The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
Book online «The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
his master’s window open. No one was looking out of it then.
“What’s it open for? It’s not summer now,” thought Grigory, and
suddenly, at that very instant he caught a glimpse of something
extraordinary before him in the garden. Forty paces in front of him
a man seemed to be running in the dark, a sort of shadow was moving
very fast.
“Good Lord!” cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain
in his back, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a
short cut, evidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went
towards the bathhouse, ran behind it and rushed to the garden
fence. Grigory followed, not losing sight of him, and ran,
forgetting everything. He reached the fence at the very moment the man
was climbing over it. Grigory cried out, beside himself, pounced on
him, and clutched his leg in his two hands.
Yes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognised him; it
was he, the “monster,” the “parricide.”
“Parricide! the old man shouted so that the whole neighbourhood
could hear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as
though struck by lightning.
Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In
Mitya’s hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in
the grass. The pestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass
but on the path, in a most conspicuous place. For some seconds he
examined the prostrate figure before him. The old man’s head was
covered with blood. Mitya put out his hand and began feeling it. He
remembered afterwards clearly that he had been awfully anxious to make
sure whether he had broken the old man’s skull, or simply stunned
him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing horribly; and in a
moment Mitya’s fingers were drenched with the hot stream. He
remembered taking out of his pocket the clean white handkerchief
with which he had provided himself for his visit to Madame Hohlakov,
and putting it to the old man’s head, senselessly trying to wipe the
blood from his face and temples. But the handkerchief was instantly
soaked with blood.
“Good heavens! What am I doing it for?” thought Mitya, suddenly
pulling himself together. “If I have broken his skull, how can I
find out now? And what difference does it make now?” he added,
hopelessly. “If I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him…. You’ve come to
grief, old man, so there you must lie!” he said aloud. And suddenly
turning to the fence, he vaulted over it into the lane and fell to
running-the handkerchief soaked with blood he held, crushed up in his
right fist, and as he ran he thrust it into the back pocket of his
coat. He ran headlong, and the few passers-by who met him in the dark,
in the streets, remembered afterwards that they had met a man
running that night. He flew back again to the widow Morozov’s house.
Immediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to
the chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ’s
sake, “not to let the captain in again to-day or to-morrow.” Nazar
Ivanovitch promised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had
suddenly sent for him, and meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who
had recently come from the country, on the way up told him to take his
place, but forgot to mention “the captain.” Mitya, running up to the
gate, knocked. The lad instantly recognised him, for Mitya had more
than once tipped him. Opening the gate at once, he let him in, and
hastened to inform him with a good-humoured smile that “Agrafena
Alexandrovna is not at home now, you know.”
“Where is she then, Prohor?” asked Mitya, stopping short.
“She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to
Mokroe.”
“What for?” cried Mitya.
“That I can’t say. To see some officer. Someone invited her and
horses were sent to fetch her.”
Mitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.
A Sudden Resolution
SHE was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were
both just going to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not
locked themselves in. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by
the throat.
“Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?” he
roared furiously.
Both the women squealed.
“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I’ll
tell you everything directly, I won’t hide anything,” gabbled Fenya,
frightened to death; “she’s gone to Mokroe, to her officer.”
“What officer?” roared Mitya.
“To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who
threw her over five years ago,” cackled Fenya, as fast as she could
speak.
Mitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat.
He stood facing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his
eyes showed that he realised it all, all, from the first word, and
guessed the whole position. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at
that moment to observe whether he understood or not. She remained
sitting on the trunk as she had been when he ran into the room,
trembling all over, holding her hands out before her as though
trying to defend herself. She seemed to have grown rigid in that
position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immovably upon
him. And to make matters worse, both his hands were smeared with
blood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched his forehead with
them, wiping off the perspiration, so that on his forehead and his
right cheek were bloodstained patches. Fenya was on the verge of
hysterics. The old cook had jumped up and was staring at him like a
mad woman, almost unconscious with terror.
Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair
next to Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were,
terror-stricken, benumbed. Yet everything was clear as day: that
officer, he knew about him, he knew everything perfectly, he had known
it from Grushenka herself, had known that a letter had come from him a
month before. So that for a month, for a whole month, this had been
going on, a secret from him, till the very arrival of this new man,
and he had never thought of him! But how could he, how could he not
have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this officer, like
that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him? That was the
question that faced him like some monstrous thing. And he looked at
this monstrous thing with horror, growing cold with horror.
But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate
child, he began speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten
how he had scared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning
Fenya with an extreme preciseness, astonishing in his position, and
though the girl looked wildly at his bloodstained hands, she, too,
with wonderful readiness and rapidity, answered every question as
though eager to put the whole truth and nothing but the truth before
him. Little by little, even with a sort of enjoyment, she began
explaining every detail, not wanting to torment him, but, as it
were, eager to be of the utmost service to him. She described the
whole of that day, in great detail, the visit of Rakitin and
Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the watch, how the mistress
had set off, and how she had called out of the window to Alyosha to
give him, Mitya, her greetings, and to tell him “to remember for
ever how she had loved him for an hour.”
Hearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a
flush of colour on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to
him, not a bit afraid now to be inquisitive:
“Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They’re all over blood!
“Yes,” answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his
hands and at once forgot them and Fenya’s question.
He sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had
run in. His first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed
determination had taken possession of him. He suddenly stood up,
smiling dreamily.
“What has happened to you, sir?” said Fenya, pointing to his hands
again. She spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to
him now in his grief. Mitya looked at his hands again.
“That’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange
expression. “That’s human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But…
Fenya… there’s a fence here” (he looked at her as though setting her
a riddle), “a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn
to-morrow, when the sun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence…. You
don’t understand what fence, Fenya, and, never mind…. You’ll hear
to-morrow and understand… and now, good-bye. I won’t stand in her
way. I’ll step aside, I know how to step aside. Live, my joy…. You
loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka Karamazov so for ever….
She always used to call me Mityenka, do you remember?”
And with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya
was almost more frightened at this sudden departure than she had
been when he ran in and attacked her.
Just ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin,
the young official with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by
now half-past eight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea,
and had just put his coat on again to go to the Metropolis to play
billiards. Mitya caught him coming out.
Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man
uttered a cry of surprise.
“Good heavens! What is the matter?”
“I’ve come for my pistols,” said Mitya, “and brought you the
money. And thanks very much. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please
make haste.”
Pyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught
sight of a bundle of banknotes in Mitya’s hand, and what was more,
he had walked in holding the notes as no one walks in and no one
carries money: he had them in his right hand, and held them
outstretched as if to show them. Perhotin’s servant-boy, who met Mitya
in the passage, said afterwards that he walked into the passage in the
same way, with the money outstretched in his hand, so he must have
been carrying them like that even in the streets. They were all
rainbow-coloured hundred-rouble notes, and the fingers holding them
were covered with blood.
When Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money,
he said that it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it
might have been two thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big,
“fat” bundle. “Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” so he testified afterwards,
“seemed unlike himself, too; not drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost
to everything, but at the same time, as it were, absorbed, as though
pondering and searching for something and unable to come to a
decision. He was in great haste, answered abruptly and very strangely,
and at moments seemed not at all dejected but quite cheerful.”
“But what is the matter with you? What’s wrong?” cried Pyotr
Ilyitch, looking wildly at his guest. “How is it that you’re all
covered with blood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!”
He took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.
Seeing
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