Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (702 page)

Mitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and attracted by the hopes of another marvellous entertainment such as they had enjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and embracing everyone he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine for everyone who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for the champagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot punch. Mitya had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that three samovars should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and punch for everyone to help himself.

An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If the peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have pulled out his notes and given them away right and left. This was probably why the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about Mitya to protect him. He seemed to have given up all idea of going to bed that night; but he drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept a sharp look-out on Mitya’s interests after his own fashion. He intervened in the nick of time, civilly and obsequiously persuading Mitya not to give away “cigars and Rhine wine,” and, above all, money to the peasants as he had done before. He was very indignant, too, at the peasant girls drinking liqueur, and eating sweets.

“They’re a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” he said. “I’d give them a kick, every one of them, and they’d take it as an honour — that’s all they’re worth!”

Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him. “I was rude to him just now,” he repeated with a sinking, softened voice. Kalgonov did to drink, and at first did not care for the girls singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne he became extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room, laughing and praising the music and the songs, admiring everyone and everything. Maximov, blissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka, too, was beginning to get drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to Mitya:

“What a dear, charming boy he is!”

And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalgonov and Maximov. Oh, great were his hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to refrain from speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with caressing and passionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand and drew him vigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the low chair by the door.

“How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really want to?”

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

“Well, go and enjoy yourself..,” she sent him away once more. “Don’t cry, I’ll call you back again.”

He would run away and she listened to the singing and looked at the dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run back to her.

“Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?”

And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently, feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.

“What are you frowning at?” she asked.

“Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I’d give ten years of my life for him to get well, to know he was all right!”

“Well, never mind him, if he’s ill. So you meant to shoot yourself to-morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as you,” she lisped, with a rather halting tongue. “So you would go any length for me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No, wait a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to you.... I won’t say it to-day, but to-morrow. You’d like it to be to-day? No, I don’t want to to-day. Come, go along now, go and amuse yourself.”

Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.

“Why are you sad? I see you’re sad.... Yes, I see it,” she added, looking intently into his eyes. “Though you keep kissing the peasants and shouting, I see something. No, be merry. I’m merry; you be merry, too.... I love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep, poor dear, he’s drunk.”

She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, “bored.” He was intensely depressed by the girls’ songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually became coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad. Two girls dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to “show them.”

“Look alive, Marya, or you’ll get the stick!

The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid roars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.

“Well, let them! Let them!” said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic expression on her face. “When they do get a day to enjoy themselves; why shouldn’t folks be happy?”

Kalgonov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.

“It’s swinish, all this peasant foolery,” he murmured, moving away; “it’s the game they play when it’s light all night in summer.”

He particularly disliked one “new” song to a jaunty dance-tune. It described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see whether they would love him: The master came to try the girls: Would they love him, would they not?

But the girls could not love the master: He would beat me cruelly And such love won’t do for me.

Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries: The gypsy came to try the girls: Would they love him, would they not?

But they couldn’t love the gypsy either: He would be a thief, I fear, And would cause me many a tear.

And many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier: The soldier came to try the girls: Would they love him, would they not?

But the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song ends with a merchant: The merchant came to try the girls: Would they love him, would they not?

And it appears that he wins their love because: The merchant will make gold for me And his queen I’ll gladly be.

Kalgonov was positively indignant.

“That’s just a song of yesterday,” he said aloud. “Who writes such things for them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew come to try his luck with the girls; they’d have carried all before them.”

And, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the spot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep. His pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on the sofa cushion.

“Look how pretty he is,” said Grushenka, taking Mitya up to him. “I was combing his hair just now; his hair’s like flax, and so thick...”

And, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalgonov instantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most anxious air inquired where was Maximov?

“So that’s who it is you want.” Grushenka laughed. “Stay with me a minute. Mitya, run and find his Maximov.”

Maximov, it appeared, could not tear himself away from the girls, only running away from time to time to pour himself out a glass of liqueur. He had drunk two cups of chocolate. His face was red, and his nose was crimson; his eyes were moist, and mawkishly sweet.He ran up and announced that he was going to dance the “sabotiere.”

“They taught me all those well-bred, aristocratic dances when I was little...”

“Go, go with him, Mitya, and I’ll watch from here how he dances,” said Grushenka.

“No, no, I’m coming to look on, too,” exclaimed Kalganov, brushing aside in the most naive way Grushenka’s offer to sit with him. They all went to look on. Maximov danced his dance. But it roused no great admiration in anyone but Mitya. It consisted of nothing but skipping and hopping, kicking the feet, and at every skip Maximov slapped the upturned sole of his foot. Kalgonov did not like it at all, but Mitya kissed the dancer.

“Thanks. You’re tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Would you like some sweets? A cigar, perhaps?”

“A cigarette.”

“Don’t you want a drink?”

“I’ll just have a liqueur.... Have you any chocolates?”

“Yes, there’s a heap of them on the table there. Choose one, my dear soul!”

“I like one with vanilla... for old people. He he!

“No, brother, we’ve none of that special sort.”

“I say,” the old man bent down to whisper in Mitya’s ear. “That girl there, little Marya, he he! How would it be if you were to help me make friends with her?”

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

“I’d do no harm to anyone,” Maximov muttered disconsolately.

“Oh, all right, all right. They only come here to dance and sing, you know, brother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be merry, meanwhile. Don’t you want money?”

“Later on, perhaps,” smiled Maximov.

“All right, all right...”

Mitya’s head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which ran round the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the courtyard. The fresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner, and suddenly clutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts came together; his sensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden light into his mind. A fearful and terrible light! “If I’m to shoot myself, why not now?” passed through his mind. “Why not go for the pistols, bring them here, and here, in this dark dirty corner, make an end?” Almost a minute he undecided. A few hours earlier, when he had been dashing here, he was pursued by disgrace, by the theft he had committed, and that blood, that blood!... But yet it was easier for him then. Then everything was over: he had lost her, given her up. She was gone, for him — oh, then his death sentence had been easier for him; at least it had seemed necessary, inevitable, for what had he to stay on earth for?

But now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least was at an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had vanished, leaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into something so small, so comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and locked in. It would never return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he could see now whom she loved. Now he had everything to make life happy... but he could not go on living, he could not; oh, damnation! “O God! restore to life the man I knocked down at the fence! Let this fearful cup pass from me! Lord, thou hast wrought miracles for such sinners as me! But what, what if the old man’s alive? Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I would restore the stolen money. I’d give it back; I’d get it somehow.... No trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever! But no, no; oh, impossible cowardly dreams! Oh, damnation!”

Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and ran back to the room — to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. “To her, to her alone, to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if only for that night, for an hour, for a moment!” Just as he turned from the balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch. He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and fancied he had come to find him.

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

“No, sir,” The landlord seemed disconcerted. “Why should I be looking for you? Where have you been?”

“Why do you look so glum? You’re not angry, are you? Wait a bit, you shall soon get to bed.... What’s the time?”

“It’ll be three o’clock. Past three, it must be.”

“We’ll leave off soon. We’ll leave off.”

“Don’t mention it; it doesn’t matter. Keep it up as long as you like...”

“What’s the matter with him?” Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran back to the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there. She was not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalgonov asleep on the sofa. Mitya peeped behind the curtain — she was there. She was sitting in the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and arms on the bed close by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to stifle her sobs that she might not be heard. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned him to her, and when he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.

“Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five years, all that time! Did I love him or only my own anger? No, him, him! It’s a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him. Mitya, I was only seventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to me.... Or so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord, it’s not the same man. Even his face is not the same; he’s different altogether. I shouldn’t have known him. I drove here with Timofey, and all the way I was thinking how I should meet him, what I should say to him, how we should look at one another. My soul was faint, and all of a sudden it was just as though he had emptied a pail of dirty water over me. He talked to me like a schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he met me so solemnly that I was struck dumb. I couldn’t get a word in. At first I thought he was ashamed to talk before his great big Pole. I sat staring at him and wondering why I couldn’t say a word to him now. It must have been his wife that ruined him; you know he threw me up to get married. She must have changed him like that. Mitya, how shameful it is! Oh, Mitya, I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed for all my life. Curse it, curse it, curse those five years!”

And again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya’s hand and did not let it go.

“Mitya, darling, stay, don’t go away. I want to say one word to you,” she whispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. “Listen, tell me who it is I love? I love one man here. Who is that man? That’s what you must tell me.”