Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (350 page)

Scoundrels love honest men. Don’t you know that? And of course I am . . . though how am I a scoundrel, tell me that, on your conscience? Why do they all follow her lead in calling me a scoundrel? And, do you know, I follow their example and hers and call myself a scoundrel too! That’s what’s scoundrelly, really scoundrelly!”

“I shall never again look on you as a scoundrel,” said Myshkin. “Just now I thought of you as quite wicked, and you have so rejoiced me all of a sudden. It’s a lesson to me not to judge without experience. Now I see that you can’t be considered wicked, nor even a really demoralised man. In my opinion you are simply one of the most ordinary men that could possibly be, only perhaps very weak and not at all original.”

Ganya smiled sarcastically to himself, but did not speak. Myshkin saw that his opinion displeased him and was embarrassed. He too was silent.

“Has father asked you for money?” Ganya inquired.

“No.”

“If he does, don’t give it him. But he once was a decent person. I remember. He used to visit people of good standing. And how quickly they pass away, these decent people, when they are old! The slightest change of circumstances and there’s nothing left of them, it’s all gone in a flash. He used not to tell such lies in old days, I assure you. In old days he was only rather over-enthusiastic — and see what it’s come to now! Of course drink’s at the bottom of it. Do you know, he keeps a mistress? He has become something worse than a harmless liar now. I can’t understand my mother’s long suffering. Has he told you about the siege of Kars? Or how his grey trace-horse began to talk? He doesn’t even stick at that.”

And Ganya suddenly roared with laughter.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked Myshkin suddenly.

“I am surprised at your laughing so genuinely. “Vbu still have the laugh of a child. “Vbu came in to make your peace with me just now and said, ‘if you like I’ll kiss your hand’ — just as a child would make it up. So you are still capable of such phrases and such impulses. And then you begin a regular harangue about this black business and this seventy-five thousand. It all seems somehow absurd and incredible.”

“What do you argue from that?”

“Aren’t you acting too heedlessly? Oughtn’t you to look about you first? Varvara Ardalionovna is right, perhaps.”

“Ah, morality! That I am a silly boy, I know that myself,” Ganya interposed hotly, “if only from my talking about such things with you. It’s not for mercenary reasons I am making this marriage, prince,” he continued, as though, stung by the vanity of youth, he could not resist speaking. “I should certainly be out of my reckoning if so, for I am still too weak in mind and character. It’s because I am carried away by passion, because I have one chief object. You think that as soon as I get seventy-five thousand I shall run and buy a carriage. No, I shall wear out my coat of the year before last and drop all my club acquaintances. There are few people of perseverance among us, though we are all money-grubbers. And I want to be persevering. The great thing is to do it thoroughly; that’s the whole problem. At seventeen Ptitsyn used to sleep in the street and sell penknives. He began with a farthing and now he has sixty thousand; but what toils he went through to get it! But I shall skip those toils and begin straight off with a capital. In fifteen years people will say, There goes Ivolgin, the king of the Jews.’ \bu tell me I am not an original person. Observe, dear prince, that nothing offends a man of our day and our race more than to tell him that he is not original, that he is weak-willed, has no particular talents and is an ordinary person. You haven’t even given me credit for being a first-rate scoundrel, and you know I was ready to annihilate you for it just now. You offended me more than Epanchin, who, without discussion, without having tried to tempt me, in the simplicity of his heart, note that, believes me capable of selling my wife. That has made me savage for a long time, and I want money. When I have money, I shall become a highly original man. What’s most low and hateful about money is that even talent can be bought with it, and will be, till the end of the world. \bu’ll say that this is all childish or, perhaps, romantic. Well, it will be the more fun for me, and I shall do what I want. Anyway, I shall persevere and carry it through. Rira bien qui rira le dernier. What makes Epanchin insult me like that? Spite, is it?

Never! It’s simply because I am of so little consequence. But then .. . That’s enough though, it’s time to be off. Kolya has poked his nose in at the door twice already; he is calling you to dinner. And I am going out. I shall look in on you sometimes. You will be all right with us; they will make you quite one of the family now. Mind you don’t give me away. I believe that you and I shall either be friends or enemies. And what do you think, prince, if I had kissed your hand (as I sincerely offered to do), would that have made me your enemy afterwards?”

“It would have been sure to, but not for always. You could not have kept it up afterwards, you would have forgiven me,” Myshkin decided with a laugh, after a moment’s thought.

“Aha! One must be more on one’s guard with you. Damn it all, you have put a drop of venom in that too! And who knows, perhaps you are an enemy? By the way — ha, ha, ha! — I forgot to ask you, was I right in fancying that you were rather too much taken with Nastasya Filippovna, eh?”

“Yes ... I like her.”

“In love with her?”

“N-no.”

“But he is blushing and unhappy. Well, never mind, never mind, I won’t laugh. But do you know she is a woman of virtuous life? Can you believe that? You imagine she is living with that man, Totsky? Not a bit of it. Not for ever so long. And did you notice that she is awfully awkward, and that she was embarrassed for some seconds to-day? Yes, really. It’s just people like that who are fond of dominating others. Well, good-bye.”

Ganya went out in good humour and much more at his ease than he had been when he entered. Myshkin remained motionless for ten minutes, thinking.

Kolya poked his head in at the door again.

“I don’t want any dinner, Kolya, I had such a good lunch at the Epanchins’.”

Kolya came in altogether and gave Myshkin a note. It was folded and sealed and was from the general. Kolya’s face showed how much he disliked giving it him. Myshkin read it, got up and took his hat.

“It’s not two steps away,” said Kolya in confusion. “He is sitting there now over a bottle. How he manages to get credit there I can’t conceive. Prince,

darling, don’t tell my people that I’ve given you the note. I’ve sworn a thousand times not to pass on these notes, but I am sorry for him. And I say, please don’t stand on ceremony with him; give him some trifle and let that be the end of it.”

“I had a notion of going to him myself, Kolya; I want to see your father. . . about something. Come along.”

CHAPTER 12

Kolya LED Myshkin into Liteyny Street, not far away, to a cafe on the ground floor with a billiard-room. Here in a room apart, in the right-hand corner, Ardalion Alexandrovitch was installed, as though an habitual visitor. He had a bottle on a little table before him and was actually holding a copy of the Independance Beige in his hands. He was expecting Myshkin. He laid aside the newspaper as soon as he saw him and began a long and heated explanation, of which Myshkin, however, could make very little, forthe general was alreadyfarfrom sober.

“I haven’t got ten roubles,” Myshkin cut him short, “but here is a note for twenty-five. Change it and give me fifteen, or else I shall be left without a farthing myself.”

“Oh, certainly, and you may be sure I’ll do so immediately.”

“I’ve come to you with a request, too, general. You’ve never been to Nastasya Filippovna’s?”

“Me? Me never been? \bu say that to me? Just occasionally, my dear fellow, several times,” cried the general in an excess of triumphant and complacent mockery. “But I broke off the acquaintance myself, for I don’t wish to encourage an unseemly alliance. You’ve seen for yourself, you’ve been witness this morning. I’ve done all a father can do, a mild and indulgent father, that is. Now a very different father must come on to the scene, and then we shall see whether an old warrior who has served with honour will triumph over the intrigue, or whether a shameless cocotte shall force her way into an honourable family.”

“I was going to ask you whether you could take me as a friend to Nastasya Filippovna’s this evening. I must go to-day, but I don’t know how I can get there. I was introduced to-day, but not invited; this evening she has a party. But I don’t mind disregarding convention a little; I don’t mind being laughed at, if only I can get in.”

“That’s precisely, precisely my own idea, my young friend,” cried the general enthusiastically. “I didn’t ask you to come on account of that trifle,” he went on, appropriating the money, however, and putting it in his pocket. “I sent for you precisely to ask you to be my companion in an expedition to Nastasya Filippovna’s, or rather an expedition against Nastasya Filippovna. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! How will that strike her? On the pretext of a civility on her name-day, I will announce my will at last — indirectly, not straight out, but it will be just as effective as though directly. Then Ganya will see for himself what he must do. He must choose between his father who has seen honourable service and ... so to say . . . and so on, or. . . But what will be, must be! your idea is a very happy one. At nine o’clock we will start, we’ve plenty of time.”

“Where does she live?”

“A long way from here, close to the Great Theatre, at Mitovtsov’s house, almost in the square, on the first floor.... It won’t be a large party, though it is her name-day, and it will break up early....”

It was getting on in the evening. Myshkin sat listening and waiting for the general, who began an extraordinary number of anecdotes and did not finish one of them. On Myshkin’s arrival he asked for another bottle, and it took him an hour to finish it; then he asked for a third, and finished it too. It may well be believed that by that time the general had narrated almost the whole of his history.

At last Myshkin got up and said he could not wait any longer. The general emptied the last drops out of the bottle, stood up, and walked out of the room very unsteadily. Myshkin was in despair. He could not understand how he could have believed in him so foolishly. As a matter of fact, he never had believed in him; he had simply reckoned on the general as a means of getting to Nastasya Filippovna, even at the cost of some impropriety. But he had not anticipated anything very scandalous. The general turned out to be thoroughly drunk; he was overwhelmingly eloquent and talked without ceasing, with feeling and on the verge of tears. He insisted continually that the misbehaviour of all the members of his family had brought about their ruin, and that it was high time to put a stop to it.

They reached Liteyny Street at last. It was still thawinq. A warm, muqqv, depressing wind whistled up and down the streets; carriages splashed through the mud. The horses’ hoofs struck the flags with a metallic ring. Crowds of wet and dejected people slouched along the pavements, here and there a drunken man among them.

“Do you see those first floors lighted up?” said the general. “My old comrades live all about here, and I — I who have seen more service and faced more hardships than any of them, I trudge on foot to the lodging of a woman of doubtful reputation! I, a man who has thirteen bullets in his breast! . . . “Vbu don’t believe it? And yet it was solely on my account Dr. Pirogov telegraphed to Paris and for a while abandoned Sevastopol at the time of the siege, and Nelaton, the Paris court doctor, succeeded in obtaining a free pass in the name of science and got into the besieged city on purpose to examine me. The highest authorities are cognisant of the fact. ‘Ah, that’s the Ivolgin who has thirteen bullets in him!’ . . . That’s how they speak of me. Do you see that house, prince? In the first floor there lives Sokolovitch, an old friend of mine, with his honourable and numerous family. That household and three families living in the Nevsky Prospect and two in Morskaya make up my present circle — that is, of my personal acquaintances. Nina Alexandrovna resigned herself to circumstances long ago. But I still remember the past . . . and still refresh myself, so to speak, in the cultured society of my old comrades and subordinates who worship me to this day. That General Sokolovitch (I haven’t been to call on him for some little time, by the way, and haven’t seen Anna Fyodorovna). . . . You know, dear prince, when one doesn’t entertain oneself, one is apt insensibly to drop out of visiting others. But yet . . . hm! . . . You don’t seem to believe me. . . . But why not introduce the son of the dearest friend of my youth and companion of my childhood into this delightful family? General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! You will see an exquisite girl, not one indeed — two, even three ornaments of Petersburg and of society: beauty, culture, enlightenment ... the woman question, poetry — all united in a happy varied combination, to say nothing of a dowry of eighty thousand roubles in hard cash for each of them, which is never a drawback in spite of any feminist or social questions. ... In fact I must, I certainly must introduce you. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! A sensation, in fact.”

“At once? Now? But you’ve forgotten . . ,” began Myshkin.

“I’ve forgotten nothing — nothing. Come along! This way, up this magnificent staircase. I wonder why there’s no porter, but. . . it’s a holiday and the porter has taken himself off. They’ve not dismissed the drunken fellow yet. This Sokolovitch is indebted for the whole happiness of his life and career to me — to me and no one else. But here we are.”

Myshkin made no further protest and to avoid irritating the general he followed him submissively, confidently hoping that General Sokolovitch and all his family would gradually evaporate like a mirage and turn out to be non-existent, so that they could quietly retrace their steps downstairs. But to his horror this hope began to fail him: the general led him up the stairs like a man who really had friends living there, and every minute he put in some biographical or topographical detail with mathematical exactitude. At last, when they had reached the first floor and stopped on the right before the door of a luxurious flat and the general had hold of the bell, Myshkin made up his mind to make his escape; but one strange circumstance held him for a moment.