The Brothers Karamazov (28 page)

Of course, this is not what Alyosha was thinking when he saw her. Although he was fascinated by her, he wondered at the same time, with a touch of irritation, why she had to drawl as she did, instead of speaking naturally. Evidently she thought that drawing out certain vowels and modulating certain syllables exaggeratedly made her voice beautiful and attractive. Of course, it was her humble background and lack of education that were to blame; her way of talking was the result of a childhood misconception about proper speech. To Alyosha, however, her accent and her intonations seemed incongruous, incompatible with her happy, child-like expression and the radiant purity of her eyes.

After kissing her warmly several times on her laughing lips, Katerina asked her to sit down in an armchair directly in front of Alyosha. Katerina acted as though she were in love with Grushenka.

“This is the first time the two of us have met,” Katerina announced to Alyosha in an excited tone. “It was I who wanted to meet her, to get to know her. I was prepared to go to her place but, as soon as she learned of my wish, she came here herself instead. And I was sure beforehand that we could settle everything between the two of us! I just had a feeling it would be this way . . . Some people tried to convince me not to do it, but I followed my own hunch and I was right! Grushenka has explained everything and told me her plans—like a good angel, she descended and brought peace of mind and joy . . .”

“And you didn’t feel you were too good for me, dear, sweet Miss Katerina,” Grushenka drawled in her sing-song voice, still radiating her warm, cheerful smile.

“You mustn’t say that. You know very well what a bewitching, irresistible charmer you are! How could I possibly have felt I was too good for you? Here, let me kiss once more that lower lip of yours—it’s so full, it looks almost swollen, and I’d like to make it even more swollen, again, and again . . . Ah, Alexei, that laughter of hers—it gladdens one’s heart to look at this angel.”

Alyosha blushed, shaken by tiny, imperceptible shivers.

“You’re certainly very sweet to me, Miss Katerina, but you may find that I don’t really deserve your kindness.”

“How can you say that? How can you not deserve it? I want you to know, Alexei, that Grushenka here is very whimsical, that she can be eccentric, and that she’s very, very proud! And she’s also generous and magnanimous, Alexei, did you know that? The only trouble was that she was unhappy; she was too willing to sacrifice everything for an unworthy and irresponsible person. There was someone once, also an army officer—she fell in love with him and gave herself to him. That was long ago—five years or so. But he forgot her and married someone else. Now he is a widower and has written that he’s on his way here. And you know what? He’s the only man she has ever loved, whom she still loves, and whom she will always love. So he will come back and Grushenka will be happy again. During these past five years she has been desperately unhappy. But who can say anything against her? Who can boast of having enjoyed her special favors? There was only one man who was close to her—the bedridden old merchant, but then he was much more of a father, a guardian, to her than anything else. He appeared on the scene when she was in deep despair, when she was disconsolate after having been deserted by the man she loved . . . And, you know, she would have drowned herself if that old merchant hadn’t stopped her then . . .”

“You’re really defending me too much, dear Miss Katerina. Aren’t you a bit quick to draw conclusions?” Grushenka said, still in her drawling voice.

“I—defend 
you?
 Who am I to defend you? I would never have the presumption to do that, Grushenka, my dear angel! Give me your hand, Grushenka—look at this tender, plump, charming hand, Alexei! And since the owner of this hand has brought me back to life and made me happy, I will kiss it now, kiss the back of it and the palm, see, and here, and here, and here again.” Katerina eagerly kissed Grushenka’s really beautiful, although perhaps rather plump hand three times. Grushenka, although she offered her hand quite willingly, watched Katerina with a charming, nervous little laugh, obviously enjoying having her hand kissed by the lady she addressed as Miss Katerina.

Alyosha turned red. “Perhaps,” the thought flashed through his head, “she’s overdoing her enthusiasm a bit.” He felt somehow tense and nervous.

“You know, Miss Katerina, you won’t make me feel embarrassed by kissing my hand like this in front of young Mr. Karamazov here,” Grushenka said.

“But . . . but I wasn’t trying to embarrass you, Grushenka,” Katerina said, slightly taken aback. “Ah, how little you understand me, my dear!”

“And perhaps you don’t quite understand me either, dear Miss Katerina; perhaps you’ll find that I’m not nearly as nice as I seem. I’m headstrong and my heart is wicked. It was just to have a good laugh that I made poor Mr. Dmitry Karamazov so crazy about me.”

“Yes, but now you’re going to save him. You’ll talk reason to him and explain to him that you love another man, that you’ve loved that other man for a long time, and that now he has asked you to marry him . . .”

“No, no, I never promised you anything of the sort. It was you who said all those things, but I never promised.”

“Well, then I must indeed have misunderstood you,” Katerina said very quietly, turning slightly paler. “You did promise, though . . .”

“No, my angel, Miss Katerina, I promised you nothing at all,” Grushenka interrupted, looking at her with the same cheerful, innocent expression. “You see for yourself, my worthy young lady, how wicked and headstrong I really am, for I’ll do whatever I feel like at the particular moment. I may have promised you something before, but just now I thought to myself: ‘And what if I take a fancy to him again, that Mitya fellow, since I took a fancy to him once and it lasted nearly a whole hour? I may even go right now and tell him to come and stay with me’ . . . That’s how fickle I am.”

“That’s not at all what you said a little while ago,” Katerina whispered barely audibly, “not at all . . .”

“Ah, that was a little while ago! But, you see, I’m a bit soft-hearted and silly. Just think what he’s been through because of me, so what if I suddenly feel sorry for him when I get back home? What then?”

“I never expected . . .”

“Well, dear Miss Katerina, I make you look very good—you’re so kind and generous compared with me. And I suppose you’ll stop loving poor silly me once you’ve got to know me better. So give me your sweet little hand, Miss Katerina, my angel,” Grushenka said in a tender voice, in a tone of great reverence, taking Katerina’s hand in hers, “and I will kiss it just as you kissed mine, dear miss. You kissed my hand three times so, to make things even, I should kiss yours three hundred times. Well, that’s how it is, and after this, let it be according to God’s will. Perhaps I’ll end up as your slave and do everything to please you, as a slave must. So let it be just as God decides for us all. There’s no need for any arrangements, agreements, or promises between us. Ah, what a pretty hand you have, a sweet, sweet hand. Ah, my dear miss, you’re so beautiful it’s just impossible!”

Slowly Grushenka raised Katerina’s hand to her lips with the strange intention of getting even with her in hand-kissing. Katerina made no effort to pull her hand away. She had listened with still flickering hope to Grushenka’s words about the possibility of doing everything to please her one day, like “a slave”; she looked intently into Grushenka’s eyes and saw in them still the same cheerful, innocent trustfulness as before. “She may be a little too naive,” Katerina thought with a spark of hope, as Grushenka was still slowly raising her hand toward her lips . . .

But when her lips were almost touching Katerina’s hand, Grushenka stopped as if something had suddenly occurred to her.

“You know what, Miss Katerina, my angel,” she announced in a voice even more sweet and tender than before, “I think I may still decide not to kiss your hand, after all,” and she broke into a very cheerful tinkling laughter.

“Please yourself . . .” Katerina said with a shudder, “but why are you doing this?”

“I simply want you to remember that you kissed my hand and I didn’t kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes and she looked at Katerina with terrible intensity.

“You’re an insolent creature!” Katerina flared up. She seemed to have suddenly understood. She leapt up from her chair.

Grushenka stood up too, but unhurriedly.

“And now I’ll be able to tell Mitya about you kissing my hand while I wouldn’t kiss yours. I can just imagine how he’ll laugh! . . .”

“Get out, you filthy slut! Get out of here!”

“Oh, you should be ashamed of yourself, talking like that, dear young lady; you shouldn’t use words like that, sweetie.”

“Get out, you whore!” Katerina was screaming now, every part of her face quivering and distorted by rage.

“You’re a fine one to call me a whore! And what about you, going to visit gentlemen after dark to try and peddle your charms for money? Why, I know all about that.”

Katerina let out a wild yell and would have thrown herself on Grushenka if Alyosha had not seized her and held her back with all his strength.

“Don’t move,” he was saying. “Don’t say anything. Don’t answer her. She’ll go. She’ll leave now . . .”

Katerina’s two aunts and the maid came running into the drawing room and the three hurried to her.

“Yes, I’m leaving,” Grushenka said, picking up her shawl from the sofa. “Please, Alyosha, won’t you see me off?”

“Hurry, go, please go,” Alyosha said, clasping his hands beseechingly.

“But I want you to see me off, my sweet boy. I promise to tell you something that’ll please you very much. It was for your sake, Alyosha, that I put on all this show. See me off now. Later you’ll be glad you did.”

Alyosha turned away from her, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands. Grushenka, letting out peals of laughter, ran from the room.

Katerina had some kind of fit: she sobbed, shook convulsively, gasped for breath. The women fussed around her.

“I warned you,” the older aunt said. “I tried to stop you from doing this . . . You’re much too rash. How could you allow this to happen? You know nothing about women of that type, and I’ve heard that this one is the worst of them all . . . I think you’re much too impulsive, Katerina.”

“She’s a wild beast, that’s what she is!” Katerina screamed. “I wish you hadn’t held me back, Alexei. I’d have given her such a beating. I’d have beaten her mercilessly!” She could not restrain herself in front of Alyosha, perhaps she did not even want to. “She must be flogged in public . . .”

Alyosha started backing toward the door.

“But, my God!” Katerina cried out in a different voice now, throwing up her arms in despair. “How could 
he
 be so dishonorable, so inhuman! He told that creature what happened on that terrible, fateful, accursed day when I was, as she put it, ‘trying to peddle my charms for money’—so she knows. Well, for your information, Alexei, your dear brother is a low, despicable man.”

Alyosha wanted to say something, but words would not come to him. His heart contracted painfully.

“Go now, Alexei. I feel ashamed, terribly ashamed . . . But please come back tomorrow. I beg you on my knees to come. And I beg you not to judge me too harshly. I still don’t know what I’ll do with myself!”

Alyosha almost staggered out into the street. He was on the verge of tears himself. The maid came running after him:

“Miss Katerina forgot to give you this letter, sir . . . It’s from Mrs. Khokhlakov and she received it at lunch time.”

Alyosha took the small pink envelope and put it in his pocket, hardly realizing what he was doing.

Chapter 11: One More Reputation Ruined

IT WAS just about a mile from the town to the monastery. Alyosha hurried along the road, which was deserted at that hour. It was almost night and so dark that it was hard to make out anything thirty yards away. About half way, at a crossroads, Alyosha discerned a human shape under a willow tree. When he reached the crossroads, the figure leaped toward him, shouting in a fierce, threatening voice:

“Your money or your life!”

“Why, you . . . Mitya!” Alyosha cried, startled and surprised.

“Ha-ha-ha! You didn’t expect me, did you? I said to myself: ‘Where should I wait for him?’ Near her house? But from there you could have gone three different ways and I might have missed you. So I decided to wait for you here: you were bound to come this way, since there’s no other way to get to the monastery. Go on then—tell me the truth and let it crush me like a cockroach! But what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing, you just frightened me. Oh, Dmitry, that blood on father . . .” Alyosha began to weep. He had been on the verge of tears for a long time and now the sobs finally broke through. “You almost killed him . . . you cursed him . . . and now you’re fooling around . . . ‘Your money or your life’ . . .”

“Why, do you think it’s unbecoming, doesn’t fit the situation, or what?”

“It’s not that, I just wanted to say . . .”

“Wait a moment. Just look at this cold, bleak night, at those big clouds, the wind coming up. So I hid under this willow here to wait for you. Then I suddenly thought (I swear I did): ‘Why should I have to go on like this? What do I have to wait for? Here’s a tree; I can tie my handkerchief and my shirt together and use them as a rope, and if that’s not enough, I have my suspenders too. There’s no reason why I should burden the earth and impose my vile presence on men.’ Just at that moment I heard you coming, and something dawned on me: ‘Why, there is, after all, a human being I love, and here he is, this little brother of mine, whom I love more than anything in the world and who is really the only person in the world I love!’ And I loved you so much, so much at that second, that I said to myself, ‘I must hug him at once, I must!’ But then I had that stupid idea: ‘Let me scare him first, for fun, to amuse him,’ and so I hollered like an idiot, ‘Your money or your life.’ Well, forgive my horseplay—it was just a stupid idea, that’s all. Inside me, though, I’m quite a mess, you know . . . But the hell with it. Tell me, then, what happened there? What did she say? Go on, let me hear it, all of it, don’t spare me: was she mad, did she have a fit?”