The Brothers Karamazov (78 page)

“So you married a lame lady?” Kalganov asked, surprised.

“That’s right. Well, between the two of them, they managed to conceal it from me at the time . . . I saw that she sort of skipped a bit when she walked, but I thought she was doing it out of sheer joy.”

“Out of joy? Because she was getting married to you!” Kalganov cried loudly like a young boy hearing something very funny.

“That’s right, I thought it was out of joy. But then later I learned the real reason. After the wedding she explained to me that, when she was a little girl, she’d jumped over a puddle and damaged her leg. She apologized profusely about it, very movingly too, he-he!”

Kalganov rolled about with laughter, that boyish laughter of his, so violently that he almost fell onto the sofa. Grushenka laughed too. Mitya simply beamed with delight.

“And this time it’s the truth. He’s not lying this time,” Kalganov said, leaning toward Mitya. “And you know, he’s been married twice. That was his first wife he just told us about. The second one ran away from him and she’s still alive—did you know that?”

“Is that true?” Mitya said, turning to Maximov with an expression of infinite amazement. “Did she run away?”

“Yes, sir, I had that unpleasant experience,” Maximov said, modestly confirming the fact. “She left me for a certain Frenchie 
monsieur
. The worst thing about it, though, is that before she left she neatly managed to transfer my little property to her name. ‘You,’ she said to me, ‘are an educated man. You’ll always be able to make enough to live on.’ And that’s all I have to show for that marriage. Once a very venerable bishop remarked to me in that connection: ‘Your first wife was lame, but the second was too light-footed.’ He-he-he-he!” Maximov chuckled.

“Just listen to him!” Kalganov cried in excited amusement. “Even assuming he makes up his stories—and I’m sure he often does invent them—he does it only to give pleasure to his listeners and I say there’s nothing so evil or despicable about that! You know, I like him very much at times. I realize he’s very much a toady, but that’s just his nature. Another man may fawn on you and clown for you when he thinks he can get something out of you for his pains, but not Maximov. He acts like that because it’s his natural way of behaving . . . Yesterday, for instance, he got it into his head, arguing it throughout the entire trip, that Gogol had used him as a prototype when he wrote 
Dead Souls
. Do you remember, there’s a character, a landowner, called Maximov? Nozdryov gives him a thrashing and is arrested and tried for ‘inflicting personal injury on the landowner Maximov by flogging him while in an inebriated state.’ Well, he claims that he is that very same Maximov and that he was actually flogged, imagine that! Now, since Chichikov’s travels date from the ’twenties at the latest, it obviously couldn’t be him, if only for chronological reasons. So he couldn’t possibly have been flogged then, could he?”

It was hard to imagine why Kalganov should be so excited about it, but somehow he really was, and Mitya was eager to show his interest in the matter.

“But suppose he was really flogged!” he shouted with a loud laugh.

“I wasn’t really flogged . . . Well, that . . . you know,” Maximov suddenly said.

“Were you flogged or weren’t you?”

“What time is it?” the Pole with the pipe asked his huge fellow countryman in Polish. The little Pole looked very bored.

The big Pole just shrugged. Neither of them had a watch.

“What’s the matter? Can’t people talk anymore?” Grushenka said aggressively, as if trying to pick a quarrel. “Can’t people have a conversation, just because you happen to be bored?”

Now, finally, it occurred to Mitya that things might not be quite the way he had imagined them. This time the pipe-smoking Polish gentleman answered with obvious irritation:

“I haven’t objected to anything as far as I know.”

“So go on, tell us more,” Grushenka cried to Maximov. “Why have you all become so quiet all of a sudden?”

“Oh, there’s nothing much to tell really. It’s all nonsense really,” Maximov answered with obvious pleasure, although pretending to be a little coy. “In Gogol, too, you understand, it’s all meant allegorically, for all the names he gives his characters are allegorical too. Nozdryov is not really Nozdryov but Nosov, and the real Kuvshinnikov’s name is altogether different—Shkornev. And Fenardi—for there really was a man like Fenardi—was a Russian in real life, not an Italian, and his name was Petrov. And Mademoiselle Fenardi was very pretty; she had very fine legs and she wore tights and a very short skirt with spangles on it, and she did spin around and around in real life, but not for four hours as Gogol has it—only for four minutes, although she still managed to turn everyone’s head . . .”

“No, you tell us why you were flogged!” Kalganov shouted.

“Because of Piron.”

“What Piron?” Mitya yelled.

“The French Piron, the famous French writer. There was quite a large party drinking in a tavern, at this fair, you know. They invited me to join them and I at once started making epigrams: ‘Why, you Boileau, I so admire, Where are you off to in that attire?’ And Boileau answers that he’s going to a masquerade, that is, to the bath-house. Hee, hee. They took it personally, though, so I quickly recited another epigram that every educated person knows:

I am Phaon, you are Sappho,

But what good is that to me,

If you don’t know your way to the sea.

“That offended them even more and they started applying all sorts of unseemly words to me. So, in order to save the situation, I told them then and there a very cultured anecdote about Piron. It was when they had refused to make him a member of the French Academy; to avenge himself, he wrote his own epitaph, that goes:

Ci-gît Piron qui ne fut rien,

Pas même académicien.

“So they got hold of me and flogged me.”

“I still don’t see why.”

“Because of my education. Since when do people need special reasons to flog a person?” Maximov offered this conclusion as if it were a profound lesson in a nut shell.

“Ah, enough of that. I don’t want to listen to that stuff anymore, I thought you’d tell us something funny,” Grushenka suddenly cut him off.

Mitya gave a start and at once stopped laughing. The tall Pole stood up and, with the bored and disdainful air of a man who is forced to put up with people with whom he ordinarily would not consort, began pacing the room from corner to corner, his hands behind his back.

“Look at the way he’s walking up and down,” Grushenka said, looking at him scornfully.

Mitya became worried. Moreover, he noticed that the other Pole was watching him from the sofa with an annoyed look.

“Hey, 
pane
,” Mitya called out to him, “let’s have a drink together. And the other 
pane
, too—let’s drink, gentlemen!” And he quickly filled three glasses.

“To Poland, gentlemen—let us drink to your Poland!” Mitya said.

“I accept your invitation with pleasure, sir,” the Pole with the pipe said, condescendingly accepting a glass from Mitya.

“And the other Polish gentleman, too. Hey, you, most honorable sir—what’s your name?—here’s your glass!” Mitya called out.

“His name is Pan Wrublewski,” the little Pole told Mitya.

Pan Wrublewski walked with a rolling gait to the table and took the glass Mitya was holding out to him.

“So here’s to Poland, gentlemen. Hurray!” Mitya announced.

The three of them emptied their glasses. As soon as they had done so, Mitya took the bottle and refilled the three glasses.

“Now, to Russia, gentlemen, and to our friendship!”

“Pour some for us, too,” Grushenka said. “I want to drink to Russia myself.”

“So do I,” said Kalganov.

“I, too, would like to drink to sweet old Russia, our grandmother,” Maximov chimed in with a titter.

“Let’s all drink, all of us! Innkeeper, bring some more bottles!”

The bottles were brought in and Mitya poured out the champagne.

“Here’s to Russia. Hurray!” Mitya announced again.

Everyone except the Poles drank, and Grushenka emptied her glass in one gulp. The Poles did not even touch theirs.

“What do you mean by this, my Polish friends? Why didn’t you drink?” Mitya cried in surprise.

Pan Wrublewski took his glass, lifted it, and announced in a resounding voice: “To Russia within her borders of 1772!”

“That way, it’s all right,” the other Pole said and the two of them emptied their glasses.

“You’re a couple of damned fools, gentlemen,” Mitya blurted out without thinking.

“Sir!” the two Poles cried, indignantly glaring at Mitya like two fighting cocks. Wrublewski looked particularly menacing.

“Are we not allowed to love our country?” he asked.

“Quiet! I don’t want any quarrels here, do you hear me?” Grushenka cried, imperiously stamping her foot on the floor. Her cheeks and eyes were afire. Perhaps the glass of champagne she had just drunk was having its effect. Mitya became terribly frightened.

“Forgive me, gentlemen. It was all my fault. Forgive me, Pan Wrublewski, it won’t happen again!”

“Be quiet at least, you silly thing. Sit down, for heaven’s sake,” Grushenka snapped at him impatiently.

They all sat down, looking at one another in silence.

“It’s all my fault,” Mitya started, having again misunderstood Grushenka’s rebuke. “Why are we all sitting here like this? What shall we do to have some fun? How can we have some fun?”

“I must say, we’re not having a very wild time right now,” Kalganov drawled lazily.

“So why not have another little game of faro as we had before?” Maximov suggested with a chuckle.

“Faro?” Mitya cried. “Excellent idea! And if our Polish friends are agreeable . . .”

“It’s rather late,” the little Pole said reluctantly.

“That’s right,” Wrublewski agreed.

“It’s always late for them. It’s always, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that!’” Grushenka cried almost shrilly in her irritation. “They sit there with bored faces and they’re determined that everyone shall be bored too. Before you came, Mitya, they hardly said a word, just scowled at the world . . .”

“My goddess,” the Pole on the sofa said, “if I am sad, it is because I see that I displease you. I am ready to play, sir,” he announced, turning toward Mitya.

“You start then,” Mitya said, pulling his wad of bills out of his pocket. He peeled off two one-hundred-ruble bills and put them on the table. “I’d be glad to lose a lot of money to you, my Polish friend. Here, take these cards and deal.”

“We’ll ask the innkeeper for a pack of cards, sir,” the little Pole said emphatically.

“Yes, that’s the proper way,” Wrublewski backed him.

“Ask the innkeeper? Fine. Good idea, gentlemen . . . A pack of cards!” Mitya shouted to the landlord.

Trifon brought a new, sealed deck and reported to Mitya that some of the girls had already arrived, that the Jews with the cymbals would be there soon, but that the cart with the provisions had not yet arrived. Mitya jumped up and dashed out of the room to give the necessary instructions. Only three girls had arrived and Maria was not among them. Actually, Mitya himself was none too sure what instructions he was supposed to give and why, actually, he had hurried out like that. He simply told the landlord to take the sweets out of the box and let the girls have what they wanted.

“Ah, yes, I want you to serve Andrei some vodka. I think I offended him!” he ordered hurriedly.

At that moment someone touched his shoulder. It was Maximov, who had come out after him.

“Could you let me have five rubles?” he whispered. “I wouldn’t mind having a go at faro too, he-he-he!”

“Good idea! Here, take ten.” Mitya pulled all the bills out of his pocket again and found a ten-ruble bill among them. “And if you lose, come back for more.”

“I will. Thank you very much,” Maximov whispered happily, trotting back to the blue room.

Mitya returned too and apologized for having kept them waiting. The Poles were already seated. They had unsealed the pack of cards. They seemed much more amiable now, almost friendly. The little Pole lighted his pipe again and prepared to deal. He looked like a man about to perform a solemn ritual.

“Take your seats, gentlemen!” Pan Wrublewski called out.

“I don’t think I’ll play anymore,” Kalganov said. “I already lost fifty rubles to them earlier.”

“You had a streak of bad luck, Pan Kalganov,” the little Pole remarked. “You may be lucky now, though.”

“How much is there in the bank?” Mitya asked. “Does this cover it?”

“Whatever you say, sir—one hundred, two hundred, whatever you wish to stake.”

“One million!” Mitya shouted and roared with laughter.

“Have you, sir, heard the story about Pan Podwysocki?”

“Who is this Podwysocki?”

“The way we play in Warsaw, anyone can come and stake against the bank. So Podwysocki comes in, sees there is a thousand zlotys in the bank, and says, ‘Banco.’ The banker says, ‘Pan Podwysocki, are you putting up cash or your word of honor?’ ‘My word of honor.’ ‘Good, I like that best.’ So the banker deals and Podwysocki wins what he thinks is one thousand zlotys. ‘Just a minute, sir,’ the banker says to him and hands him a box containing one million zlotys. It was a million zloty bank. ‘You won it, Pan Podwysocki, we trust your word of honor and we keep ours.’ So Podwysocki took the million and left.”

“That’s not true,” Kalganov said.

“That’s no way to talk in decent company, Pan Kalganov.”

“I can just imagine a Polish gambler giving away a million like that!” Mitya said, but at once checked himself. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’m wrong again. I’m sure he would give away a million, because of his Polish sense of honor—honor Polska—ha-ha-ha! You see, I can even speak Polish! So now, see, I stake ten rubles. The knave leads.”

“And I’ll stake one little ruble on this pretty little lady, the queen of hearts, the nice damsel,” Maximov said, gingerly pushing his card forward as though hoping no one would see it. He pulled his chair up as close to the table as he could and made a quick sign of the cross under the table.