The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘Why so many, what’s it all for? Just a moment!’ yelled Pyotr Ilyich. ‘What’s that box? What’s it got in it? You don’t mean to tell me there’s four hundred roubles’ worth of stuff in there, do you?’

  The bustling assistants hastened to explain to him, with servile deference, that this first box contained only half a dozen bottles of champagne, together with ‘all kinds of emergency items’, some zakuski, some sweets, fruit drops and the like, but that the main provisions would be packed and dispatched definitely within the hour, just as on the previous occasion, in a special carriage also drawn by a troika, and that it would get there on time, ‘an hour at the most after Dmitry Fyodorovich himself arrives’.

  ‘Not more than an hour, make sure it’s not more than an hour, and include plenty of fruit drops and caramels—the girls love them,’ Mitya insisted enthusiastically.

  ‘Caramels—fair enough. But what do you need four cases of champagne for? One’ll be enough,’ said Pyotr Ilyich, hardly able to contain his irritation. He began to haggle, demanded to see the bill, and generally made a nuisance of himself. All he managed to save, however, was a hundred roubles. In the end it was agreed that the total cost of the goods to be delivered should not exceed three hundred roubles.

  ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ cried Pyotr Ilyich, as though he had suddenly had enough. ‘What’s it to do with me? By all means chuck your money about if you found it so easy to come by!’

  ‘Come here, my economist, come along, don’t be angry,’ Mitya dragged him into the room at the rear of the shop. ‘They’ll bring us a bottle here, and we’ll have a few. Eh, Pyotr Ilyich, let’s go together, because you’re a nice chap, I like your type.’

  Mitya settled down in a small wicker chair by a tiny table covered with the grimiest of tablecloths. Pyotr Ilyich took a seat opposite; the champagne arrived instantly. ‘Maybe the gentlemen would like some oysters, prime oysters, only just come in.’

  ‘To hell with oysters,’ Pyotr Ilyich snapped back angrily, ‘I don’t eat them, and we don’t need anything.’

  ‘We don’t have time for oysters,’ observed Mitya, ‘and we’re not hungry either. You know, my friend,’ he said suddenly with feeling, ‘I’ve never gone in for this sort of nonsense.’

  ‘Who has! Three cases of champagne for peasants, I ask you! That’s enough to send anyone up the wall.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about a higher order of sense, don’t misunderstand me. It’s that higher order of sense that I lack, that higher level of order… But… all that’s finished now, no regrets. Too late, and to hell with everything! All my life’s been an absolute mess, it’s time I did something about it. Do you find it funny, eh?’

  ‘Anything but. You’re mad.’

  ‘Glory to the Highest in the world,

  Glory to the Highest in me!

  ‘That little verse was once a cry from the heart, a lament rather than a verse… made it up myself… but not when I was dragging the Staff Captain by the beard, mind…’

  ‘Why suddenly bring him up?’

  ‘Why bring him up? Nonsense! Everything comes to an end, everything falls into place, you come to the bottom line—and that’s it.’

  ‘You know, it’s your pistols I can’t get out of my mind.’

  ‘Pistols don’t matter either! Drink up and stop imagining things. I love life, I love it too much, I love it so much it’s disgusting. Enough! To life, my dear fellow, let’s drink to life, I propose a toast to life! Why am I satisfied with myself? I’m vile, but I’m satisfied with myself. And yet it pains me that though I’m vile, I’m satisfied with myself. I bless all creation, I’m ready this minute to bless God and all His creation, but… first I have to destroy a nasty insect and stop it crawling about and making other people’s life a misery… Let’s drink to life, my good friend! What can be more precious than life? Nothing, nothing at all! To life, and to a queen among queens!’

  ‘Yes, let’s drink to life, and if you like to your queen too.’

  They both drained their glasses. Mitya was excited and restless, but sad with it. It was as if an enormous, threatening shadow were looming over him.

  ‘Misha… is that your Misha who’s just come in? Misha, be a good boy, come here, take this glass of champagne, drink to the golden-haired Phoebus of tomorrow…’

  ‘You shouldn’t give him champagne!’ Pyotr Ilyich exclaimed irritably.

  ‘Go on, let him, just for my sake.’

  ‘All right!’

  Misha drained the glass, bowed, and ran off.

  ‘He won’t forget that in a hurry,’ Mitya observed. ‘I love a woman, a certain woman! What is a woman? She’s the queen of this earth! I’m miserable, absolutely miserable, Pyotr Ilyich. Do you remember Hamlet: “Thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart”*… “Alas! poor Yorick.”* Perhaps that’s exactly who I am—Yorick. Yorick now, and then the skull.’

  Pyotr Ilyich listened and did not say a word. Mitya too fell silent for a moment.

  ‘What’s that little dog you’ve got there?’ he suddenly asked the shop assistant vaguely, having spotted a pretty little poodle with black eyes in the corner.

  ‘That little poodle belongs to Varvara Alekseyevna, our proprietress,’ replied the assistant. ‘She brought it in herself and left it here. I must take it back to her.’

  ‘I saw one just like it… in the regiment…’, Mitya said thoughtfully. ‘Only that one had a broken hind paw… Pyotr Ilyich, I meant to ask you something, by the way: have you ever stolen anything?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said. Have you ever reached into someone’s pocket and taken something that didn’t belong to you? And I’m not talking about government money, everyone pilfers that, including you, of course…’

  ‘Go to hell!’

  ‘I mean something that didn’t belong to you: straight from someone’s pocket, from someone’s wallet, eh?’

  ‘Once, when I was nine, I stole a twenty-kopeck coin of my mother’s that was lying on the table. I took it while no one was looking, and clenched it in my fist.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Well, nothing. I kept it for three days, felt ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Naturally, they gave me a birching. But why do you ask, have you ever stolen anything yourself, or what?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Mitya said with a sly wink.

  ‘What did you steal?’ Pyotr Ilyich asked, full of curiosity.

  ‘A twenty-kopeck coin of my mother’s when I was nine… gave it back three days later.’ With this, Mitya suddenly rose to his feet.

  ‘Dmitry Fyodorovich, don’t you think we should hurry?’ Andrei, who was standing in the doorway of the shop, called out suddenly.

  ‘You’re ready, are you? Let’s go!’ said Mitya with a start. ‘One last tale I’ll tell* and… Give Andrei one for the road, quickly! And a glass of brandy as a chaser! This pistol-case goes under the seat. Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyich, don’t think ill of me.’

  ‘But aren’t you coming back tomorrow?’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to settle your bill now, would you?’ asked the assistant, rushing up to him.

  ‘Ah, yes, the bill! But of course!’

  He pulled out the wad of banknotes again, peeled off three hundred-rouble notes, threw them down on the counter, and hurried out of the shop. Everyone followed him, bowing and wishing him well. Andrei cleared his throat after the brandy which he had just downed, and leapt on to the driver’s box. But, just as Mitya was about to take his own seat, Fenya suddenly and quite unexpectedly appeared in front of him. She arrived completely out of breath, folded her hands, and with a cry collapsed at his feet.

  ‘My kindest, sweetest Dmitry Fyodorovich, spare my good lady! I told you everything!… And don’t harm him either, he’s from way back, he’s hers! Now he’ll marry Agrafena Aleksandrovna, that’s why he’s come
back from Siberia… Dear Dmitry Fyodorovich, don’t bring ruin and damnation upon others!’

  ‘Well, well, well, so that’s what it’s all about! I shudder to think what you’re going to get up to there!’ Pyotr Ilyich muttered to himself. ‘I can see it all now, it’s as plain as a pikestaff. Dmitry Fyodorovich,’ he shouted out loudly to Mitya, ‘give the pistols back to me at once, if you want to call yourself a reasonable man. Do you hear me, Dmitry?’

  ‘The pistols? Don’t worry, my good fellow, I’ll throw them in a ditch on the way,’ Mitya replied. ‘Fenya, get up, you shouldn’t prostrate yourself before me. Mitya’s not going to harm anybody, this foolish man is never going to harm anybody ever again. Look here, Fenya,’ he called out to her, after he had already taken his seat, ‘I hurt you back there, forgive me and take pity, forgive a scoundrel… But it won’t matter if you don’t, because nothing matters any more now! Come on, Andrei, let’s get going!’

  Andrei lashed his horses; the harness bells began to tinkle.

  ‘Goodbye Pyotr Ilyich! Chin up!…’

  ‘He’s not even drunk, but he doesn’t half talk a lot of rubbish!’ thought Pyotr Ilyich to himself as Mitya pulled away. Fearing that Mitya would be cheated and given short measure, he intended to stay and keep an eye on the loading of the rest of the provisions and wine into the second carriage (also drawn by a troika), but suddenly losing his temper, he swore and went off to the tavern to play billiards.

  ‘A fool, but a splendid fellow all the same!’ he mumbled to himself on the way. ‘Now I remember it all, that officer of Grushenka’s, I’ve heard about him. Well, if he’s arrived, then… My God! Those pistols! Ah, what the hell, am I his nursemaid or what? Let them get on with it! Nothing will happen. Windbags, that’s all they are. They’ll get sloshed, knock the daylights out of each other, and then make up. They don’t mean business! What was all that about “make oneself scarce”, “punish himself”—it’ll never come to that! He’s shouted things like that dozens of times at the tavern when he’s been drunk. He’s not drunk now. “My soul is drunk”—these bastards love to wax poetic. What am I, his nursemaid or something? Of course he’s been in a fight, all that blood on his damned face. I wonder who with, though? I’ll find out at the tavern. Handkerchief soaked in blood, too… Dammit, it must still be on the floor at my place!… What the hell!’

  He arrived at the tavern in a very foul temper, and began to play immediately. The game cheered him up. He played another, and mentioned casually to one of the players that Dmitry Fyodorovich appeared to be in the money again, ‘saw it myself, he had as much as three thousand on him!’ and that he had gone chasing after Grushenka to Mokroye to paint the town red again. This piece of news was received with a great deal of eager curiosity on the part of the listeners. They stopped laughing, and began to talk about it in all seriousness. Even the game came to a halt.

  ‘Three thousand? Where on earth could he have got three thousand from?’

  They began to ply him with more questions. The reference to Khokhlakova was received with scepticism.

  ‘Very likely he’s gone and robbed his old man.’

  ‘Three thousand, though! There’s something that doesn’t quite add up here.’

  ‘He did boast out loud that he’d kill his father, everybody here heard him say so. And he specified exactly three thousand…’

  Pyotr Ilyich listened, and suddenly became less forthcoming. He did not say a word about Mitya’s bloodstained face and hands, although, on his way there, he had fully intended to mention it. They started the third game, and little by little the conversation turned to other topics. But after finishing the third game, Pyotr Ilyich did not want to carry on playing; he laid down his cue and left the tavern without having eaten, though he had originally intended to have supper there. When he reached the town square he stopped in bewilderment and wondered what he was doing. He realized that he had wanted to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house to find out if anything had happened. ‘But if it all turns out to be a false alarm, I’ll only wake up the whole house and create a disturbance. Oh hell, I’m not their keeper, am I?’

  He headed for home in one of his worst moods ever, and suddenly he remembered Fenya: ‘Dammit, I wish I had questioned her,’ he thought with regret, ‘At least I’d have some idea what was going on.’ All of a sudden he felt such an impatient and irresistible urge to talk to her and discover what had happened that, half-way home, he suddenly changed direction and headed for Morozova’s house, where Grushenka lived. On reaching the gate he knocked, and the sound echoing through the stillness of the night seemed to sober him up and annoy him. No one answered, everyone was asleep. ‘I’ll create a disturbance here too!’ he thought, with a sinking heart, but instead of going away altogether, he began to beat on the gate again with all his might. The noise filled the whole street. ‘I’ll make them answer me, I’ll keep it up till they do!’ he muttered, growing progressively angrier with himself and more determined, which only served to intensify the blows that he rained on the gate.

  6

  HERE I COME!

  MEANWHILE, Dmitry Fyodorovich was speeding along the road. Mokroye was just over twenty versts away, but Andrei’s troika was going so fast that they would reach their destination in an hour and a quarter. Travelling at such a pace seemed to clear Mitya’s head. The air was fresh and cool, the clear night sky was studded with stars. It was the same night, perhaps even the same hour, that Alyosha, prostrating himself on the ground, was vowing ecstatically to love the earth till the end of time. But Mitya’s heart was heavy, very heavy, racked by so much pain, and yet his whole being was straining towards her at this moment, towards his queen, as he now sped to see her for the last time. I must be quite clear about one thing: there was not the least shadow of doubt in his heart. I may not be believed when I say that the normally jealous Mitya did not feel the least bit jealous towards this new individual, this ‘officer’, this new rival of his, who had simply appeared out of the blue. Had anyone else appeared on the scene like that, his jealousy would have been aroused immediately, and perhaps he would have stained his awful hands with blood once again, but for this man, ‘her first one’, he felt, racing along in his troika, neither jealous hatred nor even hostility—though, it has to be admitted, he had not seen him yet. ‘There’s no getting away from it, she has her rights and he has his; he is her first love, whom she still remembers even after five years, and that means she has loved only him all those five years, so why am I interfering? What am I doing here, what’s it got to do with me? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! Anyway, what am I now? Officer or no officer, it’s all over now; even if he hadn’t turned up at all, everything would still have come to an end…’

  Thus he might have been able, more or less, to express his feelings, had he been capable of reasoning. But he was no longer capable of rational thought. His present resolve went back to when he was still at Fenya’s; the decision had been taken in a flash, without reasoning, immediately after her first words—he had taken it and had accepted all its consequences. And yet, despite all his resolve, his heart was heavy, unbearably heavy, for not even his resolve could give him peace of mind. There was too much oppressing him and tormenting him. At times he was afraid too; after all, he had already written his own death sentence on a piece of paper: I’m punishing myself for… my whole life. And that piece of paper was there, in his pocket, ready and waiting; his pistol too was loaded, the decision had already been taken, he would greet the early warming rays of ‘golden-haired Phoebus’ and… and yet he was tortured by the knowledge that it was impossible to atone for all that had gone before, for all that he was leaving behind and which tormented him, and at the thought of this his heart was pierced by despair. There was a moment during the journey when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrei, jump down from the carriage, take his loaded pistol and put an end to everything, without even waiting for the dawn. Yet the moment flashed by like a spark. The troika sped on and on, ‘eating up the versts’, and a
s they approached their destination the mere thought of her made him pant with excitement, driving all the other, terrifying visions from his mind. Oh, how he wanted to gaze on her, even for an instant, even if only from afar! ‘She’s with him now, so I’ll just take a look, to see her with him, her beloved of long ago, that’s all I need.’ Never before had he felt such love for that woman who was so inextricably bound up with his own destiny, never had he felt so many new emotions, emotions that he had never experienced before, emotions that he had not even expected, such tender emotions verging on adoration, on self-extinction. ‘And I shall vanish!’ he said suddenly, in a fit of hysterical ecstasy.

  They had been driving at a gallop for about an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrei, though he was a garrulous fellow, had not said a word either, as if afraid to speak; he merely urged on his steeds, three spindle-shanked but lively bays. Suddenly Mitya exclaimed in terrible anxiety:

  ‘Andrei! What if they’re asleep?’

  This eventuality, which he had not even considered until then, suddenly struck him with devastating force.

  ‘Very likely they’ve gone to bed, Dmitry Fyodorovich.’

  Mitya winced; of course, he’d go dashing in… in such an emotional state… and they’d be asleep… she’d be asleep, too, perhaps… Rage welled up within him.

  ‘Go faster, Andrei, go on, Andrei, faster!’ he yelled, beside himself.

  ‘And then again, perhaps they haven’t gone to sleep yet,’ argued Andrei after a pause. ‘Timofei was saying back there that there’s lots of them there…’

  ‘At the coaching station?’

  ‘No, at the Plastunovs’, the coaching-inn where the gentry stop.’

  ‘I know the place. So, what do you mean, “lots”? How many? Who?’ Mitya erupted, thoroughly alarmed at this unexpected news.

  ‘Timofei said they were all gentlemen: two from the town, but I wouldn’t know who, all Timofei said was that there were two local gentlemen and two others who looked like strangers, perhaps there was someone else too, I didn’t really ask. They all sat down to play cards, he said.’