The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

his passion. And so,

perhaps, it was, but what was distressing Grushenka he did not

understand. For him the whole tormenting question lay between him

and Fyodor Pavlovitch.

 

Here, we must note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly

persuaded that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had

offered, Grushenka lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe

that the old voluptuary hoped to gain his object for three thousand

roubles. Mitya had reached this conclusion from his knowledge of

Grushenka and her character. That was how it was that he could believe

at times that all Grushenka’s uneasiness rose from not knowing which

of them to choose, which was most to her advantage.

 

Strange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to

think of the approaching return of the “officer,” that is, of the

man who had been such a fatal influence in Grushenka’s life, and whose

arrival she was expecting with such emotion and dread. It is true that

of late Grushenka had been very silent about it. Yet he was

perfectly aware of a letter she had received a month ago from her

seducer, and had heard of it from her own lips. He partly knew, too,

what the letter contained. In a moment of spite Grushenka had shown

him that letter, but to her astonishment he attached hardly any

consequence to it. It would be hard to say why this was. Perhaps,

weighed down by all the hideous horror of his struggle with his own

father for this woman, he was incapable of imagining any danger more

terrible, at any rate for the time. He simply did not believe in a

suitor who suddenly turned up again after five years’ disappearance,

still less in his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the “officer’s” first

letter which had been shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new

rival’s visit was very vaguely suggested. The letter was very

indefinite, high-flown, and full of sentimentality. It must be noted

that Grushenka had concealed from him the last lines of the letter, in

which his return was alluded to more definitely. He had, besides,

noticed at that moment, he remembered afterwards, a certain

involuntary proud contempt for this missive from Siberia on

Grushenka’s face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had passed

later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had completely

forgotten the officer’s existence.

 

He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might

take, his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him,

and must be decided before anything else. With a sinking heart he

was expecting every moment Grushenka’s decision, always believing that

it would come suddenly, on the impulse of the moment. All of a

sudden she would say to him: “Take me, I’m yours for ever,” and it

would all be over. He would seize her and bear her away at once to the

ends of the earth. Oh, then he would bear her away at once, as far,

far away as possible; to the farthest end of Russia, if not of the

earth, then he would marry her, and settle down with her incognito, so

that no one would know anything about them, there, here, or

anywhere. Then, oh then, a new life would begin at once!

 

Of this different, reformed and “virtuous” life (“it must, it must

be virtuous”) he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for

that reformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had

sunk of his own free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very

many men in such cases, he put faith above all in change of place.

If only it were not for these people, if only it were not for these

circumstances, if only he could fly away from this accursed place-he would be altogether regenerated, would enter on a new path. That

was what he believed in, and what he was yearning for.

 

But all this could only be on condition of the first, the happy

solution of the question. There was another possibility, a different

and awful ending. Suddenly she might say to him: “Go away. I have just

come to terms with Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and

don’t want you”- and then… but then… But Mitya did not know what

would happen then. Up to the last hour he didn’t know. That must be

said to his credit. He had no definite intentions, had planned no

crime. He was simply watching and spying in agony, while he prepared

himself for the first, happy solution of his destiny. He drove away

any other idea, in fact. But for that ending a quite different anxiety

arose, a new, incidental, but yet fatal and insoluble difficulty

presented itself.

 

If she were to say to him: “I’m yours; take me away,” how could he

take her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just

at this time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles

which had gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased.

Grushenka had money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly

evinced extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the

new life with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could

not conceive of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a

pang of intense repulsion. I won’t enlarge on this fact or analyse

it here, but confine myself to remarking that this was his attitude at

the moment. All this may have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from

the secret stings of his conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna

that he had dishonestly appropriated. “I’ve been a scoundrel to one of

them, and I shall be a scoundrel again to the other directly,” was his

feeling then, as he explained after: “and when Grushenka knows, she

won’t care for such a scoundrel.”

 

Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the

fateful money? Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be

done, “and only because I hadn’t the money. Oh, the shame of it!”

 

To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the

money, knew, perhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no

more of this here, as it will all be clear later. But his chief

trouble, I must explain however obscurely, lay in the fact that to

have that sum he knew of, to have the right to take it, he must

first restore Katerina Ivanovna’s three thousand-if not, “I’m a

common pickpocket, I’m a scoundrel, and I don’t want to begin a new

life as a scoundrel,” Mitya decided. And so he made up his mind to

move heaven and earth to return Katerina Ivanovna that three thousand,

and that first of all. The final stage of this decision, so to say,

had been reached only during the last hours, that is, after his last

interview with Alyosha, two days before, on the high-road, on the

evening when Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya,

after hearing Alyosha’s account of it, had admitted that he was a

scoundrel, and told him to tell Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be

any comfort to her. After parting from his brother on that night, he

had felt in his frenzy that it would be better “to murder and rob

someone than fail to pay my debt to Katya. I’d rather everyone thought

me a robber and a murderer; I’d rather go to Siberia than that Katya

should have the right to say that I deceived her and stole her

money, and used her money to run away with Grushenka and begin a new

life! That I can’t do!” So Mitya decided, grinding his teeth, and he

might well fancy at times that his brain would give way. But meanwhile

he went on struggling….

 

Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing

left for him but despair-for what chance had he, with nothing in

the world, to raise such a sum?- yet to the very end he persisted in

hoping that he would get that three thousand, that the money would

somehow come to him of itself, as though it might drop from heaven.

That is just how it is with people who, like Dmitri, have never had

anything to do with money, except to squander what has come to them by

inheritance without any effort of their own, and have no notion how

money is obtained. A whirl of the most fantastic notions took

possession of his brain immediately after he had parted with Alyosha

two days before, and threw his thoughts into a tangle of confusion.

This is how it was he pitched first on a perfectly wild enterprise.

And perhaps to men of that kind in such circumstances the most

impossible, fantastic schemes occur first, and seem most practical.

 

He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was

Grushenka’s protector, and to propose a “scheme” to him, and by

means of it to obtain from him at once the whole of the sum

required. Of the commercial value of his scheme he had no doubt, not

the slightest, and was only uncertain how Samsonov would look upon his

freak, supposing he were to consider it from any but the commercial

point of view. Though Mitya knew the merchant by sight, he was not

acquainted with him and had never spoken a word to him. But for some

unknown reason he had long entertained the conviction that the old

reprobate, who was lying at death’s door, would perhaps not at all

object now to Grushenka’s securing a respectable position, and

marrying a man “to be depended upon.” And he believed not only that he

would not object, but that this was what he desired, and, if

opportunity arose, that he would be ready to help. From some rumour,

or perhaps from some stray word of Grushenka’s, he had gathered

further that the old man would perhaps prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch

for Grushenka.

 

Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in

reckoning on such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to

speak, from the hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness

and want of delicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon

Grushenka’s past as something completely over. He looked on that

past with infinite pity and resolved with all the fervour of his

passion that when once Grushenka told him she loved him and would

marry him, it would mean the beginning of a new Grushenka and a new

Dmitri, free from every vice. They would forgive one another and would

begin their lives afresh. As for Kuzma Samsonov, Dmitri looked upon

him as a man who had exercised a fateful influence in that remote past

of Grushenka’s, though she had never loved him, and who was now

himself a thing of the past, completely done with, and, so to say,

non-existent. Besides, Mitya hardly looked upon him as a man at all,

for it was known to everyone in the town that he was only a

shattered wreck, whose relations with Grushenka had changed their

character and were now simply paternal, and that this had been so

for a long time.

 

In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya’s part in all this,

for in spite of all his vices, he was a very simplehearted man. It

was an instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously

persuaded that, being on the eve of his departure for the next

world, old Kuzma must sincerely repent of his past relations with

Grushenka, and that she had no more devoted friend and protector in

the world than this, now harmless, old man.

 

After his