The Brothers Karamazov (72 page)

“What? She left? When did she leave?”

“She left right after she came—she stayed in the house for just a minute, told Mr. Samsonov something that made him laugh, and then ran off.”

“You’re lying, you damned old hag!” Mitya roared.

“Help, help!”

But Mitya had vanished. He was galloping at full speed toward Mrs. Morozov’s house. Just about fifteen minutes earlier, Grushenka had left for Mokroye. Fenya, the maid, and the old cook, Matryona, her grandmother, were sitting in the kitchen when Dmitry suddenly broke in. At the sight of him, Fenya started to call for help.

“Why are you yelling?” Dmitry roared. “Where is she?” And before the girl, paralyzed with terror, could answer him, he threw himself down at her feet.

“Fenya, in the name of Christ our Lord, where is she? Please, Fenya, tell me . . .”

“But I don’t know, sir, I don’t know, Mr. Karamazov. I swear to God I don’t know; may I die here and now if I have any idea,” Fenya started to assure him. “You yourself went out with her . . .”

“But she came back after that, didn’t she?”

“No, sir, she didn’t. I swear to God she didn’t!”

“You’re lying. I can see that just by the way you were frightened. So where is she?”

He rushed out again. The terrified Fenya was only too glad to get off so easily, but she realized that he did not have time to argue with her then and that otherwise she might have paid dearly for her lies. But as he was rushing out, he did something that surprised her: he had already opened the door with one hand when he suddenly paused for a second, snatched the pestle out of the mortar with his other hand, and slipped it into the side pocket of his coat.

“My God, he’ll end up murdering somebody!” Fenya cried, flinging up her hands in despair when he had gone.

Chapter 4: In The Dark

WHERE WAS he off to? He had no hesitation: “The only place she can be now is at father’s . . . She must have rushed straight there from Samsonov’s. Everything’s clear now . . . Her whole scheme of deception is obvious . . .” These fragments of thought whirled around in his head. He didn’t stop at Maria Kondratievna’s yard. “I mustn’t show myself there, I mustn’t . . . I don’t want them to be warned . . . Otherwise, someone will warn them . . . Maria Kondratievna must be in on it with them . . . And so is Smerdyakov . . . They’ve all been bribed . . .”

He changed his plan of action. He gave his father’s house a wide berth, taking first a sidestreet, then Dmitrievsky Avenue, crossed the bridge, and entered the small lane at the back of the house. It was a deserted lane: no one lived there. On one side was a wattle fence with vegetable patches behind it and on the other was the tall, strong fence around his father’s garden. There, he picked the spot where, according to what he’d heard people say, Reeking Lizaveta had once climbed over the fence. “If she could do it,” the thought somehow flashed through his head, “why can’t I?” And sure enough, he jumped up and caught hold of the top of the fence; then, making a great effort, he pulled himself up and was astride the fence. The bath-house was right there by the fence. Beyond it, he saw the lighted windows of the main house. “That’s it, that light’s in the old man’s bedroom window—she’s there!” He jumped down from the wall into the garden. And although he knew that Gregory was ill, that Smerdyakov, too, was probably sick in bed, and that there was no one who could hear him, he instinctively stood still, holding his breath and listening. Silence lay all around him. It so happened that the night was completely still, without a breath of wind.

“Only the stillness whispering . . .” Somehow the line of a poem flashed through Mitya’s head. “I hope no one heard me jump down . . . I don’t think anyone did.” He waited quietly for a minute and then walked stealthily across the lawn, keeping close to the trees and bushes, muffling each step and constantly listening to make sure he made no noise. It took him five minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that there were several tall, thick elder and guelder-rose bushes growing right under the windows. As he went past it, he carefully noted that the door leading to the garden on the left side of the house was locked. When he reached the bushes, he hid there for a while. He tried not to breathe. “I must wait—if they heard my footsteps, they’ll be listening now. I want them to be reassured . . . Above all, I mustn’t cough or sneeze . . .”

He waited there for two minutes. His heart was pounding wildly. At moments he felt he was suffocating. “It doesn’t seem as if my heart will ever stop palpitating—I can’t wait any longer.” He was standing in the dark shadow of the bushes, the top branches of which were bathed in the light from the window. “The guelder-rose berries—they’re so red!” he whispered for God knows what reason. In a few measured, noiseless strides, he reached the window and raised himself on tiptoe. He could see into his father’s bedroom clearly now. It was a rather small room divided in half by a red screen. “‘Chinese’ screen, the old man calls it,” flashed through Mitya’s head, “and Grushenka must be behind it.” He looked intently at his father. The old man was wearing a new, striped silk dressing gown, tied at the waist with a tasseled cord. Mitya had never seen that dressing gown before. An immaculate white linen shirt with gold studs showed under the dressing gown. On his head Mr. Karamazov had the same red bandage that he had worn when Alyosha had seen him last. “All dressed up,” Mitya thought. His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought; suddenly he raised his head as if listening for something but then, hearing nothing, gave up, walked to the table, poured himself half a glass of brandy, drank it down, and took a deep breath. After that he stood still for a while, then went over to the mirror by the window, pushed his red bandage aside slightly, and examined the bruises and scratches that were still clearly visible. “He’s all by himself,” Mitya decided, “he must be.” The old man took his eyes off the mirror, walked to the window, and suddenly looked out. Mitya quickly jumped back into the shadow.

“Perhaps she’s behind the screen, asleep already.” The thought stabbed at Mitya’s heart. Mr. Karamazov left the window. “No, he’s still waiting for her to come. Why else would he be looking out of the window into the darkness? He’s dying of impatience . . .” Mitya went back to the window and looked in again. The old man was sitting at the table, looking disappointed, his elbow on the table and his cheek resting on the palm of his right hand. Mitya watched him intently.

“He’s all by himself, all by himself . . .” he kept muttering under his breath. “He wouldn’t have that look on his face if she were there with him.” And, strange as it may seem, he suddenly felt cheated somehow, because she was not there. The absurdity of this must have struck him for he at once gave himself an explanation for his strange feeling: “It’s not because she isn’t here. It’s because I can’t be sure whether she is or not.”

Later Mitya remembered that at that moment his brain worked with the utmost lucidity and that he took in every minute detail. At the same time, however, an acute anguish from the uncertainty of the situation mounted within him. “Is she there or isn’t she, after all!” His impatience boiled up in him and suddenly he made up his mind. He lifted his hand and knocked on the window pane. He gave the signal the old man and Smerdyakov had agreed on: first—two spaced knocks, then—three knocks closer together, indicating that Grushenka had arrived. The old man started violently, jerked his head back, and rushed over to the window. Mitya leaped sideways into the shadow. Mr. Karamazov opened the window and stuck his head out.

“Grushenka?” he called out in a strange quivering whisper. “Is that you, Grushenka? Where are you, my beauty? Where are you, my angel?”

He was terribly agitated and could hardly control his breathing.

“So there’s no one in there,” Mitya decided.

“Where are you then?” the old man called again, sticking his head farther out of the window and then his shoulders, as he looked into the darkness in all directions, right and left. “Come here, I’ve got a present for you. Come in, I’ll show it to you . . .”

“Must be that envelope with the three thousand rubles,” flashed through Mitya’s head.

“But where are you? Are you by the door? Wait, I’ll let you in . . .”

The old man almost climbed out of the window in an effort to make out Grushenka there in the darkness by the door. One more second and he certainly would have run to unlock the door without waiting for Grushenka’s answer. Mitya watched him from the side without stirring a muscle. He had a full view of the old man’s profile that was so loathsome to him, with his protuberant Adam’s apple, his hooked nose, his lips grinning in lecherous anticipation, all sharply outlined by the light of the lamp on the old man’s left. A horrible, frantic fury surged up in Mitya: “So this is my rival! This is the man who’s made such a hell, such a nightmare, of my life!” This was the sudden tidal wave of hatred and vengeful fury that Mitya, as if in anticipation, had described to Alyosha when they had met in the summer house and he had told his young brother that he might kill their father. “How can you say that, Mitya?” Alyosha had asked him then in disbelief, to which he had replied: “I don’t know, I don’t know . . . Perhaps I won’t kill him. But maybe I will. 
I’m afraid I’ll hate the sight of him too much at that moment
. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer . . . It’s a direct, spontaneous loathing. That’s what I’m afraid of. I feel I won’t be able to resist the temptation.”

And now, as he had foreseen, that spontaneous loathing was overwhelming him. He no longer knew what he was doing. The brass pestle that had been in his pocket was now in his hand . . .

*

But, as Mitya was to put it later, “God was watching over me that night . . .”

At that very second Gregory, who was laid up in bed, awoke. Earlier that evening he had undergone the treatment Smerdyakov had described to Ivan: with the assistance of his wife, he had rubbed himself all over with a mixture of vodka and a certain potent infusion, had drunk what was left of it as his wife whispered a certain prayer over him, and then had gone to sleep. Martha had drunk some of the potion too and, since she was not used to spirits, had fallen into a deep sleep beside her husband.

But, quite unaccountably, Gregory awoke late at night and, after thinking for a while, despite the persistent pain in the small of his back, sat up in bed, deliberated for another minute or so, got up, and hurriedly dressed. He may have been worried that all the time he was lying in bed the house was unguarded, and “at such a dangerous time,” too. Laid low by his epileptic seizure, Smerdyakov was lying immobile in his little room. Martha was as motionless as a log. “The woman had a bit too much of it this time,” Gregory thought, glancing at her, and stepped out onto the porch of the servants’ cottage. He thought he would just look around from the porch, for walking was too strenuous for him in his weak state and, besides, the pain in the small of his back and in his right leg was becoming unbearable. But he suddenly remembered that that evening he had forgotten to lock the gate between the yard and the garden. Being a man of order and a meticulous observer of established ways and routines, Gregory, limping and twisted with pain, went down from the porch into the yard. And, just as he had feared, the gate leading into the garden was wide open. Without thinking about it, he stepped into the garden. He thought he heard something, glanced to the left, and saw the open window of his master’s bedroom, which was empty now, with no one looking out of it. “Why is that window open—it’s not summer . . .” Gregory wondered, and while he was wondering he caught sight of something quite unexpected. Something that could have been the shadow of a running man flashed no more than forty yards in front of him, moving very fast. “Good Lord,” Gregory muttered and, forgetting the pain in his lower back, he dashed forward, trying to cut off the fast-moving shadow. Gregory obviously was more familiar with the garden than the stranger and, realizing that the other man was dashing toward the bathhouse, took a short cut. The man rushed toward the fence. Gregory followed the intruder without ever losing sight of him and, just as the man was pulling himself up onto the fence, Gregory reached him, succeeded in catching one of his feet and clutching it with both hands.

Yes, Gregory’s foreboding had not deceived him; he had somehow known that this was the “monster,” the “father-killer.”

“You father-killer!” old Gregory roared in a deafening voice.

But that was all that he had time to say before he fell to the ground as if struck by lightning. Mitya jumped down into the garden and leaned over the prostrate figure. The brass pestle was in Mitya’s hand and he tossed it away without even noticing what he was doing. The pestle fell a couple of steps from Gregory on the gravel path, where it was certain to attract attention. For several seconds Mitya stared at the old man. Gregory’s head was splattered with blood. Mitya put his hand out and touched it. Later, he remembered clearly that he had felt a terrible need to find out whether he had broken the old man’s skull or whether the blow of the pestle had just stunned him. But blood was still gushing out and Mitya’s trembling fingers were immediately splashed by the hot stream. He also remembered that he took out of his pocket a new white handkerchief, which he had carefully taken before going to see Mrs. Khokhlakov, and tried senselessly to wipe the blood off Gregory’s forehead and cheeks. But, of course, within a few seconds, the handkerchief, too, was completely soaked with blood. “My God, what am I doing that for?” Mitya suddenly came to his senses. “If I have broken his skull—how could I find it out now? Ah, and what difference could it make now?” he added in complete hopelessness. “If I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him. It’s just too bad, old man—can’t be helped now!” He said this aloud and all of a sudden dashed to the fence, climbed over it, and started to run. He had been holding the blood-soaked handkerchief in his hand and now thrust it into the right-hand pocket of his coat. Mitya ran at full speed, and the few people he passed were to testify later that they had seen him galloping madly through the streets on that particular night. He was hurrying now to Mrs. Morozov’s house. Earlier that evening, as soon as he had left, Fenya had gone to the head janitor and beseeched him, “in the name of Christ our Lord, not to let the Captain in, either tonight or tomorrow.” The janitor had promised but, unfortunately, at one point he was summoned upstairs by the old lady who owned the house. On his way, he met his twenty-year-old nephew, who had only recently come to town from his village, and told him to stay in the courtyard while he was away, forgetting, however, to say anything about “the Captain.” Soon Mitya came running up and knocked at the gate. The nephew recognized Mitya right away, for Mitya had often tipped him, and he opened the gate with a cheerful smile. He also hastened to inform him that Miss Svetlov was not at home.