Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 70 страниц)
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 panwith 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, panieWine 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 pangazed motionlessly at him, at his wad of money, gazed at Grushenka, and was clearly bewildered.
“If my królowapermits ... ,” 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 pansaid, 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 panwhom 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 panon 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 pansitting by the wall, who was younger than the panon 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 pansitting on the sofa. “About six foot six standing up,” flashed through Mitya’s head. It also flashed in him that this tall panwas most likely the friend and henchman of the panon the sofa, “his bodyguard,” so to speak, and that the little panwith 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 panhas never seen a Polish pani,and says what is not possible,” the panwith the pipe observed to Maximov.
The panwith 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 panimyself, 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 panfather and the panimother 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 panis a lajdak!” [249]the tall panon 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 panswas rather grimy.
“So it’s lajdaknow! Why is he calling names?” Grushenka suddenly became angry.
“Pani Agrippina, [250]what the pansaw in the Polish land were peasant women, not noble ladies,” the panwith the pipe observed to Grushenka.
“You can bet on that!” the tall panon 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 panin 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 panjust 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 panimother, 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 panwith the pipe addressed the tall panon 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 panreplied 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 panrose 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 panon 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 panon 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 panon 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 pansshouted 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 panon 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 panon 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 panon 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 pansaid 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 panshad already sat down and opened the deck. They looked much more amiable, almost friendly. The panon 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 panwas unlucky, the panmay be luckier this time,” the panon 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 pancaptain 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 panon 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 panssuddenly rose to their feet, looking terribly offended.
“Zartujesz(Are you joking), panie?”the little pansaid, 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 panwas 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 panowieinto 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 panand 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 panprattled.
“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 panacquired 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?”
