Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (365 page)

“Good-bye, then,” said Myshkin, holding out his hand.

“Good-bye,” said Rogozhin, pressing tightly though mechanically the hand that was held out to him.

Myshkin went down a step and turned round.

“As to the question of faith,” he began, smiling (he evidently did not want to leave Rogozhin like that) and brightening up at a sudden reminiscence, “as to the question of faith, I had four different conversations in two days last week. I came home in the morning by the new railway and talked for four hours with a man in the train; we made friends on the spot. I had heard a great deal about him beforehand and had heard he was an atheist, among other things. He really is a very learned man, and I was delighted at the prospect of talking to a really learned man. What’s more, he is a most unusually well-bred man, so that he talked to me quite as if I were his equal in ideas and attainments. He doesn’t believe in God. Only, one thing struck me: that he seemed not to be talking about that at all, the whole time; and it struck me just because whenever I have met unbelievers before, or read their books, it always seemed to me that they were speaking and writing in their books about something quite different, although it seemed to be about that on the surface. I said so to him at the time, but I suppose I didn’t say so clearly, or did not know how to express it, for he didn’t understand. In the evening I stopped for the night at a provincial hotel, and a murder had just been committed there the night before, so that every one was talking about it when I arrived. Two peasants, middle-aged men, friends who had known each other for a long time and were not drunk, had had tea and were meaning to go to bed in the same room. But one had noticed during those last two days that the other was wearing a silver watch on a yellow bead chain, which he seemed not to have seen on him before. The man was not a thief; he was an honest man, in fact, and by a peasant’s standard by no means poor. But he was so taken with that watch and so fascinated by it that at last he could not restrain himself. He took a knife, and when his friend had turned away, he approached him cautiously from behind, took aim, turned his eyes heavenwards, crossed himself, and praying fervently ‘God forgive me for Christ’s sake!’ he cut his friend’s throat at one stroke like a sheep and took his watch.”

Rogozhin went off into peals of laughter; he laughed as though he were in a sort of fit. It was positively strange to see such laughter after the gloomy mood that had preceded it.

“I do like that! “Vfes, that beats everything!” he cried convulsively, gasping for breath. “One man doesn’t believe in God at all, while the other believes in Him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men! . . . “Vbu could never have invented that, brother! Ha-ha-ha! That beats everything.”

“Next morning I went out to walk about the town,”

Myshkin went on, as soon as Rogozhin was quiet again, though his lips still quivered with spasmodic convulsive laughter. “I saw a drunken soldier in a terribly disorderly state staggering about the wooden pavement. He came up to me. ‘Buy a silver cross, sir?’ said he. ‘I’ll let you have it for twenty kopecks. It’s silver.’ I saw in his hands a cross — he must have just taken it off — on a very dirty blue ribbon; but one could see at once that it was only tin. It was a big one with eight corners, of a regular Byzantine pattern. I took out twenty kopecks and gave them to him, and at once put the cross round my neck; and I could see from his face how glad he was that he had cheated a stupid gentleman, and he went off immediately to drink what he got for it, there was no doubt about that. At that time, brother, I was quite carried away by the rush of impressions that burst upon me in Russia; I had understood nothing about Russia before. I had grown up as it were inarticulate, and my memories of my country were somehow fantastic during those five years abroad. Well, I walked on, thinking, ‘Yes, I’ll put off judging that man who sold his Christ. God only knows what’s hidden in those weak and drunken hearts.’ An hour later, when I was going back to the hotel, I came upon a peasant woman with a tiny baby in her arms. She was quite a young woman and the baby was about six weeks old. The baby smiled at herforthe first time in its life. I saw her crossing herself with great devotion. ‘What are you doing, my dear?’ (I was always asking questions in those days.) ‘God has just such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby’s face.’ That was what the woman said to me almost in those words, this deep, subtle and truly religious thought — a thought in which all the essence of Christianity finds expression; that is the whole conception of God as our Father and of God’s gladness in man, like a father’s in his own child — the fundamental idea of Christ! A simple peasant woman! It’s true she was a mother . . . and who knows, very likely that woman was the wife of that soldier. Listen, Parfyon. “Vbu asked me a question just now; here is my answer. The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanours. There is somethinq else here, and there will always be something else — something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else. But the chief thing is that you will notice it more clearly and quickly in the Russian heart than anywhere else. And this is my conclusion. It’s one of the chief convictions which I have gathered from our Russia. There is work to be done, Parfyon! There is work to be done in our Russian world, believe me! Remember how we used to meet in Moscow and talk at one time . . . and I didn’t mean to come back here now, and I thought to meet you not at all like this! Oh, well! . . . Good-bye till we meet! May God be with you!”

He turned and went down the stairs.

“Lyov Nikolayevitch!” Parfyon shouted from above when Myshkin had reached the first half-landing. “Have you that cross you bought from that soldier on you?”

“Yes,” and Myshkin stopped again.

“Show me.”

Something strange again! He thought a moment, went upstairs again, and pulled out the cross to show him without taking it off his neck.

“Give it me,” said Rogozhin.

“Why? Would you ...” Myshkin did not want to part with the cross.

“I’ll wear it, and give you mine for you to wear.”

“You want to change crosses? Certainly, Parfyon, I am delighted. We will be brothers!”

Myshkin took off his tin cross, Parfyon his gold one, and they changed. Parfyon did not speak. With painful surprise Myshkin noticed that the same mistrustfulness, the same bitter, almost ironical smile still lingered on the face of his adopted brother; at moments, anyway, it was plainly to be seen. In silence at last Rogozhin took Myshkin’s hand and stood for some time as though unable to make up his mind. At last he suddenly drew him after him, saying in a scarcely audible voice, “Come along.” They crossed the landing of the first floor and rang at the door facing the one they had come out of. It was soon opened to them. A bent old woman, wearing a black knitted kerchief, bowed low to Rogozhin without speaking. He quickly asked her some question, and, without waiting for an answer, led Myshkin through the rooms. Again they went through dark rooms of an extraordinary chilly cleanliness,

coldly and severely furnished with old-fashioned furniture under clean white covers. Without announcing their arrival, Rogozhin led Myshkin into a small room like a drawing-room, divided in two by a polished mahogany wall with doors at each end, probably leading to a bedroom. In the corner of the drawing-room by the stove a little old woman was sitting in an armchair. She did not look very old; she had a fairly healthy, pleasant round face, but she was quite grey, and it could be seen from the first glance that she had become quite childish. She was wearing a black woollen dress, a large black kerchief on her shoulders, and a clean white cap with black ribbons. Her feet were resting on a footstool. Another clean little old woman, rather older, was with her. She too was in mourning, and she too wore a white cap; she was silent, knitting a stocking, and was probably some sort of a companion. It might be fancied that they were both always silent. The first old woman, seeing Rogozhin and Myshkin, smiled to them, and nodded her head several times to them as a sign of satisfaction.

“Mother,” said Rogozhin, kissing her hand, “this is my great friend, Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin.

I’ve exchanged crosses with him. He was like a brother to me at one time in Moscow; he did a great deal for me. Bless him, mother, as though it were your own son you were blessing. Nay, old mother, like this. Let me put your fingers right....”

But before Parfyon had time to touch her, the old woman had raised her right hand, put her two fingers against her thumb, and three times devoutly made the sign of the cross over Myshkin. Then she nodded kindly, affectionately to him again.

“Come along, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” said Parfyon, “I only brought you here for that....”

When they came out on to the staircase again, he added:

“You know she understands nothing that’s said to her, and she didn’t understand a word I said, but she blessed you; so she wanted to do it of herself. . . . Well, good-bye, it’s time you were going, and I too.”

And he opened his door.

“At least let me embrace you at parting, you strange fellow,” cried Myshkin, looking at him with tender reproach; and he would have embraced him.

But Parfyon had scarcely raised his arms when he let them fall aqain. He could not brinq himself to it.

He turned away so as not to look at Myshkin; he didn’t want to embrace him.

“Don’t be afraid! Though I’ve taken your cross, I won’t murder you for your watch!” he muttered indistinctly, with a sudden strange laugh.

But all at once his whole face changed; he turned horribly pale, his lips trembled, his eyes glowed. He raised his arms, embraced Myshkin warmly, and said breathlessly:

“Well, take her then, since it’s fated! She is yours! I give in to you! ... Remember Rogozhin!”

And turning from Myshkin without looking at him, he went hurriedly in and slammed the door after him.

CHAPTER 5

It WAS by now late, almost half-past two, and Myshkin did not find General Epanchin at home. Leaving a card, he made up his mind to go to the hotel “The Scales,” and inquire for Kolya, and if he were not there, to leave a note for him. At “The Scales” they told him that Nikolay Ardalionovitch “had gone out in the morning, but as he went out he left word that if anyone should ask for him, they were to say that he might be back at three o’clock. But if he were not back by half-past three, it would mean that he had taken the train to Pavlovsk to Madame Epanchin’s villa and would dine there.” Myshkin sat down to wait for him, and as he was there, asked for dinner.

Kolya had not made his appearance at half-past three, nor even at four. Myshkin went out and walked away mechanically. At the beginning of summer in Petersburg there are sometimes exquisite days — bright, still and hot. By good fortune this day was one of those rare days. For some time Myshkin wandered aimlessly. He knew the town very little. He stood still sometimes in squares, on bridges, or at cross roads facing certain houses; once he went into a confectioner’s to rest. Sometimes he began watching the passers-by with great interest; but most of the time he scarcely noticed the people in the street, nor where he was going. He was painfully strained and restless, and at the same time he felt an extraordinary craving for solitude. He longed to be alone and to give himself up quite passively to this agonising emotion without seeking to escape from it. He loathed the thought of facing the questions that were surging in his heart and his mind. “Am I to blame for all this?” he muttered to himself, almost unconscious of his own words.

Towards six o’clock he found himself at the railway station of the Tsarskoe Syelo line. Solitude had soon become unbearable; a new warm impulse seized upon his heart, and for one moment the darkness in which his soul was steeped was lighted up by a ray of brightness. He took a ticket to Pavlovsk and was in impatient haste to get off; but, of course, he was pursued by something, and that something was a reality and not a fancy, as he was perhaps inclined to imagine. He had almost taken his seat in the train, when he suddenly flung the ticket he had only just taken on the floor and went back out of the station, pondering and confused. Some time later in the street he seemed suddenly to recall something; he seemed suddenly to grasp something very strange, something that had long worried him. He suddenly realised that he had been doing something which he had been doing for a long time, though he had not been aware of it till that minute. For some hours previously, even at “The Scales,” and even before he went there, he had at intervals begun suddenly looking for something. He would forget it for a long while, half an hour at a time, and then begin looking about him again uneasily.

But he had no sooner observed in himself this morbid and till then quite unconscious impulse, when there flashed upon his mind another recollection which interested him extremely. He remembered that, at the moment when he became aware that he was absorbed in looking for something, he was standing on the pavement before a shop window, examining with great interest the goods exposed in it. He felt he must find out whether he really had stood before that shop window just now, five minutes, perhaps, before; whether he hadn’t dreamed it; whether he wasn’t mistaken. Did that shop really exist with the goods in its window? He certainly felt specially unwell that day, almost as he used in the past when an attack of his old disease was coming on. He knew that at such times he used to be exceptionally absent-minded, and often mixed up things and people, if he did not look at them with special strained attention. But there was another special reason why he wanted to find out whether he really had been standing then before that shop. Among the things in the shop window was one thing he had looked at, he had even mentally fixed the price of it at sixty kopecks. He remembered that in spite of his absent-mindedness and agitation. If, then, that shop existed and that thing really was in the window, he must have stopped simply to look at that thing. So it must have interested him so much that it attracted his attention, even at the time when he was in such distress and confusion, just after he had come out of the railway station. He walked almost in anguish, looking to the right and his heart beat with uneasy impatience. But here was the shop, he had found it at last! He had been five hundred paces from it when he had felt impelled to turn back. And there was the article worth sixty kopecks. “It would be certainly sixty kopecks, it’s not worth more,” he repeated now and laughed. But his laughter was hysterical; he felt very wretched. He remembered clearly now that just when he had been standing here before this window he had suddenly turned round, as he had done that morning when he caught Rogozhin’s eyes fixed upon him. Making certain that he was not mistaken (though he had felt quite sure of it before), he left the shop and walked quickly away from it. He must certainly think it all over. It was clear now that it had not been his fancy at the station either, that something real must have happened to him, and that it must be overcome again by a sort of insuperable inner loathing: he did not want to think anything out, and he did not; he fell to musing on something quite different.