Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 37 (всего у книги 70 страниц)
“To life, then, and maybe to your queen as well.”
They emptied their glasses. Mitya, though rapturous and expansive, was somehow sad. As though some insuperable and heavy care stood over him.
“Misha ... was it your Misha who just came in? Misha, my dear Misha, come here, drink a glass for me, to the golden-haired Phoebus of tomorrow...”
“Not him!” Pyotr Ilyich cried irritably.
“No, please, let him. I want him to.”
“Ahh . . .!” – Misha drank his glass, bowed, and ran out.
“Hell remember it better,” Mitya observed. “A woman, I love a woman! What is woman? The queen of the earth! Sad, I feel sad, Pyotr Ilyich. Do you remember Hamlet? ‘I am sad, so sad, Horatio ... Ach, poor Yorick!’ [244]It is I, perhaps, who am Yorick. Yorick now, that is, and later—the skull.”
Pyotr Ilyich listened silently; Mitya also fell silent for a time.
“What kind of dog is that?” he suddenly asked the sales clerk distractedly, noticing a pretty little lapdog with black eyes in the corner.
“It’s the mistress’s, Varvara Alexeyevna’s, lapdog,” the sales clerk replied. “She brought him here today and forgot him. We must take him back to her.”
“I saw one like it ... in the regiment ... ,” Mitya said pensively, “only that one had a broken hind leg ... Incidentally, Pyotr Ilyich, I wanted to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“No, I’m just asking. From someone’s pocket, you see, someone else’s property? I don’t mean government money, everyone steals government money, and of course you, too ...”
“Go to the devil.” “I mean someone else’s property: right from their pocket or purse, eh?”
“I once stole twenty kopecks from my mother, from the table, when I was nine years old. Took it on the sly and clutched it in my fist.”
“And then what?”
“Then nothing. I kept it for three days, felt ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.”
“And then what?”
“Naturally I got a whipping. Why, you haven’t stolen anything, have you?”
“I have,” Mitya winked slyly.
“What have you stolen?” Pyotr Ilyich became curious.
“Twenty kopecks from my mother, when I was nine, I gave it back in three days.” Having said this, Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.
“Dmitri Fyodorovich, shouldn’t we hurry up?” Andrei suddenly called from the door of the shop.
“Ready? Let’s go!” Mitya got into a flutter. “Yet one last tale and then [245]. . . give Andrei a glass of vodka for the road now! And a shot of cognac along with it! This box” (the pistol case) “goes under my seat. Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich, think kindly of me.”
“But you’re coming back tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
“Will you be so kind as to settle the bill now, sir?” the sales clerk ran up.
“Ah, yes, the bill! Certainly!”
He again snatched the wad of money from his pocket, took three hundred-rouble bills from the top, tossed them on the counter, and walked hurriedly out of the shop. Everyone followed after him, bowing and sending him off with salutations and best wishes. Andrei grunted from the cognac he had just drunk and jumped up on the box. But as Mitya was about to take his seat, Fenya suddenly appeared quite unexpectedly before him. She came running up, out of breath, shouting, clasping her hands before him, and plopped down at his feet:
“Dear sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, don’t harm my mistress! And I told you everything...! And don’t harm him either, he’s her former one! He’ll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now, that’s what he came from Siberia for ... Dear sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, don’t harm anyone’s life!”
“Aha, so that’s it! I see what you’re up to now!” Perkhotin muttered to himself. “It’s all clear now, no mistake about it. Dmitri Fyodorovich, give me back the pistols at once, if you want to be a man,” he exclaimed aloud to Mitya, “do you hear me, Dmitri!”
“The pistols? Wait, my dear, I’ll toss them into a puddle on the way,” Mitya replied. “Fenya, get up, don’t lie there in front of me. Mitya won’t do any more harm, he won’t harm anyone anymore, the foolish man. And something else, Fenya,” he shouted to her, already seated in the cart, “I hurt you earlier, so forgive me and have mercy, I’m a scoundrel, forgive me ... And if you won’t forgive me, it doesn’t matter. Because now nothing matters! Get going, Andrei, fly off, quickly!” Andrei got going; the bells jingled.
“Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich! For you, for you is my last tear . . .!” “He’s not drunk, but what drivel he’s spouting!” Pyotr Ilyich thought, watching him go. He almost made up his mind to stay and keep an eye on the loading of the cart (also with a troika) with the rest of the goods and wine, suspecting that Mitya would be cheated and robbed, but suddenly, getting angry with himself, he spat and went to his tavern to play billiards.
“A nice fellow, but a fool ... ,” he muttered to himself as he went. “I’ve heard about some officer, Grushenka’s ‘former’ one. Well, if he’s come now ... Ah, those pistols! Eh, the devil, I’m not his nursemaid, am I? Go ahead! Anyway, nothing will happen. Loudmouths, that’s all they are. They get drunk and fight, fight and make peace. They don’t mean business. ‘Remove myself,’ ‘punish myself—what is all that? Nothing will happen! He’s shouted in the same style a thousand times, drunk, in the tavern. Now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit—these scoundrels love style. I’m not his nursemaid, am I? He must have had a fight, his whole mug was covered with blood. But who with? I’ll find out in the tavern. And that bloodstained handkerchief. . . Pah, the devil, he left it on my floor ... But who cares?”
He arrived at the tavern in the foulest of humors, and at once got a game going. The game cheered him up. He played another, and suddenly began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had money again, as much as three thousand, he had seen it himself, and that he had gone off to Mokroye again, on a spree with Grushenka. The listeners received his news with almost unexpected curiosity. And they all began to talk, not laughing, but somehow with strange seriousness. They even stopped playing.
“Three thousand? Where did he get three thousand?”
More questions were asked. The news about Madame Khokhlakov was received skeptically.
“Could he have robbed the old man, do you think?”
“Three thousand? Something’s not right.”
“He was boasting out loud that he’d kill his father, everyone here heard it. He talked precisely about three thousand...”
Pyotr Ilyich listened and suddenly started answering their questions drily and sparingly. He did not say a word about the blood on Mitya’s hands and face, though on his way there he had been planning to mention it. They began a third game, gradually the talk about Mitya died away; but, having finished the third game, Pyotr Ilyich did not wish to play any more, put down his cue, and, without taking supper, as had been his intention, left the tavern. As he walked out into the square, he stopped in perplexity, and even marveled at himself. He suddenly realized that he was just about to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, to find out if anything had happened. “On account of the nonsense it will all turn out to be, I shall wake up someone else’s household and cause a scandal. Pah, the devil, I’m not their nursemaid, am I?”
In the foulest humor, he went straight home, but suddenly remembered Fenya: “Eh, the devil, I should have asked her then,” he thought with annoyance, “then I’d know everything.” And the most impatient and stubborn desire to talk with her and find things out suddenly began burning in him, so much so that, halfway home, he turned sharply towards the widow Morozov’s house, where Grushenka lived. Coming up to the gates, he knocked, and the knock breaking the stillness of the night again seemed suddenly to sober him and anger him. Besides, no one answered, everyone in the house was asleep. “Here, too, I’ll cause a scandal!” he thought, now with a sort of suffering in his soul, but instead of finally going away, he suddenly began knocking again with all his might. The racket could be heard all up and down the street. “No, I’ll keep knocking until they answer, I will!” he muttered, getting more and more enraged each time he knocked, and at the same time banging still louder on the gate.
Chapter 6: Here I Come!
Dmitri Fyodorovich flew over the road. Mokroye was some fifteen miles away, but Andrei’s troika galloped so fast that they could make it in an hour and a quarter. It was as if the swift ride suddenly refreshed Mitya. The air was fresh and rather cool; big stars shone in the clear sky. This was the same night, perhaps the same hour, when Alyosha threw himself to the earth “vowing ecstatically to love it unto ages of ages.” But Mitya’s soul was troubled, very troubled, and though many things now tormented his soul, at this moment his whole being yearned irresistibly for her, for his queen, to whom he was flying in order to look at her for the last time. I will say just one thing: his heart did not argue even for a moment. I shall not be believed, perhaps, if I say that this jealous man did not feel the least jealousy towards this new man, this new rival who had sprung up from nowhere, this “officer.” If some other man had appeared, he would at once have become jealous, and would perhaps again have drenched his terrible hands with blood, but towards this man, “her first,” he felt no jealous hatred as he flew along in his troika, nor even any hostility– though it is true he had not yet seen him. “This is beyond dispute, this is his right and hers; this is her first love, which in five years she has not forgotten; so she has loved only him these five years, and I—what am I doing here? Why am I here, and what for? Step aside, Mitya, make way! And what am I now? It’s all finished now, even without the officer, even if he hadn’t come at all, it would still be finished...”
In some such words he might have set forth his feelings, if he had been able to reason. But at the moment he could no longer reason. All his present resolve had been born then, at Fenya’s, from her first words, without reasoning, in an instant, had been felt at once and accepted as a whole with all its consequences. And yet, despite the attained resolve, his soul was troubled, troubled to the point of suffering: even his resolve did not bring him peace. Too much stood behind him and tormented him. And at moments it seemed strange to him: he had already written his own sentence with pen and paper: “I punish myself and my life”; and the paper was there, ready, in his pocket; the pistol was already loaded, he had already decided how he would greet the first hot ray of “golden-haired Phoebus” in the morning, and yet it was impossible to square accounts with the past, with all that stood behind him and tormented him, he felt it to the point of suffering, and the thought of it pierced his soul with despair. There was a moment on the way when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrei, jump out of the cart, take his loaded pistol, and finish everything without waiting for dawn. But this moment flew by like a spark. And the troika went flying on, “devouring space,” and the closer he came to his goal, the more powerfully the thought of her again, of her alone, took his breath away and drove all the other terrible phantoms from his heart. Oh, he wanted so much to look at her, if only briefly, if only from afar!”She is with himnow, so I will only look at how she is with him, with her former sweetheart, that is all I want.” And never before had such love for this woman, so fatal for his destiny, risen in his breast, such a new feeling, never experienced before, a feeling unexpected even to himself, tender to the point of prayer, to the point of vanishing before her. “And I will vanish!” he said suddenly, in a fit of hysterical rapture.
They had been galloping for almost an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrei, though he was a talkative fellow, had not said a word yet either, as though he were wary of talking, and only urged on his “nags,” his lean but spirited bay troika. Then suddenly, in terrible agitation, Mitya exclaimed:
“Andrei! What if they’re asleep?” The thought suddenly came into his head; it had not occurred to him before.
“It’s very possible they’ve gone to bed, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”
Mitya frowned painfully: what, indeed, if he was flying there ... with such feelings ... and they were asleep ... and she, too, perhaps was sleeping right there ... ? An angry feeling boiled up in his heart.
“Drive, Andrei, whip them up, Andrei, faster!” he shouted in a frenzy.
“And maybe they haven’t gone to bed yet,” Andrei reasoned, after a pause. “Timofei was telling me there were a lot of them there ...”
“At the station?”
“Not at the station, at Plastunov’s, at the inn, it’s a way station, too.”
“I know; but what do you mean by a lot? How many? Who are they?” Mitya heaved himself forward, terribly alarmed by the unexpected news.
“Timofei said they’re all gentlemen: two from town, I don’t know who, but Timofei said two of them were locals, and those two others, the visitors, maybe there’s more, I didn’t ask him exactly. He said they sat down to play cards.”
“To play cards?”
“So maybe they’re not asleep if they’ve started playing cards. Not likely, since it’s only eleven o’clock, if that.”
“Drive, Andrei, drive!” Mitya cried again, nervously.
“Can I ask you something, sir?” Andrei began again after a pause. “Only I’m afraid it’ll make you angry, sir.”
“What is it?”
“Just now Fedosya Markovna fell at your feet, begging you not to harm her mistress, or anyone else ... so, sir, well, I’m driving you there ... Forgive me, sir, maybe I’ve said something foolish, because of my conscience.”
Mitya suddenly seized his shoulders from behind.
“Are you a coachman? A coachman?” he began frenziedly.
“A coachman ...”
“Then you know you have to make way. If you’re a coachman, what do you do, not make way for people? Just run them down? Look out, I’m coming! No, coachman, do not run them down! You must not run anyone down, you must not spoil people’s lives; and if you have spoiled someone’s life—punish yourself ... if you’ve ever spoiled, if you’ve ever harmed someone’s life—punish yourself and go away.”
All this burst from Mitya as if in complete hysterics. Andrei, though he was surprised at the gentleman, kept up the conversation.
“That’s true, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, you’re right there, one mustn’t run a man down, or torment him, or any other creature either, for every creature has been created, a horse, for example, because there’s people that just barrel on regardless, some of us coachmen, let’s say ... And there’s no holding him back, he just keeps pushing on, pushing right on.”
“To hell?” Mitya suddenly interrupted, and burst into his abrupt, unexpected laugh. “Andrei, you simple soul,” again he seized him firmly by the shoulders, “tell me: will Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov go to hell or not? What do you think?”
“I don’t know, my dear, it depends on you, because you are ... You see, sir, when the Son of God was crucified on the cross and died, he went straight from the cross to hell and freed all the sinners suffering there. And hell groaned because it thought it wouldn’t have any more sinners coming. And the Lord said to hell: ‘Do not groan, O hell, for all kinds of mighty ones, rulers, great judges, and rich men will come to you from all parts, and you will be as full as ever, unto ages of ages, till the time when I come again.’ That’s right, that’s what he said . . .” [246]
“A popular legend—splendid! Whip up the left one, Andrei!”
“That’s who hell is meant for, sir,” Andrei whipped up the left one, “and you, sir, are just like a little child to us ... that’s how we look at you ... And though you’re one to get angry, that you are, sir, the Lord will forgive you for your simple heart.”
“And you, will you forgive me, Andrei?”
“Why should I forgive you, you never did anything to me.”
“No, for everyone, for everyone, will you alone, right now, this moment, here on the road, forgive me for everyone? Speak, my simple soul!”
“Ah, sir! I’m even afraid to be driving you, you talk so strange somehow...”
But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying, whispering wildly to himself.
“Lord, take me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass without your judgment ... Do not judge me, for I have condemned myself; do not judge me, for I love you, Lord! I am loathsome, but I love you: if you send me to hell, even there I will love you, and from there I will cry that I love you unto ages of ages ... But let me also finish with loving ... finish here and now with loving, for five hours only, till your hot ray ... For I love the queen of my soul. I love her and cannot not love her. You see all of me. I will gallop up, I will fall before her: you are right to pass me by ... Farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself!”
“Mokroye!” cried Andrei, pointing ahead with his whip.
Through the pale darkness of night suddenly appeared a solid black mass of buildings spread over a vast space. The population of the village of Mokroye was two thousand souls, but at that hour they were all asleep, and only a few lights gleamed here and there in the darkness.
“Drive, drive, Andrei, I’m coming!” Mitya exclaimed as if in fever.
“They’re not asleep!” Andrei said again, pointing with his whip to Plastunov’s inn, which stood just at the entrance and in which all six street windows were brightly lit.
“Not asleep!” Mitya echoed happily. “Make it rattle, Andrei, gallop, ring the bells, drive up with a clatter. Let everybody know who’s come! I’m coming! Me! Here I come!” Mitya kept exclaiming frenziedly.
Andrei put the exhausted troika to a gallop, and indeed drove up to the high porch with a clatter and reined in his steaming, half-suffocated horses. Mitya jumped from the cart just as the innkeeper, who was in fact on his way to bed, peered out from the porch, curious who could just have driven up like that.
“Is it you, Trifon Borisich?”
The innkeeper bent forward, peered, ran headlong down the steps, and rushed up to his guest in servile rapture.
“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich! Do we meet again?”
This Trifon Borisich was a thickset and robust man of medium height, with a somewhat fleshy face, of stern and implacable appearance, especially with the Mokroye peasants, but endowed with the ability to change his expression to one of the utmost servility whenever he smelled a profit. He went about dressed in Russian style, in a peasant blouse and a long, full-skirted coat, had quite a bit of money, but also constantly dreamed of a higher role. He had more than half of the peasants in his clutches, everyone was in debt to him. He rented land from the landowners, and had also bought some himself, and the peasants worked this land for him in return for their debts, which they could never pay back. He was a widower and had four grown-up daughters; one was already a widow and lived with him with her two little ones, his granddaughters, working for him as a charwoman. Another of his peasant daughters was married to an official, who had risen from being a petty clerk, and one could see on the wall in one of the rooms of the inn, among the family photographs, also a miniature photograph of this little official in his uniform and official epaulettes. The two younger daughters, on feast days or when going visiting, would put on light blue or green dresses of fashionable cut, tight-fitting behind and with three feet of train, but the very next morning, as on any other day, they would get up at dawn, sweep the rooms with birch brooms in their hands, take the garbage out, and clear away the trash left by the lodgers. Despite the thousands he had already made, Trifon Borisich took great pleasure in fleecing a lodger on a spree, and, recalling that not quite a month ago he had profited from Dmitri Fyodorovich in one day, during his spree with Grushenka, to the tune of more than two hundred roubles, if not three, he now greeted him joyfully and eagerly, scenting his prey again just by the way Mitya drove up to the porch.
“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, will you be our guest again?”
“Wait, Trifon Borisich,” Mitya began, “first things first: where is she?”
“Agrafena Alexandrovna?” the innkeeper understood at once, peering alertly into Mitya’s face. “She’s here, too ... staying...”
“With whom? With whom?”
“Some visitors passing through, sir ... One is an official, must be a Pole from the way he talks, it was he who sent horses for her from here; the other one is a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, who can tell? They’re both in civilian clothes ...”
“What, are they on a spree? Are they rich?”
“Spree, nothing! They’re small fry, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”
“Small? And the others?”
“They’re from town, two gentlemen ... They were on their way back from Cherny and stopped here. One of them, the young one, must be a relative of Mr. Miusov’s, only I forget his name ... and the other one you know, too, I suppose: the landowner Maximov; he went on a pilgrimage to your monastery, he says, and now he’s going around with this young relative of Mr. Miusov’s ...”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Stop, listen, Trifon Borisich, now tell me the most important thing: what about her, how is she?”
“She just arrived, and now she’s sitting with them.”
“Happy? Laughing?”
“No, she doesn’t seem to be laughing much. She’s sitting there quite bored; she was combing the young man’s hair.”
“The Pole’s? The officer’s?”
“He’s no young man, and no officer either, not at all; no, sir, not his but this nephew of Miusov’s, the young man ... I just can’t remember his name.”
“Kalganov?”
“Exactly—Kalganov.”
“Good, I’ll see for myself. Are they playing cards?”
“They played for a while, then they stopped and had tea. The official ordered liqueurs.”
“Stop, Trifon Borisich, stop, my dear soul, I’ll see for myself. Now answer the most important thing: are there any gypsies around?” “There’s been no word of gypsies at all lately, Dmitri Fyodorovich, the authorities chased them away, but there are Jews hereabouts, in Rozhdestvenskaya, they play cymbals and fiddles, you can send for them even now. They’ll come.”
“Send for them, do send for them!” Mitya cried. “And you can wake up the girls like the other time, Maria especially, and Stepanida, Arina. Two hundred roubles for the chorus!”
“For that money I’ll wake up the whole village, though they’ve probably all dropped off by now. But are they worth such pampering, our peasants, or the girls, Dmitri Fyodorovich? To lay out so much for such coarseness and crudeness? It’s not for our peasant to smoke cigars—and you did give them out. They all stink, the bandits. And the girls have lice, every last one of them. Why spend so much? I’ll wake up my daughters for you for nothing, they just went to bed, I’ll kick them in the backside and make them sing for you. Last time you gave the peasants champagne to drink, agh!”
Trifon Borisich had no call to feel sorry for Mitya: he himself had hidden half a dozen bottles of champagne from him last time, and had picked up a hundred-rouble bill from under the table and clutched it in his fist. And in his fist it remained.
“I ran through more than one thousand that time, do you remember, Trifon Borisich?”
“You did, my dear, how could I forget it? Must have been three thousand you left here.”
“So, I’ve come with as much again, do you see?”
And he took out his wad of money and held it right under the innkeeper’s nose.
“Now listen and understand: in an hour the wine will arrive, appetizers, pâté, and candies—send everything upstairs at once. That box in Andrei’s cart should also go upstairs at once, open it and serve the champagne immediately ... And above all, the girls, the girls, and especially Maria...”
He turned back to the cart and took the case with the pistols from under the seat.
“Your pay, Andrei, take it! Fifteen roubles for the troika, and fifty for vodka ... for your willingness, your love ... Remember the honorable Karamazov!”
“I’m afraid, your honor ... ,” Andrei hesitated. “Give me five roubles for a tip, if you like, but I won’t take more. Trifon Borisich, be my witness. Forgive my foolish words ...”
“What are you afraid of?” Mitya looked him up and down. “To hell with you, then!” he cried, tossing him five roubles. “Now, Trifon Borisich, take me in quietly and let me first have a look at them all, so that they don’t notice me. Where are they, in the blue room?”
Trifon Borisich looked warily at Mitya, but at once obediently did as he was told: he carefully led him to the front hall, and himself went into the first large room, adjacent to the one in which the guests were sitting, and removed the candle. Then he quietly led Mitya in and put him in a corner, in the darkness, from where he could freely watch the company without being seen by them. But Mitya did not look for long, and could not simply look: he saw her, and his heart began to pound, his head swam. She was sitting at the end of the table, in an armchair, and next to her, on a sofa, sat Kalganov, a pretty and still very young man; she was holding him by the hand and seemed to be laughing, and he, without looking at her, was saying something loudly, apparently irritably, to Maximov, who sat across the table from Grushenka. Maximov was laughing very much at something. He sat on the sofa, and next to the sofa, on a chair by the wall, was some other stranger. The one on the sofa sat casually, smoking a pipe, and it flashed through Mitya that he was a sort of plumpish, broad-faced little man, who must be short and seemed to be angry about something. His companion, the other stranger, appeared to Mitya to be exceedingly tall; but he could make out nothing more. His breath failed him. Unable to stand still a moment longer, he put the case on a chest and, turning cold and with a sinking heart, walked straight into the blue room among them.
“Aie!” Grushenka shrieked in fear, noticing him first.
