Dostoevsky

I

“And now I will tell two anecdotes to wind up my account of the ‘idea,’ that it may not hinder my story again.

“In July, two months before I came to St. Petersburg, when my time was all my own, Marie Ivanovna asked me to go to see an old maiden lady who was staying in the Troitsky suburb to take her a message of no interest for my story. Returning the same day, I noticed in the railway carriage an unattractive-looking young man, not very poorly though grubbily dressed, with a pimply face and a muddy dark complexion. He distinguished himself by getting out at every station, big and little, to have a drink. Towards the end of the journey he was surrounded by a merry throng of very low companions. One merchant, also a little drunk, was particularly delighted at the young man’s power of drinking incessantly without becoming drunk. Another person, who was awfully pleased with him, was a very stupid fellow who talked a great deal. He was wearing European dress and smelt most unsavoury—he was a footman, as I found out afterwards: this fellow got quite friendly with the young man who was drinking and, every time the train stopped, roused him with the invitation, ‘It’s time for a drop of vodka,’ and they got out with their arms round each other. The young man who drank scarcely said a word, but yet more and more companions joined him. He only listened to their chatter, grinning incessantly with a drivelling snigger, and only from time to time, always unexpectedly, brought out a sound something like ‘Ture-lure-loo!’ while he put his finger up to his nose in a very comical way. This diverted the merchant, and the footman and all of them, and they burst into a very loud and free and easy laughter. It is sometimes impossible to understand why people laugh. I joined them, too, and I don’t know why, the young man attracted me too, perhaps by his very open disregard for the generally accepted conventions and proprieties. I didn’t see, in fact, that he was simply a fool. Anyway, I got on to friendly terms with him at once, and as I got out of the train, I learnt from him that he would be in the Tverskoy Boulevard between eight and nine. It appeared that he had been a student. I went to the boulevard, and this was the diversion he taught me. We walked together up and down the boulevards, and, a little later, as soon as we noticed a respectable woman walking along the street, if there were no one else near, we fastened upon her. Without uttering a word we walked one on each side of her, and with an air of perfect composure, as though we didn’t see her, began to carry on a most unseemly conversation. We called things by their names, preserving unruffled countenances as though it were the natural thing to do; we entered into such subtleties in our description of all sorts of filth and obscenity as the nastiest mind of the lewdest debauchee could scarcely have conceived. (I had, of course, acquired all this knowledge at the boarding school, before I went to the Grammar School, though I knew only words, nothing of the reality.) The woman was dreadfully frightened, and made haste to try and get away, but we quickened our pace too, and went on in the same way. Our victim, of course, could do nothing; it would be no use to cry out, there were no spectators; besides, it would be a strange thing to complain of. I repeated this diversion for eight days. I can’t think how I can have liked doing it; although, indeed, I didn’t like doing it—I simply did it. At first I thought it original, as something outside everyday conventions and conditions, besides, I couldn’t endure women. I once told the student that in his Confessions Jean Jacques Rousseau describes how, as a youth, he used to behave indecently to women. The student responded with his ‘Ture-lure-loo!’ I noticed that he was extraordinarily ignorant, and that his interests were astonishingly limited. There was no trace of any latent idea such as I hoped to find in him. Instead of originality, I found nothing but a wearisome monotony. I disliked him more and more. The end came quite unexpectedly. One night when it was quite dark, we persecuted a girl who was quickly and timidly walking along the boulevard. She was very young, perhaps sixteen, or even less, very tidily and modestly dressed, possibly a working girl hurrying home to an old widowed mother with other children; there is no need to be sentimental though. The girl listened for some time, and hurried fast as she could with her head bowed and her veil drawn over her face, frightened and trembling. But suddenly she stood still, threw back her veil, showing, as far as I remember, a thin but pretty face, and cried with flashing eyes:

“‘Oh, what scoundrels you are!’

“She may have been on the verge of tears, but something different happened. Lifting her thin little hand, she gave the student a slap in the face which could not have been more dexterously delivered. It did come with a smack! He would have rushed at her, swearing, but I held him back, and the girl had time to run away. We began quarrelling at once. I told him all that I had been saving up against him in those days. I told him that he was the paltriest commonplace fool without the trace of an idea. He swore at me.... (I had once explained to him that I was illegitimate.) Then we spat at each other, and I’ve never seen him since. I felt frightfully vexed with myself that evening, but not so much the next day, and by the day after that had quite forgotten it. And though I sometimes thought of the girl again, it was only casually, for a moment. It was only after I’d been a fortnight in Petersburg I suddenly recalled the whole scene. I remembered it, and I was suddenly so ashamed that tears of shame literally ran down my cheeks. I was wretched the whole evening, and all that night, and I am rather miserable about it now. I could not understand at first how I could have sunk to such a depth of degradation, and still less how I could have forgotten it without feeling shame or remorse. It is only now that I understand what was at the root of it; it was all due to my ‘idea.’... The ‘idea’ comforted me in disgrace and insignificance. But all the nasty things I did took refuge, as it were, under the ‘idea.’ It, so to speak, smoothed over everything, but it also put a mist before my eyes, and such a misty understanding of things and events may, of course, be a great hindrance to the ‘idea’ itself, to say nothing of other things.

“Now for another anecdote.

“On the 1st of April last year, Marie Ivanovna was keeping her name day; some visitors, though only a few, came for the evening. Suddenly Agrafena rushed in, out of breath, announcing that a baby was crying in the passage before the kitchen, and that she didn’t know what to do. We were all excited at the news. We went out and saw a bark basket, and in the basket a three- or four-week-old child, crying. I picked up the basket and took it into the kitchen. Then I immediately found a folded note:

“‘Gracious benefactors, show kind charity to the girl christened Arina, and we will join with her to send our tears to the Heavenly Throne for you for ever, and congratulate you on your name day.

“‘Persons unknown to you.’

“Then Nikolay Semyonovitch, for whom I have such a respect, greatly disappointed me. He drew a very long face, and decided to send the child at once to the Foundling Home. I felt very sad. They lived frugally and had no children and Nikolay Semyonovitch was always glad of it. I carefully took the little Arina out of the basket and held her up under the arms. The basket had that sour, pungent odour characteristic of a small child which has not been washed for a long time. I opposed Nikolay Semyonovitch and suddenly announced that I would keep the child at my expense. In spite of his gentleness he protested with some severity, and, though he ended by joking, he adhered to his intention in regard to the foundling. I got my way, however. In the same block of buildings, but in a different wing, lived a very poor carpenter, an elderly man, given to drink, but his wife, a very healthy and still youngish woman, had only just lost a baby, and what is more, the only child she had had in eight years of marriage, also a girl, and by a strange piece of luck also called Arina. I call it good luck, because while we were arguing in the kitchen, the woman, hearing of what had happened, ran in to look at the child, and when she learned that it was called Arina, she was greatly touched. She still had milk, and unfastening her dress, she put the baby to her breast. I began persuading her to take the child home with her, saying I would pay for it every month. She was afraid her husband would not allow it, but she took it for the night. Next morning, her husband consented to her keeping it for eight roubles a month, and I immediately paid him for the first month in advance. He at once spent the money on drink. Nikolay Semyonovitch, still with a strange smile, agreed to guarantee that the money would be paid regularly every month. I would have given my sixty roubles into Nikolay Semyonovitch’s keeping as security, but he did not take it. He knew, however, that I had the money, and trusted me. Our momentary quarrel was smoothed over by this delicacy on his part. Marie Ivanovna said nothing, but wondered at my undertaking such a responsibility. I particularly appreciated their delicacy in refraining from the slightest jest at my expense, but on the contrary, taking the matter with proper seriousness. I used to run over to the carpenter’s wife three times a day, and at the end of the week I slipped an extra three roubles into her hand without her husband’s knowledge. For another three I bought a little quilt and swaddling clothes. But ten days later little Arina fell ill. I called in a doctor at once, he wrote a prescription, and we were up all night tormenting the mite with horrid medicine. Next day he declared that he had been sent for too late, and answered my entreaties—which I fancy were more like reproaches—by saying with majestic evasiveness: ‘I am not God.’ The baby’s little tongue and lips and whole mouth were covered with a minute white rash and towards evening she died, gazing at me with her big black eyes as though she understood already. I don’t know why I never thought to take a photograph of the dead baby. But will it be believed that I cried that evening, and, in fact, I howled as I had never let myself do before, and Marie Ivanovna had to try to comfort me, again without the least mockery either on her part or on Nikolay Semyonovitch’s. The carpenter made a little coffin, and Marie Ivanovna finished it with a frill and a pretty little pillow, while I bought flowers and strewed them on the baby. So they carried away my poor little blossom, whom it will hardly be believed I can’t forget even now. A little afterwards, however, this sudden adventure made me reflect seriously. Little Arina had not cost me much, of course, the coffin, the burial, the doctor, the flowers, and the payment of the carpenter’s wife came altogether to thirty roubles. As I was going to Petersburg I made up this sum from the forty roubles sent to me by Versilov for the journey and from the sale of various articles before my departure, so that my capital remained intact. But I thought: ‘If I am going to be turned aside like this, I shan’t get far.’ The affair with the student showed that the ‘idea’ might absorb me till it blurred my impressions and drew me away from the realities of life. The incident with little Arina proved, on the contrary, that no ‘idea’ was strong enough to absorb me, at least so completely that I should not stop short in the face of an overwhelming fact and sacrifice to it at once all that I had done for the ‘idea’ by years of labour. Both conclusions were nevertheless true.”⁠[139]

II

“‘In what way can I be of use to you, honoured prince, since anyway you ... called me just now,’ he said at last after a brief silence.

“‘Why, I asked you about the general,’ Myshkin, who had been musing for a moment, answered hurriedly, ‘and ... in regard to that theft you told me about.’

“‘In regard to what?’

“‘Why, as though you don’t understand me now! Oh dear, Lukyan Timofeyitch, you’re always acting a part! The money, the money, the four hundred roubles you lost, that day in your pocket-book, and about which you came to tell me in the morning, as you were setting off for Petersburg. Do you understand at last?’

“‘Ah, you’re talking about that four hundred roubles!’ drawled Lebedyev, as though he had only just guessed. ‘I thank you, prince, for your sincere sympathy: it is too flattering for me, but ... I’ve found it some time since.’

“‘Found it? Ah, thank God!’

“‘That exclamation is most generous on your part, for four hundred roubles is no small matter for a poor man who lives by his hard work, with a large family of motherless children....’

“‘But I didn’t mean that! Of course, I am glad you found the money,’ Myshkin corrected himself quickly, ‘but how did you find it?’

“‘Very simply. I found it under the chair on which my coat had been hung, so that the pocket-book must have slipped out of the pocket on to the floor!’

“‘Under the chair? It’s impossible! Why, you told me yourself you had hunted in every corner. How was it you came to overlook the most obvious place?’

“‘I should think I did look! I remember only too well how I looked! I crawled on all fours, felt the place with my hands, moving back the chairs because I couldn’t trust my own eyes: I saw there was nothing there, for the place was as smooth and empty as my hands, and yet I went on fumbling. You always see that weakness in anyone who is very anxious to find anything, when anything serious and important has been lost. A man sees there’s nothing there, the place is empty, and yet he peeps into it a dozen times.’

“‘Yes, I dare say; only, how was it seen?... I still don’t understand,’ muttered Myshkin, disconcerted. ‘You told me before it wasn’t there, and you had looked in that place, and then it suddenly turned up!’

“‘And then it suddenly turned up.’

“Myshkin looked strangely at Lebedyev. ‘And the general?’ he asked suddenly. ‘What about the general?...’ Lebedyev seemed at a loss again.

“‘Oh dear! I ask you what did the general say when you found the pocket-book under the chair? You looked for it together, you know.’

“‘We did look together before. But that time, I confess, I held my tongue, and preferred not to tell him that the pocket-book had been found by me and alone.’

“‘But ... why? And the money—was it all there?’

“‘I opened the pocket-book. The money was untouched, every rouble of it.’

“‘You might have come to tell me,’ Myshkin observed thoughtfully.

“‘I was afraid to disturb you, prince, in your personal and, so to say, absorbing interests, and besides, I made as though I had found nothing. I opened the pocket-book and looked at it, then I shut it and put it back under the chair.’

“‘But what for?’

“‘Oh, n-nothing, from curiosity,’ chuckled Lebedyev, rubbing his hands.

“‘Then it has been lying there since the day before yesterday?’

“‘Oh, no; it only lay there for a day and a night. You see it was partly that I wanted the general to find it. For since I had found it, why should not the general notice the object, which lay conspicuous under the chair, so to speak, catching the eye.

“‘I lifted that chair several times and put it so that the pocket-book was completely in view, but the general simply didn’t notice it, and so it went on for twenty-four hours. He seems to be extraordinarily unobservant now, and there’s no making him out. He talks, tells stories, laughs, chuckles, and then flies into a violent temper with me. I don’t know why. At last, as we were going out of the room, I left the door open on purpose; he hesitated, would have said something, most likely he was uneasy about the pocket-book with such a sum of money in it, but suddenly flew into an awful rage and said nothing. Before we had gone two steps in the street, he left me and walked away in the other direction. We only met in the evening in the tavern.’

“‘But in the end you did take the pocket-book from under the chair?’

“‘No, it vanished from under the chair that same night.’

“‘Then where is it now?’

“‘Oh, here,’ cried Lebedyev, laughing suddenly, drawing himself up to his full height and looking amiably at Myshkin. ‘It suddenly turned up here, in the lappet of my coat. Here; won’t you look, feel?’

“The left lappet of the coat had indeed been formed into something like a bag in front, in the most conspicuous place, and it was clear at once to the touch that there was a leather pocket-book there that had fallen down from a torn pocket.

“‘I took it out and looked. The money’s all there. I dropped it in again, and so I’ve been walking about since yesterday morning. I carry it in my coat and it knocks against my legs.’

“‘And you take no notice of it?’

“‘And I take no notice of it. He-he! And would you believe it, honoured prince, though the subject is not worthy of so much notice on your part, my pockets were always perfectly good, and then a hole like that, all of a sudden, in one night! I began to look at it more curiously; it’s as though someone had cut it with a penknife. Isn’t it almost incredible?’

“‘And ... the general?’

“‘He’s been angry all day; both yesterday and to-day: fearfully ill-humoured. At one time he’d be beaming and hilarious till he began to pay me compliments, then he’d be sentimental to tears, then suddenly angry: so much so that I’d be frightened really, for I’m not a military man, after all. We were sitting yesterday in the tavern, and the lappet of my coat stood out as though by chance, in the most prominent way: a perfect mountain. He looked at it on the sly and was angry. He hasn’t looked me straight in the face for a long time, unless he’s very drunk or sentimental, but yesterday he gave me a look that made a shudder run down my spine. To-morrow, though, I mean to find the pocket-book, but I shall have an evening’s fun with him before then.’

“‘Why are you tormenting him so?’ cried Myshkin.

“‘I’m not tormenting him, prince, I’m not tormenting him,’ Lebedyev replied with warmth. ‘I sincerely love and—respect him; and now, whether you believe it or not, he’s dearer to me than ever. I have come to appreciate him even more.’

“‘You love him and you torment him like this! Why, by the very act of putting the lost pocket-book where it could be seen under the chair and in your coat, by that alone he shows you that he doesn’t want to deceive you, but with your open-hearted simplicity asks your forgiveness. Do you hear? He’s asking your forgiveness. So he relies on the delicacy of your feelings, so he believes in your friendship for him. And yet you reduce to such humiliation a man like that—a most honest man!’

“‘Most honest prince, most honest.’ Lebedyev assented, with sparkling eyes. ‘And you, most noble prince, are the only person capable of uttering that true word about him! For that, I am devoted to you, and ready to worship you, though I am rotten to the core with vices of all sorts! That’s settled it! I will find the pocket-book now, at once, not to-morrow. Look, I will take it before your eyes; here it is. There’s the money, untouched here. Take it, most noble prince, take care of it till to-morrow. To-morrow or next day I’ll have it. And, you know, prince, it’s evident that it must have been lying somewhere in my garden, hidden under some stone, the first night it was lost. What do you think?’

“‘Mind you don’t tell him directly to his face that you’ve found the pocket-book. Let him simply see that there’s nothing in the lappet of your coat, and he’ll understand.’

“‘You think so? Wouldn’t it be better to tell him I have found it, and to pretend I had not guessed about it till now?’

“‘N-no,’ Myshkin pondered, ‘n-no; it’s too late for that now. That’s more risky. You’d really better not speak of it. Be kind to him, but—don’t show too much, and—and—you know....’

“‘I know, prince, I know. That is, I know that I shan’t do it properly, perhaps, for one needs to have a heart like yours to do it. Besides, he’s irritable and prone to it himself, he has begun to treat me too superciliously sometimes of late. One minute he is whimpering and embracing me, and then he’ll suddenly begin to snub me, and sneer at me contemptuously, and then I just show him the lappet on purpose. He-he! Good-bye, prince; for it’s dear I’m keeping you and interrupting you in your most interesting feelings, so to say....’

“‘But for goodness’ sake, the same secrecy as before.’

“‘Treading softly, treading softly!’

“But, though the matter was settled, Myshkin remained almost more puzzled than before. He awaited with impatience his interview with the general next day.”⁠[140]