The Brothers Karamazov (63 page)

“I don’t care. Let’s go wherever you want.”

“What about Grushenka’s? Will you come there?” Rakitin said, after hesitating painfully. He was even trembling in his anxiety.

“Fine, let’s go to Grushenka’s,” Alyosha answered right away in a completely indifferent tone. This tone and the casual way in which Alyosha had accepted came as such a surprise to Rakitin that he almost jumped back upon hearing it.

“Really? You mean it?” Rakitin shouted in amazement. Then, suddenly seizing Alyosha’s arm, he hurriedly pulled him along the path, still fearing that Alyosha might change his mind. They walked in silence now. Rakitin was afraid to say the wrong thing.

“You can’t begin to imagine how glad she’ll be . . .” he muttered at one point, but immediately fell silent again.

Besides, it was not to please Grushenka that Rakitin was taking Alyosha to her place, for he was a serious man and never did anything which didn’t have some personal advantage for him. And now, taking Alyosha to Grushenka’s, he was pursuing a double goal. First, this was a way to get even with Alyosha—that is, to witness “the fall of the upright,” Alyosha’s transformation from a saint to a sinner—and he was savoring that in advance. Second, there was a certain material advantage for him in it, and a quite substantial one, but we shall come back to that later.

“Well, I suppose this just happened to be the right moment,” he thought with spiteful joy, “and I certainly mean to squeeze every drop of advantage out of this welcome opportunity!”

Chapter 3: One Onion

GRUSHENKA LIVED near Cathedral Square, in the busiest section of town. She rented a wooden cottage in the yard behind the house belonging to Mrs. Morozov, a merchant’s widow. Mrs. Morozov’s own house was a rather large two-story stone building, old and unprepossessing. The landlady, a very old woman, lived there with two nieces, themselves already elderly spinsters. She was well off and did not really have to rent out the cottage in her yard, but everyone in town knew that she did so to please her relative, the merchant Samsonov, who was Grushenka’s avowed protector. Some claimed that the jealous old man had originally installed his “protegée” there to have her under Mrs. Morozov’s “sharp eye.” Soon it became quite evident, however, that Grushenka required no “sharp eye” to watch over her behavior. And the old woman not only did not pester her with any surveillance but hardly ever saw her.

It is true, though, that four years had passed since the old merchant had installed her in that cottage, after bringing her back with him from the capital of the province, and much had changed since then. When she had first arrived, she was a slender, shy, eighteen-year-old girl, dreamy, brooding, and timid. People in town knew very little of her past history and what they did know was vague and uncertain. And they didn’t get to know much more as time passed, not even after four years during which Miss Grushenka Svetlov had attracted considerable interest by becoming the town’s acknowledged “great beauty.” It was rumored only that when she was seventeen, she had been seduced and abandoned by some army officer, who had moved elsewhere and married another woman, leaving Grushenka disgraced and dishonored. It was also rumored that, although the old merchant Samsonov had saved her from dire poverty, she originally came from a respectable family, that her father was a deacon or something of that sort. And so in four years the brooding, sensitive, abandoned girl had grown into a blooming, rosy-cheeked, full-bodied Russian beauty, a woman with a strong and determined character, proud, arrogant, with a sharp eye for business, acquisitive, avaricious, and cunning, who by fair means or foul had succeeded, it was rumored, in accumulating a tidy little sum for herself. On one thing, however, everybody seemed in agreement—that in all those four years Grushenka had never been easy to approach and no one except old Samsonov could boast of her favors. This was a perfectly well-established fact, for there had always been many candidates for those favors, particularly in the past year or two. But all their aspirations came to nothing; some of those who sought her favors had to beat an undignified retreat and became the butt of general jokes, for she had a special firm and mocking way of rejecting unwanted advances.

It was also common knowledge that for a year or two the young lady had been engaged in all sorts of “financial operations,” that she had displayed great talents in that field, so that in the end many said she was as sharp as any Jew. Although she didn’t actually go in for usury, she was known, for instance, to go in for buying IOU’s at nominal prices, along with Mr. Fyodor Karamazov, paying something around ten kopeks for a ruble’s worth of debts, and eventually getting back ten times the value of her original investment.

Samsonov was a sick man and during the past year he had lost the use of his swollen legs. This rich, greedy, and implacable widower, who still bullied his grown-up sons, had at first treated Grushenka with a heavy hand and kept her on “short rations,” so the gossip had it. Grushenka had, however, succeeded in emancipating herself from him while instilling in him a limitless trust in her loyalty. The old man, a most astute businessman, was (he has been dead for some time now) quite a personality himself. He was hard as flint and so stingy that, despite his passion for Grushenka, without whom he could not live (and this was especially so in the last two years), he still would not give her any substantial capital; even when she threatened to leave him unless he gave her a large sum, he still never yielded. He, nevertheless, did let her have a small sum and even that fact, when it became known in town, greatly surprised many people.

“You’re quite a business woman yourself,” he told her, giving her eight thousand rubles or so, “so why don’t you operate with it on your own. I warn you, though,” he added, “you won’t get another kopek out of me, except, of course, your regular living allowance, which will be paid to you as long as I live.”

And he kept his word: he died and left everything he had to his sons—whom, during his lifetime, he had treated as if they and their wives were his servants—while Grushenka was not even mentioned in his will. None of this became known until later, but while he was alive Samsonov did help Grushenka with advice on how to run her own “operations” and he would now and then throw some “good thing” her way. When Mr. Karamazov had become Grushenka’s partner in one particular deal and then, to his own great surprise, had found himself head over heels in love with her, Samsonov, who already had one foot in the grave at the time, was vastly amused. It is remarkable that, throughout their entire relationship, Grushenka was apparently always completely frank with her old protector; indeed, he was perhaps the only person in the world whom she ever trusted. But when Dmitry Karamazov fell in love with Grushenka, Samsonov no longer laughed. In fact, he told Grushenka:

“If you really have to choose between those two, you’d better pick the father over the son. But then you must absolutely insist that the old crook marry you and, even before that, make him transfer at least some capital to your name. But, above all, stay away from the Captain, no good will ever come of that.”

These were the very words of the old lecher, who knew he was dying and who, indeed, did die within five months. I would like to mention in passing here that, although many people in our town knew about the monstrous rivalry over Grushenka between the father Karamazov and his son, no one really understood much about the nature of her relations with either of them. Even Grushenka’s two servants testified at the trial (after the catastrophic events we shall describe later) that their mistress received “the younger Mr. Karamazov” for fear that otherwise he might kill her, for, they said, “he did threaten to kill her.” Her two servants were an old cook, a sick, deaf woman who had once worked in the house of Grushenka’s parents, and the old cook’s granddaughter, a lively girl of twenty or so, who was the maid. Otherwise Grushenka lived very frugally and her place was anything but luxurious. The three-room cottage she lived in was rented furnished, and the furniture was of old, red mahogany in the unfashionable style of the 1820’s.

When Alyosha and Rakitin arrived, it was already almost night, but there was still no light in Grushenka’s rooms.

Grushenka herself was lying on a large, cumbersome, mahogany-backed sofa in her drawing room. It was hard and was covered with worn, cracked leather. Her head rested on two white pillows from her bed. She lay quite motionless, stretched out on her back, her hands under her head. She wore a black silk dress and a light lace cap that was very becoming; a lace shawl pinned with a massive gold brooch was thrown over her shoulders. From the way she was dressed she appeared to be expecting visitors.

And, indeed, she was waiting for someone; she seemed tense and impatient. Her face was rather paler than usual, her lips and eyes were burning, and she nervously tapped the wooden arm-rest of the sofa with her foot. The arrival of Rakitin and Alyosha caused a slight commotion, and from the passage they heard Grushenka jump up and ask, “Who is it?” in a frightened voice. But the young maid, who had let them in, reassured her mistress at once:

“It’s all right, ma’am, it’s not him—it’s someone else.”

“I wonder what’s going on here?” Rakitin mumbled, pushing Alyosha ahead of him into the drawing room.

Grushenka stood by the sofa, still looking frightened. A thick coil of dark brown hair suddenly escaped from under her cap and slipped onto her shoulder, but she paid no attention to it and made no attempt to put it back in place; she gazed intently at her visitors until she made out who they were.

“Ah, so it’s you, Rakitin! You gave me a scare! And who’s this with you? Ah, just look who he’s brought along with him!” she cried in surprise when she recognized Alyosha.

“Why don’t you have some candles brought in?” Rakitin said in a familiar tone that suggested he could even give orders to the servants here.

“Candles . . . yes, right . . . Here, Fenya, get him a candle . . . But what a time to choose to bring guests!” she cried again, glancing at Alyosha, and then, turning toward the mirror, she quickly started to tuck the escaped coil of hair in under her cap with both hands. She seemed displeased about something.

“Why, have I inconvenienced you by any chance?” Rakitin asked, immediately feeling offended.

“You frightened me, that’s what you did, Rakitin,” Grushenka said, and then looked smilingly at Alyosha. “But please, don’t you be afraid of me, Alyosha dear, for I’m terribly pleased to see you, my unexpected guest! Rakitin frightened me because I thought it was Mitya breaking into the house. You see, I lied to him today. I gave my word and he believed me, but it was a lie. I told him that I was going to my old man Samsonov’s house for the whole evening and would stay there very late counting money. For, you see, I go to his house every week and we work together on the accounts. We lock ourselves in and he bangs the abacus beads about while I write down the figures in the books, for I’m the only one he trusts. So Mitya believed me when I said I was going there, but instead I locked myself in here. I’m waiting for a message, you know. I don’t understand really why Fenya let you in. Fenya, Fenya! Run out to the gate and have a good look around to make sure that the Captain isn’t there. Perhaps he’s hidden somewhere, watching. I’m terribly afraid of him!”

“There’s no one around, ma’am—I just looked. I keep peering through the crack every minute. I’m frightened myself, ma’am.”

“Are the shutters bolted, Fenya? And I want you to draw the heavy curtains too. Here, that’s better!” and she herself closed the heavy curtains. “For if he sees light in the windows, he’ll want to come in. You know, Alyosha, I’m particularly afraid of your brother Mitya today,” Grushenka said.

She was talking loudly, and although she really seemed alarmed, there was also a certain excited challenge in her voice.

“Why do you say you’re so particularly frightened of that charmer Mitya?” Rakitin asked her. “You don’t usually seem all that afraid of him. In fact, you make him dance to your tune whenever it pleases you.”

“I told you—I’m expecting a message, a most alluring and promising little message, and dear Mitya would be very much in my way just now. Besides, I feel he didn’t really believe me when I told him I was going to Samsonov’s house. I’m sure he’s sitting right now in his hiding place behind his father’s house watching for me. But then, if he’s sitting and waiting for me there, at least he won’t come here and that’s good. I did go to Samsonov’s house. Mitya himself escorted me there, and that was when I told him I’d stay until midnight and he should come and escort me back home at that time. After he left, I stayed for ten minutes and then hurried home as fast as I could, running all the way, and I was terribly afraid of bumping into him on the way.”

“And why are you dressed as if you were going out somewhere? Just look at that curious bonnet you’ve got on!”

“Oh, how inquisitive you are yourself, Rakitin. But anyway I’ve already told you I’m waiting for a certain message and, as soon as it arrives, I’ll have to fly off somewhere, and I mean fly off—you’ll see me vanish. Well, now you know why I’m all dressed up—I want to be ready as soon as I get the word.”

“And where do you plan to fly?”

“You want to know too much, Rakitin, and too much knowledge will make you old before your time.”

“Look at her! She’s all happy and excited . . . I’ve never seen you like this before. And all dressed up as if for a ball . . .” Rakitin kept muttering, examining Grushenka from various angles.

“What can a fellow like you know about balls?” Grushenka said.

“And you, how much do you know about them?”

“I’ve seen a ball. Two years ago, my Samsonov married off one of his sons and I watched the ball from the gallery. Besides, why should I waste my time talking to you, Rakitin, when I have this prince charming standing before me. What a visitor I have tonight! Alyosha, my pet, I look at you and I can hardly believe you are here, in my house! To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect to see you here, for I never thought you’d be willing to come. And although this is not the best moment, I’m madly pleased you have come! Sit down, my dear, here, right here, on the sofa. Good, that’s the way, my young knight in shining armor! I simply cannot believe it—I’m still in a fog . . . Ah, Rakitin, if only you’d brought him yesterday or the day before! . . . I’m awfully glad, though, and perhaps it’s even better that he’s come at this moment and not two days ago . . .”