The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky (the reader ebook txt) 📖

him. Yesterday’s bottle had already been finished, and the new one was more than half empty. Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for a moment with wide opened eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.

“Excuse me, you see⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… you’ve most likely heard from the forester here in the hut. I’m Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying.”

“That’s a lie!” said the peasant, calmly and confidently.

“A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?”

“I don’t know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches,” said the peasant, speaking thickly.

“You’re bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up, and collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you,” Mitya gasped breathlessly.

“You’re l-lying!” Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya’s legs went cold.

“For mercy’s sake! It isn’t a joke! You’re drunk, perhaps. Yet you can speak and understand⁠ ⁠… or else⁠ ⁠… I understand nothing!”

“You’re a painter!”

“For mercy’s sake! I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to make you, an advantageous offer⁠ ⁠… very advantageous offer, concerning the copse!”

The peasant stroked his beard importantly.

“No, you’ve contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You’re a scoundrel!”

“I assure you you’re mistaken,” cried Mitya, wringing his hands in despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his eyes cunningly.

“No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D’you hear? You’re a scoundrel! Do you understand that?”

Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly “something seemed to hit him on the head,” as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to dawn in his mind, “a light was kindled and I grasped it all.” He stood, stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.

“Why, the man’s drunk, dead drunk, and he’ll go on drinking now for a week; what’s the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? What if she⁠—? Oh, God, what have I done?”

The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table for his night’s lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A child could have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of the forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye could see.

“What despair! What death all round!” he repeated, striding on and on.

He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After some discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they arrived. At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and “unalterable” plan to procure that “accursed money” before evening. “And to think, only to think that a man’s life should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!” he cried, contemptuously. “I’ll settle it today.” And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what might have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have become quite cheerful again.⁠ ⁠… But the thought of her was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like a sharp knife.

At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.

III Goldmines

This was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with such horror. She was just then expecting the “message,” and was much relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day before. She hoped that “please God he won’t come till I’m gone away,” and he suddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him off her hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to Samsonov’s, where she said she absolutely must go “to settle his accounts,” and when Mitya accompanied her at once, she said goodbye to him at the gate, making him promise to come at twelve o’clock to take her home again. Mitya, too, was delighted at this arrangement. If she was sitting at Samsonov’s she could not be going to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s, “if only she’s not lying,” he added at once. But he thought she was not lying from what