PART II - V

The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by Eva Martin

PART II - V, THE IDIOT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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IT was late now, nearly half-past two, and the prince did not
find General Epanchin at home. He left a card, and determined to
look up Colia, who had a room at a small hotel near. Colia was
not in, but he was informed that he might be back shortly, and
had left word that if he were not in by half-past three it was to
be understood that he had gone to Pavlofsk to General Epanchin's,
and would dine there. The prince decided to wait till half-past
three, and ordered some dinner. At half-past three there was no
sign of Colia. The prince waited until four o'clock, and then
strolled off mechanically wherever his feet should carry him.

In early summer there are often magnificent days in St.
Petersburg--bright, hot and still. This happened to be such a day.

For some time the prince wandered about without aim or object. He
did not know the town well. He stopped to look about him on
bridges, at street corners. He entered a confectioner's shop to
rest, once. He was in a state of nervous excitement and
perturbation; he noticed nothing and no one; and he felt a
craving for solitude, to be alone with his thoughts and his
emotions, and to give himself up to them passively. He loathed
the idea of trying to answer the questions that would rise up in
his heart and mind. "I am not to blame for all this," he thought
to himself, half unconsciously.

Towards six o'clock he found himself at the station of the
Tsarsko-Selski railway.

He was tired of solitude now; a new rush of feeling took hold of
him, and a flood of light chased away the gloom, for a moment,
from his soul. He took a ticket to Pavlofsk, and determined to
get there as fast as he could, but something stopped him; a
reality, and not a fantasy, as he was inclined to think it. He
was about to take his place in a carriage, when he suddenly threw
away his ticket and came out again, disturbed and thoughtful. A
few moments later, in the street, he recalled something that had
bothered him all the afternoon. He caught himself engaged in a
strange occupation which he now recollected he had taken up at
odd moments for the last few hours--it was looking about all
around him for something, he did not know what. He had forgotten
it for a while, half an hour or so, and now, suddenly, the uneasy
search had recommenced.

But he had hardly become conscious of this curious phenomenon,
when another recollection suddenly swam through his brain,
interesting him for the moment, exceedingly. He remembered that
the last time he had been engaged in looking around him for the
unknown something, he was standing before a cutler's shop, in the
window of which were exposed certain goods for sale. He was
extremely anxious now to discover whether this shop and these
goods really existed, or whether the whole thing had been a
hallucination.

He felt in a very curious condition today, a condition similar
to that which had preceded his fits in bygone years.

He remembered that at such times he had been particularly
absentminded, and could not discriminate between objects and
persons unless he concentrated special attention upon them.

He remembered seeing something in the window marked at sixty
copecks. Therefore, if the shop existed and if this object were
really in the window, it would prove that he had been able to
concentrate his attention on this article at a moment when, as a
general rule, his absence of mind would have been too great to
admit of any such concentration; in fact, very shortly after he
had left the railway station in such a state of agitation.

So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and his heart
beat with intolerable impatience. Ah! here was the very shop, and
there was the article marked 60 cop." "Of course, it's sixty
copecks," he thought, and certainly worth no more." This idea
amused him and he laughed.

But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly oppressed.
He remembered clearly that just here, standing before this
window, he had suddenly turned round, just as earlier in the day
he had turned and found the dreadful eyes of Rogojin fixed upon
him. Convinced, therefore, that in this respect at all events he
had been under no delusion, he left the shop and went on.

This must be thought out; it was clear that there had been no
hallucination at the station then, either; something had actually
happened to him, on both occasions; there was no doubt of it. But
again a loathing for all mental exertion overmastered him; he
would not think it out now, he would put it off and think of
something else. He remembered that during his epileptic fits, or
rather immediately preceding them, he had always experienced a
moment or two when his whole heart, and mind, and body seemed to
wake up to vigour and light; when he became filled with joy and
hope, and all his anxieties seemed to be swept away for ever;
these moments were but presentiments, as it were, of the one
final second (it was never more than a second) in which the fit
came upon him. That second, of course, was inexpressible. When
his attack was over, and the prince reflected on his symptoms, he
used to say to himself: "These moments, short as they are, when I
feel such extreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more
of life than at other times, are due only to the disease--to the
sudden rupture of normal conditions. Therefore they are not
really a higher kind of life, but a lower." This reasoning,
however, seemed to end in a paradox, and lead to the further
consideration:--"What matter though it be only disease, an
abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and analyze the
moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in the
highest degree--an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with
unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest
life?" Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible
to Muishkin, though he knew that it was but a feeble expression
of his sensations.

That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal
moments, that they really contained the highest synthesis of
life, he could not doubt, nor even admit the possibility of
doubt. He felt that they were not analogous to the fantastic and
unreal dreams due to intoxication by hashish, opium or wine. Of
that he could judge, when the attack was over. These instants
were characterized--to define it in a word--by an intense
quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last
conscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself,
with full understanding of his words: "I would give my whole life
for this one instant," then doubtless to him it really was worth
a lifetime. For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his
argument of little worth; he saw only too clearly that the result
of these ecstatic moments was stupefaction, mental darkness,
idiocy. No argument was possible on that point. His conclusion,
his estimate of the "moment," doubtless contained some error, yet
the reality of the sensation troubled him. What's more unanswerable
than a fact? And this fact had occurred. The prince had confessed
unreservedly to himself that the feeling of intense beatitude in
that crowded moment made the moment worth a lifetime. "I feel
then," he said one day to Rogojin in Moscow, "I feel then as if I
understood those amazing words--'There shall be no more time.'"
And he added with a smile: "No doubt the epileptic Mahomet refers
to that same moment when he says that he visited all the
dwellings of Allah, in less time than was needed to empty his
pitcher of water." Yes, he had often met Rogojin in Moscow, and
many were the subjects they discussed. "He told me I had been a
brother to him," thought the prince. "He said so today, for the
first time."

He was sitting in the Summer Garden on a seat under a tree, and
his mind dwelt on the matter. It was about seven o'clock, and the
place was empty. The stifling atmosphere foretold a storm, and
the prince felt a certain charm in the contemplative mood which
possessed him. He found pleasure, too, in gazing at the exterior
objects around him. All the time he was trying to forget some
thing, to escape from some idea that haunted him; but melancholy
thoughts came back, though he would so willingly have escaped
from them. He remembered suddenly how he had been talking to the
waiter, while he dined, about a recently committed murder which
the whole town was discussing, and as he thought of it something
strange came over him. He was seized all at once by a violent
desire, almost a temptation, against which he strove in vain.

He jumped up and walked off as fast as he could towards the
"Petersburg Side." [One of the quarters of St. Petersburg.] He
had asked someone, a little while before, to show him which was
the Petersburg Side, on the banks of the Neva. He had not gone
there, however; and he knew very well that it was of no use to go
now, for he would certainly not find Lebedeff's relation at home.
He had the address, but she must certainly have gone to Pavlofsk,
or Colia would have let him know. If he were to go now, it would
merely be out of curiosity, but a sudden, new idea had come into
his head.

However, it was something to move on and know where he was going.
A minute later he was still moving on, but without knowing
anything. He could no longer think out his new idea. He tried to
take an interest in all he saw; in the sky, in the Neva. He spoke
to some children he met. He felt his epileptic condition becoming
more and more developed. The evening was very close; thunder was
heard some way off.

The prince was haunted all that day by the face of Lebedeff's
nephew whom he had seen for the first time that morning, just as
one is haunted at times by some persistent musical refrain. By a
curious association of ideas, the young man always appeared as
the murderer of whom Lebedeff had spoken when introducing him to
Muishkin. Yes, he had read something about the murder, and that
quite recently. Since he came to Russia, he had heard many
stories of this kind, and was interested in them. His
conversation with the waiter, an hour ago, chanced to be on the
subject of this murder of the Zemarins, and the latter had agreed
with him about it. He thought of the waiter again, and decided
that he was no fool, but a steady, intelligent man: though, said
he to himself, "God knows what he may really be; in a country
with which one is unfamiliar it is difficult to understand the
people one meets." He was beginning to have a passionate faith in
the Russian soul, however, and what discoveries he had made in
the last six months, what unexpected discoveries! But every soul
is a mystery, and depths of mystery lie in the soul of a Russian.
He had been intimate with Rogojin, for example, and a brotherly
friendship had sprung up between them--yet did he really know
him? What chaos and ugliness fills the world at times! What a
self-satisfied rascal is that nephew of Lebedeff's! "But what am
I thinking," continued the prince to himself. "Can he really have
committed that crime? Did he kill those six persons? I seem to be
confusing things ... how strange it all is.... My head goes
round... And Lebedeff's daughter--how sympathetic and
charming her face was as she held the child in her arms! What an
innocent look and child-like laugh she had! It is curious that I
had forgotten her until now. I expect Lebedeff adores her--and I
really believe, when I think of it, that as sure as two and two
make four, he is fond of that nephew, too!"

Well, why should he judge them so hastily! Could he really say
what they were, after one short visit? Even Lebedeff seemed an
enigma today. Did he expect to find him so? He had never seen him
like that before. Lebedeff and the Comtesse du Barry! Good
Heavens! If Rogojin should really kill someone, it would not, at
any rate, be such a senseless, chaotic affair. A knife made to a
special pattern, and six people killed in a kind of delirium. But
Rogojin also had a knife made to a special pattern. Can it be that
Rogojin wishes to murder anyone? The prince began to tremble
violently. "It is a crime on my part to imagine anything so base,
with such cynical frankness." His face reddened with shame at the
thought; and then there came across him as in a flash the memory
of the incidents at the Pavlofsk station, and at the other
station in the morning; and the question asked him by Rogojin
about THE EYES and Rogojin's cross, that he was even now wearing;
and the benediction of Rogojin's mother; and his embrace on the
darkened staircase--that last supreme renunciation--and now, to
find himself full of this new "idea," staring into shop-windows,
and looking round for things--how base he was!

Despair overmastered his soul; he would not go on, he would go
back to his hotel; he even turned and went the other way; but a
moment after he changed his mind again and went on in the old
direction.

Why, here he was on the Petersburg Side already, quite close to
the house! Where was his "idea"? He was marching along without it
now. Yes, his malady was coming back, it was clear enough; all
this gloom and heaviness, all these "ideas," were nothing more
nor less than a fit coming on; perhaps he would have a fit this
very day.

But just now all the gloom and darkness had fled, his heart felt
full of joy and hope, there was no such thing as doubt. And yes,
he hadn't seen her for so long; he really must see her. He wished
he could meet Rogojin; he would take his hand, and they would go
to her together. His heart was pure, he was no rival of Parfen's.
Tomorrow, he would go and tell him that he had seen her. Why, he
had only come for the sole purpose of seeing her, all the way
from Moscow! Perhaps she might be here still, who knows? She
might not have gone away to Pavlofsk yet.

Yes, all this must be put straight and above-board, there must be
no more passionate renouncements, such as Rogojin's. It must all
be clear as day. Cannot Rogojin's soul bear the light? He said he
did not love her with sympathy and pity; true, he added that
"your pity is greater than my love," but he was not quite fair on
himself there. Kin! Rogojin reading a book--wasn't that sympathy
beginning? Did it not show that he comprehended his relations
with her? And his story of waiting day and night for her
forgiveness? That didn't look quite like passion alone.

And as to her face, could it inspire nothing but passion? Could
her face inspire passion at all now? Oh, it inspired suffering,
grief, overwhelming grief of the soul! A poignant, agonizing
memory swept over the prince's heart.

Yes, agonizing. He remembered how he had suffered that first day
when he thought he observed in her the symptoms of madness. He
had almost fallen into despair. How could he have lost his hold
upon her when she ran away from him to Rogojin? He ought to have
run after her himself, rather than wait for news as he had done.
Can Rogojin have failed to observe, up to now, that she is mad?
Rogojin attributes her strangeness to other causes, to passion!
What insane jealousy! What was it he had hinted at in that
suggestion of his? The prince suddenly blushed, and shuddered to
his very heart.

But why recall all this? There was insanity on both sides. For
him, the prince, to love this woman with passion, was
unthinkable. It would be cruel and inhuman. Yes. Rogojin is not
fair to himself; he has a large heart; he has aptitude for
sympathy. When he learns the truth, and finds what a pitiable
being is this injured, broken, half-insane creature, he will
forgive her all the torment she has caused him. He will become
her slave, her brother, her friend. Compassion will teach even
Rogojin, it will show him how to reason. Compassion is the chief
law of human existence. Oh, how guilty he felt towards Rogojin!
And, for a few warm, hasty words spoken in Moscow, Parfen had
called him "brother," while he--but no, this was delirium! It
would all come right! That gloomy Parfen had implied that his
faith was waning; he must suffer dreadfully. He said he liked to
look at that picture; it was not that he liked it, but he felt
the need of looking at it. Rogojin was not merely a passionate
soul; he was a fighter. He was fighting for the restoration of
his dying faith. He must have something to hold on to and
believe, and someone to believe in. What a strange picture that
of Holbein's is! Why, this is the street, and here's the house,
No. 16.

The prince rang the bell, and asked for Nastasia Philipovna. The
lady of the house came out, and stated that Nastasia had gone to
stay with Daria Alexeyevna at Pavlofsk, and might be there some
days.

Madame Filisoff was a little woman of forty, with a cunning face,
and crafty, piercing eyes. When, with an air of mystery, she
asked her visitor's name, he refused at first to answer, but in a
moment he changed his mind, and left strict instructions that it
should be given to Nastasia Philipovna. The urgency of his
request seemed to impress Madame Filisoff, and she put on a
knowing expression, as if to say, "You need not be afraid, I
quite understand." The prince's name evidently was a great
surprise to her. He stood and looked absently at her for a
moment, then turned, and took the road back to his hotel. But he
went away not as he came. A great change had suddenly come over
him. He went blindly forward; his knees shook under him; he was
tormented by "ideas"; his lips were blue, and trembled with a
feeble, meaningless smile. His demon was upon him once more.

What had happened to him? Why was his brow clammy with drops of
moisture, his knees shaking beneath him, and his soul oppressed
with a cold gloom? Was it because he had just seen these dreadful
eyes again? Why, he had left the Summer Garden on purpose to see
them; that had been his "idea." He had wished to assure himself
that he would see them once more at that house. Then why was he
so overwhelmed now, having seen them as he expected? just as
though he had not expected to see them! Yes, they were the very
same eyes; and no doubt about it. The same that he had seen in
the crowd that morning at the station, the same that he had
surprised in Rogojin's rooms some hours later, when the latter
had replied to his inquiry with a sneering laugh, "Well, whose
eyes were they?" Then for the third time they had appeared just
as he was getting into the train on his way to see Aglaya. He had
had a strong impulse to rush up to Rogojin, and repeat his words
of the morning "Whose eyes are they?" Instead he had fled from
the station, and knew nothing more, until he found himself gazing
into the window of a cutler's shop, and wondering if a knife with
a staghorn handle would cost more than sixty copecks. And as the
prince sat dreaming in the Summer Garden under a lime-tree, a
wicked demon had come and whispered in his car: "Rogojin has been
spying upon you and watching you all the morning in a frenzy of
desperation. When he finds you have not gone to Pavlofsk--a
terrible discovery for him--he will surely go at once to that
house in Petersburg Side, and watch for you there, although only
this morning you gave your word of honour not to see HER, and
swore that you had not come to Petersburg for that purpose." And
thereupon the prince had hastened off to that house, and what was
there in the fact that he had met Rogojin there? He had only seen
a wretched, suffering creature, whose state of mind was gloomy
and miserable, but most comprehensible. In the morning Rogojin
had seemed to be trying to keep out of the way; but at the
station this afternoon he had stood out, he had concealed
himself, indeed, less than the prince himself; at the house, now,
he had stood fifty yards off on the other side of the road, with
folded hands, watching, plainly in view and apparently desirous
of being seen. He had stood there like an accuser, like a judge,
not like a--a what?

And why had not the prince approached him and spoken to him,
instead of turning away and pretending he had seen nothing,
although their eyes met? (Yes, their eyes had met, and they had
looked at each other.) Why, he had himself wished to take Rogojin
by the hand and go in together, he had himself determined to go
to him on the morrow and tell him that he had seen her, he had
repudiated the demon as he walked to the house, and his heart had
been full of joy.

Was there something in the whole aspect of the man, today,
sufficient to justify the prince's terror, and the awful
suspicions of his demon? Something seen, but indescribable, which
filled him with dreadful presentiments? Yes, he was convinced of
it--convinced of what? (Oh, how mean and hideous of him to feel
this conviction, this presentiment! How he blamed himself for
it!) "Speak if you dare, and tell me, what is the presentiment?"
he repeated to himself, over and over again. "Put it into words,
speak out clearly and distinctly. Oh, miserable coward that I
am!" The prince flushed with shame for his own baseness. "How
shall I ever look this man in the face again? My God, what a day!
And what a nightmare, what a nightmare!"

There was a moment, during this long, wretched walk back from the
Petersburg Side, when the prince felt an irresistible desire to
go straight to Rogojin's, wait for him, embrace him with tears
of shame and contrition, and tell him of his distrust, and finish
with it--once for all.

But here he was back at his hotel.

How often during the day he had thought of this hotel with
loathing--its corridor, its rooms, its stairs. How he had dreaded
coming back to it, for some reason.

"What a regular old woman I am today," he had said to himself
each time, with annoyance. "I believe in every foolish
presentiment that comes into my head."

He stopped for a moment at the door; a great flush of shame came
over him. "I am a coward, a wretched coward," he said, and moved
forward again; but once more he paused.

Among all the incidents of the day, one recurred to his mind to
the exclusion of the rest; although now that his self-control was
regained, and he was no longer under the influence of a
nightmare, he was able to think of it calmly. It concerned the
knife on Rogojin's table. "Why should not Rogojin have as many
knives on his table as he chooses?" thought the prince, wondering
at his suspicions, as he had done when he found himself looking
into the cutler's window. "What could it have to do with me?" he
said to himself again, and stopped as if rooted to the ground by
a kind of paralysis of limb such as attacks people under the
stress of some humiliating recollection.

The doorway was dark and gloomy at any time; but just at this
moment it was rendered doubly so by the fact that the thunder-
storm had just broken, and the rain was coming down in torrents.

And in the semi-darkness the prince distinguished a man standing
close to the stairs, apparently waiting.

There was nothing particularly significant in the fact that a man
was standing back in the doorway, waiting to come out or go
upstairs; but the prince felt an irresistible conviction that he
knew this man, and that it was Rogojin. The man moved on up the
stairs; a moment later the prince passed up them, too. His heart
froze within him. "In a minute or two I shall know all," he
thought.

The staircase led to the first and second corridors of the hotel,
along which lay the guests' bedrooms. As is often the case in
Petersburg houses, it was narrow and very dark, and turned around
a massive stone column.

On the first landing, which was as small as the necessary turn of
the stairs allowed, there was a niche in the column, about half a
yard wide, and in this niche the prince felt convinced that a man
stood concealed. He thought he could distinguish a figure
standing there. He would pass by quickly and not look. He took a
step forward, but could bear the uncertainty no longer and turned
his head.

The eyes--the same two eyes--met his! The man concealed in the
niche had also taken a step forward. For one second they stood
face to face.

Suddenly the prince caught the man by the shoulder and twisted
him round towards the light, so that he might see his face more
clearly.

Rogojin's eyes flashed, and a smile of insanity distorted his
countenance. His right hand was raised, and something glittered
in it. The prince did not think of trying to stop it. All he
could remember afterwards was that he seemed to have called out:

"Parfen! I won't believe it."

Next moment something appeared to burst open before him: a
wonderful inner light illuminated his soul. This lasted perhaps
half a second, yet he distinctly remembered hearing the beginning
of the wail, the strange, dreadful wail, which burst from his
lips of its own accord, and which no effort of will on his part
could suppress.

Next moment he was absolutely unconscious; black darkness blotted
out everything.

He had fallen in an epileptic fit.

.. . . . . . .

As is well known, these fits occur instantaneously. The face,
especially the eyes, become terribly disfigured, convulsions
seize the limbs, a terrible cry breaks from the sufferer, a wail
from which everything human seems to be blotted out, so that it
is impossible to believe that the man who has just fallen is the
same who emitted the dreadful cry. It seems more as though some
other being, inside the stricken one, had cried. Many people have
borne witness to this impression; and many cannot behold an
epileptic fit without a feeling of mysterious terror and dread.

Such a feeling, we must suppose, overtook Rogojin at this moment,
and saved the prince's life. Not knowing that it was a fit, and
seeing his victim disappear head foremost into the darkness,
hearing his head strike the stone steps below with a crash,
Rogojin rushed downstairs, skirting the body, and flung himself
headlong out of the hotel, like a raving madman.

The prince's body slipped convulsively down the steps till it
rested at the bottom. Very soon, in five minutes or so, he was
discovered, and a crowd collected around him.

A pool of blood on the steps near his head gave rise to grave
fears. Was it a case of accident, or had there been a crime? It
was, however, soon recognized as a case of epilepsy, and
identification and proper measures for restoration followed one
another, owing to a fortunate circumstance. Colia Ivolgin had
come back to his hotel about seven o'clock, owing to a sudden
impulse which made him refuse to dine at the Epanchins', and,
finding a note from the prince awaiting him, had sped away to the
latter's address. Arrived there, he ordered a cup of tea and sat
sipping it in the coffee-room. While there he heard excited
whispers of someone just found at the bottom of the stairs in a
fit; upon which he had hurried to the spot, with a presentiment
of evil, and at once recognized the prince.

The sufferer was immediately taken to his room, and though he
partially regained consciousness, he lay long in a semi-dazed
condition.

The doctor stated that there was no danger to be apprehended from
the wound on the head, and as soon as the prince could understand
what was going on around him, Colia hired a carriage and took him
away to Lebedeff's. There he was received with much cordiality,
and the departure to the country was hastened on his account.
Three days later they were all at Pavlofsk.