The Idiot (49 page)

I ... I don’t understand this at all!’ cried Ivan Fyodorovich, in the highest degree of indignation.

‘Stop it, Kolya!’ the prince cried in an imploring voice. There were exclamations from every side.

‘Read it! Read it at all costs!’ snapped Lizaveta Prokofyevna, evidently restraining herself with extreme effort. ‘Prince! If it isn’t read - we shall quarrel.’

There was nothing for it. Kolya, flushed, red and excited, continued the reading in an agitated voice:

‘But while our precocious millionaire was, so to speak, in the empyrean, an altogether extraneous event took place. One fine morning a visitor called on him, with a calm and stern countenance and a polite but dignified and correct manner of speech, dressed modestly and decently, with an evident progressive tinge of thought, and in two words explained the reason for his visit: he was a well-known lawyer; a certain matter had been entrusted to him by a young man; he was calling in his name. This young man was no more nor less than the late P.’s son, though he bore a different name. The voluptuary P., having seduced in his youth a certain honest, poor girl, one of his house serfs, but brought up in European fashion (here the baronial rights of the now obsolete serf system were, of course, involved), and having noticed the unavoidable but imminent consequence of his liaison, quickly married her off to a man of good character who worked in trade and had even been employed in government service, and who had long loved this girl. At first he helped the newly weds; but soon her husband’s good character made it impossible for him to accept this help. Some time passed, and little by little P. managed to forget both about the girl and about the son he had had by her, and then, as we know, died without having made any arrangements. Meanwhile, his son, who had been born in lawful wedlock, but had grown up under another surname and had been completely adopted by the good character of his mother’s husband, who nevertheless died in his own good time, was left completely to his own resources and with an
ailing, suffering mother who could not walk, in one of the remote provinces; he himself earned money by respectable daily toil, giving lessons in merchants’ houses and thereby supporting himself, first at a gymnasium and then as an extra-mural student attending lectures that might be useful to him, with a future aim in mind. But how much can one earn from a Russian merchant for lessons at ten copecks an hour, and, moreover, with an ailing mother who could not walk, and who, at last, did almost nothing to make his situation any easier when she died in a remote province? Now the question is: what thoughts, in all fairness, must have gone through our scion’s mind? You, of course, reader, think that he said to himself: “All my life I have had the advantage of all P.’s gifts, for my upbringing, for governesses and treatment for idiocy tens of thousands went to Switzerland; and here I am now with millions, and the good character of P.’s son, not to blame in any way for the misdemeanours of his light-minded father who had forgotten about him, is being ruined in the giving of lessons. Everything that was spent on me should really have been spent on him. Those enormous sums of money that were wasted on me are not really mine. It was just a blind mistake of fortune; they really belonged to P.’s son. They ought to have been used to help him, not me - the result of a fantastic whim of the light-minded and forgetful P. If I were really decent, sensitive and fair, I ought to have given his son half of my inheritance; but as I am above all a prudent man and understand only too well that this is not a juridical matter, I will not give half of my millions. But at any rate it would be too base and shameless (the scion forgot that it would not be prudent, either) on my part if I do not now return to him those tens of thousands that were spent on my idiocy by P. That is only what conscience and justice demand! For what would have happened to me had P. not taken me into his tutelage and concerned himself with his son instead?

‘But no, gentlemen! Our scions do not think like that. No matter how the young man’s lawyer, who had taken it upon himself to act for him solely out of friendship and almost against his will, almost by force, presented it to him, no matter how much he pointed out to him the obligations of honour, decency, justice, and even plain prudence, the Swiss protégé remained adamant, and what of it? All that would be nothing, but what was really unforgivable, and not excusable by any interesting illness, was that this millionaire who had only just left his professor’s gaiters could not realize even then that the noble character of the young man, who was wearing himself out giving lessons, was not asking him for charity and help, but for his rightful due, though not in legal terms, and was not even asking - his friends were merely interceding on his behalf. With a majestic air, and enraptured by the opportunity now afforded to him to crush people with impunity because of his millions, our scion took out a fifty-rouble note and sent it to the decent young man in the form of an insolent handout. You don’t believe it, gentlemen? You are revolted, you are insulted, you expostulate in a cry of indignation; but he did so, all the s
ame! Of course, the money was at once returned to him, thrown back in his face, so to speak. How then is this matter to be resolved? It is not a legal matter, there remains only public opinion! In communicating this anecdote to the public, we vouch for its trustworthiness. It is said that one of our best-known humorists let slip a delightful epigram in this connection, one that deserves to take its place not only in provincial sketches of our manners, but also in metropolitan ones:

When Kolya had finished, he quickly handed the paper to the prince and, without saying a word, rushed into a corner and hid in it, covering his face with his hands. He felt intolerably ashamed, and his childish impressionability, which had not yet managed to accustom itself to filth, was revolted beyond all bounds. It seemed to him that something extraordinary had happened, destroying everything at once, and he himself had really been the cause of it, by the mere fact of having read this aloud.

But everyone, it seemed, had felt something of this kind.

The girls felt very awkward and ashamed. Lizaveta Prokofyevna was restraining extreme anger within herself and also, perhaps, bitterly regretting she had got involved in the matter; now she said nothing. With the prince there took place the same thing that often happens to excessively shy people in such cases: so ashamed by the actions of others, so ashamed for his visitors was he, that at that initial moment he was afraid even to look at them. Ptitsyn, Varya, Ganya, even Lebedev - they all looked somewhat embarrassed. Strangest of all, Ippolit and ‘Pavlishchev’s son’ also seemed to be astonished by something; Lebedev’s nephew was also evidently displeased. The boxer alone sat in complete calm, twirling his moustache, with a solemn air, his eyes lowered, though not with embarrassment but, on the contrary, it appeared, from well-bred modesty, as it were, and all-too-obvious triumph. From all the signs it was clear that he had enjoyed the article greatly.

‘The devil knows what this is,’ Ivan Fyodorovich growled in an undertone. ‘It’s as though fifty lackeys had got together and written it.’

‘But pe-ermit me to inquire, dear sir, how you can be so rude as to offend people by such hypotheses?’

‘This, this, this for a man with any decency ... you will agree yourself, general, that if a man with any decency ... it’s really offen
sive!’ growled the boxer, also suddenly rousing himself for some reason, twirling his moustache and jerking his shoulders and torso.

‘In the first place, I am not your “dear sir”, and in the second, I do not intend to give you any explanation,’ the dreadfully flushed Ivan Fyodorovich answered sharply, rose from his seat and, without saying a word, walked towards the exit from the veranda and stood on the top step with his back to the public - to the very great indignation of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who had no thought of moving from her seat even now.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, permit me, at last, to speak,’ the prince exclaimed in melancholy and agitation. ‘And do me a favour, and let us speak in such a way that we can understand one another. I don’t mind the article, gentlemen, let it be; except that, gentlemen, everything that is printed in the article is untrue: I say that because you know it yourselves; it’s even shameful. So I will be truly astonished if any of you has written it.’

‘I knew nothing about this article until this very moment,’ declared Ippolit. ‘I don’t approve of it.’

‘Although I knew it had been written, I ... also would not have advised it to be printed, because it’s premature,’ added Lebedev’s nephew.

‘I knew but I have the right ... I ...’ muttered ‘Pavlishchev’s son’.

‘What? You wrote all that yourself?’ asked the prince, looking at Burdovsky with curiosity. ‘It cannot be!’

‘One could, however, refuse to recognize your right to ask such questions,’ Lebedev’s nephew intervened.

‘But you see, I was only surprised that Mr Burdovsky had succeeded in ... but ... I mean that if you’ve already aired the article in public, then why did you take such offence when I began to talk about it in the presence of my friends?’

‘At last!’ Lizaveta Prokofyevna muttered in indignation.

‘And Prince, you’ve even forgotten to mention,’ Lebedev suddenly slipped between the chairs, unable to restrain himself, and almost in a fever, ‘you’ve even forgotten to mention that it was only because of your good will and the unexampled kindness of your heart that you received them and listened to them, and that they have no right to make such a demand, all the more so since you’ve already entrusted this matter to Gavrila Ardalionovich, and that it was also because of your exceeding kindness that you acted thus, and that now, most illustrious Prince, remaining among your chosen friends, you cannot sacrifice such company for these gentlemen, sir, and could, so to speak, show all these gentlemen the door this very moment, so that I, in the capacity of master of the house, would even with exceeding pleasure, sir ...’

‘Quite right!’ General Ivolgin suddenly thundered from the depths of the room.

‘Enough, Lebedev, enough, enough ...’ the prince began, but a veritable explosion of indignation covered his words.

‘No, I’m sorry, Prince, I’m sorry, now that really is enough!’ Lebedev’s nephew almost shouted everyone down. ‘Now the matter must be set forth clearly and firmly, because it is evidently not understood. There were legal quibbles involved, and on the basis of these quibbles we are threatened with being kicked out of the house! And do you really consider us such fools, Prince, that we ourselves don’t realize the extent to which our case is not a legal one, and that if it were to be examined legally we have no right to demand even one single rouble from you, by law? But we realize precisely that if there is no legal right here, there’s a human right, a natural one; the right of common sense and the voice of conscience, and even though this right of ours is not written down in any rotten human code of law, a decent and honest man, a right-thinking man, that’s to say, is obliged to remain a decent and honest man even on those points that aren’t written down in the law books. That is why we have come here, unafraid of being thrown out of the house (as you threatened just now) precisely because we
do not ask,
but
demand,
and as for the impropriety of visiting at such a late hour (though we didn’t arrive at a late hour, but you made us wait in the lackeys’ hall), that is why, I say, we came, not at all afraid, because we supposed you to be a man of common sense, that’s to say, someone with honour and conscience. Yes, that is true, we entered not meekly, like hangers-on and seekers, but with our heads raised, like free men, and not with any plea, but with a free and proud demand (you hear, not with a plea, but with a demand, mark that!). With dignity and bluntness we put before you a question: in the case of Burdovsky, do you consider yourself right or wrong? Do you admit that you were shown much favour and even perhaps saved from death by Pavlishchev? If you admit it (which is obvious), then do you intend, or do you consider it just, in all conscience, that when you have received your millions, you should reward Pavlishchev’s needy son, even though he bears the name Burdovsky? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, that is, in other words, if you possess what you in your language call honour and conscience, and what we, with greater precision, designate with the name “common sense”, then give us satisfaction and the matter is at an end. If you do so, it will be without pleas or gratitude on our part, do not expect them from us, for you will be acting not for our sakes but for the sake of justice. If you are unwilling to give us satisfaction, that’s to say, if your reply is no, then we shall leave at once, and the case is closed; but we shall say to your face, in front of all your witnesses, that you are a man of coarse intelligence and low development; that in future you will not dare to call yourself a man of honour and conscience, and that you have no right, that you want to purchase that right too cheaply. I have finished. I have put the question. Now turn us out, if you dare to. You can do that, you have the advantage of numbers. But remember that we demand and do not beg. Demand and do not beg!’

Lebedev’s nephew, who was very flushed, stopped.

‘We demand, we demand, we demand, and do not beg! ...’ Burdovsky began to mouth, blushing red as a lobster.

After Lebedev’s nephew’s words a certain general movement ensued, and a murmur of protest even arose, though all in the assembled company were evidently trying to avoid becoming involved in the affair, except perhaps for Lebedev, who was as in a kind of fever. (It was strange: Lebedev, standing near the prince, was apparently now enjoying a sense of family pride after his nephew’s speech; at any rate, he was surveying the public with an odd air of satisfaction.)