Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (340 page)

“I know nothing about it. I should have thought you’ve only to see and to paint.”

“I don’t know how to see things.”

“Why do you keep talking in riddles? I can’t make head or tail of it,” interrupted her mother. “What do you mean by not knowing how to see? \bu’ve got eyes; see with them. If you can’t see here, you won’t learn how to abroad. Better tell us how you saw things yourself, prince.”

“Yes, that would be better,” added Adelaida. “The prince has learnt to see things abroad.”

“I don’t know. I simply got better abroad; I don’t know whether I learnt to see things. But I was almost all the time very happy.”

“Happy? You know how to be happy?” cried Aglaia. “Then how can you say you didn’t learn to see things? You might teach us, even.”

“Please do!” laughed Adelaida.

“I can’t teach anything,” Myshkin laughed too. “I spent almost all my time abroad in the same Swiss village. I rarely went on excursions, and only to a short distance. What could I teach you? At first I was simply not dull; I soon began to grow stronger. Then every day became precious to me, and more precious as time went on, so that I began to notice it. I used to go to bed very happy and get up happier still. But it would be hard to say why.”

“So you didn’t want to go away? \bu had no desire to go anywhere?” asked Alexandra.

“At the beginning, quite at the beginning, I had, and I used to become very restless. I was continually thinking of the life I would lead. I wanted to know what life had in store for me. I was particularly restless at some moments. You know there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was a small waterfall there; it fell from a height on the the mountain, such a tiny thread, almost perpendicular — foaming, white and splashing. Though it fell from a great height it didn’t seem so high; it was the third of a mile away, but it only looked about fifty paces. I used to like listening to the sound of it at night. At such moments I was sometimes overcome with great restlessness; sometimes too at midday I wandered on the mountains, and stood alone halfway up a mountain surrounded by great ancient resinous pine trees; on the crest of the rock an old mediaeval castle in ruins; our little village far, far below, scarcely visible; bright sunshine, blue sky, and the terrible stillness. At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours. I dreamed of some great town like Naples, full of palaces, noise, roar, life. And I dreamed of all sorts of things, indeed. But afterwards I fancied one might find a wealth of life even in prison.”

“That last edifying reflection I read when I was twelve in my’Reader,’” said Aglaia.

“That’s all philosophy,” observed Adelaida. “You are a philosopher perhaps, and — who knows? — perhaps, truly.”

“Perhaps vou are riqht,” smiled Mvshkin. “I am really a philosopher perhaps, and — who know? — perhaps I really have a notion of instructing. . . . That’s possible, truly.”

“And your philosophy is just like “Vfevlampia Nikolayevna’s,” Aglaia put in again. “She is the widow of a clerk, who comes to see us, rather like a poor relation. Cheapness is her one object in life — to live as cheaply as possible, and she talks of nothing but farthings. And yet she has money, you know; she is sly. That’s like your wealth of life in prison; perhaps, too, your four years of happiness in the country for which you bartered your Naples; and you seem to have gained by the bargain, though it was a petty one.”

“There may be two opinions about life in prison,” said Myshkin. “A man who spent twelve years in prison told me something. He was one of the invalids in the care of my professor. He had fits; he was sometimes restless, wept, and even tried to kill himself. His life in prison had been a very sad one, I assure you, but not at all petty. Yet he had no friends but a spider and a tree that grew under his window. . . . But I’d better tell you how I met another man last year. There was one very strange circumstance about it — strange because such things rarely happen. This man had once been led out with others to the scaffold and a sentence of death was read over him. He was to be shot for a political offence. Twenty moments later a reprieve was read to them, and they were condemned to another punishment instead. “Vfet the interval between those two sentences, twenty minutes or at least a quarter of an hour, he passed in the fullest conviction that he would die in a few minutes. I was always eager to listen when he recalled his sensations at that time, and I often questioned him about it. He remembered it all with extraordinary distinctness and used to say that he never would forget those minutes. Twenty paces from the scaffold, round which soldiers and other people were standing, there were three posts stuck in the ground, as there were several criminals. The three first were led up, bound to the posts, the death-dress (a long white gown) was put on, and white caps were pulled over their eyes so that they should not see the guns; then a company of several soldiers was drawn up against each post. My friend was the eighth on the list, so he had to be one of the third set.

The priest went to each in turn with a cross. He had only five minutes more to live. He told me that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite time, a vast wealth; he felt that he had so many lives left in those five minutes that there was no need yet to think of the last moment, so much so that he divided his time up. He set aside time to take leave of his comrades, two minutes for that; then he kept another two minutes to think for the last time; and then a minute to look about him for the last time. He remembered very well having divided his time like that. He was dying at twenty-seven, strong and healthy. As he took leave of his comrades, he remembered asking one of them a somewhat irrelevant question and being particularly interested in the answer. Then when he had said good-bye, the two minutes came that he had set apart tor thinking to himself. He knew beforehand what he would think about. He wanted to realise as quickly and clearly as possible how it could be that now he existed and was living and in three minutes he would be something — someone or something. But what? Where? He meant to decide all that in those two minutes! Not far off there was a church,

and the gilt roof was glittering in the bright sunshine. He remembered that he stared very persistently at that roof and the light flashing from it; he could not tear himself away from the light. It seemed to him that those rays were his new nature and that in three minutes he would somehow melt into them. . . . The uncertainty and feeling of aversion for that new thing which would be and was just coming was awful. But he said that nothing was so dreadful at that time as the continual thought, ‘What if I were not to die! What if I could go back to life — what eternity! And it would all be mine! I would turn every minute into an age; I would lose nothing, I would count every minute as it passed, I would not waste one!’ He said that this idea turned to such a fury at last that he longed to be shot quickly.”

Myshkin suddenly ceased speaking; every one expected him to go on and draw some conclusion.

“Have you finished?” asked Aglaia.

“What? Yes,” said Myshkin, rousing himself from a momentary dreaminess.

“But what did you tell that story for?”

“Oh . . . something in our talk reminded me of it. ..

“You are very disconnected,” observed Alexandra. “You probably meant to show, prince, that not one instant of life can be considered petty, and that sometimes five minutes is a precious treasure. That’s all very laudable, but let me ask, how did that friend who told you such horrors ... he was reprieved, so he was presented with that ‘eternity of life.’ What did he do with that wealth afterwards? Did he live counting each moment?”

“Oh no, he told me himself. I asked him about that too. He didn’t live like that at all; he wasted many, many minutes.”

“Well, there you have it tried. So it seems it’s impossible really to live ‘counting each moment.’ For some reason it’s impossible.”

“Yes, for some reason it is impossible,” repeated Myshkin. “I thought so myself . . . and yet I somehow can’t believe it...”

“Then you think you will live more wisely than any one?” said Aglaia.

“Yes, I have thought that too sometimes.”

“And you think so still?”

“Yes ... I think so still,” answered Myshkin, looking at Aglaia with the same gentle and even timid smile;

but he laughed again at once and looked gaily at her.

“That’s modest,” said Aglaia almost irritably.

“But how brave you are, you laugh! But I was so impressed by his story that I dreamt of it afterwards. I ... dreamt of that five minutes ...”

Once more he looked earnestly and searchingly from one to another of his listeners.

“You are not angry with me for anything?” he asked suddenly, seeming embarrassed, but looking them straight in the face.

“What for?” cried the three young ladies in surprise.

“Why, because I seem all the while to be preaching to you.”

They all laughed.

“If you are angry, don’t be,” he said. “I know for myself that I have lived less than others and that I know less of life than any one. Perhaps I talk very queerly at times ...”

And he was overwhelmed with confusion.

“If you’re happy, as you say, you must have lived more, not less, than others. Why do you make a pretence and apoloqise?” Aqlaia persisted naggingly. “And please don’t mind about preaching to us; it’s no sign of superiority on your part. With your quietism one might fill a hundred years of life with happiness. If one shows you an execution or if one holds out one’s finger to you, you will draw equally edifying reflections from both and be quite satisfied. Life is easy like that.”

“I can’t make out why you are so cross,” said Madame Epanchin, who had been watching the speakers’ faces for some time, “and I can’t make out what you are talking about either. Why a finger? What nonsense! The prince talks splendidly, only rather sadly. Why do you discourage him? When he began he was laughing, and now he is quite glum.”

“It’s all right, maman. But it’s a pity you haven’t seen an execution, prince, I should like to have asked you one question.”

“I have seen an execution,” answered Myshkin.

“You have?” cried Aglaia. “I ought to have guessed it. That’s the last straw! If you’ve seen that, how can you say that you were happy all the time? Didn’t I tell you the truth?”

“But do they have executions in your village?”

asked Adelaida.

“I saw it at Lyons. I visited the town with Schneider; he took me with him. We chanced upon it directly we arrived.”

“Well, did you like it? Was there much that was edifying and instructive?” asked Aglaia.

“I did not like it at all and I was rather ill afterwards, but I must confess I was riveted to the spot; I could not take my eyes off it.”

“I couldn’t have taken my eyes off it either,” said Aglaia.

“They don’t like women to look on at it; they even write about such women in the papers.”

“I suppose, if they consider that it’s not fit for women, they mean to infer (and so justify it) that it is fit for men. I congratulate them on their logic. And you think so too, no doubt.”

“Tell us about the execution,” Adelaida interrupted.

“I don’t feel at all inclined to now.” Myshkin was confused and almost frowned.

“You seem to grudge telling us about it,” Aglaia said tauntingly.

“No; but I’ve just been describing that execution.”

“Describing it to whom?”

“To your footman while I was waiting ...”

“To which footman?” he heard on all sides.

“The one who sits in the entry, with grey hair and a red face. I sat in the entry waiting to see Ivan Fyodorovitch.”

“That’s odd,” said the general’s wife.

“The prince is a democrat,” Aglaia rapped out. “Well, if you told Alexey about it, you can’t refuse us.”

“I simply must hear about it,” said Adelaida.

“One thought came into my mind just now,” Myshkin said to her, growing rather more eager again (he seemed easily roused to confiding eagerness), “when you asked me for a subject for a picture, to suggest that you should paint the face of the condemned man the moment before the blade falls, when he is still standing on the scaffold before he lies down on the plank.”

“The face? The face alone?” asked Adelaida. “That would be a strange subject. And what sort of picture would it make?”

“I don’t know. Why not?” Myshkin insisted warmly. “I saw a picture like that at Bale not long ago. I should like to tell you about it. . . . I’ll tell you about it some day.... It struck me very much.”

“You shall certainly tell us afterwards about the picture at Bale,” said Adelaida; “and now explain the picture of this execution. Can you tell me how you imagine it to yourself? How is one to draw the face? Is it to be only the face? What sort of a face is it?”

“It’s practically the minute before death,” Myshkin began with perfect readiness, carried away by his memories and to all appearance instantly forgetting everything else, “that moment when he has just mounted the ladder and has just stepped on to the scaffold. Then he glanced in my direction. I looked at his face and I understood it all. . . . But how can one describe it? I wish, I do wish that you or some one would paint it. It would be best if it were you. I thought at the time that a picture of it would do good. You know one has to imagine everything that has been before — everything, everything. He has been in prison awaiting execution for a week at least; he has been reckoning on the usual formalities, on the sentence being forwarded somewhere for signature and not coming back again for a week. But now by some chance this business was over sooner. At five o’clock in the morning he was asleep. It was at the end of October; at five o’clock it was still cold and dark. The superintendent of the prison came in quietly with the guard and touched him carefully on the shoulder. He sat up, leaning on his elbow, saw the light, asked ‘What’s the matter?”The execution is at ten o’clock.’ He was half awake and couldn’t take it in, and began objecting that the sentence wouldn’t be ready for a week. But when he was fully awake he left off protesting and was silent — so I was told. Then he said, ‘But it’s hard it should be so sudden. . . .’ And again he was silent and wouldn’t say anything more. The next three or four hours are spent on the usual things: seeing the priest, breakfast at which he is given wine, coffee and beef (isn’t that a mockery? Only think how cruel it is! Yet on the other hand, would you believe it, these innocent people act in good faith and are convinced that it’s humane); then the toilet (do you know what a criminal’s toilet is?); and at last they take him through the town to the scaffold. ... I think that he too must have thought he had an endless time left to live, while he was being driven through the town. He must have thought on the way, ‘There’s a long time left, three streets more. I shall pass through this one, then through the next, then there’s that one left where there’s a baker’s on the right. . . . It’ll be a long time before we get to the baker’s!’