Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (379 page)

“The eccentric incident yesterday,” Ganya ventured, “was, of course, premeditated, and, of course, must not be counted. To find any fault with her, people will have to seek it out on purpose, or to invent it; which they would not be slow to do, however,” Ganya concluded, expecting Myshkin would be sure to ask him at that point why he called yesterday’s incident “premeditated,” and why they would not be slow to do so.

But Myshkin did not ask it.

Ganya talked freely about Yevgeny Pavlovitch without being questioned, which was very strange, for he brought him into the conversation without any pretext for doing so. In Gavril Ardalionovitch’s opinion, Yevgeny Pavlovitch had not known Nastasya Filippovna; he scarcely knew her even now, for he had only been introduced to herfour days ago when out walking, and had probably not been once at her house. As for the lOUs, it might be so too: Ganya knew that for a positive fact. Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s fortune was, of course, a large one, but some business connected with his estate really was rather in a muddle. At this interesting point Ganya suddenly broke off. He said nothinq about Nastasya Filippovna’s prank of the previous evening, except the passing reference above.

At last Varvara Ardalionovna came in to look for Ganya. She stayed a minute, announced (also without being asked) that Yevgeny Pavlovitch was in Petersburg to-day and would perhaps be there tomorrow too; that her husband, Ivan Petrovitch Ptitsyn, was also in Petersburg and also probably on “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch’s business; that something had really happened there. As she was going, she added that Lizaveta Prokofyevna was in a fiendish temper to-day; but, what was most odd, Aglaia had quarrelled with her whole family, not only her father and mother, but even with her two sisters, and “that was anything but a good sign.” After giving him, as it were in passing, this last piece of news (which was of extreme importance to Myshkin), the brother and sister departed. Ganya had, possibly from false modesty, possibly to “spare the prince’s feelings,” not uttered one word about the case of “Pavlishtchev’s son.” Myshkin thanked him, however, once more for the careful way he had managed the affair.

Myshkin was very glad to be left alone at last. He walked off the verandah, crossed the road and went into the park. He longed to think over and decide upon one step. Yet that “step” was not one of those that can be thought over, but one of those which are simply decided upon without deliberation. A terrible longing came upon him to leave everything here and to go back to the place from which he had come, to go away into the distance to some remote region, to go away at once without even saying good-bye to any one. He had a foreboding that if he remained here even a few days longer he would be drawn into this world irrevocably and that his life would be bound up with it for ever. But he did not consider it for ten minutes; he decided at once that it would be “impossible” to run away, that it would be almost cowardice, that he was faced with such difficulties that it was his duty now to solve them, or at least to do his utmost to solve them. Absorbed in such thoughts, he returned home after a walk of less than a quarter of an hour. He was utterly unhappy at that moment.

Lebedyev was still away from home, so that towards evening Keller succeeded in bursting in on Myshkin, brimming over with confidences and confessions, though he was not drunk. He openly declared that he had come to tell Myshkin the whole story of his life, and that it was to do so that he had remained in Pavlovsk. There was not the faintest possibility of getting rid of him; nothing would have induced him to go. Keller had come prepared to talk at great length and with great incoherence. But suddenly, almost at the first word, he skipped to the conclusion and announced that he had so completely lost “every trace of morality” (solely through lack of faith in the Almighty) that he had positively become a thief.

“Can you fancy that!”

“Listen, Keller. If I were in your place I wouldn’t confess that without special need,” Myshkin began. “But perhaps you make things up against yourself on purpose?”

“To you, to you alone, and solely to promote my own development. To no one else. I shall die and bear my secret to the coffin! But, prince, if you knew, if only you knew how hard it is to get money nowadays! How is one to get it, allow me to ask you? The answer is always the same: ‘Bring gold or diamonds and we’ll give you something for them.’ That’s just what I haven’t got. Can you fancy that? I lost my temper at last, after waiting and waiting. ‘Will you give me something for emeralds?’ said I. ‘\fes, for emeralds too,’ said he. ‘Well, that’s all right,’ said I, and I put on my hat and walked out. ‘\bu’re a set of scoundrels, damn you! Yes, by Jove!’”

“Had you any emeralds, then?”

“A likely story! Oh, prince, what a sweet and innocent, pastoral, one may say, idea of life you have!”

Myshkin began at last to feel not exactly sorry for him, but, as it were, vaguely ill at ease on his account. It occurred to him to wonder, indeed, whether anything could be made of the man by any good influence. His own influence he considered for various reasons quite unsuitable; and this was not due to self-depreciation, but to a peculiar way of looking at things. By degrees they got into talk, so much so that they did not want to part. Keller, with extraordinary readiness, confessed to actions of which it seemed inconceivable any one could be willing to speak. At every fresh story he asserted positively that he was penitent and “full of tears”; yet he told it as though he were proud of his action, and sometimes too so absurdly that he and Myshkin laughed at last like madmen.

“The great thing is that you have a sort of childlike trustfulness and extraordinary truthfulness,” said Myshkin at last. “Do you know that by that alone you make up for a very great deal?”

“Generous, chivalrously generous!” Keller assented, much touched. “But you know, prince, it is all in dreams and, so to say, in bravado; it never comes to anything in action! And why is it? I can’t understand.”

“Don’t despair. Now, one can say positively that you have given me a full account of everything. I fancy anyway that it’s impossible to add anything more to what you’ve told me, isn’t it?”

“Impossible?” Keller exclaimed, almost compassionately. “Oh, prince, how completely a la Suisse, if I may say so, you still interpret human nature!”

“Can you really have more to add?” Myshkin brought out, with timid wonder. “Then tell me, please, what did you expect of me, Keller, and why have you come to me with your confession?”

“From you? What did I expect? In the first place, it is pleasant to watch your simplicity; it’s nice to sit and talk to you. I know there is a really virtuous person before me, anyway; and, secondly . . . secondly...” He was confused.

“Perhaps you wanted to borrow money?” Myshkin prompted very gravely and simply, and even rather shyly.

Keller positively started. He glanced quickly with the same wonder straight into Myshkin’s face, and brought his fist down violently on the table.

“Well, that’s how you knock a fellow out completely! Upon my word, prince, such simplicity, such innocence, as was never seen in the Golden Age — yet all at once you pierce right through a fellow like an arrow with such psychological depth of observation. But allow me, prince. This requires explanation, for I’m . . . simply bowled over! Of course, in the long run my object was to borrow money; but you ask me about it as if you saw nothing reprehensible in that, as though it were just as it should be.”

“Yes ... from you it is just as it should be.”

“And you’re not indignant?”

“No.... Why?”

“Listen, prince. I’ve been staying here since yesterday evening: first, from a special respect for the French archbishop Bourdaloue (we were pulling corks in Lebedyev’s room till three in the morning); and secondly, and chiefly (and here I’ll take my oath I am speaking the holy truth!), I stayed because I wanted, by making you a full, heartfelt confession, so to speak, to promote my own development. With that idea I fell asleep, bathed in tears, towards four o’clock. Would you believe on the word of a man of honour, now at the very minute I fell asleep, genuinely filled with inward and, so to say, outward tears (for I really was sobbing, I remember), a hellish thought occurred to me: ‘Why not, when all’s said and done, borrow money of him after my confession?’ So that I prepared my confession, so to say, as though it were a sort of ‘fricassee with tears for sauce,’ to pave the way with those tears so that you might be softened and fork out one hundred and fifty roubles. Don’t you think that was base?”

“But most likely that’s not true; it’s simply both things came at once. The two thoughts came together; that often happens. It’s constantly so with me. I think it’s not a good thing, though; and, do you know, Keller, I reproach myself most of all for it. You might have been telling me about myself just now. I have sometimes even fancied,” Myshkin went on very earnestly, genuinely and profoundly interested, “that all people are like that; so that I was even beginning to excuse myself because it is awfully difficult to struggle against these double thoughts; I’ve tried. God knows how they arise and come into one’s mind. But you call it simply baseness! Now, I’m beginning to be afraid of those thoughts again. Anyway, I am not your judge. “Vfet to my mind one can’t call it simply baseness. What do you think? You were acting deceitfully to obtain my money by your tears; but you swear yourself that there was another motive too for your confession — an honourable motive as well as a mercenary one. As for the money, you want it for riotous living, don’t you? And after such a confession, that’s feebleness, of course. But yet how are you to give up riotous living all in a minute? That’s impossible, I know. What’s to be done? It had better be left to your own conscience,

don’t you think?”

Myshkin looked with great interest at Keller. The problem of double ideas had evidently occupied his mind for some time.

“Well, I don’t understand why they call you an idiot after that!” cried Keller.

Myshkin flushed a little.

“Even the preacher, Bourdaloue, would not have spared a man; but you’ve spared one, and judged me humanely! To punish myself and to show that I am touched, I won’t take a hundred and fifty roubles; give me only twenty-five, and it will be enough! That’s all I want, for a fortnight, at any rate. I won’t come for money within a fortnight. I did mean to treat Agashka; but she’s not worth it. Oh, God bless you, dear prince!”

Lebedyev came in at last immediately on his return from town. Noticing the twenty-five-rouble note in Keller’s hand, he frowned. But the latter was in a hurry to get away as soon as he was provided with funds, and promptly took his departure. Lebedyev at once began to speak ill of him.

“You’re unjust, he really was genuinely penitent,” Myshkin observed at last.

“What does his penitence amount to? It’s just like me saying, ‘I am abject, I am abject!’ yesterday. You know it’s only words.”

“So that was only words? I thought you ...”

“Well, to you, only to you, I will tell the truth, because you see through a man. Words and deeds and lies and truth are all mixed up in me and are perfectly sincere. Deeds and truth come out in my genuine penitence, I swear it, whether you believe it or not; and words and lies in the hellish (and always present) craving to get the better of a man, to make something even out of one’s tears of penitence. It is so, by God! I wouldn’t tell another man — he’d laugh or curse. But you, prince, judge humanely.”

“Why, that’s exactly what he told me just now,” cried Myshkin, “and you both seem to be proud of it! \bu positively surprise me, only he’s more sincere than you are, and you’ve turned it into a regular trade. Come, that’s enough. Don’t crease up your face, Lebedyev, and don’t lay your hands on your heart. Haven’t you something to say to me? You don’t come in for nothing ...”

Lebedyev grimaced and wriggled.

“I’ve been waiting for you all day to put a question to you. Tell me the truth straight off for once in your life. Had you anything to do with that carriage stopping here yesterday or not?”

Lebedyev grimaced again, began tittering, rubbing his hands, even sneezing at last, but still he could not bring himself to speak.

“I see you had.”

“But indirectly, only indirectly! It’s the holy truth I’m telling you! The only part I had in it was letting a certain personage know in good time that I had such a company in my house and that certain persons were present.”

“I knew you sent your son there, he told me so himself just now; but what intrigue is this?” Myshkin cried impatiently.

“It’s not my intrigue, not mine,” Lebedyev protested, gesticulating. “There are others, others in it, and it is rather a fantasy, so to speak, than an intrigue.”

“But what’s the meaning of it? For heaven’s sake, do explain! Is it possible you don’t understand that it concerns me directly? You see, it is blackening Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s character.”

“Prince! Most illustrious prince!” Lebedyev began wriggling again. “\bu won’t allow me to tell the whole truth, you know. I’ve tried to already more than once. You wouldn’t allow me to go on ...”

Myshkin paused, and thought a little.

“Very well, tell the truth,” he said dejectedly, evidently after a severe struggle.

“Aglaia Ivanovna ...” Lebedyev promptly began.

“Be silent, be silent!” Myshkin cried furiously, flushing all over with indignation and perhaps with shame too. “It’s impossible, it’s all nonsense! You invented all that yourself, or some madmen like you. And let me never hear of it from you again!”

Late in the evening, after ten o’clock, Kolya arrived with a whole budget of news. His news was of two kinds: of Petersburg and of Pavlovsk. He hastily related the chief items of the Petersburg news (mainly about Ippolit and the scene of the previous day) and passed quickly to the Pavlovsk tidings, meaning to return to the former subject again later. He had returned from Petersburg three hours before and had gone straight to the Epanchins’ before coming to Myshkin. “It’s awful the to-do there!” Of course the carriage incident was in the foreground,

but no doubt something else had happened — something he and Myshkin knew nothing about. “I didn’t spy, of course, and didn’t care to question any one. They received me well, however, better than I’d expected, indeed; but of you not a word, prince!”