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

My spite was roused. I longed to play her the nastiest swinish cad’s trick: to look at her with a sneer, and on the spot where she stood before me to stun her with a tone of voice that only a shopman could use.

“ ‘Four thousand! What do you mean? I was joking. You’ve been counting your chickens too easily, madam. Two hundred, if you like, with all my heart. But four thousand is not a sum to throw away on such frivolity. You’ve put yourself out to no purpose.’

“I should have lost the game, of course. She’d have run away. But it would have been an infernal revenge. It would have been worth it all. I’d have howled with regret all the rest of my life, only to have played that trick. Would you believe it, it has never happened to me with any other woman, not one, to look at her at such a moment with hatred. But, on my oath, I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred⁠—that hate which is only a hair’s-breadth from love, from the maddest love!

“I went to the window, put my forehead against the frozen pane, and I remember the ice burnt my forehead like fire. I did not keep her long, don’t be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer and took out a banknote for five thousand roubles (it was lying in a French dictionary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door into the passage, and, stepping back, made her a deep bow, a most respectful, a most impressive bow, believe me! She shuddered all over, gazed at me for a second, turned horribly pale⁠—white as a sheet, in fact⁠—and all at once, not impetuously but softly, gently, bowed down to my feet⁠—not a boarding-school curtsey, but a Russian bow, with her forehead to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wearing my sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don’t know. It would have been frightfully stupid, of course. I suppose it was from delight. Can you understand that one might kill oneself from delight? But I didn’t stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back in the scabbard⁠—which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I fancy that in telling you about my inner conflict I have laid it on rather thick to glorify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart! Well, so much for that ‘adventure’ with Katerina Ivanovna. So now Ivan knows of it, and you⁠—no one else.”

Dmitri got up, took a step or two in his excitement, pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then sat down again, not in the same place as before, but on the opposite side, so that Alyosha had to turn quite round to face him.

V The Confession of a Passionate Heart⁠—“Heels Up”

“Now,” said Alyosha, “I understand the first half.”

“You understand the first half. That half is a drama, and it was played out there. The second half is a tragedy, and it is being acted here.”

“And I understand nothing of that second half so far,” said Alyosha.

“And I? Do you suppose I understand it?”

“Stop, Dmitri. There’s one important question. Tell me, you were betrothed, you are betrothed still?”

“We weren’t betrothed at once, not for three months after that adventure. The next day I told myself that the incident was closed, concluded, that there would be no sequel. It seemed to me caddish to make her an offer. On her side she gave no sign of life for the six weeks that she remained in the town; except, indeed, for one action. The day after her visit the maidservant slipped round with an envelope addressed to me. I tore it open: it contained the change out of the banknote. Only four thousand five hundred roubles was needed, but there was a discount of about two hundred on changing it. She only sent me about two hundred and sixty. I don’t remember exactly, but not a note, not a word of explanation. I searched the packet for a pencil mark⁠—n-nothing! Well, I spent the rest of the money on such an orgy that the new major was obliged to reprimand me.

“Well, the lieutenant-colonel produced the battalion money, to the astonishment of everyone, for nobody believed that he had the money untouched. He’d no sooner paid it than he fell ill, took to his bed, and, three weeks later, softening of the brain set in, and he died five days afterwards. He was buried with military honors, for he had not had time to receive his discharge. Ten days after his funeral, Katerina Ivanovna, with her aunt and sister, went to Moscow. And, behold, on the very day they went away (I hadn’t seen them, didn’t see them off or take leave) I received a tiny note, a sheet of thin blue paper, and on it only one line in pencil: ‘I will write to you. Wait. K.’ And that was all.

“I’ll explain the rest now, in two words. In Moscow their fortunes changed with the swiftness of lightning and the unexpectedness of an Arabian fairytale. That general’s widow, their nearest relation, suddenly lost the two nieces who were her heiresses and next-of-kin⁠—both died in the same week of smallpox. The old lady, prostrated with grief, welcomed Katya as a daughter, as her one hope, clutched at her, altered her will in Katya’s favor. But that concerned the future. Meanwhile she gave her, for present use, eighty thousand roubles, as a marriage portion, to do what she liked with. She was an hysterical woman. I saw something of her in Moscow, later.

“Well, suddenly I received by post four thousand five hundred roubles. I was speechless with surprise, as you may