The Brothers Karamazov

Chapter 7: The Former and Indisputable One

Mitya, with his long, quick strides, went right up to the table.

“Gentlemen,” he began loudly, almost shouting, but stammering at each word, “it’s ... it’s nothing! Don’t be afraid,” he exclaimed, “it’s really nothing, nothing,” he suddenly turned to Grushenka, who was leaning towards Kalganov in her armchair, firmly clutching his hand. “I ... I am traveling, too. I’ll stay till morning. Gentlemen, may a passing traveler ... stay with you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same room?”

These final words he addressed to the fat little man with the pipe who was sitting on the sofa. The latter imposingly removed the pipe from his lips and observed sternly:; “Panie,^[247] this is a private gathering. There are other rooms.”

“But it’s you, Dmitri Fyodorovich! But what’s the matter?” Kalganov responded suddenly. “But do sit down with us! Good evening!”

“Good evening, my dear ... and priceless fellow! I’ve always respected you ... ,” Mitya joyfully and impetuously responded, holding his hand out to him at once across the table.

“Aie, what a grip! You’ve quite broken my fingers,” Kalganov laughed.

“He always shakes hands like that, always!” Grushenka responded gaily, still with a timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced by the looks of Mitya that he was not going to start a brawl, but peering at him with terrible curiosity and still uneasily. There was something in him that struck her greatly, and she had not at all expected that he would come in like that and speak like that at such a moment.

“Good evening, sir,” the landowner Maximov responded sweetly from the left. Mitya rushed over to him as well:

“Good evening, you’re here, too, I’m so glad you’re here, too! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I ... ,” he turned again to the pan with the pipe, evidently taking him to be the most important person present, “I came flying here ... I wanted to spend my last day and my last hour in this room, in this very room, where I once adored ... my queen...! Forgive me, panie!” he cried frantically. “I came flying, and I made a vow ... Oh, don’t be afraid, it’s my last night! Let us drink for peace, panie\ Wine will be served presently ... I brought this.” Suddenly, for some reason, he pulled out his wad of money. “Allow me, panie! I want music, noise, racket, everything just as before ... And the worm, the useless worm, will crawl away over the earth and be no more! =n mb last night I will commemorate the day of my joy...!”

He was almost breathless; there was much, much that he wanted to say, but only odd exclamations flew out. The pan gazed motionlessly at him, at his wad of money, gazed at Grushenka, and was clearly bewildered.

“If my królowa permits ... ,” he started to say.

“What’s a królowa, a queen or what?”^[248] Grushenka suddenly interrupted. “It makes me laugh the way you all talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are you talking about? Don’t frighten me, please. You aren’t going to frighten me, are you? If you aren’t, then I’m glad to see you...”

“Me? Me frighten you?” Mitya suddenly cried, throwing up his hands. “Oh, pass me by, go your way, I won’t hinder you . . .!” And suddenly, quite unexpectedly for everyone, and certainly also for himself, he flung himself down on a chair and dissolved in tears, his head turned away to the opposite wall, and his arms firmly grasping the back of the chair as though embracing it. “Now, now, is that any way to behave?” Grushenka exclaimed reproachfully. “That’s just how he used to be when he came visiting me—he’d suddenly start talking, and I wouldn’t understand a thing. Then once he began crying just like that, and now again—shame on you! What are you crying for? As if you had anything to cry about!” she suddenly added mysteriously, emphasizing her words with a sort of irritation.

“I ... I’m not crying ... Well, good evening!” he turned around instantly on his chair and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt, wooden laugh, but a sort of long, nervous, inaudible, and shaking laugh.

“What, again ... ? Come on, cheer up, cheer up!”Grushenka urged him. “I’m very glad you’ve come, very glad, Mitya, do you hear that? I am very glad. I want him to sit here with us,” she said imperiously, as if addressing everyone, though her words were obviously aimed at the man sitting on the sofa. “I want it, I want it! And if he leaves, I will leave, too, that’s what!” she added, her eyes suddenly flashing.

“Whatever my queen pleases is the law!” the pan said, gallantly kissing Grushenka’s hand. “You, panie, I ask to join our company!” he addressed Mitya courteously. Mitya jumped up a little again, obviously intending to break once more into a tirade, but something else came out.

“Let’s drink, panie!” he stopped short suddenly instead of making a speech. Everyone laughed.

“Lord! I thought he was going to start talking again,” Grushenka exclaimed nervously. “Listen, Mitya,” she added insistently, “don’t jump up any more, and it’s lovely that you’ve brought champagne. I’ll drink some myself, I can’t stand liqueur. The best thing is that you yourself have come, it’s such a bore ... Are you on a spree again, or what? Do put your money in your pocket! Where did you get so much?”

Mitya, still holding in his hand the crumpled bank notes, which had been very well noticed by everyone, especially by the Poles, quickly and embarrassedly thrust them into his pocket. He blushed. At that same moment, the innkeeper brought an open bottle of champagne on a tray, with glasses. Mitya seized the bottle, but was so confused that he forgot what to do with it. Kalganov finally took it from him and poured the wine.

“Another bottle, another!” Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting to clink glasses with the pan whom he had just so solemnly invited to drink for peace, suddenly drained his whole glass by himself, without waiting for anyone else. His whole face suddenly changed. Instead of the solemn and tragic expression he was wearing when he entered, something childlike, as it were, appeared in him. He seemed suddenly to have humbled and diminished himself. He looked timidly and joyfully at everyone, giggling nervously and frequently, with the grateful look of a guilty pup that has been patted and let in again. He seemed to have forgotten everything and looked at everyone around him admiringly, with a childish smile. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and moved his chair up next to her armchair. Gradually he made out the two Poles, though he could make little sense of them. The pan on the sofa struck him by his bearing, his Polish accent, and, above all, his pipe. “Well, what of it? It’s good that he smokes a pipe,” Mitya contemplated. The pan’s nearly forty-year-old face, somewhat flabby, with a tiny little nose, under which appeared a pair of the thinnest little pointed moustaches, dyed and insolent, so far had not aroused the least question in Mitya. Even the pan’s quite wretched wig, made in Siberia, with the hair stupidly brushed forward on the temples, did not particularly strike him: “So, if there’s a wig, that’s how it should be,” he went on contemplating blissfully. As for the other pan sitting by the wall, who was younger than the pan on the sofa, and was looking impudently and defiantly at the whole company, listening with silent disdain to the general conversation, he, in turn, struck Mitya only by his great height, terribly disproportionate to the pan sitting on the sofa. “About six foot six standing up,” flashed through Mitya’s head. It also flashed in him that this tall pan was most likely the friend and henchman of the pan on the sofa, “his bodyguard,” so to speak, and that the little pan with the pipe of course gave orders to the tall pan. But all this, too, seemed terribly good and indisputable to Mitya. All rivalry had ceased in the little pup. He did not yet understand anything about Grushenka and the mysterious tone of some of her phrases; he only understood, trembling with his whole heart, that she had treated him tenderly, that she had “forgiven” him and sat him down next to her. He was beside himself with delight seeing her take a sip of wine from her glass. Suddenly, however, the silence of the company seemed to strike him, and he began looking around at everyone, his eyes expecting something: “Why are we just sitting here, why don’t we get something started, gentlemen?” his grinning eyes seemed to say.

“It’s him, he keeps telling lies, and we keep laughing,” Kalganov suddenly began, as if guessing Mitya’s thought, and he pointed at Maximov.

Mitya swiftly fixed his eyes on Kalganov and then at once on Maximov.

“Lies?” he burst into his abrupt, wooden laughter, at once becoming happy about something. “Ha, ha!”

“Yes. Imagine, he maintains that in the twenties our entire cavalry allegedly married Polish women; but that’s awful nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Polish women?” Mitya chimed in, now decidedly delighted.

Kalganov well understood Mitya’s relations with Grushenka; he had also guessed about the pan; but all that did not interest him very much, and perhaps did not interest him at all: what interested him most was Maximov. He had turned up there with Maximov by chance, and met the Poles for the first time in his life there at the inn. As for Grushenka, he had known her previously and once even visited her with someone; she had not liked him then. But now she kept glancing at him very tenderly; before Mitya arrived she had even caressed him, but he remained somehow insensible. He was a young man, not more than twenty years old, stylishly dressed, with a very sweet, pale face, and with beautiful, thick, light brown hair. And set in this pale face were a pair of lovely light blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes deep expression, even beyond his age, notwithstanding that the young man sometimes spoke and looked just like a child, and was not at all embarrassed by it, being quite aware of it himself. Generally, he was very original, even whimsical, though always kind. Occasionally something fixed and stubborn flashed in the expression of his face: he looked at you, listened, and all the while kept dreaming about something of his own. At times he would become sluggish and lazy, at others he would suddenly get excited, often apparently for the most trivial reason.

“Imagine, I’ve been taking him around with me for four days now,” he went on, drawing the words out a little, lazily, as it were, but quite naturally, and without any foppery. “Ever since the day your brother pushed him out of the carriage and sent him flying, remember? That made me very interested in him then, and I took him to the village with me, but now he keeps telling such lies that I’m ashamed to be with him. I’m taking him back...”

“The pan has never seen a Polish pani, and says what is not possible,” the pan with the pipe observed to Maximov.

The pan with the pipe spoke Russian quite well, much better, at least, than he pretended. If he happened to use Russian words, he distorted them in a Polish manner.

“But I was married to a Polish pani myself, sir,” Maximov giggled in reply.

“And did you also serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry. But you’re no cavalryman,” Kalganov immediately mixed in.

“No, indeed, he’s no cavalryman! Ha, ha!” cried Mitya, who was listening greedily and quickly shifting his questioning glance to each speaker in turn, as if he expected to hear God knows what from each of them.

“No, you see, sir,” Maximov turned to him, “I mean, sir, that those young Polish girls ... pretty girls, sir ... as soon as they’d danced a mazurka with one of our uhlans ... as soon as she’d danced a mazurka with him, she’d jump on his lap like a little cat, sir ... a little white cat, sir ... and the pan father and the pani mother see it and allow it ... allow it, sir ... and the next day the uhlan would go and offer his hand ... like that, sir ... offer his hand, hee, hee!” Maximov ended with a giggle.

“The pan is a lajdak!”^[249] the tall pan on the chair suddenly growled and crossed one leg over the other. All that caught Mitya’s eye was his enormous greased boot with its thick and dirty sole. Generally, the clothing of both pans was rather grimy.

“So it’s lajdak now! Why is he calling names?” Grushenka suddenly became angry.

“Pani Agrippina,^[250] what the pan saw in the Polish land were peasant women, not noble ladies,” the pan with the pipe observed to Grushenka.

“You can bet on that!” the tall pan on the chair snapped contemptuously.

“Really! Let him talk! People talk, why interfere with them? It’s fun to be with them,” Grushenka snarled.

“I am not interfering, pani” the pan in the wig observed significantly, with a prolonged look at Grushenka, and, lapsing into an imposing silence, began sucking on his pipe again.

“But no, no, what the pan just said is right,” Kalganov got excited again, as if the matter involved were God knows how important. “He hasn’t been to Poland, how can he talk about Poland? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you?”

“No, sir, in Smolensk province. But, anyway, an uhlan brought her from Poland, sir, I mean my future spouse, sir, with her pani mother, and her aunt, and yet another female relation with a grown-up son, right from Poland ... and let me have her. He was one of our sublieutenants, a very nice young man. First he wanted to marry her himself, but he didn’t because she turned out to be lame ...”

“So you married a lame woman?” Kalganov exclaimed.

“A lame woman, sir. They both deceived me a little bit then and concealed it. I thought she was skipping ... she kept skipping all the time, and I thought it was from high spirits ...”

“From joy that she was marrying you?” Kalganov yelled in a ringing, childlike voice.

“Yes, sir, from joy. And the reason turned out to be quite different, sir. Later, when we got married, that same evening after the church service, she confessed and asked my forgiveness with great feeling. She once jumped over a puddle in her young years, she said, and injured her little foot, hee, hee, hee!”

Kalganov simply dissolved in the most childlike laughter and almost collapsed on the sofa. Grushenka laughed, too. Mitya was in perfect bliss. “You know, you know, he’s telling the truth now, he’s not lying anymore!” Kalganov exclaimed, addressing Mitya. “And you know, he was married twice—it’s his first wife he’s talking about—and his second wife, you know, ran away and is still alive, did you know that?”

“She did?” Mitya quickly turned to Maximov, his face expressing remarkable amazement.

“Yes, sir, she ran away, I’ve had that unpleasantness,” Maximov confirmed humbly. “With a certain monsieur, sir. And the worst of it was that beforehand she first of all transferred my whole village to her name alone. You’re an educated man, she said, you can always earn your keep. So she left me flat. A venerable bishop once observed to me: your first wife was lame, and the second too lightfooted, hee, hee!”

“Listen, listen!” Kalganov was really bubbling over, “even if he’s lying— and he lies all the time—he’s lying so as to give pleasure to us all: that’s not mean, is it? You know, sometimes I love him. He’s awfully mean, but naturally so, eh? Don’t you think? Other people are mean for some reason, to get some profit from it, but he just does it naturally ... Imagine, for instance, he claims (he was arguing about it yesterday all the while we were driving) that Gogol wrote about him in Dead Souls.^[251] Remember, there’s a landowner Maximov, and Nozdryov thrashes him and is taken to court ‘for inflicting personal injury on the landowner Maximov with a birch while in a drunken condition’—do you remember? Imagine, now, he claims that was him, that it was he who was thrashed! But how can it be? Chichikov was traveling around in the twenties at the latest, the beginning of the twenties, so the dates don’t fit at all. He couldn’t have been thrashed then. He really couldn’t, could he?”

It was hard to conceive why Kalganov was so excited, but his excitement was genuine. Mitya entered wholeheartedly into his interests.

“Well, what if he was thrashed!” he cried with a loud laugh.

“Not really thrashed, but just so,” Maximov suddenly put in.

“How ‘so’? Thrashed, or not thrashed?”

“Która godzina, partie (What time is it) ?” the pan with the pipe addressed the tall pan on the chair with a bored look. The latter shrugged his shoulders in reply: neither of them had a watch.

“Why not talk? Let other people talk, too. You mean if you’re bored, no one should talk?” Grushenka roused herself again, apparently provoking him on purpose. For the first time, as it were, something flashed through Mitya’s mind. This time the pan replied with obvious irritation.

“Pani, I do not contradict, I do not say anything.”

“All right, then. And you, go on with your story,” Grushenka cried to Maximov. “Why are you all silent?” “But there’s really nothing to tell, because it’s all foolishness,” Maximov picked up at once with obvious pleasure, mincing a bit, “and in Gogol it’s all just allegorical, because he made all the names allegorical: Nozdryov really wasn’t Nozdryov but Nosov, and Kuvshinnikov doesn’t bear any resemblance, because he was Shkvornyev. And Fenardi was indeed Fenardi, only he wasn’t an Italian but a Russian, Petrov, sirs, and Mamzelle Fenardi was a pretty one, with pretty legs in tights, sirs, a short little skirt all-over sequins, and she made pirouettes, only not for four hours but just for four minutes, sirs ... and seduced everyone ...”

“What were you thrashed for, what did they thrash you for?” Kalganov kept on shouting.

“For Piron, sir,” Maximov replied.^[252]

“What Piron?” cried Mitya.

“The famous French writer Piron, sirs. We were all drinking wine then, a big company, in a tavern, at that fair. They invited me, and first of all I started reciting epigrams: ‘Is it you, Boileau, in that furbelow?’^[253] And Boileau answers that he’s going to a masquerade, meaning to the bathhouse, sirs, hee, hee—so they took it personally. Then I hastened to tell them another one, very well known to all educated people, a sarcastic one, sirs:

You’re Sappho, I’m Phaon, agreed. But there’s one thing still troubling me: You don’t know your way to the sea.^[254]

At that they got even more offended and began scolding me indecently, and I, unfortunately, tried to make things better by telling them a very educated anecdote about Piron, how he wasn’t accepted into the French Academy, and in revenge wrote his own epitaph for his gravestone: Çi-gît Piron qui ne fut rien, Pas même académicien.^[255] Then they up and thrashed me.”

“But what for, what for?”

“For my education. A man can be thrashed for all sorts of reasons,” Maximov summed up meekly and sententiously.

“Eh, enough, it’s all bad, I don’t want to listen, I thought there would be some fun in it,” Grushenka suddenly cut them off. Mitya, thrown into a flutter, stopped laughing at once. The tall pan rose to his feet and, with the haughty look of a man bored by company unsuited to him, began pacing from one corner to the other, holding his hands behind his back. “Look at him pacing!” Grushenka glanced at him contemptuously. Mitya began to worry; besides, he noticed that the pan on the sofa kept glancing at him irritably.

“Pan” Mitya cried, “let us drink, panie! And the other pan, too: let us drink, panowie!” In a second he moved three glasses together and poured champagne.

“To Poland, panowie, I drink to your Poland, to the Polish land!” Mitya exclaimed.^[256]

“Bardzo mi to milo, panie, wypijem (That is very nice, panie, let us drink),” the pan on the sofa said gravely and benevolently, taking his glass.

“And the other pan, what’s his name? Hey, Excellency, take a glass!” Mitya fussed.

“Pan Vrublevsky,” the pan on the sofa prompted.

Pan Vrublevsky came swinging up to the table and, standing, accepted his glass.

“To Poland, panowie, hurrah!” Mitya shouted, raising his glass.

All three men drank. Mitya seized the bottle and immediately poured three more glasses.

“Now to Russia, panowie, and let us be brothers!”

“Pour some for us,” said Grushenka, “I’ll drink to Russia, too.”

“So will I,” said Kalganov.

“I wouldn’t mind, either, sirs ... to our dear Russia, our old granny,” Maximov joined in, giggling.

“Everyone, everyone!” cried Mitya. “Innkeeper, more bottles!”

The three remaining bottles that Mitya had brought were produced. Mitya poured.

“To Russia, hurrah!” he proclaimed again. Everyone drank except the pans, and Grushenka finished her glass at one gulp. The panowie did not even touch theirs.

“What about you, panowie?” Mitya exclaimed. “Is that how you are?”

Pan Vrublevsky took his glass, raised it, and pronounced in a booming voice:

“To Russia within her borders before 1772!”^[257]

“Oto bardzo pieknie (Now that’s better)!” shouted the other pan, and they both drained their glasses.

“You’re both fools, panowie!” suddenly escaped from Mitya.

“Pa-nie!” both pans shouted threateningly, turning on Mitya like fighting cocks. Pan Vrublevsky especially was boiling.

“Ale nie mozno nie miec slabosci do swojego kraju (Can a man not love his own land) ?” he proclaimed. “Silence! No quarreling! There are to be no quarrels!” Grushenka cried commandingly and stamped her foot on the floor. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleaming. The glass she had just drunk was telling on her. Mitya got terribly frightened.

“Panowie, forgive me! It was my fault, I’ll stop. Vrublevsky, Pan Vrublevsky, I’ll stop...!”

“You keep quiet at least, sit down, you silly man!” Grushenka snarled at him with spiteful vexation.

They all sat down, they all fell silent, they all looked at one another.

“Gentlemen, I am the cause of everything!” Mitya began again, grasping nothing from Grushenka’s exclamation. “Why are we all sitting here? What shall we do ... for some fun, for some more fun?”

“Ah, it really isn’t terribly much fun,” Kalganov mumbled lazily.

“Why not a little game of baccarat like before, sirs ... ?” Maximov suddenly tittered.

“Baccarat? Splendid!” Mitya picked up, “if only the pans ...”

“?fznf, panie!” the pan on the sofa responded as though reluctantly.

“True,” Pan Vrublevsky agreed.

“‘Puzhno’? What does ‘puzhno’ mean?” asked Grushenka.

“It means late, pani, the hour is late,” the pan on the sofa explained.

“For them it’s always late, for them it’s always impossible!” Grushenka almost shrieked in vexation. “They’re bored sitting here, so they want everyone else to be bored, too. Before you came, Mitya, they just sat here saying nothing, puffing themselves up in front of me...”

“My goddess!” cried the pan on the sofa, “it shall be as you say. Widze nielaske i jestem smutny (I see you are ill disposed towards me and it makes me sad). Jestem gotow (I am ready), panie,” he concluded, turning to Mitya.

“Begin, panie!” Mitya picked up, snatching his money from his pocket and laying out two hundred-rouble bills on the table.

“I want to lose a lot to you, pan. Take the cards. Make the bank.”

“We should get cards from the innkeeper,” the short pan said gravely and emphatically.

“To najlepszy sposób (It’s the best way),” Pan Vrublevsky seconded.

“From the innkeeper? Very good, I understand, let them be from the innkeeper, that’s fine, panowie! Cards!” Mitya called to the innkeeper.

The innkeeper brought an unopened deck of cards and announced to Mitya that the girls were already gathering, that the Jews with cymbals would probably arrive soon as well, and that the troika with provisions had not arrived yet. Mitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to make arrangements at once. But there were only three girls, and no Maria yet. And he himself did not know what arrangements to make, or why he had run out: he only gave orders for them to take some treats, some candies and toffees from the box and give them to the girls. “And some vodka for Andrei, some vodka for Andrei,” he added hastily, “I offended Andrei!” Here Maximov, who came running after him, suddenly touched his shoulder.

“Give me five roubles,” he whispered to Mitya, “I’d like to chance a little baccarat, too, hee, hee!”

“Wonderful! Splendid! Here, take ten!”he again pulled all the money from his pocket and found ten roubles. “And if you lose, come again, come again...”

“Very well, sir,” Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back to the room. Mitya also returned at once and apologized for keeping them waiting. The pans had already sat down and opened the deck. They looked much more amiable, almost friendly. The pan on the sofa lit up a new pipe and prepared to deal; there was even a sort of solemn look on his face.

“Take seats, panowie,” Pan Vrublevsky announced.

“No, I won’t play anymore,” replied Kalganov. “I’ve already lost fifty roubles to them.”

“The pan was unlucky, the pan may be luckier this time,” the pan on the sofa observed in his direction.

“How much is in the bank? Enough to cover?” Mitya was getting excited.

“That depends, panie, maybe a hundred, maybe two, as much as you want to stake.”

“A million!” Mitya guffawed.

“The pan captain has perhaps heard of Pan Podvysotsky?”^[258]

“What Podvysotsky?”

“There is a gaming house in Warsaw, and anyone who comes can stake against the bank. Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand zloty, and stakes the bank. The banker says, ‘Panie Podvysotsky, are you putting up the money, or your honor?’ ‘My honor, panie,’ says Podvysotsky. ‘So much the better, panie.’ The banker deals, Podvysotsky wins and reaches for the thousand zloty. ‘Here, panie,’ says the banker, and he pulls out a drawer and gives him a million, ‘take it, panie, you have won it!’ There was a million in the bank. ‘I did not know that,’ says Podvysotsky. ‘Panie Podvysotsky,’ says the banker, ‘you pledged your honor, and we pledged ours.’ Podvysotsky took the million.”

“That’s not true,” said Kalganov.

“Panie Kalganov, one does not say such things in decent company.”

“As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!” Mitya exclaimed, but immediately checked himself. “Forgive me, panie, my fault, my fault again, of course he would give it away, on his gonor,^[259] on his Polish honor!See how well I speak Polish, ha, ha! Here, ten roubles on the jack.”

“And I put one little rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty thing, the little panienochka,^[260] hee, hee!” Maximov giggled, producing his queen; and moving right up to the table, as though trying to conceal it from everyone, he hurriedly crossed himself under the table. Mitya won. The rouble also won.

“Twenty-five!” cried Mitya.

“Another rouble, a little stake, a simple little stake,” Maximov muttered blissfully, terribly happy to have won a rouble.

“Lost!” cried Mitya. “Double on the seven!”

The double, too, was lost.

“Stop!” Kalganov said suddenly.

“Double! Double!” Mitya kept doubling his stakes, and every time he doubled a card, it lost. But the roubles kept winning.

“Double!” Mitya roared furiously.

“You’ve lost two hundred, panie. Will you stake another two hundred?” the pan on the sofa inquired.

“What, two hundred already! Here’s another two hundred! The whole two hundred on the double!” and pulling the money from his pocket, Mitya threw down two hundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov suddenly covered it with his hand.

“Enough!” he cried in his ringing voice.

“What do you mean?” Mitya stared at him.

“Enough, I won’t let you! You won’t play anymore!”

“Why?”

“Because. Just spit and come away, that’s why. I won’t let you play any more!”

Mitya looked at him in amazement.

“Quit, Mitya. Maybe he’s right; you’ve lost a lot as it is,” Grushenka, too, said, with a strange note in her voice. Both pans suddenly rose to their feet, looking terribly offended.

“Zartujesz (Are you joking), panie?” the little pan said, looking sternly at Kalganov.

“Yak sen powazasz to robic, panie (How dare you do that)!” Pan Vrublevsky also roared at Kalganov.

“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare shout!” Grushenka shouted. “You turkey cocks!”

Mitya looked at each of them in turn; then something in Grushenka’s face suddenly struck him, and at the same moment something quite new flashed through his mind—a strange new thought!

“Pani Agrippina!” the little pan, all flushed with defiance, began speaking, when Mitya suddenly came up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.

“A word with you, Excellency.”

“Czego chcesz, panie (What do you want) ?”

“Let’s step into the other room, over there; I have some nice news for you, the best news, you’ll be pleased to hear it.”

The little pan was surprised and looked warily at Mitya. However, he agreed at once, but on the firm condition that Pan Vrublevsky also come with them.

“The bodyguard? Let him come, we need him, too! He must come, in fact!” Mitya exclaimed. “March, panowie!”

“Where are you going?” Grushenka asked anxiously.

“We’ll be back in a moment,” Mitya replied. A certain boldness, a certain unexpected cheerfulness flashed in his face; it was quite a different look from the one he had when he entered the same room an hour earlier. He led the panowie into the room at the right, not the big one where the chorus of girls was gathering and the table was being laid, but a bedroom, where there were trunks and boxes and two big beds with a pile of cotton pillows on each. There was a candle burning on a little wooden table in the very corner. The pan and Mitya sat down at this table, facing each other, while the enormous Pan Vrublevsky stood to one side of them, his hands behind his back. The pans looked stern, but were obviously curious.

“Czym moge sluzyc panu (What can I do for the pan)?” the little pan prattled.

“Here’s what, panie, I won’t waste words: take this money,” he pulled out his bank notes, “if you want three thousand, take it and go wherever you like. “

The pan acquired a keen look, he was all eyes, he fixed his gaze on Mitya’s face.

“Trzy tysiace, panie (Three thousand, panie) ?” he exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.

“Trzy, panowie, trzy! Listen, panie, I see you’re a reasonable man. Take three thousand and go to the devil, and don’t forget Vrublevsky—do you hear? But now, this minute, and forever, do you understand, panie, you’ll walk out this door forever. What have you got in there—an overcoat, a fur coat? I’ll bring it out to you. The troika will be harnessed for you this very moment and—good-bye, panie! Eh?”

Mitya waited confidently for an answer. He had no doubts. Something extremely resolute flashed in the pan’s face. “And the roubles, panie?”

“We’ll do it this way, panie: I’ll give you five hundred roubles right now, for the coachman and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred will come tomorrow in town—I swear on my honor, I’ll dig it up somewhere!” Mitya cried.

The Poles exchanged glances again. The pan’s expression took a turn for the worse.

“Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five, right now, this minute, in your hands!” Mitya upped his offer, sensing that things were not going well. “What’s the matter, pan? You don’t believe me? I’m not going to give you all three thousand at once. I’d give it to you, and you’d go back to her tomorrow ... And I don’t have the whole three thousand with me, I have it at home, in town,” Mitya babbled weakly, losing heart with each word, “by God, I have it, hidden ...”

In an instant a sense of extraordinary dignity shone on the little pan’s face.

“Czy nie potrzebujesz jeszcze czego (Is there anything else you’d like) ?” he asked ironically. “Pfui! Ah, pfui (Shame on you)!” And he spat. Pan Vrublevsky also spat.

“You spit, panie, because,” Mitya spoke as one in despair, realizing that all was over, “because you hope to get more from Grushenka. You’re a couple of capons, that’s what!”

“Jestem do zywego dotkniety (That is a mortal insult)!” the little pan suddenly turned red as a lobster, and briskly, in terrible indignation, as though unwilling to listen any longer, walked out of the room. Vrublevsky went swinging after him, and Mitya, confused and at a loss, followed them out. He was afraid of Grushenka, he anticipated that the pan would now make an uproar. And that, indeed, is what happened. The pan walked into the room and stood theatrically before Grushenka.

“Pani Agrippina, jestem do zywego dotkniety!” he began exclaiming, but Grushenka suddenly seemed to lose all patience, as if she had been touched on her sorest spot.

“Russian, speak Russian, not a word of Polish!” she shouted at him. “You used to speak Russian, did you forget it in five years?” She was all flushed with anger.

“Pani Agrippina ...”

“I am Agrafena, I am Grushenka, speak Russian or I won’t listen to you!” The pan was panting with gonor, and in broken Russian quickly and pompously declared:

“Pani Agrafena, I came to forget the past and to forgive it, to forget what has happened until today ...” “Forgive? You mean you came to forgive me?” Grushenka interrupted and jumped up from her seat.

“Just so, pani, I am not pusillanimous, I am magnanimous. But I was surprised when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya, in the other room, offered me three thousand to depart. I spat in the pan’s face.”

“What? He offered you money for me?” Grushenka cried hysterically. “Is it true, Mitya? How dare you! Am I for sale?”

“Panie, panie,” Mitya cried out, “she is pure, she is shining, and I have never been her lover! It’s a lie...”

“How dare you defend me to him,” Grushenka went on shouting. “I have been pure not out of virtue, and not from fear of Kuzma, but in order to stand proudly before him and have the right to call him a scoundrel when I met him. But did he really not take your money?”

“He was, he was taking it!” Mitya exclaimed. “Only he wanted all three thousand at once, and I offered him just seven hundred down.”

“But of course: he heard I had money, so he came to marry me!”

“Pani Agrippina,” cried the pan, “I am a knight, a nobleman, not a lajdak. I arrived to take you for my wife, but I see a new pani, not as she was before, but wanton and shameless.”

“Ah, go back where you came from! I’ll order them to throw you out right now, and they will!” Grushenka cried in a rage. “I was a fool, a fool to torment myself for five years! And I didn’t torment myself because of him at all, I tormented myself out of spite! And this isn’t him at all! Was he like that? This one’s more like his father! Where did you get such a wig? He was a falcon, and this one is a drake. He laughed and sang songs to me ... And I, I have been shedding tears for five years, cursed fool that I am, mean, shameless!”

She fell onto her armchair and covered her face with her hands. At that moment the chorus of Mokroye girls, finally assembled in the next room to the left, suddenly burst into a rollicking dance song.

“This is Sodom!” Pan Vrublevsky suddenly bellowed. “Innkeeper, throw these shameless people out!”

The innkeeper, who had been peeking curiously through the door for a long time already, hearing shouts and seeing that his guests were quarreling, came into the room at once.

“What are you yelling about? Shut your trap!” he addressed Vrublevsky with a sort of discourtesy that was even impossible to explain.

“Swine!” roared Pan Vrublevsky.

“Swine, am I? And what sort of cards have you just been playing with? I gave you a deck and you hid it! You were playing with marked cards! I can pack you off to Siberia for marked cards, do you know that, it’s the same as bad money ...” And going over to the sofa, he put his fingers between the cushion and the back and pulled out an unopened deck of cards.

“Here’s my deck, unopened!” He held it up and showed it all around. “From there I saw him shove my deck behind the cushion and put his own in place of it—you’re not a pan, you’re a cheat!”

“And I saw the other pan palm a card twice,” cried Kalganov.

“Ah, what shame, what shame!” exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands and genuinely blushing with shame. “Lord, what he’s come to!”

“And I thought so, too!” shouted Mitya. But he had barely spoken when Pan Vrublevsky, embarrassed and infuriated, turned to Grushenka and, shaking his fist at her, shouted:

“Public slut!” But he had barely exclaimed it when Mitya flew at him, seized him with both hands, lifted him up in the air, and in an instant carried him out of the room into the bedroom on the right, the one where he had just taken the two pans.

“I left him there on the floor!” he announced, returning at once, breathless with excitement. “He’s struggling, the scum, but there’s no chance he’ll get out . . .!”He closed one half of the door, and holding the other wide open, he called out to the little pan:

“Excellency, would you care to follow him? If you please!”

“Mitri Fyodorovich, my dear,” exclaimed Trifon Borisich, “take back the money you lost to them! It’s the same as if they’d stolen it from you.”

“I don’t want my fifty roubles back,” Kalganov suddenly answered.

“And I don’t want my two hundred!” exclaimed Mitya. “Not for anything will I take it back, let him keep it as a consolation.”

“Bravo, Mitya! Well done!” cried Grushenka, and a terribly malicious note rang in her exclamation. The little pan, purple with fury, yet by no means losing his stateliness, started for the door, but stopped and suddenly said, addressing Grushenka:

“Pani, jesli chcesz isc za mna, idzmy; jesli nie—bywaj zdrowa (Pani, if you want to come with me, come; if not—farewell).’”

And pompously, puffing with ambition and indignation, he went through the door. The man had character: after all that had taken place, he did not lose hope that the pani would follow after him—so highly did he value himself. Mitya slammed the door behind him.

“Lock it with a key,” said Kalganov. But the lock clicked from the other side; they had locked themselves in.

“Bravo!” Grushenka cried again, mercilessly and maliciously. “Bravo! And good riddance!”

Chapter 8: Delirium

What began then was almost an orgy, a feast of feasts. Grushenka was the first to call for wine: “I want to drink, I want to get quite drunk, like before—remember, Mitya, remember how we were coming to know each other then?” Mitya himself was as if in delirium, anticipating “his happiness.” Grushenka, incidentally, kept chasing him away from her all the while: “Go, enjoy yourself, tell them to dance, everyone should enjoy themselves, sing ‘Dance cottage, dance stove’ like before!”^[261] she kept exclaiming. She was terribly excited. And Mitya would run to give orders. The chorus gathered in the next room. The room they had been sitting in so far was small in any case; it was divided in two by a cotton curtain, behind which, again, there was an enormous bed with a plump down mattress and a pile of the same sort of cotton pillows. Indeed, in all four “good” rooms of the house, there were beds everywhere. Grushenka settled herself just by the door; Mitya brought her an armchair: she had sat in the same place “then,” on the day of their first spree, and from there had watched the chorus and the dancing. The girls who gathered were the same as then; the Jews with fiddles and zithers arrived, and finally the long-awaited troika arrived with its cart full of wines and provisions. Mitya bustled about. Uninvited guests came to watch, peasant men and women who had already gone to sleep but woke up sensing an unheard-of entertainment, like that of a month before. Mitya greeted and embraced those he knew, recalling their faces; he uncorked bottles and poured for all comers. Champagne was popular only with the girls; the men preferred rum and cognac and especially hot punch. Mitya ordered hot chocolate for all the girls, and three samovars to be kept boiling all night so that everyone who came could have tea or punch: whoever wants to can help himself. In a word, something disorderly and absurd began, but Mitya was in his natural element, as it were, and the more absurd it all became, the more his spirits rose. If some peasant had asked him for money at that moment, he would at once have pulled out his whole wad and started giving it away right and left without counting. That is probably why, in order to protect Mitya, the innkeeper Trifon Borisich, who seemed to have quite given up any thought of going to sleep that night, and who nevertheless drank little (he only had one glass of punch), was almost constantly scurrying around him, vigilantly looking out, in his own way, for Mitya’s interests. When necessary, he intervened in a friendly and servile manner, reasoning with him, not letting him, as he had “then,” present the peasants with “cigarettes and Rhine wine” or, God forbid, with money, and was highly indignant that the girls were drinking liqueur and eating candy: “There’s nothing but lice there, Mitri Fyodorovich,” he would say, “I’d give them a knee in the backside, every one of them, and tell them to count it an honor—that’s what they’re like!” Mitya again remembered Andrei and ordered punch to be sent out to him. “I offended him before,” he kept saying in a weak and tender voice. Kalganov did not want to drink at first, and very much disliked the girls’ chorus, but after drinking two more glasses of champagne, he became terribly happy, paced about the rooms, laughed, and praised everyone and everything, songs and music. Maximov, blissful and tipsy, never left his side. Grushenka, who was also beginning to get drunk, kept pointing at Kalganov and saying to Mitya: “What a darling he is, what a wonderful boy!” And Mitya would run in rapture to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, he was expecting so much; she had not yet said anything to him, she obviously put off saying anything on purpose, and only glanced at him from time to time with caressing but ardent eyes. Finally she suddenly caught him fast by the hand and pulled him forcefully to herself. She was then sitting in the armchair by the door.

“How you walked in tonight, eh? How you walked in . . .! I was so frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, hm? Did you really?”

“I didn’t want to ruin your happiness!” Mitya prattled blissfully. But she did not even need his answer.

“Now go ... enjoy yourself,” she chased him away again, “and don’t cry, I’ll call you back.”

He would run off, and she would begin listening to the songs and watching the dancing again, following him with her eyes wherever he went, but after a quarter of an hour she would call him again, and he would again come running to her.

“Here, sit beside me now. Tell me, how did you hear about me yesterday, that I had come here? Who told you first?”

And Mitya would start telling her everything, incoherently, disconnectedly, feverishly, yet he spoke strangely, often suddenly frowning and breaking off.

“Why are you frowning?” she asked.

“It’s nothing ... I left a man sick there. I’d give ten years of my life for him to recover, just to know he’d recover!”

“Well, if he’s sick, God help him! Were you really going to shoot yourself tomorrow? What a silly man! But why? I love such men, reckless men, like you,” she prattled to him with a somewhat heavy tongue. “So you’re ready to do anything for me? Eh? But were you really going to shoot yourself tomorrow, you little fool? No, wait now, tomorrow maybe I’ll have something to tell you ... not today, but tomorrow. And you’d like it to be today? No, today I don’t want to ... Go now, go, enjoy yourself.”

Once, however, she called him over with a worried and perplexed look.

“Why are you sad? I can see you’re sad ... Yes, I see it,” she added, peering sharply into his eyes. “Though you’re kissing peasants and shouting in there, still I can see something. No, enjoy yourself. I’m enjoying myself, you enjoy yourself, too ... I love someone here—guess who ... ? Ah, look: my boy fell asleep, he’s had too much, the dear.”

She was referring to Kalganov: he had indeed had too much, and fell asleep for a moment sitting on the sofa. He fell asleep not only from drink; for some reason he suddenly felt sad, or “bored,” as he put it. Towards the end he was also greatly disheartened by the girls’ songs, which, as the drinking party wore on, gradually became rather non-lenten and licentious. And their dancing, too: two girls dressed themselves up as bears, and Stepanida, a pert girl with a stick in her hand, acted as their keeper and began “showing” them. “Faster, Maria,” she cried, “or I’ll use the stick!” The bears finally rolled on the floor somehow quite indecently, amid the loud laughter of the closely packed audience of peasants and their women. “Well, let them, let them,” Grushenka kept saying sententiously, with a blissful look on her face, “how often do they have fun like this, so why shouldn’t people enjoy themselves?” Kalganov looked as if he had soiled himself with something. “It’s all swinishness, all this populism,” he observed, drawing aside, “it’s all spring revels, when they keep watch on the sun through the summer night.” He especially disliked one “new” song with a perky dance tune,^[262] where they sang of how a master rode around searching out the girls:

And all the girls the master sought: Would they love him, or would they not?

But the girls decided they would not love the master:

For he will beat me cruelly, And love like that is not for me.

Then along comes a gypsy:

And all the girls the gypsy sought: Would they love him, or would they not?

But they would not give their love to the gypsy either: For he’ll turn out to be a thief,

And that, I’m sure, will bring me grief.

Many more people come in the same way, searching out the girls, even a

soldier:

And all the girls the soldier sought: Would they love him, or would they not?

‘‘ But the soldier is rejected with contempt:

The soldier-boy will pack his kit And drag me with him through ...

There followed a most unprintable rhyme, sung quite openly, which caused a furore in the audience. The matter finally ended with a merchant:

And all the girls the merchant sought: Would they love him, or would they not?

And it turns out that they will love him very much, because, they say:

The merchant will have gold in store, I’ll be his queen forevermore.

Kalganov even got angry.

“That song is no older than yesterday,” he observed aloud, “and who is it writes such things for them? All they need is for a railroad man or a Jew to come seeking the girls: they’d win out over all of them.”And, almost offended, he declared then and there that he was bored, sat down on the sofa, and suddenly dozed off. His pretty face turned somewhat pale and fell back on the cushion of the sofa.

“Look how pretty he is,” Grushenka said, drawing Mitya over to him. “I was combing his hair earlier; it’s like flax, and so thick ...”

And, leaning over him tenderly, she kissed him on the forehead. Kalganov opened his eyes at once, looked at her, rose a little, and, with a most worried look, asked: “Where is Maximov?”

“That’s who he wants,” laughed Grushenka. “Do sit with me for a minute. Mitya, run and fetch his Maximov.”

Maximov, it turned out, now never left the girls, and only ran off from time to time to pour himself some liqueur, or some chocolate, of which he had had two cups. His little face had turned red, his nose was purple, his eyes were moist and sweet. He ran up to them and announced that he was about to dance the sabotière “to a certain little tune.”

“You see, I learned all these well-bred society dances when I was a young boy . . .”^[263]

“Well, go, go with him, Mitya; I’ll watch how he dances from here.”

“And me, too, I’ll go and watch, too,” exclaimed Kalganov, rejecting in the most naive way Grushenka’s offer to sit with him. And they all went to watch. Maximov indeed danced his dance, but produced no special admiration in anyone, except for Mitya. The whole dance consisted in a sort of hopping and twisting aside of the feet, soles up, and with every hop Maximov slapped the sole of his foot with his hand. Kalganov did not like it at all, but Mitya even kissed the dancer.

“Well, thank you, you’re probably tired out, what do you have your eye on: would you like some candy, eh? How about a cigar?”

“A cigarette, sir.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Some of that liqueur, sir ... Are there any chocolates, sir?”

“There, on the table, a whole pile of them, take whatever you want, you dear fellow!”

“No, sir, I’d like one with vanilla ... they’re for old folks, sir ... ]], hee!”

“No, brother, that’s one kind we haven’t got.”

“Listen!” the old man suddenly leaned close to Mitya’s ear. “This girl Marfushka—hee, hee—could I possibly make her acquaintance, would you be so kind ... ?”

“So that’s what you’re after! No, brother, it won’t do!”

“I don’t mean any harm, sir,” Maximov whispered dejectedly.

“All right, all right. They only come here to sing and dance, brother, but still ... ah, the devil! wait a while ... Eat for now, eat, drink, enjoy yourself. Do you need money?”

“Maybe later, sir,” Maximov smiled.

“All right, all right ...”

Mitya’s head was burning. He walked out to the hallway and on to the upper wooden veranda, which ran part way around the inner side of the building, overlooking the courtyard. The fresh air revived him. He stood alone in the darkness, in a corner, and suddenly clutched his head with both hands. His scattered thoughts suddenly came together, his sensations merged, and the result of it all was light. A terrible, awful light!”If I’m going to shoot myself, what better time than now?” swept through his mind. “Go and get the pistol, bring it out here, and end everything in this dark and dingy corner.” For almost a minute he stood undecided. Shame lay behind him that evening as he was flying there, the theft he had already committed, carried out, and the blood, that blood . . .! But it had been easier for him then, oh, much easier! Everything had been finished then: he had lost her, given her up, she had died for him, disappeared—oh, his sentence seemed lighter then, at least it appeared inevitable, necessary, for why should he remain in the world? And now? Was it the same now as then? Now at least one ghost, one bogey was out of the way: the “former one,” this indisputable and fatal man of hers, had vanished without a trace. The terrible ghost had suddenly turned into something so small, so comical; it was carried to the bedroom and locked up. It would never return. She was ashamed, and by her eyes he could now see clearly whom she loved. So now all he had to do was live, but ... but he could not live, he could not, oh, damnation!” “God, restore him who was struck down at the fence! Let this terrible cup pass from me!^[264] You worked miracles, O Lord, for sinners just like me! And what, what if the old man is alive? Oh, then I will remove the shame of the remaining disgrace, I will return the stolen money, I’ll give it back, I’ll dig it up somewhere ... There will be no trace of shame left, except forever in my heart! But no, no, oh, fainthearted, impossible dreams! Oh, damnation!”

Yet it was as if a ray of some bright hope shone on him in the darkness. He tore himself away and rushed inside—to her, to her again, his queen forever! Isn’t one hour, one minute of her love worth the rest of my life, even in the torments of disgrace?” This wild question seized his heart. “To her, to her alone, to see her, to hear her, and not to think of anything, to forget everything, if only for this one night, for one hour, for one moment!” Still on the veranda, just at the door, he ran into the innkeeper, Trifon Borisich. He looked gloomy and worried, and seemed to be coming to find him.

“What is it, Borisich? Are you looking for me?”

“No, sir, not you,” the innkeeper seemed suddenly taken aback. “Why should I be looking for you? And you ... where were you, sir?”

“Why are you so glum? Are you angry? Wait a bit, you’ll get to bed soon ... What time is it?”

“It must be three by now. Maybe even past three.”

“We’ll stop, we’ll stop.”

“Don’t mention it, it’s nothing, sir. As long as you like, sir...”

“What’s with him?” Mitya thought fleetingly, and ran into the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there. She was not in the blue room, either; only Kalganov was dozing on the sofa. Mitya peeked behind the curtain—she was there. She was sitting in the corner, on a chest, her head and arms leaning on the bed beside her, crying bitterly, trying very hard to hold back and stifle her sobs so that no one would hear her. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned to him, and when he ran over to her, she caught him firmly by the hand.

“Mitya, Mitya, I did love him!” she began in a whisper. “I loved him so, all these five years, all, all this while! Did I love him, or only my spite? No, him! Oh, him! It’s a lie that I loved only my spite and not him! Mitya, I was just seventeen then, he was so tender with me, so merry, he sang me songs ... Or did he only seem that way to me, to a foolish girl ... ? And now, Lord, it’s not the same man, not him at all. And it’s not his face, not his at all. I didn’t even recognize his face. I was driving here with Timofei and kept thinking, all the way I kept thinking: ‘How shall I meet him, what shall I say, how shall we look at each other ... ?’ My soul was frozen, and then it was as if he emptied a bucket of slops on me. He talks like a schoolmaster: it’s all so learned, so pompous, he greeted me so pompously I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get a word in. At first I thought he was embarrassed in front of the other one, the tall one. I sat looking at them and thought: why is it I don’t know how to speak with him now? You know, it’s his wife that did it to him, the one he married then, after hedroppedme ... She’s the one that changed him. What shame, Mitya! Oh, I’m ashamed, Mitya, ashamed, so ashamed for my whole life! Cursed, cursed be those five years, cursed!” And again she dissolved in tears, yet without letting go of Mitya’s hand, holding on to it firmly.

“Mitya, my dear, wait, don’t go, I want to tell you something,” she whispered, and suddenly looked up at him. “Listen, tell me whom I love? I love one man here. Who is it? You tell me.” A smile lighted on her face swollen with tears, her eyes shone in the semidarkness. “Tonight a falcon walked in, and my heart sank inside me. ‘You fool, this is the one you love,’ my heart whispered to me at once. You walked in and brightened everything. ‘What is he afraid of?’ I thought. And you really were afraid, quite afraid, you couldn’t speak. ‘He’s not afraid of them—how can he be afraid of anyone? It’s me he’s afraid of, just me.’ But Fenya did tell you, you little fool, how I shouted to Alyosha out the window that I loved Mitenka for one hour, and am now going off to love ... another. Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool to think I could love another after you! Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love me? Do you?”

She jumped up and grasped him by the shoulders with both hands. Mute with rapture, Mitya gazed into her eyes, at her face, her smile, and suddenly, embracing her firmly, began kissing her.

“Will you forgive me for tormenting you? I tormented all of you from spite. I drove that old man out of his mind on purpose, just from spite ... Do you remember how you once drank at my place and broke the glass? I remembered it, and today I, too, broke a glass as I drank to ‘my base heart.’ Mitya, my falcon, why aren’t you kissing me? You kissed me once and tore yourself away, to look, to listen ... Why listen to me! Kiss me, kiss me harder, like this! Let’s love, if we’re going to love! I’ll be your slave now, your lifelong slave! It’s sweet to be a slave...! Kiss me! Beat me, torment me, do something to me ... Oh, how I deserve to be tormented ... Stop! Wait, not now, I don’t want it to be like that ... ,” she suddenly pushed him away. “Go, Mitka, I’ll drink wine now, I want to get drunk, I’m going to get drunk and dance, I want to, I want to!”

She broke away from him and went out through the curtain. Mitya followed after her like a drunk man. “Come what may, whatever happens now, I’ll give the whole world for one minute,” flashed through his head. Grushenka indeed drank another glass of champagne at one gulp and suddenly became very tipsy. She sat in her former place, in the armchair, with a blissful smile. Her cheeks were glowing, her lips were burning, her bright eyes turned bleary, her passionate gaze beckoned. Even Kalganov felt a stab in his heart and went up to her.

“Did you feel how I kissed you while you were sleeping?” she babbled to him. “I’m drunk now, that’s what ... And you, aren’t you drunk? And why isn’t Mitya drinking? Why aren’t you drinking, Mitya? I drank and you’re not drinking ...”

“I’m drunk! Drunk anyway ... drunk with you, and now I’m going to get drunk with wine.” He drank another glass and—he found it strange himself—only this last glass made him drunk, suddenly drunk, though until then he had been sober, he remembered that. From then on everything began whirling around him as in delirium. He walked, laughed, talked with everyone, all oblivious of himself, as it were. Only one fixed and burning feeling made itself known in him every moment, “like a hot coal in my heart,” as he recalled afterwards. He would go over to her, sit down by her, look at her, listen to her ... And she became terribly talkative, kept calling everyone to her, would suddenly beckon to some girl from the chorus, the girl would come over, and she would sometimes kiss her and let her go, or sometimes make the sign of the cross over her. Another minute and she would have been in tears. She was also greatly amused by the “little old fellow,” as she called Maximov. He ran up to her every other minute to kiss her hands, “and each little finger,” and in the end danced one more dance to an old song, which he sang himself. He danced with particular ardor to the refrain: The piggy goes oink, oink, oink,

The calfy goes moo, moo, moo,

The ducky goes quack, quack, quack

And the goosey goes goo, goo, goo.

Then little henny walks in the door,

Cluck, cluck, she says, and cluck once more,

Ai, ai, she clucked once more!’^[265]

“Give him something, Mitya,” Grushenka said, “give him a present, he’s poor. Ah, the poor, the insulted...! You know, Mitya, I will go into a convent. No, really, someday I will. Alyosha said something to me today that I’ll never forget ... Yes ... But today let’s dance. Tomorrow the convent, but today we’ll dance. I want to be naughty, good people, what of it, God will forgive. If I were God I’d forgive all people: ‘My dear sinners, from now on I forgive you all.’ And I’ll go and ask forgiveness: ‘Forgive me, good people, I’m a foolish woman, that’s what.’ I’m a beast, that’s what. But I want to pray. I gave an onion. Wicked as I am, I want to pray! Mitya, let them dance, don’t interfere. Everyone in the world is good, every one of them. The world is a good place. We may be bad, but the world is a good place. We’re bad and good, both bad and good ... No, tell me, let me ask you, all of you come here and I’ll ask you; tell me this, all of you: why am I so good? I am good, I’m very good ... Tell me, then: why am I so good?” Thus Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk, and finally declared outright that she now wanted to dance herself. She got up from her armchair and staggered. “Mitya, don’t give me any more wine, not even if I ask. Wine doesn’t bring peace. Everything is spinning, the stove and everything. I want to dance. Let everybody watch how I dance ... how well and wonderfully I dance ...”

The intention was serious: she took a white cambric handkerchief from her pocket and held it by one corner in her right hand, to wave while she danced. Mitya began bustling, the girls’ chorus fell silent, preparing to burst into a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, learning that Grushenka herself was going to dance, squealed with delight and began hopping in front of her, singing:

Its legs are naught, its sides are taut, And its little tail’s all in a curl”^[266]

I..

But Grushenka chased him away with a wave of her handkerchief.

“Shoo! Mitya, why aren’t they coming? Let everyone come ... to watch. Call them, too ... the locked-up ones ... What did you lock them up for? Tell them I’m dancing, let them watch me, too . . .” Mitya swept drunkenly to the locked door and began knocking for the pans with his fist.

“Hey, you ... Podvysotskys! Come out, she’s going to dance, she’s calling you.”

“Lajdak!” one of the pans shouted in reply.

“And you are a podlajdak!^[267] A petty little Polish scoundrel, that’s what you are!”

“You should stop deriding Poland,” Kalganov, who had also drunk more than his fill, remarked sententiously.

“Quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn’t mean I’m calling all of Poland a scoundrel. One lajdak doesn’t make a Poland. Keep quiet, pretty boy, eat your candy.”

“Ah, what people! As if they weren’t even human beings. Why won’t they make peace?” said Grushenka, and she stepped out to dance. The chorus broke into “Ah, hallway, my hallway!”^[268] Grushenka threw back her head, half opened her lips, smiled, waved the handkerchief, and suddenly, swaying badly, stopped perplexed in the middle of the room.

“I feel weak ... ,” she said in a sort of exhausted voice. “Forgive me, I feel weak, I can’t ... I’m sorry...”

She bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing on all sides.

“I’m sorry ... Forgive me ...”

“She’s had a drop, the lady, the pretty lady’s had a drop,” voices were heard saying.

“She’s drunk,” Maximov explained, giggling, to the girls.

“Mitya, help me ... take me, Mitya,” Grushenka said weakly. Mitya rushed to her, picked her up, and ran behind the curtain with his precious booty. “Well, now I really shall leave,” thought Kalganov, and going out of the blue room, he closed both halves of the door behind him. But the feast in the main room went thundering on, and thundered all the more. Mitya laid Grushenka on the bed and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss.

“Don’t touch me,” she murmured to him in a pleading voice, “don’t touch me, I’m not yours yet ... I said I was yours, but don’t touch me ... spare me ... We mustn’t do it with them here, in the next room. He is here. It’s vile here ...”

“I obey! I wouldn’t dream ... I revere...!” Mitya muttered. “Yes, it’s vile here, oh, unspeakably.” And without letting her out of his embrace, he knelt on the floor by the bed.

“I know, though you’re a beast, you’re still noble,” Grushenka spoke with difficulty. “We should do it honestly ... from now on it will be honest ... and we should be honest, and we should be good, not beasts but good ... Take me away, take me far away, do you hear ... ? I don’t want to be here, I want to be far, far away ...”

“Oh, yes, yes, we must!” Mitya pressed her in his arms. “I’ll take you, we’ll fly away ... Oh, I’d give my whole life now for one year, if only I knew about that blood!”

“What blood?” Grushenka repeated in bewilderment.

“Nothing!” Mitya growled. “Grusha, you want it to be honest, but I am a thief. I stole money from Katka ... What shame, what shame!”

“From Katka? You mean the young lady? No, you didn’t steal anything. Give it back to her, take it from me ... Why are you shouting? All that’s mine is yours now. What do we care about money? We’ll just throw it away on a spree ... It’s bound to be so with the likes of us. And you and I had better go work on the land. I want to scrape the earth with my hands. We must work, do you hear? Alyosha said so. I won’t be a mistress to you, I’ll be faithful, I’ll be your slave, I’ll work for you. We’ll both go to the young lady, we’ll bow to her and ask her forgiveness, and go away. And if she doesn’t forgive us, we’ll go away anyway. And you can give her back her money, and love me ... And not love her. Do not love her any more. If you love her, I’ll strangle her ... I’ll put out both her eyes with a needle ...”

“I love you, you alone, I’ll love you in Siberia...”

“Why in Siberia? But why not, I’ll go to Siberia if you like, it’s all the same ... we’ll work ... there’s snow in Siberia ... I like driving over snow ... and there should be a little sleigh bell ... Do you hear a bell ringing ... ? Where is that little bell ringing? People are driving ... now it’s stopped.”

She closed her eyes helplessly, and suddenly seemed to fall asleep for a moment. A bell had indeed been ringing somewhere far away, and suddenly stopped ringing. Mitya lowered his head onto her breast. He did not notice how the bell stopped ringing, nor did he notice how the singing suddenly stopped as well, and instead of songs and drunken racket, a dead silence fell suddenly, as it were, over the whole house. Grushenka opened her eyes.

“What, was I asleep? Yes ... the bell ... I fell asleep and had a dream that I was driving over the snow ... a bell was ringing, and I was dozing. It seemed I was driving with someone very dear to me—with you. Far, far away ... I was embracing you and kissing you, pressing close to you, as if I were cold, and the snow was glistening ... You know how snow glistens at night, and there’s a new moon, and you feel as if you’re not on earth ... I woke up, and my dear was beside me—how good...”

“Beside you,” Mitya murmured, kissing her dress, her breast, her hands. And suddenly a strange fancy struck him: he fancied that she was looking straight ahead, not at him, not into his eyes, but over his head, intently and with a strange fixity. Surprise, almost fear, suddenly showed on her face.

“Mitya, who is that looking at us from there?” she whispered suddenly. Mitya turned and saw that someone had indeed parted the curtains and was apparently trying to make them out. More than one person, it seemed. He jumped up and quickly went towards the intruder.

“Here, come out here, please,” someone’s voice said to him, not loudly, but firmly and insistently.

Mitya stepped from behind the curtain and stood still. The whole room was full of people, not those who had been there before, but quite new ones. A momentary shiver ran down his spine, and he drew back. He recognized all these people instantly. The tall, plump old man in a coat and a service cap with a cockade was the district police commissioner, Mikhail Makarich. And the trim, “consumptive” fop, “always in such well-polished boots,” was the deputy prosecutor. “He has a chronometer worth four hundred roubles, he showed it to me.” And the short young man in spectacles ... Mitya simply could not remember his last name, but he knew him, too, he had seen him: he was an attorney, a district attorney “from the Jurisprudence,”^[269] recently arrived. And that one—the deputy commissioner, Mavriky Mavrikich—he knew him, he was an acquaintance. And the ones with badges, what were they doing here? And the other two, peasants ... And Kalganov and Trifon Borisich there in the doorway . . .

“Gentlemen ... What is it, gentlemen?” Mitya started to say, but suddenly, as if beside himself, as if not of himself at all, he exclaimed loudly, at the top of his lungs:

“I un-der-stand!”

The young man in spectacles suddenly came forward and, stepping up to Mitya, began in a dignified manner, though a little hurriedly, as it were:

“We must have ... in short, would you kindly come over here, to the sofa ... It is of the utmost necessity that we have a word with you.”

“The old man!” Mitya cried in a frenzy, “the old man and his blood...! I un-der-stand!”

And as if cut down, he fell more than sat on a chair standing nearby.

“You understand? He understands! Parricide and monster, your old father’s blood cries out against you!” the old district police commissioner suddenly roared, going up to Mitya. He was beside himself, turned purple, and was shaking all over.

“But this is impossible!” cried the short young man. “Mikhail Makarich, Mikhail Makarich! Not like that, not like that, sir...! I ask you to allow me to speak alone ... I would never have expected such an episode from you...”

“But this is delirium, gentlemen, delirium!” the police commissioner kept exclaiming. “Look at him: in the middle of the night, with a disreputable wench, covered with his father’s blood ... Delirium! Delirium!”

“I beg you as strongly as I can, dear Mikhail Makarich, to restrain your feelings for the moment,” the deputy prosecutor whispered rapidly to the old man, “otherwise I shall have to resort to...”

But the short attorney did not let him finish; he turned to Mitya and firmly, loudly, and gravely declared:

“Retired Lieutenant Karamazov, sir, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, which took place this night ...”

He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, seemed to add something, but Mitya, though he listened, no longer understood them. With wild eyes he stared around at them all . . .