The Brothers Karamazov (21 page)

“And so our colonel was home, with a towel wrapped around his head and the three women taking turns putting ice in it, when suddenly a messenger appeared with a note demanding that the monies be handed over at once, ‘within two hours.’ He signed the messenger’s book—I saw the signature later myself—got up, saying he was going to put on his uniform, went to his bedroom, took down his double-barreled shotgun, loaded it with an army bullet, removed his right boot, pressed the barrel against his breast, and started feeling for the trigger with his big toe. But Agafia, remembering what I’d told her and suspecting that her father might try something of the sort, stole up to his bedroom door, peeped through a crack, and saw what he was up to. She rushed in, threw herself on him from behind, throwing her arms around him. The gun went off and the bullet hit the ceiling without harming anyone. In the meantime, the others dashed in, took away the shotgun, and held the old man’s arms . . .

“I found out all these little details later. But at the time I was at home. It was getting dark and I decided to go out. I dressed, combed my hair, put some eau de cologne on my handkerchief, took my cap, and was about to leave when the door opened and there she was—Katerina, standing in my room.

“Strangely enough, she had met no one she knew on her way and no one saw her enter my lodgings, so no one in town was aware of her visit. I rented my rooms from two aged ladies, both the widows of civil servants, who were very considerate to me, did whatever I asked them, and never breathed a word to anybody about Katerina’s visit, as I expressly asked them not to.

“Of course, I realized at once what she wanted. She was staring straight into my face as she came in, and there was a strange determination, even arrogance, in her dark eyes, although around her lips there were signs of wavering.

“‘My sister told me that you’d give me four thousand five hundred rubles if I came in person. Well, here I am. So give me the money . . .’ she fired off. But then she couldn’t go on; she gasped, her voice failed her, and her lips and the lines around the corners of her lips quivered . . . Hey, Alyosha, my boy, are you still following me or have you fallen asleep?”

“I know you’ll tell me the whole truth, Mitya,” Alyosha muttered nervously.

“That’s just what I’ll tell you. It will be the truth and I won’t spare myself. Well, the first thought that came to me was the one a Karamazov would be likely to have under such circumstances. You know, I was once bitten by a centipede and was in bed for two weeks with a high fever. So now I felt as if a centipede or some other noxious insect had again stung my heart and contaminated me. I suppose you see what I mean, don’t you?

“I looked her over from head to toe. Why, you’ve seen her. You know how beautiful she is. But there was something else in her then, besides her beauty. She seemed even more beautiful to me at that moment because she was noble and generous while I was a low pig; she was magnanimously sacrificing herself for her father, while I was just a bedbug. And now, I felt, she was at my mercy, me, the pig and the bedbug—the whole of her, body and soul. She was cornered. Let me tell you that this thought I had, a centipede’s thought, gripped my heart so violently that it was almost bled white from the pain alone. There seemed to be no room for any inner struggle on my part—I was going to act like a vicious bug, like a tarantula, just go ahead without any restraint . . . It took my breath away.

“I want you to understand, Alyosha, that of course I’d have gone over to their house afterward and asked for her hand in marriage, finishing it all decently, if I may call it that, and no one would or could have known anything about it because, for all my beastly desires, I am, after all, an honorable man. But then it was as though someone whispered into my ear: ‘You can be sure, if you go to ask for her hand tomorrow, that with a character like hers she’ll refuse to receive you and order her flunkey to throw you out of the house, as if challenging you to go ahead and cry it from the roof-tops, to show you that she isn’t afraid of you.’ I looked at her and saw that the voice in my ear wasn’t lying. I knew that was exactly the way it would be—they’d kick me out—I could tell it from her expression at that moment. I felt my blood seething with anger within me and I wanted to play a filthy, piggish trick on her, to treat her the way some vulgar shopkeeper would have under the circumstances. I thought I’d look at her scornfully as she stood there in front of me and say in that special tone that shop-assistants use when they’re being insolent: ‘You mean you’d really expect me to give you four thousand rubles for that? Don’t you see, ma’am, it was a joke—I never really meant it. It was rather gullible of you to believe that I’d pay you so much. I suppose I’d let you have a couple of hundred. Indeed, I’d be glad to pay you that, but four thousand, that’s quite a different matter. I wouldn’t think of wasting a sum like that so thoughtlessly. I’m afraid you took all this trouble for nothing.’

“Of course, I realized I would lose everything, for she would run away, but it would have been an infernally clever revenge that would have been worth all the rest. Even if it meant I’d suffer remorse all the rest of my life, it was terribly tempting to go through with that trick now! Believe me, never before had I looked at any woman with hatred at such a moment, but, this once, I just stood there and for maybe three, maybe five, seconds stared at her with a terrifying hatred, with the kind of hatred that is only a hair’s breadth from the maddest, most desperate love.

“I walked over to the window and put my forehead against the ice-cold pane. I remember the ice burning my forehead like a flame. Don’t worry, I didn’t keep her waiting long. I turned back to the room, went to the desk, pulled out the drawer, and took the five per cent letter of credit for five thousand rubles, which I had put in the French dictionary, and showed it to her. Then I folded it, handed it to her, opened the door leading to the entrance, stepped back, and bowed to the waist, with the deepest and most sincere reverence—and I mean reverence!

“Her whole body shuddered. She looked at me intently for a second, turned terribly pale, as pale as a sheet, and all of a sudden knelt down and bowed to the ground to me, like a simple Russian woman and certainly not like a finishing-school graduate. Then she jumped up and ran out.

“When she ran out, I drew my saber (I was wearing it, because I was about to go out when she came in) and was going to thrust it into my chest. I’m not sure why I wanted to do that. I realize how stupid it would have been, but I suppose it was the sheer ecstasy of the moment. Can you understand, Alyosha, that there are moments of ecstasy in which we could kill ourselves? But I didn’t stab myself. I kissed the blade and sheathed it—something, by the way, that I didn’t have to mention to you. Actually, I believe that, in telling you all about the struggle that took place in me, I twisted things a little, to make myself look a bit better. But I don’t care if I did. The hell with all this spying on the human heart! Well, that’s what happened between Katerina and myself. Now you and Ivan know about it—and no one else.”

Dmitry stood up. He was tense. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Then he sat down again, not in the same place as before but on a bench that stood by the opposite wall so that to see him Alyosha had to turn completely around.

Chapter 5: The Confession Of An Ardent Heart: Head Over Heels

NOW,” ALYOSHA said, “I know the first part of this business.”

“Yes, you know the first part. It was quite dramatic and it took place in that other town. But the second part will end tragically and it will take place right here, in this town.”

“I still don’t understand a thing about the second part,” Alyosha said.

“What makes you think I understand it? I don’t either.”

“Just a minute, Dmitry, there’s one word that puzzles me in this whole business: engagement—tell me, are you still engaged to marry her?”

“We didn’t get engaged right away, not for three months after her visit. The next day I told myself that the incident was closed, over and done with, and that there must be no sequel to it. To propose to her now, I felt, would be rather despicable. And as to her, for the whole of the six weeks that she stayed in town after that, I never heard a single word from her. Except for one thing, it’s true: the day after her visit, her maid appeared stealthily and, without explanation, handed me an envelope addressed to me. When I opened it, I found it contained the change from the five thousand rubles. They needed four and a half thousand and, in addition, they lost about two hundred rubles in cashing the letter of credit. So she sent me only two hundred and sixty rubles, I believe, and I remember very well that it was just the money without an explanatory note or anything. I examined the envelope hoping to find some penciled note, some sign, but found nothing.

“Well, what could I do? I went on a spree to use up what money I had left, and I went so wild that finally the new major was forced to reprimand me. As to the Lieutenant Colonel, to everyone’s surprise he handed over the battalion monies in time—to everyone’s surprise since no one thought he had the full amount. But after he had turned it over, he fell sick and took to his bed. After three weeks, softening of the brain set in and he died five days later. He was buried with military honors since his resignation had not had time to go through. About ten days after the funeral, Katerina, Agafia, and Agafia’s aunt left for Moscow. And it was only on the very day of their departure (I had not seen them and didn’t go to see them off) that I received a tiny envelope containing a one-line message on dainty blue notepaper: ‘I’ll write to you later. Wait. K.’ That was all.

“Now I’ll tell you the rest of the story very briefly. In Moscow, their fortunes suddenly changed, as unexpectedly as in a story from the 
Arabian Nights
. Katerina’s richest relative, the widow of a general, lost her two nieces, who were her heiresses, within a few days; they both died of smallpox during the same week. The grief-stricken old woman received Katerina, who had just arrived in Moscow, as if she were a long lost daughter, immediately changing her will in her favor and thus taking care of her future. And, for the meantime, she transferred eighty thousand rubles to Katerina’s name ‘as a dowry or to be used as she saw fit.’ She was a somewhat hysterical old lady—I saw quite a bit of her later in Moscow.

“Well, then, I suddenly receive in the mail four-and-a-half thousand rubles. Obviously, I am very surprised, indeed, quite stunned. Three days later, the promised letter arrives. I still have that letter. I’ll always carry it with me. I’ll die with it. Would you like to see it? I want you to read it. She proposes to me herself in that letter. ‘I love you,’ she writes, ‘I love you madly. It’s all the same if you don’t love me—if only you’re willing to marry me. Don’t be afraid—I won’t interfere with you in any way. I’ll be like a piece of your furniture, like the rug under your feet . . . I want to love you as long as I live. I want to save you from yourself . . . Alyosha, I am not even worthy to rephrase those lines in my own vile words or to repeat them in my vile tone, that loathsome tone of mine which I have never been able to get rid of. That letter pierced something very, very deep inside me and it still hurts me to this day, don’t you see?

“I answered her immediately (I couldn’t possibly go to Moscow right away). The tears were running down my cheeks as I wrote to her. There is one thing I’m ashamed of, though: I mentioned in my letter that she now was a rich heiress with a dowry, while I was still a penniless and uneducated oaf. I dragged money into it that way. I should have kept quiet about money then, but somehow I wrote it without realizing what it would mean to her at first. By the same mail, I wrote to Ivan too, explaining everything to him. He was also in Moscow then, and I wrote him a six-page letter, explaining it to him as best I could. Why are you gaping at me like that? Well, sure, Ivan fell in love with her and he still loves her, and now I realize it was a blunder on my part, a blunder, that is, in the worldly, conventional sense, but perhaps that blunder will save us all yet! Why, can’t you see that she likes him and respects him tremendously? Do you imagine that, after comparing the two of us, she could go on loving a man like me, especially after what happened?”

“I am certain that she can love only a man like you and not a man like him.”

“What she loves is not me but her own virtue,” Dmitry blurted out almost spitefully. His eyes flashed, he laughed awkwardly, and his face turned deep red. Then he banged his fist on the table.

“I swear, Alyosha,” he cried, sounding furious at himself, “and you are free to believe me or not, but it is as true as that God is holy and that Christ is our Lord, I swear that, though I just laughed at her noble feelings, I know she’s a million times better than I am, infinitely superior to me, and that those noble feelings of hers are perfectly sincere, as sincere as an angel’s! And what makes it so tragic is that I know it. What’s wrong with indulging in dramatic gestures? Why, I make dramatic gestures myself, but I know that I’m sincere, completely sincere. As to Ivan, I can well imagine how he must be cursing human nature now, especially a man of his intelligence! Who is given preference over him? A freak who, while already engaged to her, is quite unable to abstain from debauchery in full view of everybody, including her! And a creature like that is accepted, while he is rejected! And why? For no other reason than that, out of sheer gratitude, a woman has decided to do violence to herself and to throw away her life. It makes no sense! Of course, I’ve never talked about that side of it to Ivan and he’s never even hinted at it to me. But I’m sure that life will follow its proper course in the end: the worthy man will occupy his rightful place and the unworthy one will vanish in some dark alley and never be heard of again. And there, in that dark and filthy alley, which is so dear to him, where he feels so much at home, amidst the stench and the dirt, hell perish happily, because that’s what he really wants . . . But I guess I’ve talked myself dry and my words have lost much of their meaning. I’m just slapping them together any old way. But it will happen just as I say: I’ll drown in the mud in my back alley and she’ll marry Ivan.”