The possessed or, The devils
determination were evident in his manner, and a certain very threatening
assumption of argumentative calm that suggested an outburst to follow.
But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to realise the danger, and it did not
fit in with his preconceived ideas. The incidents and disasters of the
day had quite turned his head. Liputin, at the top of the three steps,
stared inquisitively down from the little dark room.
"Do you or don't you want a trustworthy passport and good money to go
where you've been told? Yes or no?"
"D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you've been deceiving me from the first,
and so you've been a regular scoundrel to me. For all the world like a
filthy human louse--that's how I look on you. You've promised me a lot
of money for shedding innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin,
though it turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding. I didn't
get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stavrogin
hit you in the face, which has come to our ears. Now you are threatening
me again and promising me money--what for, you don't say. And I
shouldn't wonder if you are sending me to Petersburg to plot some
revenge in your spite against Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
reckoning on my simplicity. And that proves you are the chief murderer.
And do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the depravity
of your heart you've given up believing in God Himself, the true
Creator? You are no better than an idolater and are on a level with
the Tatar and the Mordva. Alexey Nilitch, who is a philosopher, has
expounded the true God, the Creator, many a time to you, as well as the
creation of the world and the fate that's to come and the transformation
of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse,
but you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your
dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest
evil seducer and so-called atheist...."
"Ah, you drunken dog! He strips the ikons of their setting and then
preaches about God!"
"D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, I tell you truly that I have stripped
the ikons, but I only took out the pearls; and how do you know? Perhaps
my own tear was transformed into a pearl in the furnace of the Most High
to make up for my sufferings, seeing I am just that very orphan, having
no daily refuge. Do you know from the books that once, in ancient times,
a merchant with just such tearful sighs and prayers stole a pearl from
the halo of the Mother of God, and afterwards, in the face of all the
people, laid the whole price of it at her feet, and the Holy Mother
sheltered him with her mantle before all the people, so that it was a
miracle, and the command was given through the authorities to write it
all down word for word in the Imperial books. And you let a mouse in,
so you insulted the very throne of God. And if you were not my natural
master, whom I dandled in my arms when I was a stripling, I would have
done for you now, without budging from this place!"
Pyotr Stepanovitch flew into a violent rage.
"Tell me, have you seen Stavrogin to-day?"
"Don't you dare to question me. Mr. Stavrogin is fairly amazed at you,
and he had no share in it even in wish, let alone instructions or giving
money. You've presumed with me."
"You'll get the money and you'll get another two thousand in Petersburg,
when you get there, in a lump sum, and you'll get more."
"You are lying, my fine gentleman, and it makes me laugh to see how
easily you are taken in. Mr. Stavrogin stands at the top of the ladder
above you, and you yelp at him from below like a silly puppy dog, while
he thinks it would be doing you an honour to spit at you."
"But do you know," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in a rage, "that I won't
let you stir a step from here, you scoundrel, and I'll hand you straight
over to the police."
Fedka leapt on to his feet and his eyes gleamed with fury. Pyotr
Stepanovitch pulled out his revolver. Then followed a rapid and
revolting scene: before Pyotr Stepanovitch could take aim, Fedka swung
round and in a flash struck him on the cheek with all his might. Then
there was the thud of a second blow, a third, then a fourth, all on the
cheek. Pyotr Stepanovitch was dazed; with his eyes starting out of his
head, he muttered something, and suddenly crashed full length to the
ground.
"There you are; take him," shouted Fedka with a triumphant swagger; he
instantly took up his cap, his bag from under the bench, and was gone.
Pyotr Stepanovitch lay gasping and unconscious. Liputin even imagined
that he had been murdered. Kirillov ran headlong into the kitchen.
"Water!" he cried, and ladling some water in an iron dipper from a
bucket, he poured it over the injured man's head. Pyotr Stepanovitch
stirred, raised his head, sat up, and looked blankly about him.
"Well, how are you?" asked Kirillov. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him
intently, still not recognising him; but seeing Liputin peeping in from
the kitchen, he smiled his hateful smile and suddenly got up, picking up
his revolver from the floor.
"If you take it into your head to run away to-morrow like that scoundrel
Stavrogin," he cried, pouncing furiously on Kirillov, pale, stammering,
and hardly able to articulate his words, "I'll hang you... like a
fly... or crush you... if it's at the other end of the world... do you
understand!"
And he held the revolver straight at Kirillov's head; but almost at the
same minute, coming completely to himself, he drew back his hand, thrust
the revolver into his pocket, and without saying another word ran out of
the house. Liputin followed him. They clambered through the same gap and
again walked along the slope holding to the fence. Pyotr Stepanovitch
strode rapidly down the street so that Liputin could scarcely keep up
with him. At the first crossing he suddenly stopped.
"Well?" He turned to Liputin with a challenge.
Liputin remembered the revolver and was still trembling all over after
the scene he had witnessed; but the answer seemed to come of itself
irresistibly from his tongue:
"I think... I think that..."
"Did you see what Fedka was drinking in the kitchen?"
"What he was drinking? He was drinking vodka."
"Well then, let me tell you it's the last time in his life he will drink
vodka. I recommend you to remember that and reflect on it. And now go to
hell; you are not wanted till to-morrow. But mind now, don't be a fool!"
Liputin rushed home full speed.
IV
He had long had a passport in readiness made out in a false name. It
seems a wild idea that this prudent little man, the petty despot of
his family, who was, above all things, a sharp man of business and a
capitalist, and who was an official too (though he was a Fourierist),
should long before have conceived the fantastic project of procuring
this passport in case of emergency, that he might escape abroad by means
of it _if_... he did admit the possibility of this if, though no doubt he
was never able himself to formulate what this _if_ might mean.
But now it suddenly formulated itself, and in a most unexpected way.
That desperate idea with which he had gone to Kirillov's after that
"fool" he had heard from Pyotr Stepanovitch on the pavement, had been
to abandon everything at dawn next day and to emigrate abroad. If anyone
doubts that such fantastic incidents occur in everyday Russian life,
even now, let him look into the biographies of all the Russian exiles
abroad. Not one of them escaped with more wisdom or real justification.
It has always been the unrestrained domination of phantoms and nothing
more.
Running home, he began by locking himself in, getting out his travelling
bag, and feverishly beginning to pack. His chief anxiety was the
question of money, and how much he could rescue from the impending
ruin--and by what means. He thought of it as "rescuing," for it seemed
to him that he could not linger an hour, and that by daylight he must
be on the high road. He did not know where to take the train either; he
vaguely determined to take it at the second or third big station from
the town, and to make his way there on foot, if necessary. In that way,
instinctively and mechanically he busied himself in his packing with a
perfect whirl of ideas in his head--and suddenly stopped short, gave it
all up, and with a deep groan stretched himself on the sofa.
He felt clearly, and suddenly realised that he might escape, but that
he was by now utterly incapable of deciding whether he ought to make off
_before or after_ Shatov's death; that he was simply a lifeless body, a
crude inert mass; that he was being moved by an awful outside power; and
that, though he had a passport to go abroad, that though he could run
away from Shatov (otherwise what need was there of such haste?), yet he
would run away, not from Shatov, not before his murder, but _after_ it,
and that that was determined, signed, and sealed.
In insufferable distress, trembling every instant and wondering at
himself, alternately groaning aloud and numb with terror, he managed to
exist till eleven o'clock next morning locked in and lying on the sofa;
then came the shock he was awaiting, and it at once determined him. When
he unlocked his door and went out to his household at eleven o'clock
they told him that the runaway convict and brigand, Fedka, who was a
terror to every one, who had pillaged churches and only lately been
guilty of murder and arson, who was being pursued and could not be
captured by our police, had been found at daybreak murdered, five miles
from the town, at a turning off the high road, and that the whole town
was talking of it already. He rushed headlong out of the house at once
to find out further details, and learned, to begin with, that Fedka, who
had been found with his skull broken, had apparently been robbed and,
secondly, that the police already had strong suspicion and even good
grounds for believing that the murderer was one of the Shpigulin men
called Fomka, the very one who had been his accomplice in murdering the
Lebyadkins and setting fire to their house, and that there had been a
quarrel between them on the road about a large sum of money stolen from
Lebyadkin, which Fedka was supposed to have hidden. Liputin ran to Pyotr
Stepanovitch's lodgings and succeeded in learning at the back door, on
the sly, that though Pyotr Stepanovitch had not returned home till about
one o'clock at night, he had slept there quietly all night till eight
o'clock next morning. Of course, there could be no doubt that there was
nothing extraordinary about Fedka's death, and that such careers usually
have such an ending; but the coincidence of the fatal words that "it was
the last time Fedka would drink vodka," with the prompt fulfilment of
the prediction, was so remarkable that Liputin no longer hesitated. The
shock had been given; it was as though a stone had fallen upon him and
crushed him forever. Returning home, he thrust his travelling-bag under
the bed without a word, and in the evening at the hour fixed he was the
first to appear at the appointed spot to meet Shatov, though it's true
he still had his passport in his pocket.
CHAPTER V. A WANDERER
I
THE CATASTROPHE WITH Liza and the death of Marya Timofyevna made an
overwhelming impression on Shatov. I have already mentioned that that
morning I met him in passing; he seemed to me not himself. He told me
among other things that on the evening before at nine o'clock (that
is, three hours before the fire had broken out) he had been at Marya
Timofyevna's. He went in the morning to look at the corpses, but as far
as I know gave no evidence of any sort that morning. Meanwhile, towards
the end of the day there was a perfect tempest in his soul, and... I