A Nasty Story by Fyodor Dostoevski

First published: "Skverny anekdot," 1862 (English translation, 1925)

Type of plot: Psychological

Time of work: The early 1860's

Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia

Principal Characters:

• General Ivan Ilyitch Pralinski, the Actual State Councillor, who is forty-three years old
• Porfiry Petrovitch Pseldonymov, a young clerk in his department
• Titular Councillor Mlekopitayev, the father of the bride
• The Bride, a seventeen-year-old girl
• Akim Petrovitch Zubikov, the chief clerk in General Pralinski's department

The Story

Actual State Councillor Pralinski, a forty-three-year-old man recently promoted to the rank of general in the civil service, is a bachelor from a good family. As the pampered son of a general, he was educated in an aristocratic establishment and is generally considered to be a gifted person. The third-person narrator calls him "a kind man and even a poet at heart," one who is frequently overcome by painful moments of disillusionment. As the story opens on a winter evening in St. Petersburg, General Pralinski, while at a dinner party with two other generals, expresses his idealistic view that the privileged must have a love of humankind and must have consideration particularly toward their inferiors. This idea is in keeping with Pralinski's satisfaction at being known as "a desperate liberal, which flattered him greatly."

Leaving the dinner, Pralinski, who realizes that he is slightly drunk, begins to walk because his coach driver has disappeared. After going a short distance, Pralinski notes a wedding party taking place in a long, one-storied wooden house. When he inquires, he learns that this is the party for Porfiry Petrovitch Pseldonymov, a young clerk in his department. After briefly discussing with himself whether he should attend the party, he decides to do so. The narrator states that "he was being led astray by his evil star."

Entering into this party of about thirty guests, Pralinski instantly becomes the center of attention, as he had foreseen. After an awkward, stunned silence, Pralinski is welcomed by the young groom, Pseldonymov, who does not know what to make of his presence. The situation is briefly saved by Akim Petrovitch Zubikov, the chief clerk in General Pralinski's department. After Pralinski unsuccessfully tries to tell a humorous story, he is introduced to the bride. This seventeen-year-old girl, whose first name is never given, has a malicious look to her thin, pale face, a scraggy neck, and the body of a pullet. Her father describes her as having "seven devils."

Pseldonymov's mother, a very kind woman, makes the general at home by offering him a bottle of champagne, obviously intended only for the bride and groom. In his nervousness, the general consumes two bottles of the expensive champagne. By this time, the other guests return to normal, realizing that Pralinski is here only because he is drunk. As several young men begin to express themselves, Pralinski grows more uncomfortable. He manages to infuriate a young journalist, who also has had more than he is accustomed to drink.

Although he knows that he should leave before dinner, Pralinski allows himself to be persuaded to remain. Having never before drunk vodka, he drains "a huge wineglass of vodka." After this, he is blindly drunk, and the narrator says, "From then on, events took their own course." The bride's mother appears, a spiteful-looking woman with an "irreconcilable hostility towards Pseldonymov's mother." At this time, Pralinski drunkenly decides to tell the guests some of his idealistic views, only to begin spitting on the table in his drunkenness. The young journalist can no longer contain his hatred, bursting out that the general has "disrupted everyone's enjoyment" and insulting him openly. As the journalist is evicted from the party, General Pralinski passes out cold. It is now three o'clock in the morning.

At this point, the narrator explains what is really the "nasty" part of the story, as if the general's embarrassment were not bad enough. Pseldonymov's true story is presented. He and his mother are extremely poor, he suffers from a sketchy education, and she is forced to wash clothes for other people to support their miserable living conditions. Now Titular Councillor Mlekopitayev is presented, a man who was in some way indebted to Pseldonymov's father. This Mlekopitayev, father of the bride, is "a vicious man": pigheaded, a drunkard, a petty tyrant. He was "sure to be tormenting someone all the time. For this purpose he kept several distant relatives in the house." The reader learns that the young bride is against this marriage and that Mlekopitayev favors the marriage particularly because it is against her will and because she is furious. This is the wedding feast that the general has chosen to attend.

Being unable to transport the general home by carriage, Pseldonymov must lodge him in this house for the night. The bridal couch being the only available bed, Pralinski is placed there. The hastily arranged substitute bridal bed crashes to the floor in the middle of the night, the bride trembles with rage, and Pseldonymov is morally crushed as the bride is led away by her shrewish mother. Pseldonymov realizes that he will have to change his place of work. He also realizes that he has not yet received from his vicious father-in-law any of the money and property promised as wedding presents.

With this, the focus again returns to the drunken General Pralinski, who spends the night with "headache, vomiting and other most unpleasant attacks." Even the tender care given him by Pseldonymov's mother cannot reduce the deadly shame he feels about his disastrous involvement with this affair. In the morning, Pralinski runs from the house and grabs a passing cab. He hides out in his own home for eight days, painfully ill "but more in his mind than his body." He realizes that this shameful affair will be talked about all over the city. He is particularly ashamed that he can find no excuse for himself.

When he finally returns to his office, he finds that nothing unpleasant happens to him. He hears no whisperings, sees no malicious smiles from those who work under his supervision. At last, chief clerk Zubikov appears, asking shortly afterward that clerk Pseldonymov be allowed to transfer to a different department. When the general begins to discuss the matter with Zubikov, the chief clerk becomes so upset that he quickly withdraws. The story ends with General Pralinski's sense of shame and heaviness at heart. He says in the final sentence: "I have failed to live up to my ideals!"