The Idiot

Rogozhin had not come back; no one opened to his ringing; he rang at old Mrs. Rogozhin's; they opened the door and also announced that Parfyon Semyonovich was not at home and might not be back for some three days. What disturbed the prince was that he was again studied with the same wild curiosity. The caretaker this time was nowhere to be found. He went, as earlier, to the opposite sidewalk, looked at the windows, and paced up and down in the torrid heat for about half an hour or maybe more; this time nothing stirred; the windows did not open, the white blinds were motionless. It finally occurred to him that he had probably only imagined it earlier, that the windows by all tokens were even so dim, so long in need of washing, that it would have been hard to make anything out, even if anyone in fact had looked through the glass. Gladdened by this thought, he again went to the Izmailovsky quarter, to the teacher's widow.

He was expected there. The teacher's widow had already gone

to three or four places and had even stopped at Rogozhin's: not the slightest trace. The prince listened silently, went into the room, sat on the sofa, and began looking at them all as if not understanding what they were telling him. Strange: first he was extremely observant, then suddenly impossibly distracted. The whole family reported later that he had been an "astonishingly" strange man that day, so that "perhaps all the signs were already there." He finally stood up and asked to be shown Nastasya Filippovna's rooms. These were two large, bright, high-ceilinged rooms, quite well furnished, and not cheap. All these ladies reported afterwards that the prince studied every object in the rooms, saw an open book on the table, from a lending library, the French novel Madame Bovary, ⁵² looked at it, earmarked the page on which the book lay open, asked permission to take it with him, and, not listening to the objection that it was a library book, put it into his pocket. He sat down by the open window and, seeing a card table covered with writing in chalk, asked who played. They told him that Nastasya Filippovna had played every night with Rogozhin—fools, preference, millers, whist, hearts—all sorts of games, and that the cards had appeared only very recently, when she moved from Pavlovsk to Petersburg, because Nastasya Filippovna kept complaining that she was bored, that Rogozhin sat silent for whole evenings and could not talk about anything, and she often wept; and suddenly the next evening Rogozhin took cards from his pocket; here Nastasya Filippovna laughed and they began to play. The prince asked where the cards they had played with were. But there were no cards; Rogozhin himself always brought the cards in his pocket, a new deck every day, and then took them away with him.

The ladies advised him to go once more to Rogozhin's and to knock harder once more, not now, but in the evening: "something might turn up." The teacher's widow herself volunteered meanwhile to go to Pavlovsk to see Darya Alexeevna before evening: they might know something there. The prince was invited to come by ten o'clock that evening, in any case, to make plans for the next day. Despite all consolations and reassurances, a perfect despair overwhelmed the prince's soul. In inexpressible anguish, he reached his inn on foot. The dusty, stifling summer Petersburg squeezed him as in a vice; he jostled among stern or drunken people, aimlessly peered into faces, probably walked much more than he had to; it was nearly evening when he entered his hotel room. He decided to rest a little and then go again to Rogozhin's, as he had

been advised, sat down on the sofa, rested both elbows on the table, and fell to thinking.

God knows how long he thought and God knows what about. There was much that he feared, and he felt painfully and tormentingly that he was terribly afraid. Vera Lebedev came into his head; then it occurred to him that Lebedev might know something about this matter, and if he did not, he would be able to find out sooner and more easily than he would himself. Then he remembered Ippolit, and that Rogozhin had gone to see Ippolit. Then he remembered Rogozhin himself: recently at the burial, then in the park, then—suddenly here in the corridor, when he had hidden himself in the corner that time and waited for him with a knife. His eyes he now remembered, his eyes looking out of the darkness then. He gave a start: the earlier importunate thought now came to his head.

It was in part that if Rogozhin was in Petersburg, then even if he was hiding for a time, all the same he would end by coming to him, the prince, with good or bad intentions, perhaps, just as then. At least, if Rogozhin had to come for some reason or other, then he had nowhere else to come than here, to this same corridor again. He did not know his address; therefore he would very possibly think that the prince was staying at the same inn; at least he would try looking here ... if he needed him very much. And, who knows, perhaps he would need him very much?

So he reflected, and for some reason this thought seemed perfectly possible to him. He would not have been able to account for it to himself, if he had begun to go deeper into this thought: "Why, for instance, should Rogozhin suddenly need him so much, and why was it even impossible that they should not finally come together?" But the thought was painfuclass="underline" "If things are well with him, he won't come," the prince went on thinking, "he'll sooner come if things are not well with him; and things are probably not well ..."

Of course, with such a conviction, he ought to have waited for Rogozhin at home, in his hotel room; but he was as if unable to bear his new thought, jumped up, seized his hat, and ran. It was now almost quite dark in the corridor: "What if he comes out of that corner now and stops me by the stairs?" flashed in him as he approached the familiar spot. But no one came out. He went down under the gateway, walked out to the sidewalk, marveled at the dense crowd of people who came pouring outside at sunset (as

always in Petersburg at vacation time), and went in the direction of Gorokhovaya Street. Fifty paces from the inn, at the first intersection, in the crowd, someone suddenly touched his elbow and said in a low voice, just at his ear:

"Lev Nikolaevich, come with me, brother, you've got to."

It was Rogozhin.

Strange: the prince began telling him, suddenly, with joy, babbling and almost not finishing the words, how he had been expecting him just now in the corridor, at the inn.

"I was there," Rogozhin answered unexpectedly, "let's go."

The prince was surprised by the answer, but he was surprised at least two minutes later, when he understood. Having understood the answer, he became frightened and began studying Rogozhin. The man was walking almost half a step ahead, looking straight in front of him and not glancing at anyone he met, giving way to them all with mechanical care.

"Then why didn't you ask for me in my room ... if you were at the inn?" the prince asked suddenly.

Rogozhin stopped, looked at him, thought, and, as if not understanding the question at all, said:

"So, now, Lev Nikolaevich, you go straight on here, right to the house, you know? And I'll go along the other side. And watch out that we keep together ..."

Having said this, he crossed the street, stepped onto the opposite sidewalk, looked whether the prince was following, and seeing that he was standing and staring at him, waved his hand in the direction of Gorokhovaya and went on, constantly turning to look at the prince and beckoning to him to follow. He was obviously heartened to see that the prince had understood him and did not cross the street to join him. It occurred to the prince that Rogozhin had to keep an eye out for someone and not miss him on the way, and that that was why he had crossed to the other side. "Only why didn't he tell me who to look for?" They went some five hundred paces that way, and suddenly the prince began to tremble for some reason; Rogozhin still kept looking back, though more rarely; the prince could not help himself and beckoned to him with his hand. The man at once came across the street to him.