The Brothers Karamazov
voice. “I didn’t speak to you as a judge but as the lowest of the
judged. What am I beside her? I came here seeking my ruin, and said to
myself, ‘What does it matter?’ in my cowardliness, but she, after five
years in torment, as soon as any one says a word from the heart to
her—it makes her forget everything, forgive everything, in her tears!
The man who has wronged her has come back, he sends for her and she
forgives him everything, and hastens joyfully to meet him and she won’t
take a knife with her. She won’t! No, I am not like that. I don’t know
whether you are, Misha, but I am not like that. It’s a lesson to me....
She is more loving than we.... Have you heard her speak before of what
she has just told us? No, you haven’t; if you had, you’d have
understood her long ago ... and the person insulted the day before
yesterday must forgive her, too! She will, when she knows ... and she
shall know.... This soul is not yet at peace with itself, one must be
tender with it ... there may be a treasure in that soul....”
Alyosha stopped, because he caught his breath. In spite of his
ill-humor Rakitin looked at him with astonishment. He had never
expected such a tirade from the gentle Alyosha.
“She’s found some one to plead her cause! Why, are you in love with
her? Agrafena Alexandrovna, our monk’s really in love with you, you’ve
made a conquest!” he cried, with a coarse laugh.
Grushenka lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a
tender smile shining on her tear-stained face.
“Let him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is, he is not a
person for you to speak to. Mihail Osipovitch,” she turned to Rakitin,
“I meant to beg your pardon for being rude to you, but now I don’t want
to. Alyosha, come to me, sit down here.” She beckoned to him with a
happy smile. “That’s right, sit here. Tell me,” she shook him by the
hand and peeped into his face, smiling, “tell me, do I love that man or
not? the man who wronged me, do I love him or not? Before you came, I
lay here in the dark, asking my heart whether I loved him. Decide for
me, Alyosha, the time has come, it shall be as you say. Am I to forgive
him or not?”
“But you have forgiven him already,” said Alyosha, smiling.
“Yes, I really have forgiven him,” Grushenka murmured thoughtfully.
“What an abject heart! To my abject heart!” She snatched up a glass
from the table, emptied it at a gulp, lifted it in the air and flung it
on the floor. The glass broke with a crash. A little cruel line came
into her smile.
“Perhaps I haven’t forgiven him, though,” she said, with a sort of
menace in her voice, and she dropped her eyes to the ground as though
she were talking to herself. “Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to
forgive. I shall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown
to love my tears in these five years.... Perhaps I only love my
resentment, not him ...”
“Well, I shouldn’t care to be in his shoes,” hissed Rakitin.
“Well, you won’t be, Rakitin, you’ll never be in his shoes. You shall
black my shoes, Rakitin, that’s the place you are fit for. You’ll never
get a woman like me ... and he won’t either, perhaps ...”
“Won’t he? Then why are you dressed up like that?” said Rakitin, with a
venomous sneer.
“Don’t taunt me with dressing up, Rakitin, you don’t know all that is
in my heart! If I choose to tear off my finery, I’ll tear it off at
once, this minute,” she cried in a resonant voice. “You don’t know what
that finery is for, Rakitin! Perhaps I shall see him and say: ‘Have you
ever seen me look like this before?’ He left me a thin, consumptive
cry-baby of seventeen. I’ll sit by him, fascinate him and work him up.
‘Do you see what I am like now?’ I’ll say to him; ‘well, and that’s
enough for you, my dear sir, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the
lip!’ That may be what the finery is for, Rakitin.” Grushenka finished
with a malicious laugh. “I’m violent and resentful, Alyosha, I’ll tear
off my finery, I’ll destroy my beauty, I’ll scorch my face, slash it
with a knife, and turn beggar. If I choose, I won’t go anywhere now to
see any one. If I choose, I’ll send Kuzma back all he has ever given
me, to-morrow, and all his money and I’ll go out charing for the rest
of my life. You think I wouldn’t do it, Rakitin, that I would not dare
to do it? I would, I would, I could do it directly, only don’t
exasperate me ... and I’ll send him about his business, I’ll snap my
fingers in his face, he shall never see me again!”
She uttered the last words in an hysterical scream, but broke down
again, hid her face in her hands, buried it in the pillow and shook
with sobs.
Rakitin got up.
“It’s time we were off,” he said, “it’s late, we shall be shut out of
the monastery.”
Grushenka leapt up from her place.
“Surely you don’t want to go, Alyosha!” she cried, in mournful
surprise. “What are you doing to me? You’ve stirred up my feeling,
tortured me, and now you’ll leave me to face this night alone!”
“He can hardly spend the night with you! Though if he wants to, let
him! I’ll go alone,” Rakitin scoffed jeeringly.
“Hush, evil tongue!” Grushenka cried angrily at him; “you never said
such words to me as he has come to say.”
“What has he said to you so special?” asked Rakitin irritably.
“I can’t say, I don’t know. I don’t know what he said to me, it went
straight to my heart; he has wrung my heart.... He is the first, the
only one who has pitied me, that’s what it is. Why did you not come
before, you angel?” She fell on her knees before him as though in a
sudden frenzy. “I’ve been waiting all my life for some one like you, I
knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that,
nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful
love!”
“What have I done to you?” answered Alyosha, bending over her with a
tender smile, and gently taking her by the hands; “I only gave you an
onion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that was all!”
He was moved to tears himself as he said it. At that moment there was a
sudden noise in the passage, some one came into the hall. Grushenka
jumped up, seeming greatly alarmed. Fenya ran noisily into the room,
crying out:
“Mistress, mistress darling, a messenger has galloped up,” she cried,
breathless and joyful. “A carriage from Mokroe for you, Timofey the
driver, with three horses, they are just putting in fresh horses.... A
letter, here’s the letter, mistress.”
A letter was in her hand and she waved it in the air all the while she
talked. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and carried it to the
candle. It was only a note, a few lines. She read it in one instant.
“He has sent for me,” she cried, her face white and distorted, with a
wan smile; “he whistles! Crawl back, little dog!”
But only for one instant she stood as though hesitating; suddenly the
blood rushed to her head and sent a glow to her cheeks.
“I will go,” she cried; “five years of my life! Good-by! Good-by,
Alyosha, my fate is sealed. Go, go, leave me all of you, don’t let me
see you again! Grushenka is flying to a new life.... Don’t you remember
evil against me either, Rakitin. I may be going to my death! Ugh! I
feel as though I were drunk!”
She suddenly left them and ran into her bedroom.
“Well, she has no thoughts for us now!” grumbled Rakitin. “Let’s go, or
we may hear that feminine shriek again. I am sick of all these tears
and cries.”
Alyosha mechanically let himself be led out. In the yard stood a
covered cart. Horses were being taken out of the shafts, men were
running to and fro with a lantern. Three fresh horses were being led in
at the open gate. But when Alyosha and Rakitin reached the bottom of
the steps, Grushenka’s bedroom window was suddenly opened and she
called in a ringing voice after Alyosha:
“Alyosha, give my greetings to your brother Mitya and tell him not to
remember evil against me, though I have brought him misery. And tell
him, too, in my words: ‘Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to
you, noble heart.’ And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one
hour, only one short hour she loved him—so let him remember that hour
all his life—say, ‘Grushenka tells you to!’”
She ended in a voice full of sobs. The window was shut with a slam.
“H’m, h’m!” growled Rakitin, laughing, “she murders your brother Mitya
and then tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!”
Alyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard. He walked fast
beside Rakitin as though in a terrible hurry. He was lost in thought
and moved mechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had
been touched on an open wound. He had expected something quite
different by bringing Grushenka and Alyosha together. Something very
different from what he had hoped for had happened.
“He is a Pole, that officer of hers,” he began again, restraining
himself; “and indeed he is not an officer at all now. He served in the
customs in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little
beggar of a Pole, I expect. Lost his job, they say. He’s heard now that
Grushenka’s saved a little money, so he’s turned up again—that’s the
explanation of the mystery.”
Again Alyosha seemed not to hear. Rakitin could not control himself.
“Well, so you’ve saved the sinner?” he laughed spitefully. “Have you
turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils,
eh? So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come
to pass!”
“Hush, Rakitin,” Alyosha answered with an aching heart.
“So you despise me now for those twenty-five roubles? I’ve sold my
friend, you think. But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not
Judas.”
“Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I’d forgotten about it,” cried Alyosha, “you
remind me of it yourself....”
But this was the last straw for Rakitin.
“Damnation take you all and each of you!” he cried suddenly, “why the
devil did I take you up? I don’t want to know you from this time
forward. Go alone, there’s your road!”
And he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in
the dark. Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to
the monastery.
Chapter IV.
Cana Of Galilee
It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha
returned to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special
entrance. It had struck nine o’clock—the hour of rest and repose after
a day of such agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and
went into the elder’s cell where his coffin was now standing. There was
no one in the cell but Father Païssy, reading the Gospel in solitude
over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the
previous night’s conversation and the disturbing incidents of the day,
was sleeping the deep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other
room. Though Father Païssy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look
in his direction. Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the
corner, fell on his knees and began to pray.
His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation
stood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow,
continual rotation. But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange
to say, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw that coffin
before him, the hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping
and poignant grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul. As
soon as he came in, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy
shrine, but joy, joy was glowing in his mind and in his heart. The one
window of the cell was open, the air was fresh and cool. “So the smell
must have become stronger, if they opened the window,” thought Alyosha.
But even this thought of the smell of corruption, which had seemed to