V. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. “Heels in the Air”

“Now,” said Alyosha, “I know the first half of this business.”

“The first half you understand: it’s a drama, and it took place there. But the second half is a tragedy, and it will take place here.”

“Of the second half I still understand nothing,” said Alyosha.

“And I? Do I understand it, do you think?”

“Wait, Dmitri, there’s one key word here. Tell me: you’re engaged, you are still engaged now?”

“I became engaged not right then, but only three months after what happened that time. The very next day after it happened, I told myself that the incident was exhausted and finished, there would be no sequel. To come and ask for her hand seemed to me a baseness. For her part, too, for the whole six weeks she lived in our town afterward, she didn’t let me hear a word from her. Except, it’s true, for one occasion: the day after her visit their maid slipped in to see me and, without saying a word, handed me a packet. On the packet, the address: to so-and-so. I open it—the change from the five-thousand bond. Only four thousand five hundred had been needed, and on selling the five-thousand bond there had been a loss of two hundred rubles and more. She sent me two hundred and sixty little rubles in all, it seems, I don’t remember exactly, and only the money—not a note, not a word, not an explanation. I searched the packet for some sign in pencil—n-nothing! Well, I went on a spree in the meantime with the rest of my rubles, so that even the new major was at last obliged to reprimand me. And the lieutenant colonel handed over the government funds—safely, and to everyone’s surprise, because nobody supposed any longer that he had the money intact. He handed it over, and then fell ill, took to his bed, lay there for some three weeks, then suddenly a softening of the brain set in, and in five days he died. They buried him with military honors; he hadn’t yet had time to receive his discharge. Katerina Ivanovna, her sister, and her aunt, having only just buried her father, set off for Moscow some ten days later. And then, just before they left, on the very day they went (I didn’t see them or see them off), I receive a tiny little packet, a little blue one, a sheet of lace paper, and on it a single line in pencil: ‘I shall write to you; wait. K.’ That’s all.

“I’ll explain it to you now in two words. In Moscow their affairs took a turn with the speed of lightning and the unexpectedness of an Arabian tale. That general’s widow, her chief relative, suddenly loses her two nearest heiresses all at once, her two nearest nieces—both die of smallpox in one and the same week. The shaken old woman was overjoyed at Katya as if she were her own daughter, as at a star of salvation, flung herself upon her, at once altered her will in her favor, but that was for the future, and for now, straight into her hands—eighty thousand: here, she says, is your dowry, do what you like with it. A hysterical woman; I observed her in Moscow later. Well, then suddenly I receive four thousand five hundred rubles by post; naturally I’m bewildered and struck dumb with surprise. Three days later the promised letter arrives too. I have it even now, it’s always with me, and I’ll die with it—shall I show it to you? You must read it: she offers herself as my bride, she offers herself, ‘I love you madly,’ she says, ‘let it be that you don’t love me, it’s all the same, only be my husband. Don’t be afraid—I won’t hamper you in anything, I’ll be your furniture, I’ll be the carpet you walk on… I want to love you forever, I want to save you from yourself…’ Alyosha, I’m not worthy even to repeat those lines in my vile words and my vile tone, my everlasting vile tone that I have never been able to cure myself of! That letter has pierced me to this day, and do you think I’m at ease now, do you think I’m at ease today? I wrote an answer at once then (I couldn’t possibly come to Moscow myself). I wrote it in tears; one thing I’ll be ashamed of forever: I mentioned that she was rich now and had a dowry, and I was only a beggarly boor—I mentioned money! I ought to have borne it, but it slipped off my pen. At the same time, right away, I wrote to Ivan in Moscow and explained everything to him in the letter as far as possible, the letter ran to six sheets, and I sent Ivan to her. Why are you looking, why are you staring at me? Well, yes, Ivan fell for her, and he’s still in love with her now, I know it; I did a stupid thing, by your lights, by worldly lights, but perhaps it’s that very stupidity alone that will save us all now! Whew! Don’t you see how she reveres him, how she respects him? Can she, comparing the two of us, love a man like me, and especially after all that has happened here?”

“But I’m sure that she loves a man like you, and not a man like him.”

“It’s her own virtue she loves, not me,” broke suddenly from Dmitri Fyodorovich, involuntarily but almost spitefully. He laughed, but a second later his eyes flashed, he turned red all over, and he struck the table hard with his fist.

“I swear, Alyosha,” he exclaimed with terrible and sincere anger at himself, “believe it or not, but as God is holy, and as Christ is the Lord, I swear that though I sneered just now at her higher feelings, I know that I am a million times more worthless in soul than she is, and that these finer feelings of hers are sincere, like a heavenly angel’s! That’s just where the tragedy is, that I know it for certain. What does it matter if a person declaims a little? Don’t I declaim? And yet I’m sincere, I am sincere. As for Ivan, I do understand with what a curse he must look at nature now, and with his intelligence at that! To whom, to what has preference been given? To a monster who, even here, already engaged, and with everyone watching him, couldn’t restrain his debaucheries—and that with his fiancée right here, with his fiancée here! And a man like me is preferred, and he is rejected. But what for? Why, because a girl wants to violate her life and her fate out of gratitude! An absurdity! I’ve never said anything to Ivan in this sense, and Ivan, of course, has never said half a word to me about it either, not the slightest hint; but fate will be fulfilled, and the worthy man will take his place, and the unworthy one will vanish into his back lane forever—into his dirty back lane, his beloved back lane, the one that suits him, and there, in filth and stench, he will perish of his own free will and with delight. I’m talking a lot of rubbish, my words are all worn out, I’m putting them down at random, as it were, but as I have decided, so it shall be. I’ll drown in the back lane, and she’ll marry Ivan.”

“Brother, wait,” Alyosha interrupted again with extreme uneasiness, “there’s still one thing here you haven’t explained to me yet: you’re engaged, after all you’re still engaged? How can you want to break it off if she, your fiancée, doesn’t want to?”

“I’m engaged, formally and with a blessing; it all took place in Moscow, after I arrived, with ceremony, with icons, and in the best style. The general’s widow gave her blessing and—would you believe it—even congratulated Katya: you’ve chosen well, she says, I see right through him. And would you believe it, she took a dislike to Ivan and didn’t congratulate him. In Moscow, too, I talked a great deal with Katya; I described the whole of myself to her, nobly, accurately, sincerely. She heard it all out:

“There was a sweet confusion,
There were tender words…

“Well, there were proud words too. She forced a great promise out of me then to reform. I gave the promise. And now…”

“What?”

“And now I’ve called you and dragged you here today, on this very date—remember it!—so as to send you, and again today, to Katerina Ivanovna, and…”

“What?”

“To tell her that I’ll never come to her again; he sends you his bow, tell her.”

“But is that possible?”

“That’s just why I’m sending you instead of myself, because it’s impossible; otherwise how could I tell her that myself?”

“But where will you go?”

“To the back lane.”

“So it’s to Grushenka!” Alyosha exclaimed sorrowfully, clasping his hands. “Can it be that Rakitin really told the truth? And I thought you had only been going to see her for a while and had finished with it.”

“A man engaged, going to see her? Is that possible, and with such a fiancée, and in full view of people? I have some honor, I dare say. The moment I began going to Grushenka, I at once ceased to be engaged and to be an honest man, I understand that much. Why are you staring? You see, I went to her first of all to beat her. I learned, and I know now for certain, that this staff captain, Father’s agent, had passed on an IOU of mine to this Grushenka, for her to collect on, so that I would calm down and give up. They wanted to frighten me. So I set off to beat Grushenka. I had seen her before, in passing. She isn’t striking. I knew about the old merchant, who on top of everything is ill now, lying paralyzed, but who will leave her a tidy sum all the same. I knew too that she likes to make money, makes it, lends at wicked interest, a sly one, a rogue, without pity. I went to beat her, and I stayed with her. The storm broke, the plague struck, I caught it and I’m infected to this day, and I know that it’s all over, that there will never be anything else. The cycle of the ages is complete. That’s my story. And then, as if on purpose, three thousand suddenly turned up in my pocket, a beggar’s pocket. She and I went from here to Mokroye, that’s twenty-five versts from here; I got gypsies there, gypsy girls, champagne, made all the peasants there drunk on champagne, all the women and girls, I sent the thousands flying. Three days later I was stripped bare, but a falcon still. You think the falcon got anywhere? She didn’t show me a thing, not even from a distance. I tell you: a curve. Grushenka, the rogue, has a certain curve of the body; it shows in her little foot, it even echoes in the little toe of her left foot. I’ve seen it and kissed it, but that’s all—I swear! She says: ‘If you like, I’ll marry you; you’re a beggar, after all. Say you won’t beat me and will let me do whatever I want, and then maybe I’ll marry you’—she laughs. And she’s laughing now!”

Dmitri Fyodorovich rose from his seat almost in a sort of fury; he suddenly became like a drunken man. His eyes suddenly filled with blood.

“And you really want to marry her?”

“If she’s willing, then at once, and if she isn’t, I’ll stay anyway; I’ll be the yard porter at her house. You… you, Alyosha…” He suddenly stopped in front of him and, seizing him by the shoulders, began suddenly to shake him hard. “Do you know, you innocent boy, that all this is delirium, unthinkable delirium, for here there is tragedy! Know, then, Alexei, that I may be a low man, with low and lost passions, but a thief, a pickpocket, a petty thief of entryways, Dmitri Karamazov can never be. Well, then, know now that I am a petty thief, a thief of pockets and entryways! Just before I went to beat Grushenka, that very morning, Katerina Ivanovna calls me in and, in terrible secrecy, so that nobody should know for the time being (why, I don’t know; evidently she needed it that way), asks me to go to the provincial capital and send three thousand by post from there to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow; to the capital so that people here wouldn’t even know. And it was with that three thousand in my pocket that I turned up at Grushenka’s then, and on it we went to Mokroye. Afterward I pretended I had dashed off to the capital, but I didn’t give her the postal receipt; I said I had sent it and would bring the receipt, and I still haven’t brought it, I forgot, sir. Now, what do you think, you go to her today and say: ‘He sends you his bow,’ and she says to you: ‘And the money?’ You could still have said to her: ‘He is a low sensualist and a vile creature with unbridled feelings. He didn’t send your money that time, he squandered it, because he couldn’t restrain himself, like an animal’—but still you could have added: ‘But he is not a thief; here is your three thousand, he sends it back; send it to Agafya Ivanovna yourself, and he sends you his bow.’ But now, suddenly, she says: ‘And where is the money?’”

“Mitya, you are unhappy, yes! But still not as much as you think—don’t kill yourself with despair, don’t!”

“And what do you think, that I’ll shoot myself if I don’t get three thousand to pay her back? That’s just the thing, I won’t shoot myself. I haven’t the strength now; later, perhaps, but now I’m going to Grushenka… Let my lard go to waste!”

“And then, at her place?”

“I’ll be her husband, I’ll be granted the honor of being her spouse, and if a lover comes, I’ll go into the other room. I’ll clean her friends’ dirty galoshes, blow up the samovar, run errands…”

“Katerina Ivanovna will understand everything,” Alyosha suddenly said solemnly. “She will understand the whole depth of all this grief, and she will be reconciled. She has the highest mind, because it isn’t possible to be more unhappy than you are; she will see for herself.”

“She won’t be reconciled to everything,” Mitya grinned. “There’s something here, brother, that no woman can be reconciled to. And do you know what would be best of all to do?”

“What?”

“To give her back the three thousand.”

“But where can we get it? Listen, I have two thousand, Ivan will give a thousand too, that makes three; take it and give it back.”

“And when will it come, your three thousand? You’re not even of age, on top of everything, and it’s absolutely, absolutely necessary that you bow out to her for me today, with the money or without it, because I can’t drag it out any longer; things have come to such a point. Tomorrow will be too late, too late. I’ll send you to Father.”

“To Father?”

“Yes, to Father, before her. Ask him for the three thousand.”

“But, Mitya, he won’t give it.”

“As if he would; I know he won’t. Do you know, Alexei, what despair means?”

“I do.”

“Listen: legally he owes me nothing. I’ve drawn everything out of him, everything, I know that. But morally he does owe me, doesn’t he? After all, he started out with my mother’s twenty-eight thousand and made a hundred thousand out of it. Let him give me only three thousand out of the twenty-eight, only three, and he’ll draw my soul out of hell, and it will be counted to him for many sins! And I’ll finish with that three thousand, I give you my solemn word, and he’ll never hear anything more about me at all. I’m giving him a chance to be a father for the last time. Tell him that God himself is sending him this chance.”

“Mitya, he won’t give it for anything.”

“I know he won’t give it, I know it perfectly. And especially now. More than that, here’s what else I know: now, only the other day, only perhaps yesterday, he found out seriously for the first time (underline it: seriously) that Grushenka may really not be joking and may want to take the leap and marry me. He knows that character, he knows that cat. So is he going to give me money on top of it, to help bring about such a thing, when he himself is out of his mind over her? But even that isn’t all; I can tell you more: I know that for some five days now he has had three thousand rubles taken out, changed into hundred-ruble notes, and packed in a large envelope with five seals on it, tied crosswise with a little red ribbon. You see how thoroughly I know it! And on the envelope is written: ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she will come’; he scrawled it himself, in quiet and in secret, and nobody knows that he has the money there except the lackey Smerdyakov, in whose honesty he believes as in his own. So for the third or fourth day now he’s been waiting for Grushenka, hoping she’ll come for the envelope; he let her know, and she let him know that ‘maybe I’ll come.’ So if she comes to the old man, how can I marry her then? Do you understand now why I’m sitting here in secret and what exactly I’m watching for?”

“For her?”

“For her. Foma rents a little room from these sluts, the women who own the house. Foma is from our parts, our former soldier. He does odd jobs for them, keeps watch at night, and in the daytime goes shooting black grouse, and that’s how he lives. I’ve settled in here with him; neither he nor the women know the secret, that is, that I’m keeping watch here.”

“Only Smerdyakov knows?”

“He alone. And he’ll let me know if she comes to the old man.”

“Was it he who told you about the envelope?”

“He. The greatest secret. Even Ivan knows nothing about the money or anything. And the old man is sending Ivan off to Chermashnya for a two- or three-day trip: a buyer has turned up for the grove, to cut it down for eight thousand, so the old man keeps begging Ivan: ‘Help me out,’ he says, ‘go yourself,’ for two or three days, that is. He wants Grushenka to come while Ivan is away.”

“So he’s expecting Grushenka today too?”

“No, she won’t come today; there are signs. She certainly won’t come!” Mitya suddenly shouted. “Smerdyakov thinks so too. Father is drinking now; he’s sitting at the table with brother Ivan. Go, Alexei, ask him for that three thousand…”

“Mitya, dear, what’s the matter with you!” exclaimed Alyosha, jumping up from his seat and peering at the frenzied Dmitri Fyodorovich. For a moment he thought his brother had gone out of his mind.

“What is it? I haven’t lost my mind,” said Dmitri Fyodorovich, looking at him intently and even somehow solemnly. “Never fear, I’m sending you to Father, and I know what I’m saying: I believe in a miracle.”

“A miracle?”

“A miracle of God’s providence. God knows my heart, he sees all my despair. He sees this whole picture. Will he really allow a horror to happen? Alyosha, I believe in a miracle; go!”

“I’ll go. Tell me, will you wait here?”

“I will; I understand it won’t be soon, that you can’t just walk in like that and plop, straight out with it! He’s drunk now. I’ll wait three hours, and four, and five, and six, and seven, but only know that today, even if it’s at midnight, you will appear at Katerina Ivanovna’s, with the money or without it, and say: ‘He sends you his bow.’ I want you to say precisely that line: ‘He sends his bow, he says.’”

“Mitya! And what if Grushenka comes today… or if not today, then tomorrow or the day after?”

“Grushenka? I’ll spy her out, burst in, and stop it…”

“And if…”

“If it’s if, then I’ll kill. I won’t live through it.”

“Kill whom?”

“The old man. I won’t kill her.”

“Brother, what are you saying!”

“I don’t know, you see, I don’t know… Maybe I won’t kill, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that at that very moment his face will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. That’s what I’m afraid of. And then I won’t hold back…”

“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe that God will arrange things as he knows best, so that there will be no horror.”

“And I’ll sit and wait for a miracle. But if it doesn’t come to pass, then…”

Alyosha, deep in thought, set off to his father’s.