Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
Book online «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed,
confessed, and gave it back.”
“And what then?”
“Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen
something?”
“I have,” said Mitya, winking slyly.
“What have you stolen?” inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.
“I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years
old, and gave it back three days after.”
As he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won’t you come now?” called Andrey from
the door of the shop.
“Are you ready? We’ll come!” Mitya started. “A few more last words
and-Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as
well! That box” (the one with the pistols) “put under my seat.
Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyitch, don’t remember evil against me.”
“But you’re coming back to-morrow?”
“Will you settle the little bill now?” cried the clerk,
springing forward.
“Oh yes, the bill. Of course.”
He pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked
out three hundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran
hurriedly out of the shop. Everyone followed him out, bowing and
wishing him good luck. Andrey, coughing from the brandy he had just
swallowed, jumped up on the box. But Mitya was only just taking his
seat when suddenly to his surprise he saw Fenya before him. She ran up
panting, clasped her hands before him with a cry, and plumped down
at his feet.
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don’t harm my
mistress. And it was I told you all about it…. And don’t murder him,
he came first, he’s hers! He’ll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now.
That’s why he’s come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear,
don’t take a fellow creature’s life!”
“Tut-tut-tut! That’s it, is it? So you’re off there to make
trouble!” muttered Pyotr Ilyitch. “Now, it’s all clear, as clear as
daylight. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you
mean to behave like a man,” he shouted aloud to Mitya. “Do you hear,
Dmitri?”
“The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I’ll throw them into the pool
on the road,” answered Mitya. “Fenya, get up, don’t kneel to me. Mitya
won’t hurt anyone, the silly fool won’t hurt anyone again. But I
say, Fenya,” he shouted, after having taken his seat. “I hurt you just
now, so forgive me and have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel…. But it
doesn’t matter if you don’t. It’s all the same now. Now then,
Andrey, look alive, fly along full speed!”
Andrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.
“Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!…”
“He’s not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic,” Pyotr
Ilyitch thought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and
see the cart packed with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing
that they would deceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed
with himself, he turned away with a curse and went to the tavern to
play billiards.
“He’s a fool, though he’s a good fellow,” he muttered as he
went. “I’ve heard of that officer, Grushenka’s former flame. Well,
if he has turned up…. Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I’m not his
nurse! Let them do what they like! Besides, it’ll all come to nothing.
They’re a set of brawlers, that’s all. They’ll drink and fight,
fight and make friends again. They are not men who do anything real.
What does he mean by ‘I’m stepping aside, I’m punishing myself’? It’ll
come to nothing! He’s shouted such phrases a thousand times, drunk, in
the taverns. But now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit’- they’re fond
of fine phrases, the villains. Am I his nurse? He must have been
fighting, his face was all over blood. With whom? I shall find out
at the Metropolis. And his handkerchief was soaked in blood…. It’s
still lying on my floor…. Hang it!”
He reached the tavern in a bad humour and at once made up a
game. The game cheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly
began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in
for some cash again-something like three thousand roubles, and had
gone to Mokroe again to spend it with Grushenka…. This news roused
singular interest in his listeners. They all spoke of it, not
laughing, but with a strange gravity. They left off playing.
“Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?”
Questions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov’s present was
received with scepticism.
“Hasn’t he robbed his old father?- that’s the question.”
“Three thousand! There’s something odd about it.”
“He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him,
here. And it was three thousand he talked about…”
Pyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his
answers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya’s face and hands,
though he had meant to speak of it at first.
They began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya
died away. But by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no
more desire for billiards; he laid down the cue, and without having
supper as he had intended, he walked out of the tavern. When he
reached the marketplace he stood still in perplexity, wondering at
himself. He realised that what he wanted was to go to Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s and find out if anything had happened there. “On
account of some stupid nonsense as it’s sure to turn out-am I going
to wake up the household and make a scandal? Fooh! damn it, is it my
business to look after them?”
In a very bad humour he went straight home, and suddenly
remembered Fenya. “Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just
now,” he thought with vexation, “I should have heard everything.”
And the desire to speak to her, and so find out, became so pressing
and importunate that when he was halfway home he turned abruptly and
went towards the house where Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he
knocked. The sound of the knock in the silence of the night sobered
him and made him feel annoyed. And no one answered him; everyone in
the house was asleep.
“And I shall be making a fuss!” he thought, with a feeling of
positive discomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell
to knocking again with all his might, filling the street with clamour.
“Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!” he muttered at
each knock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his
knocks on the gate.
“I Am Coming, Too!”
BUT Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a
little more than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey’s three horses
galloped at such a pace that the distance might be covered in an
hour and a quarter. The swift motion revived Mitya. The air was
fresh and cool, there were big stars shining in the sky. It was the
very night, and perhaps the very hour, in which Alyosha fell on the
earth, and rapturously swore to love it for ever and ever.
All was confusion, confusion in Mitya’s soul, but although many
things were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was
yearning for her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her
for the last time. One thing I can say for certain; his heart did
not waver for one instant. I shall perhaps not be believed when I
say that this jealous lover felt not the slightest jealousy of this
new rival, who seemed to have sprung out of the earth. If any other
had appeared on the scene, he would have been jealous at once, and
would-perhaps have stained his fierce hands with blood again. But as
he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no hostility even, for the
man who had been her first lover…. It is true he had not yet seen
him.
“Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his;
this was her first love which, after five years, she had not
forgotten; so she had loved him only for those five years, and I,
how do I come in? What right have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make
way! What am I now? Now everything is over apart from the officer even
if he had not appeared, everything would be over…”
These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had
been capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His
present plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya’s
first words, it had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a
flash, with all its consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution,
there was confusion in his soul, an agonising confusion: his
resolution did not give him peace. There was so much behind that
tortured him. And it seemed strange to him, at moments, to think
that he had written his own sentence of death with pen and paper: “I
punish myself,” and the paper was lying there in his pocket, ready;
the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next morning, he
would meet the first warm ray of “golden-haired Phoebus.”
And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had
left behind and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the
thought of it sank into his heart with despair. There was one moment
when he felt an impulse to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to
pull out his loaded pistol, and to make an end of everything without
waiting for the dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. The horses
galloped on, “devouring space,” and as he drew near his goal, again
the thought of her, of her alone, took more and more complete
possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful images that had
been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if only for a
moment, if only from a distance!
“She’s now with him,” he thought, “now I shall see what she
looks like with him, her first love, and that’s all I want.” Never had
this woman, who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such
love in his breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to
himself, a feeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before
her! “I will efface myself!” he said, in a rush of almost hysterical
ecstasy.
They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and
though Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter
a word, either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly
his three lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out
in horrible anxiety:
“Andrey! What if they’re asleep?”
This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him
before.
“It may well be that they’re gone to bed by now, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch.”
Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed… he was rushing
there… with such feelings… while they were asleep… she was
asleep, perhaps, there too…. An angry feeling surged up in his
heart.
“Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!” he cried, beside
himself.
“But maybe they’re not in bed!” Andrey went on after a pause.
“Timofey said they were a lot of them there-.”
“At the station?”
“Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov’s, at the inn, where
they let
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