The Brothers Karamazov
then, finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it
on Lyagavy’s head. The forester still treated the matter
contemptuously, and when he opened the window said grumpily:
“It’ll be all right, now.”
He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed
about the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and
gravely resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that
when he sat down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes,
unconsciously stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like
the dead.
It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine
o’clock. The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the
hut. The curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat
on. He had another samovar and another bottle in front of him.
Yesterday’s bottle had already been finished, and the new one was more
than half empty. Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the cursed
peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for
a moment with wide opened eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly
watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of contemptuous
condescension, so Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.
“Excuse me, you see ... I ... you’ve most likely heard from the
forester here in the hut. I’m Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of
the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying.”
“That’s a lie!” said the peasant, calmly and confidently.
“A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?”
“I don’t know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches,” said the peasant,
speaking thickly.
“You’re bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up,
and collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You
wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you,” Mitya gasped
breathlessly.
“You’re l-lying!” Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya’s legs went cold.
“For mercy’s sake! It isn’t a joke! You’re drunk, perhaps. Yet you can
speak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!”
“You’re a painter!”
“For mercy’s sake! I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to
make you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning
the copse!”
The peasant stroked his beard importantly.
“No, you’ve contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You’re a
scoundrel!”
“I assure you you’re mistaken,” cried Mitya, wringing his hands in
despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up
his eyes cunningly.
“No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D’you
hear? You’re a scoundrel! Do you understand that?”
Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly “something seemed to hit him
on the head,” as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to
dawn in his mind, “a light was kindled and I grasped it all.” He stood,
stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could
have yielded to such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and
have kept it up for almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this
Lyagavy, wetting his head.
“Why, the man’s drunk, dead drunk, and he’ll go on drinking now for a
week; what’s the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here
on purpose? What if she—? Oh, God, what have I done?”
The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might
have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He
went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a
word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next
room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out
of his pocket and put them on the table for his night’s lodging, the
candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw
nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which
way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left. Hurrying there
the evening before with the priest, he had not noticed the road. He had
no revengeful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He
strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding
where he was going. A child could have knocked him down, so weak was he
in body and soul. He got out of the forest somehow, however, and a
vista of fields, bare after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye
could see.
“What despair! What death all round!” he repeated, striding on and on.
He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across
country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and
it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After
some discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they
arrived. At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to
the town, and suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While
the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He
ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and
swallowed three glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his
heart grew lighter. He flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and
suddenly made a new and “unalterable” plan to procure that “accursed
money” before evening. “And to think, only to think that a man’s life
should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!” he cried,
contemptuously. “I’ll settle it to-day.” And if it had not been for
the thought of Grushenka and of what might have happened to her, which
never left him, he would perhaps have become quite cheerful again....
But the thought of her was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like
a sharp knife.
At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.
Chapter III.
Gold-Mines
This was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin
with such horror. She was just then expecting the “message,” and was
much relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day
before. She hoped that “please God he won’t come till I’m gone away,”
and he suddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him
off her hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to
Samsonov’s, where she said she absolutely must go “to settle his
accounts,” and when Mitya accompanied her at once, she said good-by to
him at the gate, making him promise to come at twelve o’clock to take
her home again. Mitya, too, was delighted at this arrangement. If she
was sitting at Samsonov’s she could not be going to Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s, “if only she’s not lying,” he added at once. But he
thought she was not lying from what he saw.
He was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved
woman, at once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be
happening to her, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken,
heartbroken, convinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her; at
the first glance at her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he
revives at once, lays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses
himself for his jealousy.
After leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home. Oh, he had so much
still to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart,
anyway.
“Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether
anything happened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to
Fyodor Pavlovitch; ough!” floated through his mind.
Before he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again
in his restless heart.
Jealousy! “Othello was not jealous, he was trustful,” observed Pushkin.
And that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great
poet. Othello’s soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply
because _his ideal was destroyed_. But Othello did not begin hiding,
spying, peeping. He was trustful, on the contrary. He had to be led up,
pushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the
idea of deceit. The truly jealous man is not like that. It is
impossible to picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to
which the jealous man can descend without a qualm of conscience. And
yet it’s not as though the jealous were all vulgar and base souls. On
the contrary, a man of lofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of
self-sacrifice, may yet hide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and
be familiar with the lowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.
Othello was incapable of making up his mind to faithlessness—not
incapable of forgiving it, but of making up his mind to it—though his
soul was as innocent and free from malice as a babe’s. It is not so
with the really jealous man. It is hard to imagine what some jealous
men can make up their mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive!
The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.
The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course,
after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost
conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only
he can somehow be convinced that it has all been “for the last time,”
and that his rival will vanish from that day forward, will depart to
the ends of the earth, or that he himself will carry her away
somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course
the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did
disappear next day, he would invent another one and would be jealous of
him. And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so
watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous
guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And yet among
them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those very
men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and
spying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway,
though they understand clearly enough with their “noble hearts” the
shameful depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.
At the sight of Grushenka, Mitya’s jealousy vanished, and, for an
instant he became trustful and generous, and positively despised
himself for his evil feelings. But it only proved that, in his love for
the woman, there was an element of something far higher than he himself
imagined, that it was not only a sensual passion, not only the “curve
of her body,” of which he had talked to Alyosha. But, as soon as
Grushenka had gone, Mitya began to suspect her of all the low cunning
of faithlessness, and he felt no sting of conscience at it.
And so jealousy surged up in him again. He had, in any case, to make
haste. The first thing to be done was to get hold of at least a small,
temporary loan of money. The nine roubles had almost all gone on his
expedition. And, as we all know, one can’t take a step without money.
But he had thought over in the cart where he could get a loan. He had a
brace of fine dueling pistols in a case, which he had not pawned till
then because he prized them above all his possessions.
In the “Metropolis” tavern he had some time since made acquaintance
with a young official and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor
was passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers,
daggers, hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He
prided himself on them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of
the revolver. Mitya, without stopping to think, went straight to him,
and offered to pawn his pistols to him for ten roubles. The official,
delighted, began trying to persuade him to sell them outright. But
Mitya would not consent, so the young man gave him ten roubles,
protesting that nothing would induce him to take interest. They parted
friends.
Mitya was in haste; he rushed towards Fyodor Pavlovitch’s by the back
way, to his arbor, to get hold of Smerdyakov as soon as possible. In