The Brothers Karamazov (77 page)

Grushenka was the first to see him.

“Ah . . .” she shrieked.

Chapter 7: The First And Rightful One

WITH HIS long, rapid stride Mitya walked up to the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, “please don’t mind me . . . don’t be afraid. Why, I’m not going to do anything,” he said, suddenly addressing Grushenka, who had pulled back toward Kalganov and was tightly clutching his hand. “I’m going away too, you see. I’m only staying until morning . . . May I then . . . may I join you, please, as one passing traveler joins other travelers? Only till morning, and for the last time in this room?”

At the end he was addressing the pudgy little man with the pipe, who was sprawled on the sofa. The man removed his pipe from his lips and said sternly with a strong Polish accent:

“This is a private party, sir. I’m sure there are other rooms in this inn.”

“Why, Mr. Karamazov, it’s you!” Kalganov said, suddenly recognizing him. “Why, do join us. Please, sit down! How are you?”

“Hello, my dear friend!” Mitya said happily, reacting at once to his friendliness and shaking his hand across the table. “You know, I’ve always liked you.”

“Ouch!” Kalganov cried with a laugh. “What a handshake—you almost broke my fingers!”

“That’s just his normal way of shaking hands,” Grushenka said, smiling but still looking apprehensively at Dmitry. She had gathered just from looking at him that he would not turn suddenly violent right now, but there was still a good deal of alarm mixed with a tremendous curiosity in the way she looked at him. There was something about him that struck her as uncanny; she would never have expected him to behave and speak as he was doing in those circumstances.

“How do you do, sir,” Maximov said in a honeyed voice, following suit, and Mitya responded most eagerly to this overture too.

“I’m so glad you’re here too,” he said to him. “But, gentlemen, gentlemen . . .” Mitya again turned to the pipe-smoking Pole, apparently considering him the most important person in the party. “As I was hurrying here . . . I was so anxious to spend my last night and my last hour in this room . . . in the room where I once worshipped my queen! Forgive me, sir,” he cried, becoming agitated, “as I was speeding here, I swore . . . I promised . . . Oh, please, don’t be afraid of me—this is my very last night! Let us drink to our reconciliation, sir! They will bring in the wine right away . . . I’ve brought this, see . . .” and he suddenly produced his wad of bills. “Allow me, my good sir—I want music and noise, just like that other time . . . The useless worm will crawl on the earth for the last time, and disappear! Let me relive my happiest hour on my last night!”

He was almost choking. There was much more he wanted to say, but only inarticulate exclamations escaped his lips. The Pole stared fixedly at the wad of bills in Mitya’s hands; then he threw Grushenka a quick glance, indicating his bewilderment.

“If my queen permits . . .” he began slowly in his Polish accent, but Grushenka impatiently interrupted him.

“You pronounce everything so funnily—I suppose you mean ‘queen’ but it sounded more like ‘quin’ or something. I can’t help laughing, listening to you two . . . Sit down, Mitya, and tell me what you’ve been trying to say. And don’t frighten me anymore. Tell me—you won’t try to frighten me, will you? For if you won’t, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me frighten you?” Mitya cried, throwing up his hands. “Oh no, you and he, you can go right ahead, and I’ll step out of your way so as not to disturb you!” And to everyone’s complete surprise, even his own, he flung himself astride a chair and burst into abundant tears, turning his head away from them, toward the opposite wall, and hugging the back of the chair.

“Ah, come on, Mitya, stop it, you crazy man,” Grushenka said reproachfully. “That’s the way it was with him when he used to come and see me: he would talk and talk and say all sorts of things, and I wouldn’t understand a word. And once he burst into tears, just like now—a real shame! Tell me, what are you weeping about? 
I would understand if you had some good reason at least
,” she added rather enigmatically, irritatedly stressing every word.

“I . . . I’m not weeping . . .” Mitya turned around, turning his chair with him, and began to laugh, but not in his abrupt, wooden way; this was a nervous, convulsive laughter.

“Oh, this is no good, not like this,” Grushenka said, trying to calm him. “Come, Mitya, cheer up, cheer up now. You know, I’m awfully pleased that you’ve come, terribly pleased! I want him to sit here, with us,” she said imperiously, addressing no one in particular, although she looked at the man on the sofa. “I want him here. Do you understand me, all of you? For if he leaves, I leave too!” she added with flashing eyes.

“Whatever my tsarina says is law to me,” the Pole said gallantly, raising Grushenka’s hand and kissing it. “Please, sir, join our company!” he said, inviting Mitya with a gracious gesture.

Mitya leaped up again and was obviously about to deliver himself of another of his speeches, but instead he just said:

“Let’s drink to it, Mr. Pole.”

This made them all laugh.

“Thank heaven! I thought he was going to make another speech,” Grushenka cried nervously. “Listen, Mitya,” she said firmly, “I don’t want you to keep jumping up like that. But it’s nice of you to have brought champagne with you. I’m going to have some myself, for I loathe liqueurs. The best part of it, though, is that you’ve come yourself. It was deadly boring here . . . But tell me, have you come to have another wild spree here? Put that money back in your pocket, for heaven’s sake, Mitya! Where did you get all that?”

Mitya, who was still holding the crumpled bills in his hand—bills that had attracted everyone’s attention, particularly the two Polish gentlemen’s—looked at her in sheepish embarrassment and quickly thrust the money into his pocket. He turned red. At that moment, the landlord brought in an opened bottle of champagne and glasses. Mitya grabbed the bottle, but a lost look appeared in his eyes and he seemed to have forgotten what to do with it. Kalganov took it out of his hand and poured the champagne into the glasses.

“Get us another bottle, and still another!” Mitya shouted to the landlord and, forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had formally invited to drink to their reconciliation with him, he emptied his glass without waiting for the others. A sudden change came over him: instead of the solemn, tragic look he had worn when he came in, his expression became that of a small child. He became meek and subdued, looked at the others shyly and cheerfully, tittering nervously and politely, behaving like a grateful little dog who has misbehaved but has now been forgiven and allowed back into the room, and is petted on the head. He seemed to have forgotten everything and was looking at his companions admiringly, a child-like smile on his face. He kept looking at Grushenka and laughing and gradually moving his chair closer to hers.

At the same time he observed the two Poles with curiosity, still unable to quite make them out. Mitya was impressed by the dignified bearing of the one on the sofa, by his Polish accent, and above all his pipe. “Well, why shouldn’t he smoke that pipe of his if he enjoys it?” Mitya mused contemplatively. So far, Mitya had no misgivings about the Polish gentleman’s rather bloated, almost middle-aged face, with its very short nose and the stringy, dyed, arrogant moustache beneath it. Mitya didn’t even particularly object to his very poor-quality, Siberian-made wig with the hair absurdly combed forward at the temples. “I suppose that’s how wigs are supposed to be,” Mitya simply concluded. As to the other Pole, who sat by the wall at some distance and looked at the company with scorn and defiance as he listened to the general conversation, Mitya noticed only that he was a little younger than the one on the sofa. He was struck by the huge size of the man, which was especially impressive in contrast with his fellow Pole. “I bet that fellow must be over six foot nine,” Mitya thought; and it somehow occurred to him that the big Pole was probably a friend of the little Pole’s in a somewhat subordinate position, “a kind of bodyguard,” flashed through Mitya’s head; but in any case, he decided, it was the little pipe-smoking Pole who was in charge. But that didn’t strike Mitya as at all strange either—it was perfectly proper and just as it should be. Having turned into a little dog, there was no sense of rivalry left in Mitya. As to Grushenka’s strange attitude and her rather enigmatic remarks, he had not yet made anything out of them; he felt only that she was warm and friendly toward him, that she had “forgiven” him and allowed him to sit next to her, and this made his heart throb with joy. He watched her with boundless admiration as she sipped champagne from her glass.

At one point, however, he suddenly became aware of a general silence and his surprised and expectant look, wandering from one face to another, seemed to ask them: “What are we waiting for, isn’t it time to begin?”

Kalganov seemed to have guessed what Mitya felt.

“Before you came in, he kept telling all kinds of crazy stories and making us laugh,” he said, indicating Maximov with his head.

Mitya quickly glanced first at Kalganov, then at Maximov.

“Crazy stories? Ha-ha-ha,” he said with a short, wooden laugh, as if pleased at something.

“He claims, for one thing, that in the 1820’s, our cavalry all got themselves Polish wives. Can anything beat that for nonsense?”

“Polish wives, ha!” Mitya exclaimed with great delight.

Kalganov was aware of Mitya’s relations with Grushenka; he probably also had a good idea of what the Pole meant to her, but he was not much concerned with all that. The person who interested him now was Maximov. He and Maximov had just happened by chance to stop at the guest house and there he had met the two Poles for the first time in his life. He had met Grushenka before and once had even gone to her place with someone or other, but on that occasion she had rather disliked him. Here, however, before Mitya’s arrival, she had looked at him rather warmly and even flirted with him, although Kalganov seemed quite insensitive to her attentions. This most elegantly dressed young gentleman was hardly more than twenty, had an extremely pleasant face, a fine complexion, and thick, light-brown hair. But in that charming face of his there was a pair of very light-blue eyes that shone with intelligence and sometimes revealed a depth of thought strange in a boy of his age. This, however, did not prevent him from sometimes behaving and talking like a child, a fact of which he was quite aware himself but about which he was completely unconcerned. In general, he was eccentric, even whimsical, although always pleasant and warm. At times, though, there was an absent, obstinate look about him: he could listen to you without taking his eyes off you, while thinking of something completely different. He was also somewhat unpredictable—at times appearing lazy, almost listless, and at others, becoming extremely excited at the slightest provocation.

“Imagine, I’ve been dragging Maximov around with me for four days,” Kalganov said in his lazy, elegant drawl, which, nevertheless, was completely unaffected. “Do you know, I became interested in him the day your brother Ivan pushed him out of your father’s carriage so violently and he went flying through the air. I was so curious about him that I took him with me to my place in the country. But he talked such a collection of nonsense and lies all the time that I became quite ashamed to be seen with him and now I’m taking him back to town.”

“The gentleman can never even have seen a Polish lady in his life,” the pipe-smoking Pole remarked, “for what he claims is impossible.”

Obviously the Pole spoke Russian much better than he pretended and deliberately tried to pronounce Russian words in such a way as to make them sound Polish.

“Except that I was married to a Polish lady myself,” Maximov countered with a chuckle.

“Why, did you serve in the cavalry then, since it was the Russian cavalry that you were talking about? Are you a cavalryman then?” Kalganov quickly asked him.

“Yes, quite—is he a cavalryman then? Ha, ha!” Mitya cried, listening eagerly and quickly shifting his questioning glance to each one who started to speak, as if he were expecting to hear God knows what from each of them.

“N-no, not really,” Maximov said, turning to him. “What I was trying to say was that those pretty Polish ladies—some of them are very pretty, by the way—when they dance a mazurka with our Uhlans . . . Well, as soon as the mazurka is over, she immediately sits herself on his lap, just like a little white kitten . . . while her gentlemanly Polish papa and her lady-like Polish mamma watch her without objecting. And then, the next day, the Russian Uhlan comes to the house and asks for the girl’s hand, see? He-he-he!” Maximov ended in a chuckle.

“The useless windbag . . .” the big Pole growled, crossing one leg over the other, and Mitya was struck by the size of his boot with its thick, muddy sole. In general, he noted, the clothes of the two Polish gentlemen could have done with some cleaning.

“Windbag?” Grushenka said angrily. “What does this fellow mean by calling people names like that?”

“What the other gentleman saw in Poland was peasant girls, not ladies,” the pipe-smoking Pole explained to her.

“You can bet on that!” the big Pole put in scornfully.

“That’s what you think,” Grushenka snapped back. “He says it’s different. Why try to stop people from talking? It’s more fun if they say what they want.”

“I’m not stopping him,” the Pole with the hairpiece said, giving Grushenka a long, scrutinizing look. Then, with a most dignified air, he went back to puffing at his pipe.

“No, no, no, the Polish gentleman is right.” Kalganov suddenly became agitated as if a matter of the utmost importance were at stake. “As far as I know, Maximov has never even been to Poland, so how can he speak about it? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you, Maximov?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I got married in Smolensk Province. But then it was an Uhlan who brought my future wife from Poland with him, along with her mamma, her auntie, and some other lady relative of hers who had a grown-up son. So he found her in Poland, brought her fresh from there, and it was only after that that he handed her over to me. He was a young lieutenant from our town, a very nice young man indeed. At first he was going to marry her himself, but he decided not to because she turned out to be lame.”