The Idiot: Part Four, Chapter Eleven Summary & Analysis

In St. Petersburg, Myshkin goes straight to Rogozhin’s house. Rogozhin’s mother says her son is not at home. Myshkin tries to find out if he came back the night before with Nastasya, but she will not tell him. Myshkin then asks the caretaker, who informs him that Rogozhin was at home the day before, although it’s possible that he’s gone out now. Myshkin then stands outside on the street for a while, and for a second thinks he thinks he sees Rogozhin’s face peering through a blind, but within a second it is gone. Myshkin then sets off for the neighborhood where he knows Nastasya had been staying with a friend of hers, an old teacher’s widow. 

Myshkin is shocked to learn that the none of the people at the widow’s house had seen Nastasya there that day or the day before. They are all desperate to know about the wedding, and he explains the whole story. The next day Myshkin goes back to Rogozhin’s house, where the caretaker tells him that Rogozhin went to Pavlovsk that morning and may not be back for a week. Myshkin then goes to see Nastasya’s beautiful German friend, only to find that she and Nastasya have had a fight and are not speaking. Myshkin begins to have a strange feeling, and returns to Rogozhin’s, before again going to the widow’s apartment.

Myshkin asks the women at the apartment to show him Nastasya’s room. There he finds a copy of Madame Bovary and a card table. The women tell him that Nastasya plays cards there every night with Rogozhin. Now, the cards they use to play with are missing. The women advise Myshkin to keep checking in at Rogozhin’s house, and the widow offers to go to Darya’s dacha in Pavlovsk herself. Myshkin returns to the inn where he is staying in “inexpressible anguish.” He leaves the inn again, but has only walked 50 steps when Rogozhin grabs him. Rogozhin insists that they walk to his house but on opposite sides of the street, so that they are not seen together.

At the house, Rogozhin said he lied to the caretaker and said he was in Pavlovsk. He says he knew Myshkin kept coming to the house, and hid from him. When Myshkin asks where Nastasya is, Rogozhin replies that she is “here.” After they speak a little, Myshkin again demands to know where Nastasya is, and Rogozhin points to a curtain. Myshkin moves past it to look, and sees a figure lying in bed, completely still. Clothes lie scattered all around the bed, and the whole scene is “terribly still.” Rogozhin leads him out of the room. He notices that Myshkin is shaking, which might mean he is going to have a fit.

Sitting together again, Rogozhin tells Myshkin: “I just can’t think what I’m going to do with you now.” He admits that he killed Nastasya, and that no one in the house knows that she spent the night there. He says that he and Myshkin should spend the night there with Nastasya, and expresses concern that people might hear him if he has a fit. Although there is only one bed, he will arrange pillows on the floor. He asks Myshkin if there’s a smell in the room, and Myshkin replies that he doesn’t know.

Myshkin asks if Rogozhin killed Nastasya with the same knife he used to try and attack Myshkin, and Rogozhin says he did. Myshkin then asks if he wanted to kill Nastasya before the wedding; Rogozhin says he doesn’t know. They hear footsteps and both scramble to shut the door. Myshkin whispers that he wanted the cards Nastasya and Rogozhin played with, and Rogozhin gives them to him. They wait silently for half an hour, before Rogozhin suddenly bursts out laughing remembering how Nastasya whipped the officer at the Pavlovsk vauxhall. Many hours pass, and Rogozhin weeps. Eventually, people burst through the door to find Rogozhin unconscious, and Myshkin in the same state of “idiocy” as when he first arrived in Switzerland.