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

frightened of anyone? It’s me he’s afraid of, I thought, only me. So Fenya told you, you little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the window that I’d loved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going now to love⁠ ⁠… another. Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool as to think I could love anyone after you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love me? Do you love me?” She jumped up and held him with both hands on his shoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture, gazed into her eyes, at her face, at her smile, and suddenly clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her passionately.

“You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was through spite I tormented you all. It was for spite I drove the old man out of his mind.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember how you drank at my house one day and broke the wineglass? I remembered that and I broke a glass today and drank ‘to my vile heart.’ Mitya, my falcon, why don’t you kiss me? He kissed me once, and now he draws back and looks and listens. Why listen to me? Kiss me, kiss me hard, that’s right. If you love, well, then, love! I’ll be your slave now, your slave for the rest of my life. It’s sweet to be a slave. Kiss me! Beat me, ill-treat me, do what you will with me.⁠ ⁠… And I do deserve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won’t have that.⁠ ⁠…” she suddenly thrust him away. “Go along, Mitya, I’ll come and have some wine, I want to be drunk, I’m going to get drunk and dance; I must, I must!” She tore herself away from him and disappeared behind the curtain. Mitya followed like a drunken man.

“Yes, come what may⁠—whatever may happen now, for one minute I’d give the whole world,” he thought. Grushenka did, in fact, toss off a whole glass of champagne at one gulp, and became at once very tipsy. She sat down in the same chair as before, with a blissful smile on her face. Her cheeks were glowing, her lips were burning, her flashing eyes were moist; there was passionate appeal in her eyes. Even Kalganov felt a stir at the heart and went up to her.

“Did you feel how I kissed you when you were asleep just now?” she said thickly. “I’m drunk now, that’s what it is.⁠ ⁠… And aren’t you drunk? And why isn’t Mitya drinking? Why don’t you drink, Mitya? I’m drunk, and you don’t drink.⁠ ⁠…”

“I am drunk! I’m drunk as it is⁠ ⁠… drunk with you⁠ ⁠… and now I’ll be drunk with wine, too.”

He drank off another glass, and⁠—he thought it strange himself⁠—that glass made him completely drunk. He was suddenly drunk, although till that moment he had been quite sober, he remembered that. From that moment everything whirled about him, as though he were delirious. He walked, laughed, talked to everybody, without knowing what he was doing. Only one persistent burning sensation made itself felt continually, “like a red-hot coal in his heart,” he said afterwards. He went up to her, sat beside her, gazed at her, listened to her.⁠ ⁠… She became very talkative, kept calling everyone to her, and beckoned to different girls out of the chorus. When the girl came up, she either kissed her, or made the sign of the cross over her. In another minute she might have cried. She was greatly amused by the “little old man,” as she called Maximov. He ran up every minute to kiss her hands, “each little finger,” and finally he danced another dance to an old song, which he sang himself. He danced with special vigor to the refrain:

The little pig says⁠—umph! umph! umph!
The little calf says⁠—moo, moo, moo,
The little duck says⁠—quack, quack, quack,
The little goose says⁠—ga, ga, ga.
The hen goes strutting through the porch;
Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she’ll say,
Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she’ll say!

“Give him something, Mitya,” said Grushenka. “Give him a present, he’s poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!⁠ ⁠… Do you know, Mitya, I shall go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to me today that I shall remember all my life.⁠ ⁠… Yes.⁠ ⁠… But today let us dance. Tomorrow to the nunnery, but today we’ll dance. I want to play today, good people, and what of it? God will forgive us. If I were God, I’d forgive everyone: ‘My dear sinners, from this day forth I forgive you.’ I’m going to beg forgiveness: ‘Forgive me, good people, a silly wench.’ I’m a beast, that’s what I am. But I want to pray. I gave a little onion. Wicked as I’ve been, I want to pray. Mitya, let them dance, don’t stop them. Everyone in the world is good. Everyone⁠—even the worst of them. The world’s a nice place. Though we’re bad the world’s all right. We’re good and bad, good and bad.⁠ ⁠… Come, tell me, I’ve something to ask you: come here everyone, and I’ll ask you: Why am I so good? You know I am good. I’m very good.⁠ ⁠… Come, why am I so good?”

So Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk. At last she announced that she was going to dance, too. She got up from her chair, staggering. “Mitya, don’t give me any more wine⁠—if I ask you, don’t give it to me. Wine doesn’t give peace. Everything’s going round, the stove, and everything. I want to dance. Let everyone see how I dance⁠ ⁠… let them see how beautifully I dance.⁠ ⁠…”

She really meant it. She pulled a white cambric handkerchief out of her pocket, and took it by one corner in her right hand, to wave it in the dance. Mitya ran to and fro, the girls were quiet, and got ready to break into a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, hearing that Grushenka wanted to dance, squealed with delight, and ran skipping about in front of her, humming:

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