The Brothers Karamazov

BOOK VIII: MITYA

Chapter 1: Kuzma Samsonov

But Dmitri Fyodorovich, to whom Grushenka, flying to her new life, had “ordered” her last farewell sent and whom she bade remember forever the one hour of her love, unaware as he was of what had happened with her, was at that moment also running around in terrible disarray. For the past two days he had been in such an unimaginable state that, as he himself said afterwards, he might well have come down with brain fever. Alyosha had been unable to find him the morning before, and that same day his brother Ivan had been unable to arrange a meeting with him in the tavern. The owners of the little apartment he lived in covered his traces, as he had ordered them to do. And he, in those two days, had literally been rushing in all directions, “struggling with his fate and trying to save himself,” as he put it afterwards, and had even flown out of town for a few hours on some urgent business, though he was afraid to leave Grushenka unwatched even for a moment. All of this was found out later in the most detailed and documented form, but here we shall outline only the most necessary facts from the history of those two terrible days of his life, which preceded the horrible catastrophe that broke so suddenly upon his fate.

Grushenka, though it was true that she had loved him genuinely and sincerely for one little hour, at the same time would torment him quite cruelly and mercilessly. The worst thing was that he could make out nothing of her intentions; it was impossible to coax them out of her either with tenderness or by force: she would not give in, and would only become angry and turn her back on him altogether—that he understood clearly at the time. He then suspected, quite correctly, that she herself was caught in some sort of struggle, in some sort of extraordinary indecision, trying to make up her mind and unable to make it up, and he therefore supposed with a sinking heart, and not groundlessly, that at moments she must simply hate him and his passion. Perhaps that was the case, but what precisely Grushenka was anguished about, he still did not understand. So far as he was concerned, the whole tormenting question formed itself into just two definitions: “Either him, Mitya, or Fyodor Pavlovich.” Here, incidentally, one firm fact must be noted: he was quite certain that Fyodor Pavlovich would be sure to offer Grushenka (if he had not offered her already) a lawful marriage, and did not believe for a moment that the old voluptuary hoped to get off for a mere three thousand. This Mitya deduced from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. Which was why it could sometimes seem to him that all of Grushenka’s torment, and all her indecision, came simply from the fact that she did not know which of them to choose, and which of them would be the more profitable for her. Strangely enough, in those days he did not even think of thinking about the imminent return of “the officer”—that is, the fatal man in Grushenka’s life, whose arrival she awaited with such fear and agitation. True, in the past few days Grushenka had been quite silent with him on the subject. Nevertheless, he had been fully informed by her of the letter she had received a month earlier from her former seducer, and he had also been partly informed of the content of the letter. In a wicked moment, Grushenka had shown him the letter, but, to her surprise, he placed very little value on this letter. And it would be quite difficult to explain why: perhaps simply because he was so oppressed by all the ugliness and horror of his struggle with his own father for this woman that he could not even imagine anything more terrible or dangerous for himself, at least not at that time. He simply did not believe in this fiancé who had suddenly sprung from somewhere after a five-year disappearance, much less that he would soon arrive. And this first letter from “the officer,” which was shown to Mitenka, itself spoke quite uncertainly about the coming of this new rival: it was a very vague letter, very grandiloquent, and full of nothing but sentimentality. It should be noted that at the time Grushenka concealed from him the last lines of the letter, which spoke with more certainty about his return. Besides, Mitenka later recalled that at that moment he had detected, as it were, some involuntary and proud contempt for this missive from Siberia on the part of Grushenka herself. After that, Grushenka told Mitenka nothing about any of her subsequent dealings with this new rival. So it happened that little by little he even quite forgot about the officer. He thought only that whatever the outcome and whatever turn the affair might take, his impending final clash with Fyodor Pavlovich was too near and must be resolved before anything else. With a sinking soul he waited every moment for Grushenka’s decision and kept thinking that it would occur as if unexpectedly, by inspiration. Suddenly she would tell him: “Take me, I’m yours forever,” and it would all be over: he would snatch her up and take her to the end of the world at once. Oh, at once, take her far away, as far as possible, if not to the end of the world, then somewhere to the end of Russia, marry her there, and settle down with her incognito, so that no one would know anything about them, not here, not there, not anywhere. Then, oh, then a totally new life would begin at once! He dreamed of this other, this renewed and now “virtuous” life (“it must, it must be virtuous”) ceaselessly and feverishly. He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren’t for these people, if only it weren’t for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from this cursed place—then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for.

But that would only be in the case of the first, happy solution to the question. There was another solution; he imagined a different and terrible ending. She suddenly says to him: “Go, I’ve just reached an agreement with Fyodor Pavlovich and shall marry him, you’re no longer needed”—and then ... but then ... Incidentally, Mitya did not know what would happen then, until the very last hour he did not know, we must clear him of that. He had no definite intentions, the crime had not been thought out. He just watched, spied, and suffered, while preparing himself only for the first, happy ending to his fate. He even drove away all other thoughts. But here quite a different torment began, here arose a quite new and unrelated, but equally fatal and insoluble, circumstance.

Namely, if she should say to him: “I’m yours, take me away,” how was he to take her away? Where would he get the means, the money to do it? Just at that time he had exhausted all his income from Fyodor Pavlovich’s handouts, which until then had continued nonstop for so many years. Of course Grushenka had money, but on this point Mitya suddenly turned out to be terribly proud: he wanted to take her away himself, to start the new life with her on his own money, not on hers; he could not even imagine himself taking money from her and suffered at the thought to the point of painful revulsion. I will not enlarge upon this fact, or analyze it, I will only note that such was the cast of his soul at the moment. All of this might well have proceeded indirectly and unwittingly, as it were, from the secret suffering of his conscience over Katerina Ivanovna’s money, which he had thievishly appropriated: “I am a scoundrel before one woman, and I’ll prove at once to be a scoundrel before the other,” he thought then, as he himself confessed later, “and Grushenka, if she finds out, will not want such a scoundrel.” And so, where to find the means, where to find this fatal money? Otherwise all was lost, and nothing would happen, “for the sole reason that there wasn’t enough money—oh, shame!”

To anticipate: the thing was that he perhaps knew where to get the money, he perhaps knew where it lay. I will not go into details just now, as it will all become clear later; but what his main trouble consisted of, I will say, albeit vaguely: in order to take this money that was lying somewhere, in order to have the right to take it, it was necessary beforehand to return the three thousand to Katerina Ivanovna—otherwise, “I am a pickpocket, I am a scoundrel, and I do not want to begin a new life as a scoundrel,” Mitya decided, and therefore he decided to turn the whole world upside down, if need be, but to be sure to return the three thousand to Katerina Ivanovna at all costs and before all else. The final working out of this decision took place in him, so to speak, in the last hours of his life—that is, starting from his last meeting with Alyosha, two days before, in the evening, on the road, after Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, having listened to Alyosha’s account of it, admitted that he was a scoundrel and asked that Katerina Ivanovna be told so “if it’s any comfort to her.” Right then, that night, after parting with his brother, he had felt in his frenzy that it would be better even “to kill and rob someone, but repay his debt to Katya.” “Better to stand as a murderer and a thief before that robbed and murdered man and before everyone, and go to Siberia, than that Katya should have the right to say I betrayed her and then stole money from her, and with that money ran away with Grushenka to start a virtuous life! That I cannot do!” Thus spoke Mitya, gnashing his teeth, and he might well have imagined at times that he would end up with brain fever. But meanwhile he went on struggling . . .

Strangely enough, it would seem that after such a decision nothing was left for him but despair; for how could one suddenly come up with so much money, especially such a pauper as he? Nevertheless, to the very end he kept hoping that he would get the three thousand, that the money would come to him, that it would somehow fly down to him by itself, from the sky no less. But that is precisely how things happen with people like Dmitri Fyodorovich, who all their lives know only how to spend and squander inherited money that they got without any effort, but have no idea of how money is earned. The most fantastic whirlwind arose in his head just after he had parted with Alyosha two days before, and confused all his thoughts. Thus it came about that he started with the wildest enterprise. Yes, perhaps with such people, precisely in such situations, it is the most impossible and fantastic enterprises that seem to offer the best possibilities. He suddenly decided to go to the merchant Samsonov, Grushenka’s patron, to offer him a “plan,” to obtain from him for this “plan” the entire sum he needed at once; he had not the slightest doubt about the commercial aspects of his plan, but doubted only how Samsonov himself might view his escapade if he chose to look beyond its commercial aspects. Though Mitya knew the merchant by sight, he was not acquainted with him and had never once spoken to him. But for some reason the conviction had settled in him, even much earlier, that this old profligate, now with one foot in the grave, might not be at all averse at the moment to Grushenka somehow arranging her life honorably and marrying “a trustworthy man.” And that he not only would not resist, but even wished it himself, and would further it if the occasion should arise. He also concluded, either from rumors or from something Grushenka had said, that the old man might prefer him for Grushenka over Fyodor Pavlovich. Perhaps to many readers of our story the expectation of such help and the intention of taking his fiancée from the hand of her patron, so to speak, were much too crude and unscrupulous on Dmitri Fyodorovich’s part. I can only note that Mitya thought of Grushenka’s past as definitively passed. He looked upon that past with infinite compassion, and decided with all the fire of his passion that once Grushenka told him she loved him and would marry him, a completely new Grushenka would begin at once, and together with her a completely new Dmitri Fyodorovich, with no vices now, but with virtues only: they would forgive each other and start their life quite anew. As for Kuzma Samsonov, he considered him a fatal man in Grushenka’s life, in that former, swallowed-up past, whom, however, she had never loved, and who—this above all—was now also “passed,” done with, so that he was no longer there at all. And besides, Mitya could not even regard him as a man now, because it was known to all and sundry in town that he was an ailing wreck, who maintained only fatherly relations, so to speak, with Grushenka, and not at all on the same terms as before, and that it had been so for a long time, almost a year. In any case, there was much simple-heartedness here on Mitya’s part, for with all his vices this was a very simple-hearted man. Because of his simple-heartedness, by the way, he was seriously convinced that old Kuzma, preparing to depart to another world, felt sincerely repentant for his past with Grushenka, and that she had no more faithful patron and friend than this already-harmless old man.

The day after his conversation with Alyosha in the fields, following which he had hardly slept the whole night, Mitya appeared at Samsonov’s house at about ten o’clock in the morning and asked to be announced. The house was old, gloomy, spacious, two-storied, with outbuildings and a cottage in the yard. On the ground floor lived Samsonov’s two married sons with their families, his elderly sister, and one unmarried daughter. The cottage housed his two clerks, one of whom also had a large family. Both his children and his clerks were cramped in their quarters, but the old man occupied the upper floor by himself and would not share it even with his daughter, who looked after him and at regular hours or at his irregular summons had each time to run up to him from downstairs, despite her chronic shortness of breath. This “upstairs” consisted of a number of large formal rooms, furnished in the merchant style of old, with long, dull rows of clumsy mahogany armchairs and sidechairs along the walls, with crystal chandeliers in dust covers, and sullen mirrors between the windows. All these rooms stood completely empty and uninhabited, because the sick old man huddled himself in one little room, his remote and tiny bedroom, where he was waited on by an old woman in a kerchief and a “lad” who resided on a bench in the front hall. Because of his swollen legs, the old man was almost entirely unable to walk, and only rarely got up from his leather chair, when the old woman, holding him under the arms, would take him once or twice around the room. He was severe and taciturn even with this old woman. When the arrival of “the captain” was announced to him, he at once gave orders not to admit him. But Mitya insisted and asked to be announced a second time. Kuzma Kuzmich questioned the lad in detail: how did he look, was he drunk, was he making trouble? The answer was “sober, but won’t go away.” The old man again refused to admit him. Then Mitya, who had foreseen as much, and therefore had purposely brought paper and pencil with him, wrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: “On most important business closely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna,” and sent it to the old man. Having thought a little, the old man told the lad to show the visitor to the drawing room, and sent the old woman downstairs with an order for his younger son to report upstairs at once. This younger son, a man over six feet tall and of enormous strength, who shaved his beard and dressed in German fashion (Samsonov himself wore a caftan and had a beard), came immediately and without a word. They all trembled before their father. The father sent for this stalwart not so much from fear of the captain (he was no coward) as simply to have him there, just in case, if he should need a witness. Accompanied by his son, who supported him under the arm, and by the lad, he finally came sailing into the drawing room. One may suppose he felt a certain rather strong curiosity. This drawing room where Mitya was waiting was a huge, dreary, killingly depressing room, with windows on both sides, a gallery, “marbled” walls, and three huge crystal chandeliers in dust covers. Mitya was sitting on a little chair by the entrance, awaiting his fate with nervous impatience. When the old man appeared at the opposite door, about twenty yards away from Mitya’s chair, he jumped up suddenly and went to meet him with his long, firm, military stride. Mitya was respectably dressed in a buttoned frock coat, was holding a round hat, and wearing black leather gloves, exactly as three days before in the monastery, at the elder’s, at the family meeting with Fyodor Pavlovich and his brothers. The old man stood solemnly and sternly waiting for him, and Mitya felt at once that he was examining him thoroughly as he approached. Mitya was also struck by the face of Kuzma Kuzmich, which had become extremely swollen recently: his lower lip, which had always been thick, now looked like a kind of drooping pancake. He bowed solemnly and silently to his guest, motioned him to an armchair near the sofa, and, leaning on his son’s arm, with painful groans began slowly lowering himself onto the sofa facing Mitya, who, seeing his painful exertions, immediately felt remorse in his heart, sensible of his present insignificance before this so solemn personage whom he had ventured to disturb.

“What do you want of me, sir?” the old man, having finally seated himself, said slowly, distinctly, sternly, but courteously.

Mitya gave a start, jumped up, and sat down again. Then all at once he began speaking loudly, quickly, nervously, gesticulating and decidedly in a frenzy. Here obviously was a man at the end of his rope, facing ruin and looking for a last way out, and if he did not find it, he might just go and drown himself. All this old Samsonov probably understood instantly, though his face remained unchanged and cold as an idol’s.

“The most honorable Kuzma Kuzmich has doubtless already heard more than once of my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, who robbed me of my inheritance after my own mother ... because the whole town is chattering about it ... because here everyone chatters about things they shouldn’t ... And besides, it might also have come to you from Grushenka ... I beg your pardon: from Agrafena Alexandrovna ... from Agrafena Alexandrovna who is so greatly respected and so greatly honored by me . . .” Thus Mitya began, and broke off at the first sentence. However, we will not quote his whole speech word for word, but will only give a summary of it. The thing was, he said, that three months ago, he, Mitya, had purposefully consulted (he precisely said “purposefully,” not “purposely”) a lawyer in the provincial capital, “a famous lawyer, Kuzma Kuzmich, Pavel Pavlovich Korneplodov, perhaps you’ve heard of him, sir? A vast brain, almost the mind of a statesman ... he knows you, too ... he has the highest opinion ... ,” Mitya broke off again. But these gaps did not deter Mitya, he immediately leaped over them and rushed ahead. This same Korneplodov, after questioning him in detail and examining all the documents Mitya could present to him (about the documents Mitya spoke vaguely, and became particularly hurried at this point), opined that with regard to the village of Chermashnya, which should, he said, belong to him, Mitya, from his mother, it would indeed be possible to start a court action and knock the pins out from under the old hooligan ... “because it’s impossible that all doors are locked, and the law knows all the loopholes.” In a word, he might hope for as much as an additional six thousand from Fyodor Pavlovich, maybe even seven, because after all Chermashnya is worth not less than twenty-five thousand—that is, certainly twenty-eight, “thirty, in fact, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmich, and just imagine, I never got even seventeen out of that cruel man...!” And then, he said, I, Mitya, dropped the whole business, because I can’t deal with the law, and when I came here, I was dumbstruck by a countersuit (here Mitya became confused again, and again leaped abruptly ahead): and so, most honorable Kuzma Kuzmich, he said, how would you like to take over all my claims against that monster, and give me just three thousand ... You can’t lose in any case, I swear it on my honor, and quite the opposite, you could make six or seven thousand instead of three ... And above all it must be settled “this same day.” “I’ll ... at the notary, is it, or whatever ... In a word, I’m ready for anything, I’ll supply all the documents you want, I’ll sign anything ... and we could draw up the paper right now, and if possible, if only it were possible, this morning ... You could let me have the three thousand ... because who else is a capitalist in this little town if not you ... and you would save me from ... in a word, you would save my poor head for a most honorable deed, for a most lofty deed, one might say ... for I cherish the most honorable feelings for a certain person, whom you know only too well, sir, and for whom you have a fatherly concern. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come, if it wasn’t fatherly. And here three men are at loggerheads, if you like, because fate is a grisly thing, Kuzma Kuzmich! Realism, Kuzma Kuzmich, realism! And since you should have been counted out long ago, there are two heads left, as I put it, awkwardly perhaps, but I’m not a literary man. That is, one of the heads is mine, and the other—that monster’s. So choose: me or the monster? Everything is in your hands now—three fates and two lots ... Forgive me, I’ve gotten confused, but you understand ... I can see by your venerable eyes that you understand ... And if you don’t understand, I’ll drown myself today, that’s it!”

Mitya broke off his absurd speech with “that’s it,” and jumping up from his seat, awaited the answer to his stupid offer. At the last phrase, he felt suddenly and hopelessly that everything had fallen through, and, above all, that he had produced a lot of terrible drivel. “Strange, on my way here it all seemed fine, and now it’s all drivel!” suddenly flashed through his hopeless head. All the while he was talking, the old man sat motionlessly and watched him with an icy expression in his eyes. However, after keeping him in suspense for a moment, Kuzma Kuzmich at last declared in the most resolute and cheerless tone:

“Excuse me, sir, we do not engage in that kind of business.”

Mitya suddenly felt his legs give way under him.

“What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmich?” he murmured, with a pale smile. “I’m done for now, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me, sir...”

Mitya went on standing, staring fixedly at the old man, and suddenly noticed a slight movement in his face. He gave a start. “You see, sir, such business is not in our line,” the old man said slowly, “there would be courts, lawyers, all kinds of trouble! But there is a man for that, if you like you can try him...”

“My God, who is he...! You’re my resurrection, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya began babbling suddenly.

“He’s not a local man, the one I mean, and he’s not here now. He’s from peasants, he trades in timber, he’s called Lyagavy.^[235] He’s been bargaining for a year with Fyodor Pavlovich over that woodlot in Chermashnya, but they can’t agree on a price, as perhaps you’ve heard. Now he’s come back again and is staying with the priest in Ilyinskoye, about eight miles or so from Volovya station, in the village of Ilyinskoye. He also wrote here, to me, about the same business—that is, concerning the woodlot—asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovich himself wants to go and see him. So if you were to get there ahead of Fyodor Pavlovich, and make Lyagavy the same offer you made me, he might just ...”

“A brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “It’s made for him, just made for him! He’s bargaining, the price is too high, and here is this document of ownership just made for him, ha, ha, ha!” Mitya burst into his clipped, wooden laugh, so unexpectedly that even Samsonov jerked his head.

“How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya was bubbling over.

“It’s nothing, sir,” Samsonov inclined his head.

“But you don’t realize, you’ve saved me, oh, I was drawn to you by some presentiment ... And so, off to that priest!”

“No thanks are necessary, sir.”

“I hasten, I fly! I’ve abused your health. I will remember it always—it’s a Russian man saying it to you, Kuzma Kuzmich, a R-r-russian man!”

“Well, sir.”

Mitya seized his hand to shake it, but something malicious flashed in the old man’s eyes. Mitya drew his hand back, and at once reproached himself for his suspicion. “He must be tired ... ,” flashed through his mind.

“For her! For her, Kuzma Kuzmich! You understand it’s for her!” he roared suddenly to the rafters, then bowed, turned around sharply, and with the same long, quick strides walked to the door without looking back. He was trembling with delight. “Everything was on the verge of ruin, and my guardian angel saved me,” raced through his mind. “And if such a businessman as this old man (a most honorable old man, and what bearing! ) has pointed out this course, then ... then this course must surely be a winner. I’ll fly immediately. I’ll be back before nightfall, by nightfall, but the thing will be won. Can the old man have been laughing at me?” Thus Mitya exclaimed, striding back to his lodgings, and of course to his mind it could not have appeared otherwise; that is, either it was businesslike advice, and from such a businessman, who knows business and knows this Lyagavy (strange name!), or—or the old man was laughing at him! Alas! only the second of these thoughts was true. Later, much later, when the whole catastrophe had already taken place, old Samsonov himself admitted, laughing, that he had made a fool of the “captain.” This was a spiteful, cold, and sarcastic man, full of morbid antipathies as well. Whether it was the rapturous look of the captain, the foolish conviction of this “wastrel and spendthrift” that he, Samsonov, might fall for something as wild as his “plan,” or jealousy over Grushenka, in whose name this “madcap” came with such a wild thing, asking for money—I cannot say what precisely prompted the old man at the time, but when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs give way, and exclaimed senselessly that he was done for—-at that moment the old man looked upon him with boundless spite and decided to make a fool of him. Once Mitya had left, Kuzma Kuzmich, livid with spite, turned to his son and told him to give orders that not a hair of that ragamuffin was to be seen in the future, that he was not even to be allowed into the yard, or else . . .

He did not finish his threat, but even his son, who had often seen him angry, jumped in fear. For a whole hour afterwards the old man was even shaking all over with spite, and by evening he had fallen ill and sent for a “leech.”

Chapter 2: Lyagavy

So he had to go “at a gallop,” and yet he had no money, not a kopeck, for horses—that is, he had forty kopecks, but that was all, all that remained from so many years of former prosperity! But at home he had an old silver watch that had long since stopped running. He grabbed it and took it to a watchmaker, a Jew, who had his shop in the marketplace. The Jew gave him six roubles for it. “I didn’t expect even that much!” cried the delighted Mitya (he still went on being delighted), grabbed his six roubles and ran home. At home he added to the sum, borrowing three roubles from his landlords, who gave it to him gladly, though it was their last money—so much did they love him. Mitya, in his rapturous state, revealed to them at once that his fate was being decided, and told them, in a terrible hurry of course, almost the whole of his “plan,” which he had just presented to Samsonov, then Samsonov’s decision, his future hopes, and so on and so forth. His landlords even before then had been initiated into many of his secrets, which was why they looked upon him as one of their own, not at all as a proud gentleman. Having thus collected nine roubles, Mitya sent for post horses going to Volovya station. But in this way the fact came to be remembered and noted that “on the eve of a certain event, at noon, Mitya did not have a kopeck, and that, in order to get money, he sold his watch and borrowed three roubles from his landlords, all in the presence of witnesses.”

I note this fact beforehand; why I do so will become clear later.

Although, as he galloped to Volovya station, Mitya was beaming with joyful anticipation that he was at last about to finish and have done with “all these affairs,” he was nevertheless also trembling with fear: what would happen with Grushenka now, in his absence? What if precisely today she should at last decide to go to Fyodor Pavlovich? That was why he had left without telling her and ordered his landlords under no circumstances to reveal where he was going if anyone should come asking for him. “I must get back, I must get back by this evening,” he kept saying, as he jolted along in the wagon, “and maybe even drag this Lyagavy here ... to execute this deed . . .” So Mitya dreamed, with a sinking soul, but, alas, his dreams were not at all destined to come true according to his “plan.”

First of all, he was late, having set out on a back road from Volovya station. Instead of eight miles, it turned out to be twelve. Second, he did not find the Ilyinskoye priest at home; he was away in a neighboring village. It was almost dark by the time Mitya located him, having driven to this neighboring village with the same, already exhausted, horses. The priest, a timid, tender-looking little man, explained to him at once that though this Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now in Sukhoy Possyolok, and would be spending the night in the forester’s hut, because he was buying timber there too. To Mitya’s urgent requests to take him to Lyagavy at once and “thereby save him, so to speak,” the priest, though hesitant at first, finally agreed to go with him to Sukhoy Possyolok, apparently out of curiosity; but, as bad luck would have it, he suggested that they go “afoot,” since it was only “a wee bit more” than half a mile. Mitya naturally agreed and set off with his long strides, so that the poor priest almost had to run to keep up. He was not yet old, and was a very cautious little man. Mitya also began speaking with him at once about his plans, hotly and nervously demanded advice concerning Lyagavy, and talked all the way. The priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He responded evasively to Mitya’s questions: “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know, how am I to know that,” and so on. When Mitya began speaking about his disputes with his father over the inheritance, the priest was even frightened, because he stood in some sort of dependent relation to Fyodor Pavlovich. However, he did ask in surprise why Mitya called this peasant trader Gorstkin by the name of Lyagavy, and made a point of explaining to him that though the man was indeed Lyagavy, he was also not Lyagavy, because he took bitter offense at the name, and that he must be called Gorstkin, “otherwise you won’t get anywhere with him, and he won’t even listen,” the priest concluded. Mitya was slightly and briefly surprised, and explained that Samsonov himself had referred to the man that way. On hearing of this circumstance, the priest at once changed the subject, though he would have done better to explain then and there to Dmitri Fyodorovich what he suspected: that if Samsonov himself had sent him to this peasant calling him Lyagavy, did he not do it in mockery for some reason, and wasn’t there something wrong here? But Mitya had no time to pause over “such trifles.” He rushed, he strode along, and only when they reached Sukhoy Possyolok did he realize that they had gone not half a mile, not a mile, but a good mile and a half. This annoyed him, but he let it pass. They went into the hut. The forester, an acquaintance of the priest, occupied half of the hut, and in the other, the good half, on the opposite side of the entryway, Gorstkin was staying. They went into this good room and lighted a tallow candle. The room was overheated. The samovar on the pine table had gone out; there were also a tray with cups, an empty bottle of rum, an almost empty quart bottle of vodka, and some crusts of white bread. The visitor himself lay stretched out on a bench, his coat bunched up under his head for a pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood perplexed. “Of course I must wake him up; my business is too important, I’ve hurried so, I’m in a hurry to get back today,” Mitya became alarmed; but the priest and the forester stood silently without expressing their opinion. Mitya went over himself and began shaking him, quite energetically, but the sleeping man would not wake up. “He’s drunk,” Mitya de- , cided, “but what am I to do, Lord, what am I to do!” And suddenly, in terrible impatience, he began tugging the sleeping man by the arms and legs, rolling his head back and forth, lifting him up and sitting him on the bench, yet after prolonged exertions, all he accomplished was that the man began mumbling absurdly and uttering strong but inarticulate oaths.

“No, you’d better wait,” the priest finally pronounced, “he’s obviously in no condition.”

“Been drinking all day,” the forester echoed.

“Oh, God!” Mitya kept exclaiming, “if only you knew how necessary it is, and what despair I’m in now!”

“No, you’d better wait till morning,” the priest repeated. “Till morning? But, merciful God, that’s impossible!” And in his despair he was about to rush at the drunk man to wake him, but stopped at once, realizing that all efforts were useless. The priest was silent, the sleepy forester was gloomy.

“What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people,” Mitya uttered in complete despair. Sweat was streaming down his face. Seizing the moment, the priest quite reasonably explained that even if they succeeded in waking the sleeping man up, still, in his drunken state, he would not be fit for any conversation, “and you have important business, so it would be safer to leave it till morning . . “Mitya spread his arms helplessly and agreed.

“I’ll stay here, father, with a lighted candle, and try to catch the right moment. When he wakes up, I’ll begin ... I’ll pay you for the candle,” he turned to the forester, “and for the night’s lodging, too; you’ll remember Dmitri Karamazov. Only I don’t know what to do with you, father: where will you sleep?”

“No, I’d better go back to my place, sir. I’ll take his mare and go,” he pointed to the forester. “And now, farewell, sir, I hope you get full satisfaction.”

So it was settled. The priest rode off on the mare, happy to have escaped at last, but still shaking his head in perplexity and wondering whether first thing next day he ought not to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovich of this curious incident, “or else, worse luck, he may find out, get angry, and stop his favors.” The forester, having scratched himself, silently went back to his room, and Mitya sat on the bench, waiting, as he put it, to catch the right moment. Deep anguish, like a heavy fog, enveloped his soul. Deep, terrible anguish! He sat and thought, but could not think anything through. The candle flickered, a cricket chirped, it was becoming unbearably stuffy in the overheated room. He suddenly imagined a garden, a lane behind the garden, the door of his father’s house secretly opening, and Grushenka running in through the door ... He jumped up from the bench.

“A tragedy!” he said, grinding his teeth, and mechanically going over to the sleeping man, he began looking at his face. He was a lean man, not yet old, with a very oblong face, light brown curly hair, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which the chain of a silver watch peeped out. Mitya examined his physiognomy with terrible hatred, and for some reason the most hateful thing was his curly hair. Above all it was unbearably vexing that he, Mitya, should be standing there over him with his urgent business, having sacrificed so much, having left so much behind, utterly exhausted, while this parasite, “on whom my entire fate now depends, goes on snoring as if nothing were wrong, as if he came from another planet.” “Oh, the irony of fate!” Mitya exclaimed, and suddenly losing his head altogether, he again tried frantically to rouse the drunken peasant. He began rousing him in a kind of rage, pulled him, pushed him, even beat him, but, having labored over him for about five minutes, again with no results, he went back to his bench in helpless despair and sat down.

“Stupid, stupid!”Mitya kept exclaiming, “and ... how dishonorable it all is!” he suddenly added for some reason. He was getting a terrible headache. “Why not drop it? Go away altogether?” flashed through his mind. “Oh, no, not before morning. On purpose, I’ll stay on purpose! Why did I come, after all? And I have no means of leaving, how can I leave here now? Oh, absurd!”

His head, however, was aching more and more. He sat without moving and had no recollection of how he dozed off and suddenly fell asleep sitting up. He must have slept for two hours or more. He was awakened by an unbearable pain in his head, so unbearable he could have screamed. It hammered at his temples, the top of his head throbbed; having come to, it was a long time before he was able to regain full consciousness and understand what had happened to him. He finally realized that the overheated room was full of fumes, and that he might even have died. And the drunken peasant still lay there and snored; the candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya shouted and rushed staggering across the hallway to the forester’s room. The forester woke up quickly, but on hearing that the other room was full of fumes, though he went to take care of it, he accepted the fact with strange indifference, which sorely surprised Mitya.

“But he’s dead, he’s dead, and now ... what now?” Mitya kept shouting before him in a frenzy.

They opened the door, flung the windows wide, undamped the flue; Mitya brought a bucket of water from the hallway, wet his own head first, and then, finding some rag, dipped it in the water and put it to Lyagavy’s head. The forester continued to treat the whole event somehow even disdainfully, and after opening the window, said sullenly: “That’ll do,” and went back to bed, leaving Mitya with a lighted iron lantern. Mitya fussed over the fume-poisoned drunkard for about half an hour, kept wetting his head, and seriously intended not to sleep for the rest of the night, but he became exhausted, sat down for a moment to catch his breath, instantly closed his eyes, then unconsciously stretched out on the bench and fell at once into a dead sleep.

He woke up terribly late. It was already approximately nine o’clock in the morning. The sun was shining brightly through the two windows of the hut. The curly-headed peasant of the night before was sitting on a bench, already dressed in his long-waisted coat. Before him stood a fresh samovar and a fresh quart bottle. The old one from the day before was empty, and the new one was more than half gone. Mitya jumped up and instantly realized that the cursed peasant was drunk again, deeply and irretrievably drunk. He stared wide-eyed at him for a moment. The peasant kept glancing at him silently and slyly, with a sort of offensive composure, even with a sort of derisive haughtiness, as Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.

“Allow me, you see ... I ... you’ve probably heard from the forester there in the other room: I am Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, old Karamazov’s son, from whom you are buying a woodlot. . .”

“That’s a lie!” the peasant suddenly rapped out firmly and calmly.

“A lie? If you please, you do know Fyodor Pavlovich?”

“I don’t please to know any Fyodor Pavlovich of yours,” the peasant said, moving his tongue somehow heavily.

“A woodlot, you’re buying a woodlot from him; wake up, come to your senses! Father Pavel llyinsky brought me here ... You wrote to Samsonov, and he sent me to you ... ,” Mitya spoke breathlessly.

“A l-lie!” Lyagavy again rapped out.

Mitya’s legs went cold.

“For pity’s sake, this isn’t a joke! You’re a bit drunk, perhaps. But anyway you can speak, you can understand ... otherwise ... otherwise I don’t understand anything!”

“You’re a dyer!”

“For pity’s sake, I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov, I have an offer to make you ... a profitable offer ... quite profitable ... about that same wood-lot.”

The peasant was stroking his beard solemnly.

“No, you contracted for the job and turned out to be a cheat. You’re a cheat!”

“You’re mistaken, I assure you!” Mitya was wringing his hands in despair. The peasant kept stroking his beard and suddenly narrowed his eyes slyly.

“No, you show me one thing: show me where there’s a law that allows people to play dirty tricks, do you hear? You’re a cheat, understand?”

Mitya glumly stepped back, and suddenly it was as though “something hit him on the head,” as he himself put it later. In an instant a sort of illumination came to him, “a light shone and I perceived everything.” He stood dumbfounded, wondering how he, an intelligent man after all, could have given in to such foolishness, could have been sucked into such an adventure, and kept on with it all for nearly a whole day and night, worrying over this Lyagavy, wetting his head ... “Well, the man is drunk, drunk out of his mind, and he’ll go on drinking for another week—what is there to wait for? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? And what if she ... Oh, God, what have I done . . .!”

The peasant sat watching him and chuckled. On another occasion Mitya might have killed the fool in a rage, but now he himself became weak as a child. He quietly walked over to the bench, took his coat, silently put it on, and went out of the room. He did not find the forester in the other room; no one was there. He took fifty kopecks in change from his pocket and put it on the table, for the night’s lodging, the candle, and the trouble. Stepping out of the hut, he saw nothing but forest all around. He walked at random, not even remembering whether to turn right or left from the hut; hurrying there with the priest the night before, he had not noticed the way. There was no vengeance in his soul for anyone, not even Samsonov. He strode along a narrow forest path, senselessly, lost, with his “lost idea,” not caring where he was going. A passing child might have knocked him down, so strengthless had he suddenly become in soul and body. Somehow he nevertheless got out of the forest: suddenly before him spread a boundless expanse of bare, harvested fields. “What despair, what death all around!” he kept saying as he strode on and on.

He was saved by some passers-by: a coachman was taking an old merchant over the back road. When they drew up with him, Mitya asked the way, and it turned out that they, too, were going to Volovya. After some negotiating, they agreed to take Mitya along. They arrived three hours later. At Volovya station Mitya immediately ordered post horses to town, and suddenly realized that he was impossibly hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, some fried eggs were fixed for him. He ate them instantly, ate a whole big hunk of bread, ate some sausage that turned up, and drank three glasses of vodka. Having refreshed himself, he cheered up and his soul brightened again. He flew down the road, urging the coachman on, and suddenly arrived at a new, and this time “immutable,” plan for obtaining “that accursed money” before evening. “And to think that a man’s fate should be ruined because of a worthless three thousand roubles!”heexclaimed contemptuously. “I’ll have done with it today!” And had it not been for ceaselessly thinking of Grushenka and whether anything had happened with her, he would perhaps have become quite happy again. But the thought of her stabbed his soul every moment like a sharp knife. They arrived at last, and Mitya ran at once to Grushenka.

Chapter 3: Gold Mines

This was precisely the visit from Mitya of which Grushenka had told Rakitin with such fear. She was then expecting her “messenger,” and was very glad that Mitya had not come either the day before or that day, hoping that perchance, God willing, he would not come before her departure, when suddenly he descended upon her. The rest we know: in order to get him off her hands, she persuaded him at once to take her to Kuzma Samsonov’s, where she said it was terribly necessary for her to go to “count the money,” and when Mitya promptly took her, she made him promise, as she said good-bye to him at Kuzma’s gate, to come for her after eleven and take her home again. Mitya was also pleased with this order: “If she’s sitting at Kuzma’s, she won’t go to Fyodor Pavlovich ... if only she’s not lying,” he added at once. But from what he could see, she was not lying. His jealousy was precisely of such a sort that, separated from the beloved woman, he at once invented all kinds of horrors about what was happening with her, and how she had gone and “betrayed” him; but, running back to her, shaken, crushed, convinced irretrievably that she had managed to betray him, with the first look at her face, at the gay, laughing, tender face of this woman, his spirits would at once revive, he would at once lose all suspicion, and with joyful shame reproach himself for his jealousy. Having accompanied Grushenka, he rushed home. Oh, he still somehow had to do so much that day! But at least he felt relieved. “Only I must find out quickly from Smerdyakov whether anything happened last night, whether, God forbid, she went to Fyodor Pavlovich!” raced through his head. And so, in just the time it took him to run home, jealousy had already begun stirring again in his restless heart.

Jealousy!”Othello is not jealous, he is trustful,” Pushkin observed,^[236] and this one observation already testifies to the remarkable depth of our great poet’s mind. Othello’s soul is simply shattered and his whole world view clouded because his ideal is destroyed. Othello will not hide, spy, peep: he is trustful. On the contrary, he had to be led, prompted, roused with great effort to make him even think of betrayal. A truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible to imagine all the shame and moral degradation a jealous man can tolerate without the least remorse. And it is not that they are all trite and dirty souls. On the contrary, it is possible to have a lofty heart, to love purely, to be full of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to hide under tables, to bribe the meanest people, and live with the nastiest filth of spying and eavesdropping. Othello could in no way be reconciled with betrayal—not that he could not forgive, but he could not be reconciled—though his soul was gentle and innocent as a babe’s. Not so the truly jealous man: it is hard to imagine what some jealous men can tolerate and be reconciled to, and what they can forgive! Jealous men forgive sooner than anyone else, and all women know it. The jealous man (having first made a terrible scene, of course) can and will very promptly forgive, for example, a nearly proven betrayal, the embraces and kisses he has seen himself, if, for example, at the same time he can somehow be convinced that this was “the last time” and that his rival will disappear from that moment on, that he will go to the end of the earth, or that he himself will take her away somewhere, to some place where this terrible rival will never come. Of course, the reconciliation will only last an hour, because even if the rival has indeed disappeared, tomorrow he will invent another, a new one, and become jealous of this new one. And one may ask what is the good of a love that must constantly be spied on, and what is the worth of a love that needs to be guarded so intensely? But that is something the truly jealous will never understand, though at the same time there happen, indeed, to be lofty hearts among them. It is also remarkable that these same lofty-hearted men, while standing in some sort of closet, eavesdropping and spying, though they understand clearly “in their lofty hearts” all the shame they have gotten into of their own will, nevertheless, at least for that moment, while standing in that closet, will not feel any pangs of remorse. Mitya’s jealousy disappeared at the sight of Grushenka, and for a moment he became trustful and noble, and even despised himself for his bad feelings. But this meant only that his love for this woman consisted in something much higher than he himself supposed and not in passion alone, not merely in that “curve of the body” he had explained to Alyosha. But when Grushenka disappeared, Mitya at once began again to suspect in her all the baseness and perfidy of betrayal. And for that he felt no pangs of remorse.

And so jealousy was again seething in him. He had to hurry in any case. First of all he needed at least a little money to get by on. The previous day’s nine roubles had been almost entirely spent on the trip, and without money, as everyone knows, one cannot take a step. But that morning, in the wagon, along with his new plan, he had also thought of how to find some money to get by on. He had a pair of fine dueling pistols with cartridges, and if he had not pawned them yet, it was because he loved them more than anything else he owned. Some time before, in the “Metropolis,” he had struck up a slight acquaintance with a certain young official and had learned somehow, also in the tavern, that this official, a bachelor of no small means, had a passion for weapons, bought pistols, revolvers, daggers, hung them on the wall, showed them to his acquaintances, boasted of them, was expert at explaining the workings of the revolver, loading, firing, and so on. Without thinking twice, Mitya went straight to him and offered to pawn the pistols to him for ten roubles. The delighted official tried to persuade him to sell them outright, but Mitya would not agree, so the man handed him ten roubles, declaring that he would not think of accepting any interest. They parted friends. Mitya was in a hurry; he raced off to behind Fyodor Pavlovich’s, to his gazebo, in order to send quickly for Smerdyakov. In this way, again, the fact emerged that only three or four hours before a certain incident, of which I shall speak below, Mitya did not have a kopeck, and pawned his dearest possession for ten roubles, whereas three hours later he suddenly had thousands in his hands ... But I anticipate.

At Maria Kondratievna’s (next door to Fyodor Pavlovich) the news awaited him of Smerdyakov’s illness, which struck and dismayed him greatly. He listened to the story of the fall into the cellar, then of the falling fit, the doctor’s visit, Fyodor Pavlovich’s concern; he was also interested to learn that his brother Ivan Fyodorovich had gone off to Moscow that morning. “He must have passed through Volovya ahead of me,” Dmitri Fyodorovich thought, but Smerdyakov troubled him terribly: “What now? Who will keep watch? Who will bring me word?” Greedily he began inquiring of the women whether they had noticed anything the previous evening. They knew very well what he was trying to find out and reassured him completely: no one had come, Ivan Fyodorovich had spent the night there, “everything was in perfect order.” Mitya began to think. Undoubtedly he had to be on watch today, too, but where— here, or at Samsonov’s gate? Both here and there, he decided, depending on the situation, but meanwhile, meanwhile ... What faced him now was that morning’s “plan,” the new and this time certain plan, which he had thought up in the wagon, the carrying out of which could not be put off any longer. Mitya decided to sacrifice an hour to it: “In an hour I’ll settle everything, find out everything, and then—then first of all to Samsonov’s house, to see whether Grushenka is there, then immediately back here, stay here till eleven, then again to Samsonov’s to take her home.” That was what he decided.

He flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, got dressed, and went to see Madame Khokhlakov. Alas, his “plan” lay there. He had made up his mind to borrow the three thousand from this lady. Moreover, suddenly, somehow unexpectedly, he had acquired a remarkable certainty that she would not refuse him. It may be wondered why, given such certainty, he had not gone there first, to his own society, so to speak, but had gone instead to Samsonov, a man of alien caste, with whom he did not even know how to speak. But the thing was that for the past month he had almost broken off relations with Madame Khokhlakov, and even before then had been only slightly acquainted with her, and, moreover, he knew very well that she could not stand him. The lady had detested him from the beginning, simply because he was Katerina Ivanovna’s fiancé, whereas she, for some reason, suddenly wanted Katerina Ivanovna to drop him and marry “the dear, chivalrously educated Ivan Fyodorovich, who has such beautiful manners.” Mitya’s manners she detested. Mitya even laughed at her and had said of her once that this lady “is as bold and lively as she is uneducated.” And so that morning, in the wagon, he had been illumined by a most brilliant idea: “If she is so much against my marrying Katerina Ivanovna, and against it to such a degree” (he knew it was almost to the point of hysterics), “then why should she deny me the three thousand now, when this money would precisely enable me to leave Katya and clear out of here forever? These spoiled high-up ladies, if they take it into their heads to want something, will spare nothing to get their way. Besides, she’s so rich,” Mitya reasoned. As for the “plan” itself, it was all the same as before, that is, the offer of his rights to Chermashnya, but now with no commercial purpose, as with Samsonov the day before, not trying to tempt this lady, like Samsonov the day before, with the prospect of picking up twice the sum, about six or seven thousand, but merely as an honorable pledge for the borrowed money. Mitya went into ecstasies developing his new idea, but that is what always happened to him in all his undertakings, all his sudden decisions. He gave himself passionately to every new idea. Nevertheless, as he stepped onto the porch of Madame Khokhlakov’s house, he suddenly felt a chill of horror run down his spine: only at that second did he realize fully and now with mathematical clarity that this was his last hope, that if this should fall through, there was nothing left in the world but “to kill and rob someone for the three thousand, and that’s all . . “It was half past seven when he rang the bell.

At first things seemed to smile on him: he was received at once, with remarkable promptness, as soon as he was announced. “Just as if she were expecting me,” flashed through Mitya’s mind, and then suddenly, as soon as he was shown into the drawing room, the hostess all but ran in and declared directly that she had been expecting him . . .

“I was expecting you, expecting you! I could not even think you would come to me, you must agree, and yet I was expecting you—just marvel at my instinct, Dmitri Fyodorovich, all morning I felt certain you would come today.”

“That is indeed amazing, madame,” Mitya uttered, sitting down clumsily, “but ... I’ve come on extremely important business ... the most important business, for me, that is, madame, for me alone, and I am in a hurry...”

“I know you have the most important business, Dmitri Fyodorovich, here there’s no question of presentiments, no retrograde pretense to miracles (have you heard about the elder Zosima?), this, this is mathematics: you could not fail to come after all that’s happened with Katerina Ivanovna, you could not, you simply could not, it’s mathematics.”

“The realism of actual life, madame, that’s what it is! Allow me, however, to explain ...”

“Realism precisely, Dmitri Fyodorovich. I’m all for realism now, I’ve been taught a good lesson about miracles. Have you heard that Zosima died?”

“No, madame, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” Mitya was a little surprised. Alyosha’s image flashed through his mind.

“Last night, and just imagine...”

“Madame,” Mitya interrupted, “I can imagine only that I am in a most desperate position, and that if you do not help me, everything will fall through, and I will fall through first of all. Forgive the triviality of the expression, but I feel hot, I am in a fever...”

“I know, I know you’re in a fever, I know everything, and you could hardly be in any other state of spirit, and whatever you may say, I know everything beforehand. I took your fate into consideration long ago, Dmitri Fyodorovich, I’ve been following it, studying it ... Oh, believe me, I am an experienced doctor of souls, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Madame, if you are an experienced doctor, I am an experienced patient,” Mitya forced himself into pleasantry, “and I have a feeling that if you have been following my fate as you say, you will help it in its ruination, but for that allow me, finally, to explain the plan with which I’ve ventured to come ... and what I expect from you ... I’ve come, madame ...”

“Don’t explain, it’s secondary. As for helping, you will not be the first I’ve helped, Dmitri Fyodorovich. You’ve probably heard about my cousin, Madame Belmesov, her husband was ruined, he fell through, as you so characteristically expressed it, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and what did I do ... ? I sent him into horse-breeding, and now he’s flourishing. Do you have any notion of horse-breeding, Dmitri Fyodorovich?”

“Not the slightest, madame—oh, madame, not the slightest!” Mitya exclaimed in nervous impatience, and even rose from his seat. “I only beg you, madame, to listen to me, allow me just two minutes to speak freely, so that I can first of all explain everything to you, the whole project with which I have come. Besides, I’m short of time, I’m in a terrible hurry!” Mitya shouted hysterically, feeling that she was about to start talking again and hoping to out-shout her. “I’ve come in despair ... in the last degree of despair, to ask you to lend me money, three thousand, but to lend it on a sure, on the surest pledge, madame, on the surest security! Only let me explain...”

“All of that later, later!” Madame Khokhlakov waved her hand at him in turn, “and whatever you are going to say, I know it all beforehand, I’ve already told you that. You are asking for a certain sum, you need three thousand, but I will give you more, infinitely more, I will save you, Dmitri Fyodorovich, but you must do as I say!”

Mitya reared up from his seat again.

“Madame, can you possibly be so kind!” he cried with extreme feeling. “Oh, Lord, you’ve saved me. You are saving a man from a violent death, madame, from a bullet ... My eternal gratitude...”

“I will give you more, infinitely more than three thousand!” Madame Khokhlakov cried, gazing at Mitya’s rapture with a beaming smile.

“Infinitely? But I don’t need so much. All that’s necessary is that fatal three thousand, and I, for my part, am prepared to guarantee the sum to you, with infinite gratitude, and I’ve come to offer you a plan that...”

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovich, it’s said and done,” Madame Khokhlakov spoke abruptly, with the virtuous triumph of a benefactress. “I’ve promised to save you, and I will save you. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What do you think about gold mines, Dmitri Fyodorovich?”

“Gold mines, madame! I’ve never thought anything about them.”

“But I have thought for you! I’ve thought and thought about it! I’ve been watching you for a whole month with that in mind. I’ve looked at you a hundred times as you walked by, saying to myself: here is an energetic man who must go to the mines. I even studied your gait and decided: this man will find many mines.”

“From my gait, madame?” Mitya smiled.

“And why not from your gait? What, do you deny that it’s possible to tell a man’s character from his gait, Dmitri Fyodorovich? Natural science confirms it. Oh, I’m a realist now, Dmitri Fyodorovich. From this day on, after all that story in the monastery, which upset me so, I’m a complete realist, and want to throw myself into practical activity. I am cured. Enough! as Turgenev said.”^[237]

“But, madame, this three thousand, which you have so generously promised to lend me...”

“You will get it, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Madame Khokhlakov at once cut him short, “you may consider it as good as in your pocket, and not three thousand, but three million, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and in no time! I shall tell you your idea: you will discover mines, make millions, return and become an active figure, and you will stir us, too, leading us towards the good. Should everything be left to the Jews? You’ll build buildings, start various enterprises. You will help the poor, and they will bless you. This is the age of railroads, Dmitri Fyodorovich. You will become known and indispensable to the Ministry of Finance, which is in such need now. The decline of the paper rouble allows me no sleep, Dmitri Fyodorovich, few know this side of me...”

“Madame, madame!” Dmitri Fyodorovich again interrupted with a certain uneasy foreboding. “Perhaps I will really and truly follow your advice, your sound advice, and go there, perhaps ... to these mines ... we can talk more about it ... I’ll come again ... even many times ... but about this three thousand, which you have so generously ... Oh, it would set me free, today if possible ... That is, you see, I don’t have any time now, not a moment...”

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovich, enough!” Madame Khokhlakov interrupted insistently. “The question is: are you going to the mines or not? Have you fully decided? Answer mathematically.”

“I will go, madame, later ... I’ll go wherever you like, madame, but now...”

“Wait, then!” cried Madame Khokhlakov, and, jumping up, she rushed to her magnificent bureau with numerous little drawers and began pulling out one drawer after another, looking for something and in a terrible hurry.

“The three thousand!” Mitya’s heart froze, “and just like that, without any papers, without any deed ... oh, but how gentlemanly! A splendid woman, if only she weren’t so talkative...”

“Here!” Madame Khokhlakov cried joyfully, coming back to Mitya. “Here is what I was looking for!”

It was a tiny silver icon on a string, of the kind sometimes worn around the neck together with a cross.

“It’s from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” she continued reverently, “from the relics of the great martyr Varvara.^[238] Allow me personally to put it around your neck and thereby bless you for a new life and new deeds.”

And she indeed put the icon around his neck and began tucking it in. Mitya, in great embarrassment, leaned forward and tried to help her, and finally got the icon past his tie and collar and onto his chest.

“Now you can go!” Madame Khokhlakov uttered, solemnly resuming her seat.

“Madame, I am so touched ... I don’t know how to thank ... for such kindness, but ... if you knew how precious time is to me now...! That sum, which I am so much expecting from your generosity ... Oh, madame, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me,” Mitya suddenly exclaimed inspiredly, “allow me to reveal to you ... what you, however, have long known ... that I love a certain person here ... I’ve betrayed Katya ... Katerina Ivanovna, I mean. Oh, I was inhuman and dishonorable towards her, but here I’ve come to love another ... a woman you perhaps despise, madame, for you already know everything, but whom I absolutely cannot part with, absolutely, and therefore, now, this three thousand...”

“Part with everything, Dmitri Fyodorovich!” Madame Khokhlakov interrupted him in the most determined tone. “Everything, women especially. Your goal is the mines, and there’s no need to take women there. Later, when you return in wealth and glory, you will find a companion for your heart in the highest society. She will be a modern girl, educated and without prejudices. By then the women’s question, which is just beginning now, will have ripened, and a new woman will appear ...”

“Madame, that’s not it, not it ... ,” Dmitri Fyodorovich clasped his hands imploringly.

“That is it, Dmitri Fyodorovich, that is precisely what you need, what you thirst for, without knowing it. I am no stranger to the present women’s question, Dmitri Fyodorovich. The development of women and even a political role for women in the nearest future—that is my ideal. I myself have a daughter, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and few know this side of me. I wrote in this regard to the writer Shchedrin. This writer has shown me so much, so much about the woman’s vocation, that last year I sent him an anonymous letter of two lines: ‘I embrace you and kiss you, my writer, for the contemporary woman: carry on.’ And I signed it: A mother.’ I almost wrote ‘a contemporary mother,’ but I hesitated, and then decided just to be a mother: it has more moral beauty, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and besides, the word contemporary’ would have reminded him of The Contemporary—a bitter recollection for him, owing to our censorship . . .^[239] Oh, my God, what’s the matter with you?”

“Madame,” Mitya jumped up at last, clasping his hands in helpless supplication, “you will make me weep, madame, if you keep putting off what you have so generously...”

“Weep, Dmitri Fyodorovich, weep! Such feelings are beautiful ... and with such a path before you! Tears will ease you, afterwards you will return and rejoice. You will come galloping to me on purpose from Siberia, to rejoice with me ...”

“But allow me, too,” Mitya suddenly yelled, “for the last time I implore you, tell me, am I to have this promised sum from you today? And if not, precisely when should I come for it?”

“What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovich?” “The three thousand you promised ... which you so generously ...”

“Three thousand? You mean roubles? Oh, no, I haven’t got three thousand,” Madame Khokhlakov spoke with a sort of quiet surprise. Mitya was stupefied . . .

“Then why ... just ... you said ... you even said it was as good as in my pocket...”

“Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovich. In that case, you misunderstood me. I was talking about the mines ... It’s true I promised you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I recall it all now, but I was only thinking about the mines.”

“And the money? The three thousand?” Dmitri Fyodorovich exclaimed absurdly.

“Oh, if you meant money, I don’t have it. I don’t have any money at all now, Dmitri Fyodorovich, just now I’m fighting with my manager, and the other day I myself borrowed five hundred roubles from Miusov. No, no, I have no money. And you know, Dmitri Fyodorovich, even if I had, I would not give it to you. First, I never lend to anyone. Lending means quarreling. But to you, to you especially I would not give anything, out of love for you I would not give anything, in order to save you I would not give anything, because you need only one thing: mines, mines, mines...!”

“Ah, devil take . . .!” Mitya suddenly roared, and banged his fist on the table with all his might.

“Aiee!” Khokhlakov cried in fear and flew to the other end of the drawing room.

Mitya spat and with quick steps walked out of the room, out of the house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like a madman, beating himself on the chest, on that very place on his chest where he had beaten himself two days before, with Alyosha, when he had seen him for the last time, in the evening, in the darkness, on the road. What this beating on the chest, on that spot, meant, and what he intended to signify by it—so far was a secret that no one else in the world knew, which he had not revealed then even to Alyosha, but for him that secret concealed more than shame, it concealed ruin and suicide, for so he had determined if he were unable to obtain the three thousand to pay back Katerina Ivanovna and thereby lift from his chest, “from that place on his chest,” the shame he carried there, which weighed so heavily on his conscience. All this will be perfectly well explained to the reader later on, but now, after his last hope had disappeared, this man, physically so strong, having gone a few steps from Madame Khokhlakov’s house, suddenly dissolved in tears like a little child. He walked on, unconsciously wiping his tears away with his fist. Thus he came out into the square and suddenly felt that he had bumped into something with his full weight. He heard the squeaking howl of some little old woman whom he had almost knocked over.

“Lord, he nearly killed me! What are you stomping around here for, hooligan!”

“What, is it you?” Mitya cried, recognizing the old woman in the darkness. It was the same old serving-woman who served Kuzma Samsonov, and whom Mitya had noticed only too well the day before.

“And you, who are you, my dear?” the old woman said in quite a different voice. “I can’t make you out in the dark.”

“You live at Kuzma Kuzmich’s, you’re a servant there?”

“That’s so, my dear, I’ve just run over to Prokhorich’s ... But how is it I still don’t recognize you?”

“Tell me, granny, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?” Mitya asked, beside himself with impatience. “I took her there some time ago.”

“She was, my dear, she came, she stayed for a while and left.”

“What? Left?” cried Mitya. “When?”

“Right then she left, she only stayed for a minute, told Kuzma Kuzmich some story, made him laugh, and ran away.”

“You’re lying, damn you!”yelled Mitya.

“Aiee!” cried the little old woman, but Mitya’s tracks were already cold; he ran as fast as he could to the widow Morozov’s house. It was exactly at the same time that Grushenka drove off to Mokroye, not more than a quarter of an hour after her departure. Fenya was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother, the cook Matryona, when the “captain” suddenly ran in. Seeing him, Fenya screamed to high heaven.

“You’re screaming?” Mitya yelled. “Where is she?” And without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to say a word, he suddenly collapsed at her feet:

“Fenya, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, tell me where she is!”

“My dear, I know nothing, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, I know nothing, even if you kill me, I know nothing,” Fenya began swearing and crossing herself. “You took her yourself...”

“She came back...!”

“She didn’t, my dear, I swear to God she didn’t!”

“You’re lying,” roared Mitya. “I can see by how scared you are, you know where she is...!”

He dashed out. The frightened Fenya was glad to have gotten off so easily, but she knew very well that he simply had no time, otherwise it would have gone badly for her. But as he ran out, he still surprised both Fenya and old Matryona by a most unexpected act: on the table stood a brass mortar with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, only seven inches long. As he was running out, having already opened the door with one hand, Mitya suddenly, without stopping, snatched the pestle from the mortar with his other hand, shoved it into his side pocket, and made off with it.

“Oh, Lord,” Fenya clasped her hands, “he’ll kill somebody!”

Chapter 4: In the Dark

Where did he run to? But of course: “Where could she be if not with Fyodor Pavlovich? She ran straight to him from Samsonov’s, it’s all clear now. The whole intrigue, the whole deception is obvious now . . .” All this flew like a whirlwind through his head. He did not even run over to Maria Kondratievna’s yard: “No need to go there, no need at all ... mustn’t cause any alarm ... they’ll all play and betray at once ... Maria Kondratievna is obviously in on the conspiracy, Smerdyakov, too, they’ve all been bought!” A different plan took shape in him: he ran down a lane, making a long detour around Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, ran along Dmitrovsky Street, then ran across the footbridge, and came straight to the solitary back lane, empty and uninhabited, bordered on one side by the wattle fence of the neighbor’s garden, and on the other by the strong, high fence surrounding Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden. There he chose a spot that seemed, according to the story he had heard, to be the same spot where Stinking Lizaveta had once climbed over the fence. “If she could climb over,” the thought flashed, God knows why, through his head, “surely I can climb over.” He jumped, and indeed managed at once to grasp the top of the fence with his hands, then he pulled himself up energetically, climbed right to the top, and sat astride the fence. There was a little bathhouse nearby in the garden, but from the fence the lighted windows of the house could also be seen. “Just as I thought, there’s a light in the old man’s bedroom—she’s there!” and he jumped down from the fence into the garden. Though he knew that Grigory was sick, and that Smerdyakov, perhaps, was indeed sick as well, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively hid himself, stood stock still, and began listening. But there was dead silence and, as if on purpose, complete stillness, not a breath of wind.

“And naught but the silence whispers,”^[240] the little verse for some reason flashed through his head, “that is, if no one heard me jump over; and it seems no one did.” Having paused for a minute, he quietly walked across the garden, over the grass; he walked for a long time, skirting the trees and bushes, concealing each step, listening himself to each of his own steps. It took him about five minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that there, right under the window, there were several large, high, thick bushes of elder and snowball. The door from the house into the garden on the left side of the house was locked—he purposely and carefully checked it as he passed by. At last he reached the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. “I must wait now,” he thought, “till they reassure themselves, in case they heard my footsteps and are listening ... if only I don’t cough, or sneeze...”

He waited for about two minutes, but his heart was pounding terribly, and he felt at moments as if he were suffocating. “No, my heart won’t stop pounding,” he thought, “I can’t wait any longer.” He was standing behind a bush in the shadow; the front part of the bush was lighted from the window. “Snowball berries, how red they are!” he whispered, not knowing why. Quietly, with careful, noiseless steps, he approached the window and stood on tiptoe. Before him lay the whole of Fyodor Pavlovich’s bedroom. It was a small room, divided all the way across by red screens, “Chinese,” as Fyodor Pavlovich called them. “Chinese” raced through Mitya’s mind, “and behind the screens—Grushenka.” He began examining Fyodor Pavlovich. He was wearing his new striped silk dressing gown, which Mitya had never seen on him before, tied with a tassled cord also of silk. Clean, stylish linen, a fine Dutch shirt with gold studs, peeped out from under the collar of the gown. On his head Fyodor Pavlovich had the same red bandage Alyosha had seen him wearing. “All dressed up,” thought Mitya. Fyodor Pavlovich stood near the window, apparently deep in thought; suddenly he jerked his head up, listened for a moment, and, having heard nothing, went over to the table, poured half a glass of cognac from a decanter, and drank it. Then he heaved a deep sigh, paused again for a moment, absentmindedly went up to the mirror on the wall between the windows, lifted the red bandage from his forehead a little with his right hand, and began to examine his scrapes and bruises, which had still not gone away. “He’s alone,” thought Mitya, “most likely he’s alone.” Fyodor Pavlovich stepped away from the mirror, suddenly turned to the window, and looked out. Mitya instantly jumped back into the shadow.

“Maybe she’s behind the screen, maybe she’s already asleep,” the thought needled his heart. Fyodor Pavlovich stepped away from the window. “He was looking for her from the window, so she must not be there: why else would he stare into the dark ... ? So he’s eaten up with impatience . . .”Mitya at once jumped closer and began looking through the window again. The old man was now sitting at the table, obviously feeling dejected. Finally he leaned on his elbow and put his right hand to his cheek. Mitya stared greedily. “Alone, alone!” he again repeated. “If she were here, his face would be different.” Strangely, some weird and unreasonable vexation suddenly boiled up in his heart because she was not there. “Not because she’s not here,” Mitya reasoned and corrected himself at once, “but because I have no way of knowing for certain whether she’s here or not. “ Mitya himself later recalled that his mind at that moment was remarkably clear and took in everything to the last detail, grasped every smallest feature. But anguish, the anguish of ignorance and indecision, was growing in his heart with exceeding rapidity. “Is she here, finally, or is she not?” boiled angrily in his heart. And he suddenly made up his mind, reached out his hand, and tapped softly on the windowpane. He tapped out the signal agreed upon between the old man and Smerdyakov: twice slowly, then three times more quickly, tap-tap-tap—the signal meaning “Grushenka is here.” The old man gave a start, jerked his head up, jumped quickly to his feet, and rushed to the window. Mitya jumped back into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovich opened the window and stuck his head all the way out.

“Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?” he said in a sort of trembling half-whisper. “Where are you, sweetie, my little angel, where are you?” He was terribly excited; he was breathless.

“Alone!” Mitya decided.

“But where are you?” the old man cried again, and stuck his head out even further, stuck it out to the shoulders, looking in all directions, right and left. “Come here; I have a little present waiting for you; come, I’ll show you . . .!”

“He means the envelope with the three thousand,” flashed through Mitya’s mind.

“But where are you . .? At the door? I’ll open at once...”

And the old man leaned almost all the way out the window, looking to the right, in the direction of the garden gate, and peering into the darkness. In another second he would surely run to open the door, without waiting for any answer from Grushenka. Mitya watched from the side, and did not move. The whole of the old man’s profile, which he found so loathsome, the whole of his drooping Adam’s apple, his hooked nose, smiling in sweet expectation, his lips—all was brightly lit from the left by the slanting light of the lamp shining from the room. Terrible, furious anger suddenly boiled up in Mitya’s heart: “There he was, his rival, his tormentor, the tormentor of his life!” It was a surge of that same sudden, vengeful, and furious anger of which he had spoken, as if in anticipation, to Alyosha during their conversation in the gazebo four days earlier, in response to Alyosha’s question, “How can you say you will kill father?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he had said then. “Maybe I won’t kill him, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that his face at that moment will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. I’m afraid of that, I may not be able to help myself...”

The personal loathing was increasing unbearably. Mitya was beside himself, and suddenly he snatched the brass pestle from his pocket. . .”

“God was watching over me then,” Mitya used to say afterwards: just at that time, the sick Grigory Vasilievich woke up on his bed. Towards evening of that day he had performed upon himself the famous treatment Smerdyakov had described to Ivan Fyodorovich—that is, with his wife’s help he had rubbed himself all over with some secret, very strong infusion made from vodka, and had drunk the rest while his wife whispered “a certain prayer” over him, after which he lay down to sleep. Marfa Ignatievna also partook, and, being a nondrinker, fell into a dead sleep next to her husband. But then, quite unexpectedly, Grigory suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, thought for a moment, and, though he at once felt a burning pain in the small of his back, sat up in bed. Again he thought something over, got up, and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps he felt pangs of conscience for sleeping while the house was left unguarded “at such a perilous time.” Smerdyakov, broken by the falling sickness, lay in the next room without moving. Marfa Ignatievna did not stir. “She’s gone feeble,” Grigory Vasilievich thought, glancing at her, and, groaning, went out onto the porch. Of course he only wanted to take a look from the porch, for he was quite unable to walk, the pain in his lower back and right leg was unbearable. But just then he remembered that he had not locked the garden gate that evening. He was a most precise and punctilious man, a man of established order and age-old habit. Limping and cringing with pain, he went down the porch steps and walked out towards the garden. Yes, indeed, the gate was wide open. Mechanically he stepped into the garden: perhaps he fancied something, perhaps he heard some noise, but, glancing to the left, he saw his master’s window open, and the window was now empty, no one was peering out of it. “Why is it open? It’s not summertime!” Grigory thought, and suddenly, just at that very moment, he caught a glimpse of something unusual right in front of him in the garden. About forty paces away from him a man seemed to be running in the darkness, some shadow was moving very quickly. “Lord!” said Grigory, and, forgetting himself and the pain in the small of his back, he rushed to intercept the running man. He took a short cut, obviously knowing the garden better than the running man; the latter was heading for the bathhouse, ran behind the bathhouse, dashed for the wall. . . Grigory kept his eyes on him and ran, forgetting himself. He reached the fence just as the fugitive was climbing over it. Beside himself, Grigory yelled, rushed forward, and clutched his leg with both hands.

Just so, his forebodings had not deceived him; he recognized the man, it was him, the “monster,” the “parricide”!

“Parricide!” the old man shouted for all the neighborhood to hear, but that was all he had time to shout; suddenly he fell as if struck by a thunderbolt. Mitya jumped back down into the garden and bent over the stricken man. There was a brass pestle in Mitya’s hand, and he threw it mechanically into the grass. The pestle fell two paces away from Grigory, not in the grass, however, but on a footpath, in a most conspicuous place. For a few seconds he examined the prostrate figure before him. The old man’s head was all covered with blood; Mitya reached out his hand and began feeling it. Afterwards he clearly recalled that at that moment he had wanted terribly “to find out for certain” whether he had cracked the old man’s skull or merely “dazed” him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing, flowing terribly, and instantly poured its hot stream over Mitya’s trembling fingers. He remembered snatching from his pocket the new white handkerchief he had provided himself with for his visit to Madame Khokhlakov, and putting it to the old man’s head, senselessly trying to wipe the blood from his forehead and face. But the handkerchief instantly became soaked with blood as well. “Lord, why am I doing this?” Mitya suddenly came to his senses. “If I’ve cracked his skull, how can I tell now ... ? And what difference does it make?” he suddenly added hopelessly. “If I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him ... You came a cropper, old man, now lie there!” he said aloud, and suddenly dashed for the fence, jumped over it into the lane, and started running. The blood-soaked handkerchief was crumpled in his right fist, and as he ran he stuffed it into the back pocket of his coat. He was running like mad, and the few rare passers-by he met in the darkness, in the streets of the town, remembered afterwards how they had met a wildly running man that night. He was flying again to the house of the widow Morozov. Fenya had rushed to the head porter, Nazar Ivanovich, just after he left, and begun begging him “by Christ God not to let the captain in again either today or tomorrow.” Nazar Ivanovich listened and agreed, but, as bad luck would have it, he went upstairs to his mistress, who had suddenly summoned him, and on his way, having met his nephew, a lad about twenty years old who had just come from the village, he told him to stay in the yard, but forgot to tell him about the captain. Mitya ran up to the gate and knocked. The lad recognized him instantly: Mitya had already tipped him several times. He at once opened the gate for him, let him in, and with a cheerful smile courteously hastened to inform him that “Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home at the moment, sir.”

“Where is she, Prokhor?” Mitya stopped suddenly.

“She left about two hours ago, with Timofei, for Mokroye.”

“Why?” Mitya cried.

“That I can’t say, sir. To see some officer. Someone invited her there and sent horses...”

Mitya left him and ran like a madman for Fenya.

Chapter 5: A Sudden Decision

She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; both were preparing to go to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovich, they had once again not locked the doors. Mitya ran in, rushed at Fenya, and seized her tightly by the throat.

“Talk now! Where is she? Who is she with in Mokroye?” he shouted in a frenzy.

Both women shrieked.

“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear, I’ll tell you all right now, I won’t hide anything,” Fenya rattled out, frightened to death. “She went to Mokroye to see the officer.”

“What officer?” Mitya shouted.

“Her former officer, the same one from before, from five years ago, who left her and went away,” Fenya rattled out in the same patter.

Dmitri Fyodorovich relaxed his grip on her throat and let his hands fall. He stood before her, speechless and pale as death, but one could see from his eyes that he had understood everything at once, everything, everything all at once, at half a word, had understood it to the last detail and figured it all out. It was not for poor Fenya, of course, to notice at that moment whether he had understood or not. She sat on the chest where she had been sitting when he ran in, and remained like that, trembling all over, holding her hands out in front of her as if trying to protect herself, and froze in that position. She stared at him fixedly, her eyes terrified, her pupils dilated with fear. Worse still, both his hands were stained with blood. On the way, as he was running, he must have touched his forehead with them, wiping the sweat from his face, so that he left red patches of smeared blood both on his forehead and on his right cheek. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics, and the old cook jumped up, staring crazily, and nearly passed out. Dmitri Fyodorovich stood for a moment, then suddenly dropped mechanically into a chair next to Fenya.

He sat there, not pondering exactly, but as if in fear, as if in some kind of stupor. But everything was clear as day: this officer—he knew about him, he knew everything perfectly well, knew it from Grushenka herself, knew that a month ago a letter had come from him. So for a month, for a whole month this affair had been going on in deep secret from him, up to the present arrival of this new man, and he had not even given him a thought! But how could he, how could he not give him a thought? Why had he simply forgotten about the officer, forgotten the moment he learned of him? That was the question that stood before him like some sort of bogey. And he indeed contemplated this bogey in fear, in cold fear.

But suddenly he began speaking gently and meekly with Fenya, like a gentle and affectionate child, as if he had quite forgotten that he had just frightened, offended, and tormented her so much. He suddenly began questioning Fenya with great and, in his position, even surprising precision. And Fenya, though she gazed wildly at his bloodstained hands, also began answering each of his questions with surprising readiness and haste, as if she were even hastening to lay the whole “truthful truth” before him. Little by little, and even with a sort of joy, she began giving him all the details, not wishing in the least to torment him, but as if she were hastening, with all her heart, to please him as much as she could. She also told him to the last detail about that day, the visit of Rakitin and Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had kept watch, how her mistress had driven off, and that she had called from the window to Alyosha to bow to him, Mitenka, and tell him he should “remember forever how she had loved him for one hour.” Hearing of the bow, Mitya suddenly grinned and a blush came to his pale cheeks. At that same moment, Fenya, now not the least bit afraid of her curiosity, said to him:

“But your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovich, they’re all covered with blood!”

“Yes,” Mitya answered mechanically, looked distractedly at his hands, and immediately forgot about them and about Fenya’s question. Again he sank into silence. Some twenty minutes had already passed since he ran in. His initial fear was gone, but he was evidently now totally possessed by some new, inflexible resolve. He suddenly stood up and smiled pensively.

“What has happened to you, sir?” Fenya said, pointing again at his hands; said with regret, as if she were now the person closest to him in his grief.

Mitya again looked at his hands.

“That’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange expression, “that is human blood, and, my God, why was it shed? But ... Fenya ... there is a fence here” (he looked at her as though he were setting her a riddle), “a high fence, and fearful to look at, but ... tomorrow at dawn, when the sun soars aloft,’ Mitenka will jump over that fence ... You don’t understand about the fence, Fenya, but never mind ... it doesn’t matter, tomorrow you will hear and understand everything ... and now, farewell! I won’t interfere, I’ll remove myself, I’ll know how to remove myself. Live, my joy ... you loved me for one little hour, so remember Mitenka Karamazov forever ... She always called me Mitenka, remember?”

And with those words he suddenly walked out of the kitchen. Fenya was almost more frightened by this exit than she had been earlier when he ran in and fell upon her.

Exactly ten minutes later, Dmitri Fyodorovich walked into the rooms of the young official, Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, to whom he had pawned his pistols earlier that day. It was then half past eight, and Pyotr Ilyich, having had his tea at home, had just dressed himself once more in his frock coat in order to set off to the “Metropolis” for a game of billiards. Mitya caught him as he was going out. Seeing him and his bloodstained face, the young man cried out:

“Lord! What’s with you?”

“So,” Mitya said quickly, “I’ve come for my pistols and brought you the money. Many thanks. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyich, please make it fast.”

Pyotr Ilyich grew more and more surprised: in Mitya’s hand he suddenly noticed a pile of money, and, what was more, he had walked in holding this pile as no one in the world holds money and comes walking in with it: he had all the bills in his right hand, and was holding his hand, as if for show, straight out in front of him. A boy, the official’s servant, who had met Mitya in the hallway, recounted later that he had walked through the front door just like that, with the money in his hand, which means that he had also been walking through the streets like that, carrying the money before him in his right hand. It was all in iridescent hundred-rouble bills, and he was holding them with his bloodied fingers. Afterwards, to the further questioning of certain interested persons as to how much money there was, Pyotr Ilyich replied that it was difficult to tell then by eye, maybe two thousand, maybe three, but it was a big, “hefty” wad. Dmitri Fyodorovich, as Perkhotin also testified later, “was not quite himself, as it were, not that he was drunk, but he seemed to be in some sort of ecstasy, quite distracted, and at the same time apparently concentrated, as if he were thinking about something, getting at something, but could not make up his mind. He was in a great hurry, responded abruptly in a very strange manner, and at moments seemed not grieved at all but even cheerful.” “But what is it, what’s happened?” Pyotr Ilyich shouted again, staring wildly at his visitor. “How did you get so covered with blood? Did you fall? Look!”

He seized Mitya by the elbow and placed him in front of a mirror. Mitya saw his bloodstained face, gave a start, and frowned wrathfully.

“Ah, the devil! Just what I need,” he muttered angrily, quickly shifted the bills from his right hand to his left, and convulsively snatched the handkerchief from his pocket. But the handkerchief, too, turned out to be all covered with blood (it was the same handkerchief he had used to wipe Grigory’s head and face): there was hardly a white spot left on it, and it had not merely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a ball and refused to be unfolded. Mitya angrily flung it to the floor.

“Eh, the devil! Have you got some rag ... to wipe myself off ... ?”

“So you’re only stained, you’re not wounded? Then you’d better wash,” Pyotr Ilyich answered. “There’s the basin, let me help you.”

“The basin? Good ... only where am I going to put this?” With quite a strange sort of bewilderment he pointed at his wad of bills, looking questioningly at Pyotr Ilyich, as if the latter had to decide where he should put his own money.

“Put it in your pocket, or here on the table—nothing will happen to it.”

“In my pocket? Yes, my pocket. Good ... No, you see, it’s all nonsense!” he cried, as if suddenly coming out of his distraction. “Look: first let’s finish this business, the pistols, I mean, give them back to me, and here’s your money ... because I really, really must ... and I have no time, no time at all...”

And taking the topmost hundred-rouble bill from the wad, he handed it to the official.

“But I don’t have any change,” the latter remarked, “don’t you have something smaller?”

“No,” Mitya said, glancing at the money again, and, as if uncertain of his words, he peeled back the first two or three bills with his fingers. “No, they’re all the same,” he added, and again looked questioningly at Pyotr Ilyich.

“How did you get so rich?” the latter asked. “Wait, I’ll have my boy run over to Plomikov’s. They close late—maybe they’ll change it. Hey, Misha!” he shouted into the hallway.

“To Plotnikov’s shop—splendid!” Mitya, too, shouted, as if some thought had struck him. “Misha,” he turned to the boy as he came in, “look, run over to Plotnikov’s and tell them that Dmitri Fyodorovich sends them his respects and will come himself shortly ... But listen, listen: tell them to have some champagne ready when he comes, three dozen bottles, let’s say, and packed the same way as when I went to Mokroye ... I bought four dozen that time,” he turned suddenly to Pyotr Ilyich. “Don’t worry, Misha, they’ll know what I mean,” he turned back to the boy. “And listen: some cheese, too, some Strasbourg pâté, smoked whitefish, ham, caviar, and everything, everything, whatever they’ve got, up to a hundred roubles, or a hundred and twenty, like the other time ... And listen: they mustn’t forget some sweets, candies, pears, watermelons—two, three, maybe four—well, no, one watermelon is enough, but there must be chocolate, sour balls, fruit-drops, toffee—well, all the same things they packed for me to take to Mokroye that time, it should come to about three hundred roubles with the champagne ... It must be exactly the same this time. Try to remember, Misha, if you are Misha ... His name is Misha, isn’t it?” he again turned to Pyotr Ilyich.

“But wait,” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, staring at him and listening worriedly, “you’d better go yourself, then you can tell them, he’ll get it all wrong.”

“He will, I can see, he’ll get it all wrong! Eh, Misha, and I was about to give you a kiss for your services. If you keep it all straight, you’ll get ten roubles, now off with you ... Champagne above all, let them break out the champagne, and some cognac, and red wine, and white wine, and all the rest, like the other time ... They’ll remember how it was.”

“But listen to me!” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, now with impatience. “I said, let him just run over to change the money and tell them not to lock up, and then you can go and talk to them yourself. . . Give me your bill. Off you go, Misha, shake a leg!” Pyotr Ilyich seemed to chase Misha out deliberately, because the boy was standing in front of the visitor, staring goggle-eyed at his bloody face and bloodstained hands, with a bunch of money in his trembling fingers, and just stood gaping in amazement and fear, probably grasping little of what Mitya was telling him to do.

“Well, now let’s go and wash,” Pyotr Ilyich said sternly. “Put the money on the table, or in your pocket ... That’s it, now come along. And take your frock coat off.”

And he began helping him to take off his frock coat, but suddenly he cried out again:

“Look, there’s blood on your coat, too!”

“It ... it’s not the coat. Only a little bit on the sleeve ... And then just here, where the handkerchief was. It soaked through the pocket. I sat down on it at Fenya’s and the blood soaked through,” Mitya explained at once with surprising trustfulness. Pyotr Ilyich listened, frowning.

“How on earth did you get like this? You must have had a fight with someone,” he muttered.

They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyich held the jug and poured water. Mitya hurried and did not soap his hands well. (His hands were trembling, as Pyotr Ilyich recalled afterwards.) Pyotr Ilyich at once ordered him to use more soap and scrub harder. It was as if, at that moment, he was gaining more and more of an upper hand over Mitya. Let us note in passing that the young man was not of a timid nature.

“Look, you didn’t clean under your nails; now scrub your face, here, on the temples, by your ear ... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you going? Look, the whole right cuff is bloody.”

“Yes, bloody,” Mitya remarked, examining the cuff of his shirt.

“Change your shirt, then.”

“No time. Look, I’ll just ... ,” Mitya went on with the same trustfulness, wiping his face and hands now and putting on his frock coat, “I’ll just tuck the edge of the sleeve in here, and it won’t show under the coat ... See!”

“Tell me, now, how on earth did you get like this? Did you have a fight with someone? Was it in the tavern, like the other time? It wasn’t that captain again—the one you beat and dragged around?” Pyotr Ilyich recalled as if in reproach. “Did you beat someone else ... or kill him, possibly?”

“Nonsense!” said Mitya.

“Why nonsense?”

“Never mind,” Mitya said, and suddenly grinned. “I just ran down a little old woman in the square.”

“Ran down? A little old woman?”

“An old man!” Mitya shouted, looking Pyotr Ilyich straight in the face, laughing, and shouting at him as if he were deaf.

“Ah, devil take it—an old man, an old woman ... Did you kill somebody?”

“We made peace. Had a fight, then made peace. Somewhere. We parted friends. Some fool ... he’s forgiven me ... surely he’s forgiven me by now ... If he’d gotten up, he wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Mitya suddenly winked, “only, you know, devil take him, do you hear, Pyotr Ilyich, devil take him! Never mind! No more now!” Mitya snapped resolutely.

“I mean, why go getting into trouble with everybody ... like the other time with that captain, over some trifle ... You’ve had a fight, and now you’re going off on a spree—that’s just like you! Three dozen bottles of champagne—what do you need so much for?”

“Bravo! Now give me the pistols. By God, I have no time. I’d like to chat with you, my dear, but I have no time. And there’s no need, it’s too late for talking. Ah! Where’s the money, where did I put it?” he cried, and began feeling in all his pockets.

“You put it on the table ... yourself. . . there it is. Did you forget? Really, money is like trash or water for you. Here are your pistols. Strange, at six o’clock you pawned them for ten roubles, and now look how many thousands you’ve got. Must be two, or three?”

“Must be three!” Mitya laughed, putting the money into the side pocket of his trousers.

“You’ll lose it that way. Have you got a gold mine or something?”

“A mine? A gold mine!” Mitya shouted at the top of his lungs, and burst out laughing. “Do you want to go to the gold mines, Perkhotin? There’s a lady here who’ll fork out three thousand on the spot if you’ll agree to go. She did it for me, she likes gold mines so much! You know Madame Khokhlakov?”

“Not personally, but I’ve heard about her and seen her. Did she really give you three thousand? Just forked it out like that?” Pyotr Ilyich looked doubtful.

“Go there tomorrow, when the sun soars aloft, when the ever-youthful Phoebus soars aloft,^[241] praising and glorifying God, go to her, to Khokhlakov, and ask her yourself if she forked me out three thousand or not. See what she says.”

“I don’t know what terms you’re on ... since you say it so positively, I suppose she did ... And you grabbed the money, and instead of Siberia, you’re going on a spree ... But where are you really off to, eh?”

“Mokroye.”

“Mokroye? But it’s night!”

“Mastriuk had it all, Mastriuk had a fall,”^[242] Mitya said suddenly.

“What do you mean, a fall? You’ve got thousands!”

“I’m not talking about thousands. To hell with thousands! I’m talking about a woman’s heart:

Gullible is the heart of woman, Ever-changing and full of vice.

I agree with Ulysses, it was he who said that.”^[243]

“I don’t understand you.”

“You think I’m drunk?”

“Not drunk, worse than that.”

“I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyich, drunk in spirit, and enough, enough...”

“What are you doing, loading the pistol?”

“Loading the pistol.”

Indeed, having opened the pistol case, Mitya uncapped the powder horn, carefully poured in some powder, and rammed the charge home. Then he took a bullet and, before dropping it in, held it up in two fingers near the candle. “What are you looking at the bullet for?” Pyotr Ilyich watched him with uneasy curiosity.

“Just a whim. Now, if you had decided to blow your brains out, would you look at the bullet before you loaded the pistol, or not?”

“Why look at it?”

“It will go into my brain, so it’s interesting to see what it’s like ... Ah, anyway, it’s all nonsense, a moment’s nonsense. There, that’s done,” he added, having dropped the bullet in and rammed the wadding in after it. “Nonsense, my dear Pyotr Ilyich, it’s all nonsense, and if you only knew what nonsense it is! Now give me a piece of paper.”

“Here’s some paper.”

“No, smooth, clean, for writing. That’s it.” And having snatched a pen from the table, Mitya quickly wrote two lines on the piece of paper, folded it in half twice, and put it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the pistols back in their case, locked it with a little key, and took the case in his hands. Then he looked at Pyotr Ilyich and gave him a long, meaning smile.

“Let’s go now,” he said.

“Go where? No, wait ... So you’re thinking about putting it into your brain, the bullet, I mean ... ?” Pyotr Ilyich asked uneasily.

“The bullet? Nonsense! I want to live, I love life! Believe me. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his hot light ... My dear Pyotr Ilyich, do you know how to remove yourself?”

“What do you mean, remove myself?”

“To make way. To make way for one you hold dear, and for one you hate. And so that the one you hate becomes dear to you—to make way like that! And to say to them: God be with you, go, pass by, while I...”

“While you ... ?”

“Enough. Let’s go.”

“By God, I’ll tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich looked at him, “to keep you from going there. Why do you need to go to Mokroye now?”

“There’s a woman there, a woman, and let that be enough for you, Pyotr Ilyich, drop it!”

“Listen, even though you’re a savage, somehow I’ve always liked you ... That’s why I worry.”

“Thank you, brother. I’m a savage, you say. Savages, savages! That’s something I keep repeating: savages! Ah, yes, here’s Misha, I forgot about him.”

Misha came in, puffing, with a wad of small bills, and reported that “they all got a move on” at Plotnikov’s and were running around with bottles, and fish, and tea—everything would be ready shortly. Mitya snatched a ten-rouble note and gave it to Pyotr Ilyich, and he tossed another ten-rouble note to Misha.

“Don’t you dare!” Pyotr Ilyich cried. “Not in my house. Anyway, it’s a harmful indulgence. Hide your money away, put it here, why throw it around? Tomorrow you’ll need it, and it’s me you’ll come to asking for ten roubles. Why do you keep stuffing it into your side pocket? You’re going to lose it!”

“Listen, my dear fellow, let’s go to Mokroye together!”

“Why should I go?”

“Listen, let’s open a bottle now, and we’ll drink to life! I want to have a drink, and I want above all to have a drink with you. I’ve never drunk with you, have I?”

“Fine, let’s go to the tavern, I’m on my way there myself.”

“No time for the tavern, better at Plotnikov’s shop, in the back room. Now, do you want me to ask you a riddle?”

“Ask.”

Mitya took the piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it, and held it up. There was written on it in his large, clear hand:

“For my whole life I punish myself, I punish my whole life!”

“Really, I’m going to tell someone, I will go now and tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich said, having read the paper.

“You won’t have time, my dear, let’s have a drink, come on!”

Plotnikov’s shop was only about two doors away from Pyotr Ilyich, at the corner of the street. It was the main grocery store in our town, owned by wealthy merchants, and in fact not bad at all. They had everything any store in the capital would have, all kinds of groceries: wines “bottled by Eliseyev brothers,” fruit, cigars, tea, sugar, coffee, and so on. There were always three clerks on duty, and two boys to run around with deliveries. Though things had gone poorly in our parts, landowners had left, trade had slackened, yet the grocery business flourished as before, and even got better and better every year: purchasers for such goods were never lacking. Mitya was awaited with impatience at the shop. They remembered only too well how three or four weeks earlier he had bought in the same way, all at once, all kinds of goods and wines, for several hundred roubles in cash (they would not, of course, have given him anything on credit); they remembered that he had a whole wad of money sticking out of his hand, just as now, and was throwing it around for nothing, without bargaining, without thinking and without wishing to think why he needed such a quantity of goods, wines, and so forth. Afterwards the whole town was saying that he had driven off to Mokroye with Grushenka then, “squandered three thousand at once in a night and a day, and came back from the spree without a kopeck, naked as the day he was born.” He had roused a whole camp of gypsies that time (they were in our neighborhood then), who in two days, while he was drunk, relieved him of an untold amount of money and drank an untold quantity of expensive wine. They said, laughing at Mitya, that in Mokroye he had drowned the cloddish peasants in champagne and stuffed their women and girls with candies and Strasbourg pâté. They also laughed, especially in the tavern, over Mitya’s own frank and public confession (of course, they did not laugh in his face; it was rather dangerous to laugh in his face) that all he got from Grushenka for the whole “escapade” was that “she let him kiss her little foot, and would not let him go any further.”

When Mitya and Pyotr Ilyich arrived at the shop, they found a cart ready at the door, covered with a rug, harnessed to a troika with bells and chimes, and the coachman Andrei awaiting Mitya. In the shop they had nearly finished “putting up” one box of goods and were only waiting for Mitya’s appearance to nail it shut and load it on the cart. Pyotr Ilyich was surprised.

“How did you manage to get a troika?” he asked Mitya.

“I met him, Andrei, as I was running to your place, and told him to drive straight here to the shop. Why waste time! Last time I went with Timofei, but now Timofei said bye-bye and went off ahead of me with a certain enchantress. Will we be very late, Andrei?”

“They’ll get there only an hour before us, if that, just an hour before!” Andrei hastily responded.”I harnessed Timofei up, I know how he drives. His driving’s not our driving, Dmitri Fyodorovich, not by a long shot. They won’t make it even an hour before us!” Andrei, a lean fellow with reddish hair, not yet old, dressed in a long peasant coat and with a caftan over his arm, added enthusiastically.

“I’ll give you fifty roubles for vodka if you’re only an hour behind them.”

“I guarantee you an hour, Dmitri Fyodorovich. An hour, hah! They won’t even be half an hour ahead of us!”

Though Mitya began bustling about, making arrangements, he spoke and gave commands somehow strangely, at random and out of order. He began one thing and forgot to finish it. Pyotr Ilyich found it necessary to step in and help matters along.

“It should come to four hundred roubles, not less than four hundred roubles, just like the other time,” Mitya commanded. “Four dozen bottles of champagne, not a bottle less.”

“Why do you need so much? What for? Stop!” Pyotr Ilyich yelled. “What’s this box? What’s in it? Four hundred roubles’ worth?” The bustling shop clerks explained to him at once, in sugary tones, that this first box contained only a half dozen bottles of champagne and “all sorts of indispensable starters,” such as appetizers, candies, fruit-drops, and so on. And that the main “provision” would be packed and sent separately that same hour, just as the other time, in a special cart, also drawn by a troika, and would get there in good time, “perhaps only an hour behind Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“No more than an hour, no more than an hour, and put in as much candy and toffee as you can—the girls there love it,” Mitya hotly insisted.

“Toffee is one thing, but four dozen bottles—why do you need so much? One dozen is enough,” Pyotr Ilyich was almost angry now. He started bargaining, demanded to see the bill, would not be silenced. He saved, however, only a hundred roubles. They settled on delivering three hundred roubles’ worth of goods.

“Ah, devil take you!” Pyotr Ilyich cried, as if suddenly thinking better of it. “What do I care? Throw your money away, since you got it for nothing!”

“Come along, my economist, come along, don’t be angry,” Mitya dragged him into the back room of the shop. “They’re going to bring us a bottle here, we’ll have a sip. Eh, Pyotr Ilyich, let’s go together, because you’re a dear man, just the sort I like.”

Mitya sat down on a little wicker chair in front of a tiny table covered with a most filthy tablecloth. Pyotr Ilyich squeezed in opposite him, and the champagne appeared at once. The offer was made to serve the gentlemen oysters, “foremost oysters, the latest arrivals.”

“Devil take your oysters, I don’t eat them, bring us nothing,” Pyotr Ilyich snarled almost angrily.

“No time for oysters,” Mitya remarked, “and I have no appetite. You know, my friend,” he suddenly said with feeling, “I’ve never liked all this disorder.”

“Who likes it? Three dozen bottles, for peasants? Good Lord, anyone would explode!”

“I don’t mean that. I mean a higher order. There is no order in me, no higher order ... But ... that’s all over, nothing to grieve about. Too late, devil take it! My whole life has been disorder, and I must put it in order. Punning, am I?”

“You’re not punning, you’re raving.”

“Glory to the Highest in the world, Glory to the Highest in me!

That verse once burst from my soul, not a verse but a tear, I wrote it myself ... not, by the way, that time when I was dragging the captain by his beard ...” “Why mention him all of a sudden?”

“Why him all of a sudden? Nonsense! Everything ends, everything comes out even; a line—and a sum total.”

“I keep thinking about your pistols, really.”

“The pistols are nonsense, too! Drink and stop imagining things. I love life, I’ve grown to love life too much, so much it’s disgusting. Enough! To life, my dear, let us drink to life, I offer a toast to life! Why am I so pleased with myself? I’m base, but I’m pleased with myself, and yet it pains me to be base and still pleased with myself. I bless creation, I’m ready right now to bless God and his creation, but ... I must exterminate one foul insect, so that it will not crawl around spoiling life for others ... Let us drink to life, dear brother! What can be more precious than life! Nothing, nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens.”

“To life, then, and maybe to your queen as well.”

They emptied their glasses. Mitya, though rapturous and expansive, was somehow sad. As though some insuperable and heavy care stood over him.

“Misha ... was it your Misha who just came in? Misha, my dear Misha, come here, drink a glass for me, to the golden-haired Phoebus of tomorrow...”

“Not him!” Pyotr Ilyich cried irritably.

“No, please, let him. I want him to.”

“Ahh . . .!” — Misha drank his glass, bowed, and ran out.

“Hell remember it better,” Mitya observed. “A woman, I love a woman! What is woman? The queen of the earth! Sad, I feel sad, Pyotr Ilyich. Do you remember Hamlet? ‘I am sad, so sad, Horatio ... Ach, poor Yorick!’^[244] It is I, perhaps, who am Yorick. Yorick now, that is, and later—the skull.”

Pyotr Ilyich listened silently; Mitya also fell silent for a time.

“What kind of dog is that?” he suddenly asked the sales clerk distractedly, noticing a pretty little lapdog with black eyes in the corner.

“It’s the mistress’s, Varvara Alexeyevna’s, lapdog,” the sales clerk replied. “She brought him here today and forgot him. We must take him back to her.”

“I saw one like it ... in the regiment ... ,” Mitya said pensively, “only that one had a broken hind leg ... Incidentally, Pyotr Ilyich, I wanted to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“No, I’m just asking. From someone’s pocket, you see, someone else’s property? I don’t mean government money, everyone steals government money, and of course you, too ...”

“Go to the devil.” “I mean someone else’s property: right from their pocket or purse, eh?”

“I once stole twenty kopecks from my mother, from the table, when I was nine years old. Took it on the sly and clutched it in my fist.”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing. I kept it for three days, felt ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.”

“And then what?”

“Naturally I got a whipping. Why, you haven’t stolen anything, have you?”

“I have,” Mitya winked slyly.

“What have you stolen?” Pyotr Ilyich became curious.

“Twenty kopecks from my mother, when I was nine, I gave it back in three days.” Having said this, Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.

“Dmitri Fyodorovich, shouldn’t we hurry up?” Andrei suddenly called from the door of the shop.

“Ready? Let’s go!” Mitya got into a flutter. “Yet one last tale and then^[245]. . . give Andrei a glass of vodka for the road now! And a shot of cognac along with it! This box” (the pistol case) “goes under my seat. Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich, think kindly of me.”

“But you’re coming back tomorrow?”

“Certainly.”

“Will you be so kind as to settle the bill now, sir?” the sales clerk ran up.

“Ah, yes, the bill! Certainly!”

He again snatched the wad of money from his pocket, took three hundred-rouble bills from the top, tossed them on the counter, and walked hurriedly out of the shop. Everyone followed after him, bowing and sending him off with salutations and best wishes. Andrei grunted from the cognac he had just drunk and jumped up on the box. But as Mitya was about to take his seat, Fenya suddenly appeared quite unexpectedly before him. She came running up, out of breath, shouting, clasping her hands before him, and plopped down at his feet:

“Dear sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, don’t harm my mistress! And I told you everything...! And don’t harm him either, he’s her former one! He’ll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now, that’s what he came from Siberia for ... Dear sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, don’t harm anyone’s life!”

“Aha, so that’s it! I see what you’re up to now!” Perkhotin muttered to himself. “It’s all clear now, no mistake about it. Dmitri Fyodorovich, give me back the pistols at once, if you want to be a man,” he exclaimed aloud to Mitya, “do you hear me, Dmitri!”

“The pistols? Wait, my dear, I’ll toss them into a puddle on the way,” Mitya replied. “Fenya, get up, don’t lie there in front of me. Mitya won’t do any more harm, he won’t harm anyone anymore, the foolish man. And something else, Fenya,” he shouted to her, already seated in the cart, “I hurt you earlier, so forgive me and have mercy, I’m a scoundrel, forgive me ... And if you won’t forgive me, it doesn’t matter. Because now nothing matters! Get going, Andrei, fly off, quickly!” Andrei got going; the bells jingled.

“Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich! For you, for you is my last tear . . .!” “He’s not drunk, but what drivel he’s spouting!” Pyotr Ilyich thought, watching him go. He almost made up his mind to stay and keep an eye on the loading of the cart (also with a troika) with the rest of the goods and wine, suspecting that Mitya would be cheated and robbed, but suddenly, getting angry with himself, he spat and went to his tavern to play billiards.

“A nice fellow, but a fool ... ,” he muttered to himself as he went. “I’ve heard about some officer, Grushenka’s ‘former’ one. Well, if he’s come now ... Ah, those pistols! Eh, the devil, I’m not his nursemaid, am I? Go ahead! Anyway, nothing will happen. Loudmouths, that’s all they are. They get drunk and fight, fight and make peace. They don’t mean business. ‘Remove myself,’ ‘punish myself—what is all that? Nothing will happen! He’s shouted in the same style a thousand times, drunk, in the tavern. Now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit—these scoundrels love style. I’m not his nursemaid, am I? He must have had a fight, his whole mug was covered with blood. But who with? I’ll find out in the tavern. And that bloodstained handkerchief. . . Pah, the devil, he left it on my floor ... But who cares?”

He arrived at the tavern in the foulest of humors, and at once got a game going. The game cheered him up. He played another, and suddenly began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had money again, as much as three thousand, he had seen it himself, and that he had gone off to Mokroye again, on a spree with Grushenka. The listeners received his news with almost unexpected curiosity. And they all began to talk, not laughing, but somehow with strange seriousness. They even stopped playing.

“Three thousand? Where did he get three thousand?”

More questions were asked. The news about Madame Khokhlakov was received skeptically.

“Could he have robbed the old man, do you think?”

“Three thousand? Something’s not right.”

“He was boasting out loud that he’d kill his father, everyone here heard it. He talked precisely about three thousand...”

Pyotr Ilyich listened and suddenly started answering their questions drily and sparingly. He did not say a word about the blood on Mitya’s hands and face, though on his way there he had been planning to mention it. They began a third game, gradually the talk about Mitya died away; but, having finished the third game, Pyotr Ilyich did not wish to play any more, put down his cue, and, without taking supper, as had been his intention, left the tavern. As he walked out into the square, he stopped in perplexity, and even marveled at himself. He suddenly realized that he was just about to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, to find out if anything had happened. “On account of the nonsense it will all turn out to be, I shall wake up someone else’s household and cause a scandal. Pah, the devil, I’m not their nursemaid, am I?”

In the foulest humor, he went straight home, but suddenly remembered Fenya: “Eh, the devil, I should have asked her then,” he thought with annoyance, “then I’d know everything.” And the most impatient and stubborn desire to talk with her and find things out suddenly began burning in him, so much so that, halfway home, he turned sharply towards the widow Morozov’s house, where Grushenka lived. Coming up to the gates, he knocked, and the knock breaking the stillness of the night again seemed suddenly to sober him and anger him. Besides, no one answered, everyone in the house was asleep. “Here, too, I’ll cause a scandal!” he thought, now with a sort of suffering in his soul, but instead of finally going away, he suddenly began knocking again with all his might. The racket could be heard all up and down the street. “No, I’ll keep knocking until they answer, I will!” he muttered, getting more and more enraged each time he knocked, and at the same time banging still louder on the gate.

Chapter 6: Here I Come!

Dmitri Fyodorovich flew over the road. Mokroye was some fifteen miles away, but Andrei’s troika galloped so fast that they could make it in an hour and a quarter. It was as if the swift ride suddenly refreshed Mitya. The air was fresh and rather cool; big stars shone in the clear sky. This was the same night, perhaps the same hour, when Alyosha threw himself to the earth “vowing ecstatically to love it unto ages of ages.” But Mitya’s soul was troubled, very troubled, and though many things now tormented his soul, at this moment his whole being yearned irresistibly for her, for his queen, to whom he was flying in order to look at her for the last time. I will say just one thing: his heart did not argue even for a moment. I shall not be believed, perhaps, if I say that this jealous man did not feel the least jealousy towards this new man, this new rival who had sprung up from nowhere, this “officer.” If some other man had appeared, he would at once have become jealous, and would perhaps again have drenched his terrible hands with blood, but towards this man, “her first,” he felt no jealous hatred as he flew along in his troika, nor even any hostility— though it is true he had not yet seen him. “This is beyond dispute, this is his right and hers; this is her first love, which in five years she has not forgotten; so she has loved only him these five years, and I—what am I doing here? Why am I here, and what for? Step aside, Mitya, make way! And what am I now? It’s all finished now, even without the officer, even if he hadn’t come at all, it would still be finished...”

In some such words he might have set forth his feelings, if he had been able to reason. But at the moment he could no longer reason. All his present resolve had been born then, at Fenya’s, from her first words, without reasoning, in an instant, had been felt at once and accepted as a whole with all its consequences. And yet, despite the attained resolve, his soul was troubled, troubled to the point of suffering: even his resolve did not bring him peace. Too much stood behind him and tormented him. And at moments it seemed strange to him: he had already written his own sentence with pen and paper: “I punish myself and my life”; and the paper was there, ready, in his pocket; the pistol was already loaded, he had already decided how he would greet the first hot ray of “golden-haired Phoebus” in the morning, and yet it was impossible to square accounts with the past, with all that stood behind him and tormented him, he felt it to the point of suffering, and the thought of it pierced his soul with despair. There was a moment on the way when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrei, jump out of the cart, take his loaded pistol, and finish everything without waiting for dawn. But this moment flew by like a spark. And the troika went flying on, “devouring space,” and the closer he came to his goal, the more powerfully the thought of her again, of her alone, took his breath away and drove all the other terrible phantoms from his heart. Oh, he wanted so much to look at her, if only briefly, if only from afar!”She is with him now, so I will only look at how she is with him, with her former sweetheart, that is all I want.” And never before had such love for this woman, so fatal for his destiny, risen in his breast, such a new feeling, never experienced before, a feeling unexpected even to himself, tender to the point of prayer, to the point of vanishing before her. “And I will vanish!” he said suddenly, in a fit of hysterical rapture.

They had been galloping for almost an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrei, though he was a talkative fellow, had not said a word yet either, as though he were wary of talking, and only urged on his “nags,” his lean but spirited bay troika. Then suddenly, in terrible agitation, Mitya exclaimed:

“Andrei! What if they’re asleep?” The thought suddenly came into his head; it had not occurred to him before.

“It’s very possible they’ve gone to bed, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

Mitya frowned painfully: what, indeed, if he was flying there ... with such feelings ... and they were asleep ... and she, too, perhaps was sleeping right there ... ? An angry feeling boiled up in his heart.

“Drive, Andrei, whip them up, Andrei, faster!” he shouted in a frenzy.

“And maybe they haven’t gone to bed yet,” Andrei reasoned, after a pause. “Timofei was telling me there were a lot of them there ...”

“At the station?”

“Not at the station, at Plastunov’s, at the inn, it’s a way station, too.”

“I know; but what do you mean by a lot? How many? Who are they?” Mitya heaved himself forward, terribly alarmed by the unexpected news.

“Timofei said they’re all gentlemen: two from town, I don’t know who, but Timofei said two of them were locals, and those two others, the visitors, maybe there’s more, I didn’t ask him exactly. He said they sat down to play cards.”

“To play cards?”

“So maybe they’re not asleep if they’ve started playing cards. Not likely, since it’s only eleven o’clock, if that.”

“Drive, Andrei, drive!” Mitya cried again, nervously.

“Can I ask you something, sir?” Andrei began again after a pause. “Only I’m afraid it’ll make you angry, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Just now Fedosya Markovna fell at your feet, begging you not to harm her mistress, or anyone else ... so, sir, well, I’m driving you there ... Forgive me, sir, maybe I’ve said something foolish, because of my conscience.”

Mitya suddenly seized his shoulders from behind.

“Are you a coachman? A coachman?” he began frenziedly.

“A coachman ...”

“Then you know you have to make way. If you’re a coachman, what do you do, not make way for people? Just run them down? Look out, I’m coming! No, coachman, do not run them down! You must not run anyone down, you must not spoil people’s lives; and if you have spoiled someone’s life—punish yourself ... if you’ve ever spoiled, if you’ve ever harmed someone’s life—punish yourself and go away.”

All this burst from Mitya as if in complete hysterics. Andrei, though he was surprised at the gentleman, kept up the conversation.

“That’s true, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, you’re right there, one mustn’t run a man down, or torment him, or any other creature either, for every creature has been created, a horse, for example, because there’s people that just barrel on regardless, some of us coachmen, let’s say ... And there’s no holding him back, he just keeps pushing on, pushing right on.”

“To hell?” Mitya suddenly interrupted, and burst into his abrupt, unexpected laugh. “Andrei, you simple soul,” again he seized him firmly by the shoulders, “tell me: will Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov go to hell or not? What do you think?”

“I don’t know, my dear, it depends on you, because you are ... You see, sir, when the Son of God was crucified on the cross and died, he went straight from the cross to hell and freed all the sinners suffering there. And hell groaned because it thought it wouldn’t have any more sinners coming. And the Lord said to hell: ‘Do not groan, O hell, for all kinds of mighty ones, rulers, great judges, and rich men will come to you from all parts, and you will be as full as ever, unto ages of ages, till the time when I come again.’ That’s right, that’s what he said . . .”^[246]

“A popular legend—splendid! Whip up the left one, Andrei!”

“That’s who hell is meant for, sir,” Andrei whipped up the left one, “and you, sir, are just like a little child to us ... that’s how we look at you ... And though you’re one to get angry, that you are, sir, the Lord will forgive you for your simple heart.”

“And you, will you forgive me, Andrei?”

“Why should I forgive you, you never did anything to me.”

“No, for everyone, for everyone, will you alone, right now, this moment, here on the road, forgive me for everyone? Speak, my simple soul!”

“Ah, sir! I’m even afraid to be driving you, you talk so strange somehow...”

But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying, whispering wildly to himself.

“Lord, take me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass without your judgment ... Do not judge me, for I have condemned myself; do not judge me, for I love you, Lord! I am loathsome, but I love you: if you send me to hell, even there I will love you, and from there I will cry that I love you unto ages of ages ... But let me also finish with loving ... finish here and now with loving, for five hours only, till your hot ray ... For I love the queen of my soul. I love her and cannot not love her. You see all of me. I will gallop up, I will fall before her: you are right to pass me by ... Farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself!”

“Mokroye!” cried Andrei, pointing ahead with his whip.

Through the pale darkness of night suddenly appeared a solid black mass of buildings spread over a vast space. The population of the village of Mokroye was two thousand souls, but at that hour they were all asleep, and only a few lights gleamed here and there in the darkness.

“Drive, drive, Andrei, I’m coming!” Mitya exclaimed as if in fever.

“They’re not asleep!” Andrei said again, pointing with his whip to Plastunov’s inn, which stood just at the entrance and in which all six street windows were brightly lit.

“Not asleep!” Mitya echoed happily. “Make it rattle, Andrei, gallop, ring the bells, drive up with a clatter. Let everybody know who’s come! I’m coming! Me! Here I come!” Mitya kept exclaiming frenziedly.

Andrei put the exhausted troika to a gallop, and indeed drove up to the high porch with a clatter and reined in his steaming, half-suffocated horses. Mitya jumped from the cart just as the innkeeper, who was in fact on his way to bed, peered out from the porch, curious who could just have driven up like that.

“Is it you, Trifon Borisich?”

The innkeeper bent forward, peered, ran headlong down the steps, and rushed up to his guest in servile rapture.

“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich! Do we meet again?”

This Trifon Borisich was a thickset and robust man of medium height, with a somewhat fleshy face, of stern and implacable appearance, especially with the Mokroye peasants, but endowed with the ability to change his expression to one of the utmost servility whenever he smelled a profit. He went about dressed in Russian style, in a peasant blouse and a long, full-skirted coat, had quite a bit of money, but also constantly dreamed of a higher role. He had more than half of the peasants in his clutches, everyone was in debt to him. He rented land from the landowners, and had also bought some himself, and the peasants worked this land for him in return for their debts, which they could never pay back. He was a widower and had four grown-up daughters; one was already a widow and lived with him with her two little ones, his granddaughters, working for him as a charwoman. Another of his peasant daughters was married to an official, who had risen from being a petty clerk, and one could see on the wall in one of the rooms of the inn, among the family photographs, also a miniature photograph of this little official in his uniform and official epaulettes. The two younger daughters, on feast days or when going visiting, would put on light blue or green dresses of fashionable cut, tight-fitting behind and with three feet of train, but the very next morning, as on any other day, they would get up at dawn, sweep the rooms with birch brooms in their hands, take the garbage out, and clear away the trash left by the lodgers. Despite the thousands he had already made, Trifon Borisich took great pleasure in fleecing a lodger on a spree, and, recalling that not quite a month ago he had profited from Dmitri Fyodorovich in one day, during his spree with Grushenka, to the tune of more than two hundred roubles, if not three, he now greeted him joyfully and eagerly, scenting his prey again just by the way Mitya drove up to the porch.

“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, will you be our guest again?”

“Wait, Trifon Borisich,” Mitya began, “first things first: where is she?”

“Agrafena Alexandrovna?” the innkeeper understood at once, peering alertly into Mitya’s face. “She’s here, too ... staying...”

“With whom? With whom?”

“Some visitors passing through, sir ... One is an official, must be a Pole from the way he talks, it was he who sent horses for her from here; the other one is a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, who can tell? They’re both in civilian clothes ...”

“What, are they on a spree? Are they rich?”

“Spree, nothing! They’re small fry, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Small? And the others?”

“They’re from town, two gentlemen ... They were on their way back from Cherny and stopped here. One of them, the young one, must be a relative of Mr. Miusov’s, only I forget his name ... and the other one you know, too, I suppose: the landowner Maximov; he went on a pilgrimage to your monastery, he says, and now he’s going around with this young relative of Mr. Miusov’s ...”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Stop, listen, Trifon Borisich, now tell me the most important thing: what about her, how is she?”

“She just arrived, and now she’s sitting with them.”

“Happy? Laughing?”

“No, she doesn’t seem to be laughing much. She’s sitting there quite bored; she was combing the young man’s hair.”

“The Pole’s? The officer’s?”

“He’s no young man, and no officer either, not at all; no, sir, not his but this nephew of Miusov’s, the young man ... I just can’t remember his name.”

“Kalganov?”

“Exactly—Kalganov.”

“Good, I’ll see for myself. Are they playing cards?”

“They played for a while, then they stopped and had tea. The official ordered liqueurs.”

“Stop, Trifon Borisich, stop, my dear soul, I’ll see for myself. Now answer the most important thing: are there any gypsies around?” “There’s been no word of gypsies at all lately, Dmitri Fyodorovich, the authorities chased them away, but there are Jews hereabouts, in Rozhdestvenskaya, they play cymbals and fiddles, you can send for them even now. They’ll come.”

“Send for them, do send for them!” Mitya cried. “And you can wake up the girls like the other time, Maria especially, and Stepanida, Arina. Two hundred roubles for the chorus!”

“For that money I’ll wake up the whole village, though they’ve probably all dropped off by now. But are they worth such pampering, our peasants, or the girls, Dmitri Fyodorovich? To lay out so much for such coarseness and crudeness? It’s not for our peasant to smoke cigars—and you did give them out. They all stink, the bandits. And the girls have lice, every last one of them. Why spend so much? I’ll wake up my daughters for you for nothing, they just went to bed, I’ll kick them in the backside and make them sing for you. Last time you gave the peasants champagne to drink, agh!”

Trifon Borisich had no call to feel sorry for Mitya: he himself had hidden half a dozen bottles of champagne from him last time, and had picked up a hundred-rouble bill from under the table and clutched it in his fist. And in his fist it remained.

“I ran through more than one thousand that time, do you remember, Trifon Borisich?”

“You did, my dear, how could I forget it? Must have been three thousand you left here.”

“So, I’ve come with as much again, do you see?”

And he took out his wad of money and held it right under the innkeeper’s nose.

“Now listen and understand: in an hour the wine will arrive, appetizers, pâté, and candies—send everything upstairs at once. That box in Andrei’s cart should also go upstairs at once, open it and serve the champagne immediately ... And above all, the girls, the girls, and especially Maria...”

He turned back to the cart and took the case with the pistols from under the seat.

“Your pay, Andrei, take it! Fifteen roubles for the troika, and fifty for vodka ... for your willingness, your love ... Remember the honorable Karamazov!”

“I’m afraid, your honor ... ,” Andrei hesitated. “Give me five roubles for a tip, if you like, but I won’t take more. Trifon Borisich, be my witness. Forgive my foolish words ...”

“What are you afraid of?” Mitya looked him up and down. “To hell with you, then!” he cried, tossing him five roubles. “Now, Trifon Borisich, take me in quietly and let me first have a look at them all, so that they don’t notice me. Where are they, in the blue room?”

Trifon Borisich looked warily at Mitya, but at once obediently did as he was told: he carefully led him to the front hall, and himself went into the first large room, adjacent to the one in which the guests were sitting, and removed the candle. Then he quietly led Mitya in and put him in a corner, in the darkness, from where he could freely watch the company without being seen by them. But Mitya did not look for long, and could not simply look: he saw her, and his heart began to pound, his head swam. She was sitting at the end of the table, in an armchair, and next to her, on a sofa, sat Kalganov, a pretty and still very young man; she was holding him by the hand and seemed to be laughing, and he, without looking at her, was saying something loudly, apparently irritably, to Maximov, who sat across the table from Grushenka. Maximov was laughing very much at something. He sat on the sofa, and next to the sofa, on a chair by the wall, was some other stranger. The one on the sofa sat casually, smoking a pipe, and it flashed through Mitya that he was a sort of plumpish, broad-faced little man, who must be short and seemed to be angry about something. His companion, the other stranger, appeared to Mitya to be exceedingly tall; but he could make out nothing more. His breath failed him. Unable to stand still a moment longer, he put the case on a chest and, turning cold and with a sinking heart, walked straight into the blue room among them.

“Aie!” Grushenka shrieked in fear, noticing him first.