And Rogozhin suddenly laughed, this time with open malice, as though relieved that he had succeeded in expressing it in some way.
“Are you settled here for good?”
“Yes, I am at home. Where else should I be?”
“It’s a lonq time since we’ve met. I’ve heard such things about you, not like yourself.”
“People will say anything.” Rogozhin observed drily.
“You’ve turned off all your followers, and you stay in your old home and live quietly. Well, that’s a good thing. Is it your own house, or does it belong to all of you in common?”
“The house is my mother’s. That’s the way to her rooms across the corridor.”
“And where is your brother living?”
“My brother Semyon Semyonovitch is in the lodge.”
“Is he married?”
“He is a widower. Why do you want to know?”
Myshkin looked at him and did not answer; he was suddenly thoughtful and seemed not to have heard the question. Rogozhin waited and did not insist. They were silent for a little.
“I guessed it was your house a hundred paces away, as I came along,” said Myshkin.
“How was that?”
“I don’t know at all. Your house has a look of your whole family and your Rogozhin manner of life; but if you ask me how I know that, I can’t explain it. A disordered fancy, I suppose. It makes me uneasy indeed that it should trouble me so much. I had an idea before that you lived in such a house, but, as soon as I saw it, I thought at once, That’s just the sort of house he ought to have.’”
“I say!” Rogozhin smiled vaguely, not quite understanding Myshkin’s obscure thought. “It was my grandfather built the house,” he observed. “It was always tenanted by the Hludyakovs, who are Skoptsy, and they are our tenants still.”
“It’s so dark! You are living here in darkness,” said Myshkin, looking round the room.
It was a big room, lofty and dark, filled with furniture of all sorts, for the most part big business tables, bureaux, cupboards, in which were kept business books and papers of some sort. The wide sofa, covered in red morocco, obviously served Rogozhin as a bed. Myshkin noticed two or three books lying on the table, at which Rogozhin had made him sit down; one of them, Solovyev’s “History,” was open and had a book-mark in it. On the walls there were a few oil-paintings in tarnished gold frames. They were dark and grimy, and it was difficult to make out what they represented. One full-length portrait attracted Myshkin’s notice. It was the portrait of a man of fifty, wearing a frock-coat, very long, though of European cut, and two medals round his neck. He had a very scanty short grey beard, a yellow wrinkled face with suspicious, secretive and melancholy eyes.
“Is that your father?” asked Myshkin.
“Yes, it is,” Rogozhin answered with an unpleasant grin, as though expecting some rude jest at his dead father’s expense to follow immediately.
“He wasn’t one of the Old Believers, was he?”
“No, he used to go to church; but it’s true he used to say that the old form of belief was truer. He had a great respect for the Skoptsy too. This used to be his study. Why do you ask was he an Old Believer?”
“Will you have your wedding here?”
“Y-yes,” answered Rogozhin, almost starting at the unexpected question.
“Will it be soon?”
“You know yourself it doesn’t depend on me.”
“Parfyon, I am not your enemy, and I have no intention of interfering with you in anyway. I tell you that as I’ve told you once before, almost on a similar occasion. When your wedding was arranged in Moscow, I didn’t hinder you, you know that. The first time she rushed to me of herself, almost on the wedding day, begging me ‘to save’ her from you. It’s her own words I am repeating to you. Afterwards she ranawayfrom me too. You found her again and were going to marry her, and now they tell me she ran away from you again here. Is that true? Lebedyev told me so; that’s why I’ve come. But that you’d come together again I learnt for the first time only yesterday in the train from one of your former friends, Zalyozhev, if you care to know. I came here with a purpose. I wanted to persuade her to go abroad for the sake of her health. She is not well physically or mentally — her brain especially; and, to my mind, she needs great care. I didn’t mean to take her abroad myself; it was my plan for her to go without me. I am telling you the absolute truth. If it’s quite true that you’ve made it up again, I shan’t show myself to her, and I’ll never come again to see you either. \bu know I don’t deceive you, because I’ve always been open with you. I have never concealed from you what I think about it, and I have always said that to marry you would be her perdition. \bur perdition too . . . even more perhaps than hers. If you were to part again, I should be very glad; but I don’t intend to disturb or try to part you myself. Don’t worry yourself and don’t suspect me. You know yourself whether I was ever really your rival, even when she ran away to me. Now you are laughing. I know what you are laughing at. Yes, we lived apart, in different towns, and you know all that for a fact. I explained to you before that I don’t love her with love, but with pity. I believe I define it exactly. You said at the time that you understood what I said. Was that true? Did you understand? Here you are looking at me with hatred! I’ve come to reassure you, for you are dear to me too. I am very fond of you, Parfyon. But now I am going away and shall never come again. Good-bye!”
Myshkin got up.
“Stay with me a little,” said Parfyon softly, sitting still in his place with his head resting on his right hand. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen you.”
Myshkin sat down. Both were silent again.
“When you are not before me I feel anger against you at once, Lyov Nikolayevitch. Every minute of these three months that I haven’t seen you I have been angry with you, on my word, I have. I felt I could have poisoned you! I tell you now. \bu haven’t been sitting a quarter of an hour with me, and all my anger is passing away and you are dear to me as you used to be. Stay with me a little….”
“When I am with you, you believe me, but when I am away, you leave off believing me at once and begin suspecting me. \bu are like your father,” Myshkin answered, with a friendly smile, trying to hide his emotion.
“I believe your voice when I am with you. I understand, of course, we can’t be put on a level, you and I….”
“Why do you add that? And now you are irritated again,” said Myshkin, wondering at Rogozhin.
“Well, brother, our opinion is not asked in the matter,” he answered. “It’s settled without consulting us. \bu see, we love in different ways too. There’s a difference in everything,” he went on softly after a pause. “You say you love her with pity. There’s no sort of pity for her in me. And she hates me too, more than anything. I dream of her every night now, always that she is laughing at me with other men. And that’s what she is doinq, brother. She is qoinq to the altar with me and she has forgotten to give me a thought, as though she were changing her shoe. Would you believe it, I haven’t seen her for five days, because I don’t dare to go to her. She’ll ask me, ‘What have you come for?’ She has covered me with shame.”
“Shame? How can you!”
“As though he didn’t know! Why, she ran away with you from me on the very wedding day — you said so yourself just now.”
“Why, you don’t believe yourself that…”
“Didn’t she shame me in Moscow with that officer, Zemtyuzhnikov? I know for certain she did, and even after she had fixed the wedding day.”
“Impossible!” cried Myshkin.
“I know it for a fact,” Rogozhin persisted with conviction. “She is not that sort of woman, you say? It’s no good telling me she is not that sort of woman, brother. That’s nonsense. With you she won’t be that sort of woman, and will be horrified herself, maybe, at such doings. But that’s just what she is with me. That’s the fact. She looks on me as the lowest refuse. I know for a fact that simply to make a laughingstock of me she got up an affair with Keller, that officer, the man who boxes. . . . “Vbu don’t know, of course, the tricks she played me at Moscow. And the money — the money I’ve wasted! …”
“And . . . and you are marrying her now? What will you do afterwards?” Myshkin asked in horror.
Rogozhin bent a lowering, terrible gaze on Myshkin and made no answer.
“It’s five days since I’ve been with her,” he went on after a minute’s pause. “I am afraid of her turning me out. ‘lam still mistress in my own house,’ she says. ‘If I choose I will get rid of you altogether and go abroad.’ (She told me that already, that she will go abroad, he observed,
