured that all this will be buried in my loyal heart. I’d give every drop of my blood. . . . Illustrious prince, I’m a poor creature in soul and spirit, but ask any poor creature, any scoundrel even, which he’d rather have to do with, a scoundrel like himself, or a noble-hearted man like you, most true-hearted prince, he’ll answer that he prefers the noble-hearted man, and that’s the triumph of virtue! Good-bye honoured prince! Treading softly . . . treading softly, and ... hand in hand.”

CHAPTER 10

Myshkin understood at last why he turned cold every time he touched those three letters, and why he had put off reading them until the evening. When, in the morning, he had sunk into a heavy sleep on the lounge in the verandah without having brought himself to open those three envelopes, he had another painful dream, and again the same “sinful woman” came to him. Again she looked at him with tears sparkling on her long eyelashes, again beckoned him to follow her, and again he waked up, as he had done before, with anguish recalling her face. He wanted to go to her at once, but could not. At last, almost in despair he opened the letters and began reading them.

These letters too were like a dream. Sometimes one dreams strange, impossible and incredible dreams; on awakening you remember them and are amazed at a strange fact. You remember first of all that your reason did not desert you throughout the dream; you remember even that you acted very cunningly and logically through all that long, long time, while you were surrounded by murderers who deceived you, hid their intentions, behaved amicably to you while they had a weapon in readiness, and were only waiting for some signal; you remember how cleverly you deceived them at last, hiding from them; then you guessed that they’d seen through your deception and were only pretending not to know where you were hidden; but you were sly then and deceived them again; all this you remember clearly. But how was it that you could at the same time reconcile your reason to the obvious absurdities and impossibilities with which your dream was overflowing? One of your murderers turned into a woman before your eyes, and the woman into a little, sly, loathsome dwarf — and you accepted it all at once as an accomplished fact, almost without the slightest surprise, at the very time when, on another side, your reason was at its highest tension and showed extraordinary power, cunning, sagacity, and logic? And why, too, on waking up and fully returning to reality, do you feel almost every time, and sometimes with extraordinary intensity, that you have left something unexplained behind with the dream? “Vbu laugh at the absurdities of your dream, and at the same time you feel that interwoven with those absurdities some thought lies hidden, and a thought that is real, something belonging to your actual life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart. It’s as though something new, prophetic, that you were awaiting, has been told you in your dream. \bur impression is vivid, it may be joyful or agonising, but what it is, and what was said to you, you cannot understand or recall.

It was almost like this, after reading these letters. But even before he had unfolded them, Myshkin felt that the very fact of the existence and the possibility of them was like a nightmare. How could she have brought herself to write to her, he asked himself as he wandered about alone that evening (at times not knowing where he was going). How could she write of that, how could such a mad fantasy have arisen in her mind? But that fantasy had by now taken shape, and the most amazing thing of all for him was that, as he read those letters, he himself almost believed in the possibility and the justification of that fantasy. “Vfet, of course, it was a dream, a nightmare, a madness; but there was something in it tormentingly real, and agonisingly true, which justified the dream and the nightmare and the madness. For several hours together he seemed to be haunted by what he had read, every minute recalling fragments of it; brooding over them, pondering them. Sometimes he was even inclined to tell himself that he had foreseen all this and known it beforehand. It even seemed to him as though he had read it all before, some time very long ago, and that everything that he had grieved over since, everything that had been a pain or a dread to him had all lain hidden in those letters he had read long ago.

“When you open this letter” — so the first epistle began— “you will look first of all at the signature. The signature will tell you all, and explain all, so there’s no need to make any defence or explanation. If I were in any way on a level with you, you might be offended at such impertinence. But, who am I, and who are you?

We are two such opposite extremes and I am so infinitely below you that I cannot insult you, even if I wanted to.”

In another place she wrote:

“Don’t consider my words the sick ecstasy of a sick mind, but you are for me perfection! I have seen you, I see you everyday. I don’t judge you; I have not come by reason to believe that you are perfection; I simply have faith in it. But one wrong I do you: I love you. Perfection should not be loved; one can only look on perfection as perfection. Is that not so? “Vfet I am in love with you. Though love makes equal, yet don’t be uneasy; I have not put myself on an equality with you even in my most secret thought. I have written, ‘don’t be uneasy.’ Can you possibly be uneasy? I would kiss your footprints if I could. Oh, I don’t put myself on a level with you. . . . Look at my signature, you need only look at my signature!”

“I notice, however,” she wrote in another letter, “that I join your name with his, and I have never once asked myself whether you love him. He loved you, though he had seen you only once. He thought of you as of ‘light.’ Those are his own words, I heard them from him. But without words I knew that you were ‘light’ for him. I’ve lived a whole month beside him, and understood then that you love him too. To me you and he are one.”