The Brothers Karamazov (81 page)

“Mitya, dear, don’t go away yet—there’s something I’d like to tell you,” she whispered, and for the first time lifted her face and looked straight at him. “Listen, you tell me who I love now. There’s someone here I love, and I want you to tell me who it is. So who is it, Mitya? You tell me!” A smile lighted up her face that was swollen with crying, and her eyes glowed in the dim light.

“So, as I sat there with them, suddenly an eagle appeared. My heart sank when he came in. ‘Idiot, this is the man you love,’ it whispered to me, my heart. Everything turned bright the moment you came in. ‘But what is he afraid of?’ I thought to myself. For you were scared, you were so scared, you were so scared that you couldn’t even talk. ‘He surely can’t be afraid of them?’ I said to myself. ‘He’s never been afraid of anybody. Therefore he can only be afraid of me,’ I decided. So Fenya must have repeated to you the silly message I asked Alyosha to give you—that I’d loved you for one hour but that I was leaving now and would always love someone else. Didn’t Fenya repeat it to you, my crazy fool? Ah, Mitya, Mitya, how could I ever have imagined that I could love that other one after having loved you! Can you forgive me—can you? Do you still love me, Mitya? Do you love me?”

She stood up quickly, seizing him by the shoulders. He was speechless, just staring in adoration at her smiling eyes, her face . . . Suddenly he threw his arms around her and kissed her madly, desperately.

“And will you forgive me, too, for having deliberately made you suffer? I made you all suffer, just out of sheer spite. It was just out of sheer viciousness that I drove your old man insane . . . Remember, once in my house, you smashed the glass you were drinking out of? Well, that was what I was thinking of when I smashed my glass today as I drank to my vile heart . . . Mitya, my eagle, why don’t you kiss me? What is it? You started to kiss me, then stopped in the middle, and now you’re just staring at me and listening to me! What is there to listen to? Come, kiss me, kiss me harder . . . like this . . . If it’s to be love, let it be love then! I’ll be your slave now, your slave as long as I live, and I’ll love being your slave . . . Come, Mitya, keep kissing me! You can beat me, hurt me, do what you want to me . . . Yes, I suppose I have really deserved to be made to suffer . . . Wait, stop! I don’t want it like this . . .” She suddenly pushed him off. “Go away—leave me, Dmitry Karamazov. I’ll go and get myself some wine now. I want to get drunk, and then I’ll dance, dance drunk. That’s what I want, and that’s what I’ll do!”

She broke away from him, pulled aside the curtain dividing the blue room, and dashed out. Mitya followed her as though moving in a drunken haze. “I don’t care, I don’t care,” the thought throbbed inside him. “I don’t care what happens. I’d give the world for a minute like this one . . .”

Grushenka did as she said: she downed a large glass of champagne and it went straight to her head. She sat down in the armchair where she had sat earlier. She was smiling happily. Her cheeks were aflame, her lips were hot, her eyes, filled with passion, flashed under her heavy lids. There was an irresistible fascination in her look. Even Kalganov, feeling as if something had stung him, got up and walked over to her.

“Did you feel me kiss you while you were asleep?” she mumbled to him. “The wine has gone to my head now, you see . . . Tell me—what about you? Aren’t you drunk too? And why isn’t Mitya drinking? Hey, Mitya, why aren’t you drinking? I’m drinking and you’re not . . .”

“I’m drunk as it is, drunk on you . . . But now, I want to be drunk on wine too.” He emptied a glass and had the strange impression that this was the first time that night that he had felt its effect. Until then, he felt, he had been absolutely sober. But from that second on, everything started to turn around him as in delirium. He walked about, laughed, talked to people, no longer conscious of himself. He was only conscious of a persistent, burning sensation that felt “like a burning coal in my soul,” as he described it later . . . He kept coming back to Grushenka, sitting down next to her, looking at her, listening to her. She herself was seized by an unrestrainable urge to talk; she kept beckoning to people to come and chat with her; she would suddenly call over a girl from the group of singers and kiss her maybe, or just make the sign of the cross over her . . . There were moments, though, when she seemed on the verge of tears. But then she would be cheered up by Maximov, the “old cutie,” as she called him, who kept dashing up to her every moment to kiss her hand and “every single finger thereof,” as he put it, and who finally performed one more dance to the tune of an old song that he sang himself. He leapt into the air and stamped his feet with particular zest every time he got to the refrain:

The little pig says froo-froo-froo,

The little calf says moo-moo-moo,

The little duck says dack-dack-dack,

The little goose says quack-quack-quack,

The hen wandered through the shed,

Chuck-chuck-chuck, she said,

Clack-tack-pack, she said . . .

“Give him something, Mitya,” Grushenka kept saying; “you must make him some nice present. He’s so poor and he has to put up with so much ! . . . You know what, Mitya—I think I’ll become a nun. I’m not just saying that, I mean it—I’ll end up in a convent some day. Alyosha said something to me before I came here, something I’ll always remember. Tomorrow it’ll be the convent, but today I’ll dance! I want to have a wild time today, good people! Now what’s wrong with that? I’m sure God will forgive me. If I were God, I’d forgive everyone. ‘My dear sinners,’ I’d say to them, ‘as of today, you are all forgiven!’ Tomorrow I’ll go and ask people for forgiveness: ‘Forgive me, stupid woman that I am,’ I’ll beg them. I’m a beast, that’s what I am, and I want to pray. I gave away an onion, though. A vicious woman like me needs to pray. Mitya, let them dance; don’t interfere. Everyone in the world, without exception, is good. It’s nice to live in the world—even if we are wicked, it’s still nice to be here . . . We’re both good and bad, bad and good . . . Come over here, everybody, come over here! I want every one of you to tell me why I am so good. Because I am good, am I not, very, very good? All right then, tell me why I am so good.”

Grushenka went on and on like this, getting more and more drunk, and in the end declared that she wanted to dance all by herself. She rose from her armchair, staggering.

“Don’t give me any more wine, Mitya,” she mumbled, “don’t. Wine won’t give me peace. Everything is turning, turning, the stove is turning . . . I want to dance. I want everyone to watch me dance. I want everyone to admire how marvelously I can dance . . .”

She meant it. She pulled a white lawn handkerchief out of her pocket and held it by one corner in her right hand to wave as she danced. Mitya made everyone stop dancing and be quiet. The singers stood ready to burst into a dance song at the first signal. Hearing that Grushenka was to perform a solo dance, Maximov actually squealed with delight and started skipping around her, singing:

With legs trim and hips slim

And tail in a wiggle . . .

But Grushenka waved him away with her handkerchief.

“Sh-sh-sh . . . quiet! Mitya, where are they all? I want everybody to come and watch me. Call those fellows locked up in there too. Why did you have to lock them in? Tell them I’m about to dance. Let them watch me dance, too . . .”

With a drunken man’s enthusiasm, Mitya went to the door and banged on it with his fist.

“Hey, you, Podwysocki fellows, come out. She’s dancing and she wants you to watch her!”

“You good-for-nothing!” one of the Poles answered him from behind the door.

“And you’re worse than a good-for-nothing. You’re a lousy little crook, that’s what you are!”

“I wish you’d stop insulting Poland,” Kalganov said pompously. He, too, was hopelessly drunk.

“Shut up, boy, I only told him what he is and that doesn’t go for Poland as a whole. One crook doesn’t make a Poland, you know. Anyway, shut up, pretty boy—better put a candy in your mouth.”

“So that’s how they feel! They’re not even human. Why don’t they want to make peace?” Grushenka said and decided to start dancing. The singers burst into a popular folk song. Grushenka tossed her head back, parted her lips, waved the handkerchief over her head, then swaying violently, stopped dead in the middle of the room, looking completely bewildered.

“I feel all weak . . .” she said in an exhausted voice. “I’m sorry, I feel too weak . . . I can’t do it . . . I’m sorry . . .”

She bowed to the singers and then bowed in turn in all four directions, repeating “I’m sorry . . . Forgive me.”

“The pretty lady’s been drinking . . . The beautiful lady’s had one too many,” voices came from all around.

“Yes, you see, madam is quite full of drink,” Maximov explained to the girls with a titter.

“Take me out of here, Mitya. Take me away,” Grushenka said weakly.

Mitya hurried to her, picked her up in his arms, and carried his precious booty into the blue room and behind the curtain.

“Now, that does it!” Kalganov muttered under his breath. “This time I’m leaving and I mean it!” And he walked out of the blue room, carefully closing the two half doors behind him.

But in the big room the party went on again, louder than ever.

Mitya laid Grushenka down on the bed and his kiss tore open her lips.

“No, don’t . . .” she mumbled imploringly, “don’t do it Mitya. I’m not yours yet . . . I’ve told you that I’m yours, but you mustn’t touch me . . . Please don’t—spare me . . . I can’t with these people . . . they’re too near. And he’s still here. It’s revolting here . . .”

“As you wish . . . I didn’t mean it . . . I adore you,” Mitya muttered breathlessly. “Yes, it is revolting here, and it’s degrading too . . .”

And, without letting go of her, Mitya slipped from the bed and knelt beside her on the floor.

“I know, Mitya, I know you’re a wild animal, but you’re a noble and generous animal,” Grushenka said, pronouncing the words with difficulty. “I want everything to be proper and decent, and I want us to be decent, honorable people, good, nice people, not wild animals . . . I want you to take me away from here, very, very far away—do you hear me? I don’t want to be here, Mitya. I want to be far, far, away . . .”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Mitya said, folding her in his arms. “I’ll take you away. We’ll leave forever . . . Oh, I’d be happy to die if I could live for one single year without knowing about that blood. I’d be happy to give my whole life for that year . . .”

“What blood?” Grushenka asked, taken aback.

“Never mind,” Mitya mumbled through clenched teeth. “You said just now, Grusha, that you wanted us to be honest, decent people, but how can I? I am a thief. I stole money from Katya, you know. I’m ashamed, ashamed . . .”

“From that Katya damsel? No, you haven’t stolen from her, since you’ll give it back to her. I’ll give it to you and you’ll pay her back. What are you hollering like that for? Now everything that’s mine is yours. What’s money for? We’d have ourselves a good time and squander it all anyway. Such people as you and I—how could we hold on to money? I think we really ought to become peasants and till the soil. I want to scrape a living from the earth with these hands, see! I want to work hard. Alyosha said I should. I won’t be just your mistress—I’ll be your true and faithful wife, your slave, and I’ll work for you. We’ll both go and see that Katya damsel; we’ll both bow low to her and ask her to forgive us, and then we’ll leave. And if she refuses to forgive us, we’ll leave anyway. And you, you’ll take the money to her, and all you have to do is to love me, not her, because if you ever think of loving her, I’ll strangle her. And before that, I’ll gouge out both her eyes for her with a needle.”

“It’s you I love, you alone, and when I’m in Siberia, I’ll love only you.”

“Why Siberia? But if that’s where you want to go, it suits me fine. We’ll work there together. There’s lots of snow in Siberia and I like driving over the snow in a sled. I insist we have bells, though . . . Mitya, do you hear bells jingling? Where are those bells jingling, Mitya? Someone is coming—don’t you hear? They’ve stopped now . . .”

Exhausted, she closed her eyes and seemed to doze off for a minute. But a distant bell had jingled and then stopped, just as she had said. Mitya’s head was resting on her breast. He had not noticed that the jingling had stopped, but then neither had he noticed that all of a sudden there was no more singing and, instead of songs and drunken voices, a dead silence had descended on the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.

“What’s happening? Did I fall asleep? . . . Yes, yes, I know . . . the bells . . . I was asleep and I dreamt I was riding over the snow . . . the bells jingled and I was dozing. I was driving with the man I love, with you, Mitya. We were going very, very far . . . I was hugging you and kissing you and clinging hard to you, because I was so cold and the snow was glistening . . . You know how it is when the moon is up and the snow glistens. It felt as if I was somewhere else, not on earth . . . And now I have woken up and the man I love is still here with me. It’s so good.”

“With you . . .” Mitya muttered, kissing her dress, her neck, her hands.

But suddenly it struck him as strange the way she was looking straight in front of her, not at his face but somehow over his head, beyond him, staring intently, her eyes strangely fixed, in surprise and then in fright.

“Mitya, who’s that looking at us from over there?” she whispered.

He turned around and saw that the curtain had been pulled aside and that someone was watching them, and apparently not just one person either. Mitya jumped to his feet and walked quickly to the curtain.

“Would you please come in here, sir,” a voice said quietly but firmly.

Mitya stepped out from behind the curtain and stopped dead. The rest of the room was packed with people, but they were not the people who had been at the party, but others quite different. An icy chill ran down Mitya’s spine and he shuddered. Now he recognized these new arrivals. That tall, heavy-set, elderly man in the long greatcoat and the peaked cap with a badge was Mikhail Makarov, the police inspector. And that consumptive-looking dandy in blindingly shiny boots was the assistant prosecutor—“he has a four-hundred-ruble timepiece—he showed it to me,” flashed through Mitya’s mind. And that short, rather young fellow with glasses—Mitya couldn’t think of his name, but he was sure he had met him; in any case he knew that he was the new examining magistrate—“he hasn’t been in town very long.” And over there, that, of course, was Mavriky Mavrikevich, whom Mitya knew very well. But what were all those men with shiny buttons doing here? And those other two who looked like peasants? And there by the door was Kalganov, and next to him Trifon, the innkeeper.