Текст книги "The Insulted and the Injured"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

She smiled and gave him a long, tender look.

“And what delicacy he has. He saw how poor your lodging is and not a word ...”

“Of what?”

“Why . . . of your moving . . . or anything,” he added reddening.

“Nonsense, Alyosha, why ever should he?”

“That’s just what I say. He has such delicacy. And how he praised you! I told you so . . . I told you. Yes, he’s capable of understanding and feeling anything! But he talked of me as though I were a baby; they all treat me like that. But I suppose I really am.”

“You’re a child, but you see further than any of us. You’re good, Alyosha!”

“He said that my good heart would do me harm. How’s that? I don’t understand. But I say, Natasha, oughtn’t I to make haste and go to him? I’ll be with you as soon as it’s light tomorrow.”

“Yes, go, darling, go. You were right to think of it. And be sure to show yourself to him, do you hear? And come tomorrow as. early as you can. You won’t run away from me for five days now?” she added slyly, with a caressing glance.

We were all in a state of quiet, unruffled joy.

“Are you coming with me, Vanya?” cried Alyosha as he went out.

“No, he’ll stay a little. I’ve something more to say to you, Vanya. Mind, quite early tomorrow.”

“Quite early. Good-night, Mavra.”

Mavra was in great excitement. She had listened to all the prince said, she had overheard it all, but there was much she had not understood. She was Longing to ask questions, and make

surmises. But meantime she looked serious, and even proud. She, too, realized that much was changed.

We remained alone. Natasha took my hand, and for some time was silent, as though seeking for something to say.

“I’m tired,” she said at last in a weak voice. “ Listen, are you going to them tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Tell mamma, but don’t speak to him.”

“I never speak of you to him, anyway.”

“Of course; he’ll find out without that. But notice what he says. How he takes it. Good heavens, Vanya, will he really curse me for this marriage? No, impossible.”

“The prince will have to make everything right,” I put in hurriedly. “They must be reconciled and then everything will go smoothly.”

“My God! If that could only be! If that could only be!” she cried imploringly.

“Don’t worry yourself, Natasha, everything will come right. Everything points to it.”

She looked at me intently.

“Vanya, what do you think of the prince?”

“If he was sincere in what he said, then to my thinking he’s a really generous man.”

“Sincere in what he said? What does that mean? Surely he couldn’t have been speaking insincerely?”

“I agree with you,” I answered. “Then some idea did occur to her,” I thought. “That’s strange!”

“You kept looking at him . . . so intently.”

“Yes, I thought him rather strange.”

“I thought so too. He kept on talking so . . . my dear, I’m tired. You know, you’d better be going home. And come to me tomorrow as early as you can after seeing them. And one other thing: it wasn’t rude of me to say that I wanted to get fond of him, was it?”

“No, why rude?”

“And not . . . stupid? You see it was as much as to say that so far I didn’t like him.”

“On the contrary, it was very good, simple, spontaneous. You looked so beautiful at that moment! He’s stupid if he doesn’t understand that, with his aristocratic breeding!”

“You seem as though you were angry with him, Vanya. But how horrid I am, how suspicious, and vain! Don’t laugh at me; I hide nothing from you, you know. Ah, Vanya, my dear! If I am unhappy again, if more trouble comes, you’ll be here beside me, I know; perhaps you’ll be the only one! How can I repay you for everything! Don’t curse me ever, Vanya!”

Returning home, I undressed at once and went to bed. My room was as dark and damp as a cellar. Many strange thoughts and sensations were hovering in my mind, and it was long before I could get to sleep.

But how one man must have been laughing at us that moment as he fell asleep in his comfortable bed – that is, if he thought us worth laughing at! Probably he didn’t.

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter III

AT ten o’clock next morning as I was coming out of my lodgings hurrying off to the Ichmenyevs in Vassilyevsky Island, and meaning to go from them to Natasha, I suddenly came upon my yesterday’s visitor, Smith’s grandchild, at the door. She was coming to see me. I don’t know why, but I remember I was awfully pleased to see her. I had hardly had time to get a good look at her the day before, and by daylight she surprised me more than ever. And, indeed, it would have been difficult to have found a stranger or more original creature – in appearance, anyway. With her flashing black eyes, which looked somehow foreign, her thick, dishevelled, black hair, and her mute, fixed, enigmatic gaze, the little creature might well have attracted the notice of anyone who passed her in the street. The expression in her eyes was particularly striking. There was the light of intelligence in them, and at the same time an inquisitorial mistrust, even suspicion. Her dirty old frock looked even more hopelessly tattered by daylight. She seemed to me to be suffering from some wasting, chronic disease that was gradually and relentlessly destroying her. Her pale, thin face had an unnatural sallow, bilious tinge. But in spite of all the ugliness of poverty and illness, she was positively pretty. Her eyebrows were strongly marked, delicate and beautiful. Her broad, rather low brow was particularly beautiful, and her lips were exquisitely formed with a peculiar proud bold line, but they were pale and colourless.

“Ah, you again!” I cried. “Well, I thought you’d come! Come in!”

She came in, stepping through the doorway slowly just as before, and looking about her mistrustfully. She looked carefully round the room where her grandfather had lived, as though noting how far it had been changed by another inmate.

“Well, the grandchild is just such another as the grandfather,” I thought. “Is she mad, perhaps?”

She still remained mute; I waited.

“For the books!” she whispered at last, dropping her eves.

“Oh yes, your books; here they are, take them! I’ve been keeping them on purpose for you.”

She looked at me inquisitively, and her mouth worked strangely as though she would venture on a mistrustful smile. But the effort at a smile passed and was replaced by the same severe and enigmatic expression.

“Grandfather didn’t speak to you of me, did he?” she asked, scanning me ironically from head to foot.

“No, he didn’t speak of you, but . . . ”

“Then how did you know I should come? Who told you?” she asked, quickly interrupting me.

“I thought your grandfather couldn’t live alone, abandoned by everyone. He was so old and feeble; I thought someone must be looking after him . . . Here are your books, take them. Are they your lesson-books?”

“No.”

“What do you want with them, then?”

“Grandfather taught me when I used to see him.”

“Why did you leave off coming then?”

“Afterwards . . . I didn’t come. I was ill,” she added, as though defending herself.

“Tell me, have you a home, a father and mother?”

She frowned suddenly and looked at me, seeming almost scared. Then she looked down, turned in silence and walked softly out of the room without deigning to reply, just as she had done the day before. I looked after her in amazement. But she stood still in the doorway.

“What did he die of?” she asked me abruptly, turning slightly towards me with exactly the same movement and gesture as the day before, when she had asked after Azorka, stopping on her way out with her face to the door.

I went up to her and began rapidly telling her. She listened mutely and with curiosity, her head bowed and her back turned to me. I told her, too, how the old man had mentioned Sixth Street as he was dying.

“I imagine” I added, “that someone dear to him live there, and that’s why, I expected someone would come to inquire after him. He must have loved, you, since he thought of you at the last moment.”

“No,” she whispered, almost unconsciously it seemed; “he didn’t love me.”

She was strangely moved. As I told my story I bent down and looked into her face. I noticed that she was making great effort to suppress her emotion, as though too proud to let me see it. She turned paler and paler and bit her lower lip But what struck me especially was the strange thumping of her heart. It throbbed louder and louder, so that one could hear it two or three paces off, as in cases of aneurysm. I thought she would suddenly burst into tears as she had done the day before but she controlled herself.

“And where is the fence?”

“What fence?”

“That he died under.”

“I will show you . . . when we go out. But, tell me, what do they call you?”

“No need to.”

“No need to-what?”

“Never mind . . . it doesn’t matter. . . . They don’t call me anything,” she brought out jerkily, seeming annoyed, an she moved to go away. I stopped her.

“Wait a minute, you queer little girl! Why, I only want to help you. I felt so sorry for you when I saw you crying in the corner yesterday. I can’t bear to think of it. Besides, your grandfather died in my arms, and no doubt he was thinking of you when he mentioned Sixth Street, so it’s almost as if he left you in my care. I dream of him. . . . Here, I’ve kept those books for you, but you’re such a wild little thing, as though you were afraid of me. You must be very poor and an orphan perhaps living among strangers; isn’t that so?”

I did my utmost to conciliate her, and I don’t know how it was she attracted me so much. There was something beside pity in my feeling for her. Whether it was the mysteriousness of the whole position, the impression made on me by Smith, or my own fantastic mood – I can’t say; but something drew me irresistibly to her. My words seemed to touch her. She bent on me a strange look, not severe now, but soft and deliberate, then looked down again as though pondering.

“Elena,” she brought out unexpectedly, and in an extremely low voice.

“That’s your name, Elena?”

“Yes.”

“Well, will you come and see me?”

“I can’t. . . . I don’t know . . . . .I will,” she whispered, as though pondering and struggling with herself.

At that moment a clock somewhere struck.

She started, and with an indescribable look of heart-sick anguish she whispered:

“What time was that?”

“It must have been half-past ten.”

She gave a cry of alarm.

“Oh, dear!” she cried and was making away. But again I stopped her in the passage.

“I won’t let you go like that,” I said. “What are you afraid of? Are you late?”

“Yes, yes. I came out secretly. Let me go! She’ll beat me,” she cried out, evidently saying more than she meant to and breaking away from me.

“Listen, and don’t rush away; you’re going to Vassilyevsky Island, so am I, to Thirteenth Street. I’m late, too. I’m going to take a cab. Will you come with me? I’ll take you. You’ll get there quicker than on foot.

You can’t come back with me, you can’t!” she cried, even more panic-stricken. Her features positively worked with terror at the thought that I might come to the house where she was living.

“But I tell you I’m going to Thirteenth Street on business of my own. I’m not coming to your home! I won’t follow you. We shall get there sooner with a cab. Come along!”

We hurried downstairs. I hailed the first driver I met with a miserable droshky. It was evident Elena was in great haste, since she consented to get in with me. What was most baffling was that I positively did not dare to question her. She flung up her arms and almost leapt off the droshky when I asked her who it was at home she was so afraid of. “What is the mystery?” I thought.

It was very awkward for her to sit on the droshky. At every jolt to keep her balance she clutched at my coat with her left hand, a dirty, chapped little hand. In the other hand she held her books tightly. One could see that those books were very precious to her. As she recovered her balance she happened to show her leg, and to my immense astonishment I saw that she had no stockings, nothing but torn shoes. Though I had made up my mind not to question her, I could not restrain myself again.

“Have you really no stockings?” I asked. “How can you go about barefoot in such wet weather and when it’s so cold?”

“No,” she answered abruptly.

“Good heavens! But you must be living with someone! You ought to ask someone to lend you stockings when you go out.”

“I like it best. . . .”

“But you’ll get ill. You’ll die”

“Let me die.”

She evidently did not want to answer and was angry at my question.

“Look! this was where he died,” I said, pointing out the house where the old man had died.

She looked intently, and suddenly turning with an imploring look, said to me:

“For God’s sake don’t follow me. But I’ll come, I’ll come again! As soon as I’ve a chance I’ll come.”

“Very well. I’ve told you already I won’t follow you. But what are you afraid of? You must be unhappy in some way. It makes me sad to look at you.”

“I’m not afraid of anyone,” she replied, with a note of irritation in her voice.

“But you said just now ‘she’ll beat me’”

“Let her beat me!” she answered, and her eyes flashed. “Let her, let her!” she repeated bitterly, and her upper lip quivered and was lifted disdainfully.

At last we reached Vassilyevsky Island. She stopped the droshky at the beginning of Sixth Street, and jumped off, looking anxiously round.

“Drive away! I’ll come, I’ll come,” she repeated, terribly uneasy, imploring me not to follow her. “Get on, make haste, make haste!”

I drove on. But after driving a few yards further along the embankment I dismissed the cab, and going back to Sixth Street ran quickly across the road. I caught sight of her; she had not got far away yet, though she was walking quickly, and continually looking about her. She even stopped once or twice to look more carefully whether I were following her or not. But I hid in a handy gateway, and she did not see me. She walked on. I followed her, keeping on the other side of the street.

My curiosity was roused to the utmost. Though I did not intend to follow her in, I felt I must find which house she lived in, to be ready in case of emergency. I was overcome by a strange, oppressive sensation, not unlike the impression her grandfather had made on me when Azorka died in the restaurant.

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter IV

WE walked a long way, as far as Little Avenue. She was almost running. At last she went into a little shop. I stood still and waited. “Surely she doesn’t live at the shop,” I thought.

She did in fact come out a minute later, but without the books. Instead of the books she had an earthenware cup in her hand. Going on a little further she went in at the gateway of an unattractive-looking house. It was an old stone house of two storeys, painted a dirty-yellow colour, and not large. In one of the three windows on the ground floor there was a miniature red coffin – as a sign that a working coffin-maker lived there. The windows of the upper storey were extremely small and perfectly square with dingy-green broken panes, through which I caught a glimpse of pink cotton curtains. I crossed the road, went up to the house, and read on an iron plate over the gate, “Mme. Bubnov.”

But I had hardly deciphered the inscription when suddenly I heard a piercing female scream, followed by shouts of abuse in Mme. Bubnov’s yard. I peeped through the gate. On the wooden steps of the house stood a stout woman, dressed like a working woman with a kerchief on her head, and a green shawl. Her face was of a revolting purplish colour. Her little, puffy, bloodshot eves were gleaming with spite. It was evident that she was not sober, though it was so early in the day. She was shrieking at poor Elena, who stood petrified. before her with the cup in her hand. A dishevelled female, painted and rouged, peeped from the stairs behind the purple-faced woman.

A little later a door opened on the area steps leading to the basement, and a poorly dressed, middle-aged woman of modest and decent appearance came out on the steps, probably attracted by the shouting. The other inhabitants of the basement, a decrepit-looking old man and a girl, looked out from the half-opened door. A big, hulking peasant, probably the porter, stood still in the middle of the yard with the broom in his hand, looking lazily at the scene.

“Ah, you damned slut, you bloodsucker, you louse!” squealed the woman, letting out at one breath all her store of abuse, for the most part without commas or stops, but with a sort of gasp.

So this is how you repay, me for my care of you, you ragged wench. She was just sent for some cucumbers and off she slipped. My heart told me she’d slip off when I sent her out! My heart ached it did! Only last night I all but pulled her hair out for it, and here she runs off again today. And where have you to go, you trollop? Where have you to go to? Who do you go to, you damned mummy, you staring viper, you poisonous vermin, who, who is it? Speak, you rotten scum, or I’ll choke you where you stand!”

And the infuriated woman flew at the poor girl, but, seeing the woman looking at her from the basement steps, she suddenly checked herself and, addressing her, squealed more shrilly than ever, waving her arms as though calling her to witness the monstrous crimes of her luckless victim.

“Her mother’s hopped the twig! You all know, good neighbours, she’s left alone in the world. I saw she was on your hands, poor folks as you are, though you’d nothing to eat for yourselves. There, thought I, for St. Nikolay’s sake I’ll put myself out and take the orphan. So I took her. and would you believe it, here I’ve been keeping her these two months, and upon my word she’s been sucking my blood and wearing me to a shadow, the leech, the rattlesnake, the obstinate limb of Satan. You may beat her, or you may let her alone, she won’t speak. She might have a mouth full of water, the way she holds her tongue! She breaks my heart holding her tongue! What do you take yourself for, you saucy slut, you green monkey? If it hadn’t been for me you’d have died of hunger in the street. You ought to be ready to wash my feet and drink the water, you monster, you black French poker! You’d have been done for but for me!”

“But why are you upsetting yourself so, Anna Trifonovna? How’s she vexed you again?” respectfully inquired the woman who had been addressed by the raving fury.

“You needn’t ask, my good soul, that you needn’t. I don’t like people going against me! I am one for having things my own way, right or wrong – I’m that sort! She’s almost sent me to my grave this morning! I sent her to the shop to get some cucumbers, and it was three hours before she was back. I’d a feeling in my heart when I sent her – it ached it did, didn’t it ache! Where’s she been? Where did she go? What protectors has she found for herself? As though I’d not been a good friend to her. Why, I forgave her slut of a mother a debt of fourteen roubles, buried her at my own expense, and took the little devil to bring up, you know that, my dear soul, you know it yourself! Why, have I no rights over her, after that? She should feel it, but instead of feeling it she goes against me! I wished for her good. I wanted to put her in a muslin frock, the dirty slut! I bought her boots at the Gostiny Dvor, and decked her out like a peacock, a sight for a holiday! And would you believe it, good friends, two days later she’d torn up the dress, torn it into rags, and that’s how she goes about, that’s how she goes about! And what do you think, she tore it on purpose – I wouldn’t tell a lie, I saw it myself; as much as to say she would go in rags, she wouldn’t wear muslin! Well, I paid, her out! I did give her a drubbing! Then I called in the doctor afterwards and had to pay him, too. If I throttled you, you vermin, I should be quit with not touching milk for a week; that would be penance enough for strangling you. I made her scrub the floor for a punishment; and what do you think, she scrubbed and scrubbed, the jade! It vexed me to see her scrubbing. Well, thought I, she’ll run away from me now. And I’d scarcely thought it when I looked round and off she’d gone, yesterday. You heard how I beat her for it yesterday, good friends. I made my arms ache. I took away her shoes and stockings – she won’t go off barefoot, thought I; yet she gave me the slip today, too! Where have you been? Speak! Who have you been complaining of me to, you nettle-seed? Who have you been telling tales to? Speak, you gipsy, you foreign mask! Speak!

And in her frenzy, she rushed at the little girl, who stood petrified with horror, clutched her by the hair, and flung her on the ground. The cup with the cucumbers in it was dashed aside and broken. This only increased the drunken fury’s rage. She beat her victim about the face and the head; but Elena remained obstinately mute; not a sound, not a cry, not a complaint escaped her, even under the blows.

I rushed into the yard, almost beside myself with indignation, and went straight to the drunken woman.

“What are you about? How dare you treat a poor orphan like that?” I cried, seizing the fury by her arm.

“What’s this? Why, who are you?” she screamed, leaving Elena, and putting her arms akimbo. “What do you want in my house?”

“To tell you you’re a heartless woman.” I cried. “How dare you bully a poor child like that? She’s not yours. I’ve just heard that she’s only adopted, a poor orphan.”

“Lord Jesus!” cried the fury. “But who are you, poking your nose in! Did you come with her, eh? I’ll go straight to the police-captain! Andrey Timofeyitch himself treats me like a lady. Why, is it to see you she goes, eh? Who is it? He’s come to make an upset in another person’s house. Police!”

And she flew at me, brandishing her fists. But at that instant we heard a piercing, inhuman shriek. I looked. Elena, who had been standing as though unconscious, uttering a strange, unnatural scream, fell with a thud on the ground, writhing in awful convulsions. Her face was working. She was in an epileptic fit. The dishevelled female and the woman from the basement ran, lifted her up, and hurriedly carried her up the steps.

“She may choke for me, the damned slut the woman shrieked after her. “That’s the third fit this month! ... Get off, you pickpocket” and she rushed at me again. “Why are you standing there, porter? What do you get your wages for?”

“Get along, get along! Do you want a smack on the head?” the porter boomed out lazily, apparently only as a matter of form. “Two’s company and three’s none. Make your bow and take your hook!”

There was no help for it. I went out at the gate, feeling that my interference had been useless. But I was boiling with indignation. I stood on, the pavement facing the gateway, and looked through the gate. As soon as I had gone out the woman rushed up the steps, and the porter having done his duty vanished. Soon after, the woman who had helped to carry up Elena hurried down the steps on the way to the basement. Seeing me she stood still and looked at me with curiosity. Her quiet, good-natured face encouraged me. I went back into the yard and straight up to her.

“Allow me to ask,” I said, “who is that girl and what is that horrible woman doing with her? Please don’t imagine that I ask simply from curiosity. I’ve met the girl, and owing to special circumstances I am much interested in her.”

“If you’re interested in her you’d better take her home or find some place for her than let her come to ruin here,” said the woman with apparent reluctance, making a movement to get away from me.

“But if you don’t tell me, what can I do? I tell you I know nothing about her. I suppose that’s Mme. Bubnov herself, the woman of the house?”

“Yes”

“Then how did the girl fall into her hands? Did her mother die here?”

“Oh, I can’t say. It’s not our business.”

And again she would have moved away.

“But please do me a kindness. I tell you it’s very interesting to me. Perhaps I may be able to do something. Who is the girl? What was her mother? Do you know?”

“She looked like a foreigner of some sort; she lived down below with us; but she was ill; she died of consumption.”

“Then she must have been very poor if she shared a room in the basement?”

“Ough ! she was poor! My heart was always aching for her. We simply live from hand to mouth, yet she owed us six roubles in the five months she lived with us. We buried her, too. My husband made the coffin.”

“How was it then that woman said she’d buried her?”

“As though she’d buried her!”

“And what was her surname?”

“I can’t pronounce it, sir. It’s difficult. It must have been German.”

“Smith?”

“No, not quite that. Well, Anna Trifonovna took charge of the orphan, to bring her up, she says. But it’s not the right thing at all.”

“I suppose she took her for some object?”

“She’s a woman who’s up to no good,” answered the woman, seeming to ponder and hesitate whether to speak or not. “What is it to us? We’re outsiders.”

“You’d better keep a check on your tongue,” I heard a man’s voice say behind us.

It was a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, with a full-coat over the dressing-gown, who looked like an artisan, the woman’s husband.

“She’s no call to be talking to you, sir; it’s not our business,” he said, looking askance at me. “And you go in. Good-bye, sir; we’re coffin-makers. If you ever need anything in our way we shall be pleased . . . but apart from that we’ve nothing to say.

I went out, musing, and greatly excited. I could do nothing, but I felt that it was hard for me to leave it like this. Some words dropped by the coffin-maker’s wife revolted me particularly. There was something wrong here; I felt that.

I was walking away, looking down and meditating, when suddenly a sharp voice called me by my surname. I looked up. Before me stood a man who had been drinking and was almost staggering, dressed fairly neatly, though he had a shabby overcoat and a greasy cap. His face was very familiar. I looked more closely at it. He winked at me and smiled ironically.

“Don’t you know me?”

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.