The Idiot Read Free Page B

quiet but heavy, and they were filled with that strange expression by which some can detect epilepsy on first glance at a person. The young man’s face was, however, pleasant, delicate and lean, though colourless, and now so cold that it was positively blue. In his hands dangled a thin bundle made of old, faded silk, apparently containing all his travelling possessions. He wore thick-soled shoes with buttoned gaiters - all quite un-Russian. The dark-haired neighbour in the wool-lined sheepskin coat observed all this, partly because he had nothing else to do, and, at last, with that insensitive smile in which people so unceremoniously and carelessly express their satisfaction at the misfortunes of a neighbour, inquired:

    ‘Chilly?’
    And hunched his shoulders.
    ‘Yes, indeed,’ the neighbour replied with extreme readiness, ‘and, mind you, there’s still a thaw. What would it be like in a frost? I really didn’t think it could be as cold as this in our country. I’m not used to it.’
    ‘Come from abroad, have you?’
    ‘Yes, from Switzerland.’
    ‘Whew! You don’t say!...’
    The dark-haired man whistled and began to laugh.
    A conversation ensued. The willingness of the fair-haired young man in the Swiss cloak to answer every question from his swarthy neighbour was remarkable, and he appeared to have no inkling of the utterly casual, inappropriate and idle nature of some of the questions. In replying he declared, among other things, that he had not been in Russia for a long time, four years or more, and that he had been sent abroad because of an illness, some strange nervous illness, akin to epilepsy or St Vitus’s dance, with tremors and convulsions. As he listened to him, the swarthy man grinned several times; he laughed especially when to the question: ‘Well, and did they cure you?’ the fair-haired man replied: ‘No, they didn’t.’
    ‘Heh! You probably paid them a lot of money for nothing, and here we still go on believing in them,’ the swarthy man observed caustically.
    ‘Very true!’ said a shabbily dressed gentleman who was sitting near by, some sort of minor official hardened in the work of the civil service, aged about forty, strongly built, with a red nose and a face covered in blackheads, as he joined the conversation: ‘Very true, sir, all they do is use up all Russia’s strength for their own benefit and give nothing in return!’
    ‘Oh, but in my own case you’re very mistaken,’ the Swiss patient rejoined in a quiet and conciliatory voice. ‘Of course, I can’t argue, for there are many things I don’t know, but my doctor gave me the money for my fare here out of the last he had, having supported me at his own expense for almost two years.’
    ‘Why? Was there no one to pay for you?’ asked the swarthy man.
    ‘Well, you see, Mr Pavlishchev, who was supporting me, died two years ago; then I wrote to Mrs Yepanchin, the general’s wife, a distant relation of mine in St Petersburg, but received no reply. And so that’s why I’ve returned.’
    ‘Returned where, exactly?’
    ‘You mean, where will I stay? ... Well, I don’t really know yet ... that is...’
    ‘You haven’t decided yet?’
    And both listeners again burst into laughter.
    ‘And I suppose all your worldly possessions are in that bundle?’ asked the swarthy man.
    ‘I’m willing to bet on that,’ the red-nosed official said with a look of extreme satisfaction, ‘and that he has nothing in the luggage van, though poverty’s no sin, we mustn’t omit to point that out.’
    This also turned out to be true: the fair-haired young man admitted it at once, and with unexpected haste.
    ‘Your bundle does have a certain significance, however,’ the official continued, once they had finished laughing (remarkably enough, the owner of the bundle himself eventually began to laugh as he surveyed them, which increased their merriment), ‘and though I’m willing to bet there are no gold coins in it, no foreign bags