X. Both Together

Alyosha left his father’s house in a state of mind even more broken and crushed than when he had gone in to his father earlier. His mind, too, seemed shattered and scattered, while at the same time he felt that he was afraid to put the scattered pieces together and draw a general idea out of all the tormenting contradictions he had lived through that day. Something bordered almost on despair, which had never happened in Alyosha’s heart before. Over everything, like a mountain, stood the chief question, fatal and insoluble: how would it end between his father and his brother Dmitri over that dreadful woman? Now he had been a witness himself. He had been there himself and had seen them face to face. And yet only brother Dmitri could turn out to be unhappy, completely and terribly unhappy: unmistakable disaster lay in wait for him. Other people had turned up too whom all this concerned, and perhaps much more than Alyosha could have supposed before. Something even mysterious was coming out of it. Brother Ivan had taken a step toward him, which Alyosha had wished for so long, and now for some reason he felt that this step toward closeness had frightened him. And those women? A strange thing: earlier he had been on his way to Katerina Ivanovna in extraordinary embarrassment, and now he felt none at all; on the contrary, he was hurrying to her of his own accord, as though expecting to find guidance from her. And yet delivering the message to her was evidently harder now than before: the matter of the three thousand had been settled for good, and brother Dmitri, feeling himself dishonored now and past all hope, would of course stop at nothing any longer, at no fall whatever. On top of that, he had been told to pass on to Katerina Ivanovna the scene that had just taken place at his father’s as well.

It was already seven o’clock and growing dark when Alyosha set off for Katerina Ivanovna’s; she occupied a very spacious and comfortable house on Bolshaya Street. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of them, however, was an aunt only to her sister Agafya Ivanovna; this was that wordless person in her father’s house who had looked after her there together with her sister when she came to them from the institute. The other aunt was a stylish and imposing Moscow lady, though one of the poor ones. It was said that both of them submitted to Katerina Ivanovna in everything and were attached to her solely for the sake of propriety. Katerina Ivanovna herself submitted only to her benefactress, the general’s widow, who had stayed behind in Moscow on account of illness and to whom she was obliged to send two letters a week with detailed news of herself.

When Alyosha entered the front hall and asked the maid who had opened the door to announce him, in the drawing room they evidently knew of his arrival already (perhaps they had noticed him from the window), only Alyosha suddenly heard a commotion of some sort: someone’s running female footsteps, rustling dresses; perhaps two or three women had run out. Alyosha thought it strange that his arrival could cause such a stir. He was, however, shown into the drawing room at once. It was a large room, furnished with elegant and abundant furniture, not at all in a provincial way. There were many sofas and couches, settees, tables large and small; the walls were hung with pictures, the tables held vases and lamps, a great many flowers, there was even an aquarium by the window. With the dusk the room was rather dark. Alyosha made out a silk mantilla flung down on a sofa where people had evidently just been sitting, and on the table in front of the sofa two unfinished cups of chocolate, biscuits, a crystal plate of blue raisins and another of sweets. Someone was being entertained. Alyosha guessed that he had walked in on guests, and frowned. But at that very instant a portiere was raised, and with quick, hurried steps Katerina Ivanovna came in, stretching out both her hands to Alyosha with a joyful, rapturous smile. At the same moment a servant carried in two lit candles and put them down on the table.

“Thank God, you’ve come at last! You’re the only one I’ve been praying God for all day! Sit down.”

Katerina Ivanovna’s beauty had struck Alyosha before, when brother Dmitri, some three weeks earlier, had brought him to her for the first time to introduce him and make them acquainted, at Katerina Ivanovna’s own extraordinary wish. No conversation had got going between them at that meeting, however. Supposing that Alyosha was badly abashed, Katerina Ivanovna had, as it were, spared him and spent the whole time talking with Dmitri Fyodorovich. Alyosha had been silent, but he had made out a great deal very well. He had been struck by the imperiousness, the proud ease, the self-assurance of the haughty girl. And all this was beyond doubt. Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating. He found that her large, black, burning eyes were beautiful and especially suited to her pale, even somewhat pale-yellow, oval face. But in those eyes, as in the outline of her lovely lips, there was something with which his brother could of course fall terribly in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long. He had expressed this thought almost outright to Dmitri when, after the visit, Dmitri pestered him, begging him not to hide what impression he had carried away from seeing his fiancée.

“You’ll be happy with her, but perhaps… not peacefully happy.”

“That’s just it, brother, women like that stay as they are, they don’t humble themselves before fate. So you think I won’t love her forever?”

“No, perhaps you will love her forever, but perhaps you won’t always be happy with her…”

Alyosha had given his opinion then, blushing and vexed with himself for having yielded to his brother’s entreaties and spoken such “stupid” thoughts. For his opinion had seemed terribly stupid to him himself the moment he had uttered it. And he was ashamed, too, to have pronounced so authoritatively on a woman. All the greater was his astonishment now to feel, at his first glance at Katerina Ivanovna as she ran out to him, that perhaps he had been very wrong that time. This time her face shone with unfeigned, simple-hearted kindness, with direct and ardent sincerity. Of all the former “pride and haughtiness” that had so struck Alyosha then, there could be seen now only a bold, noble energy and a kind of clear, mighty faith in herself. Alyosha understood from his first look at her, from her first words, that the whole tragedy of her position with regard to the man she loved so much was no secret to her at all, that she perhaps knew everything already, absolutely everything. And yet, in spite of that, there was so much light in her face, so much faith in the future. Alyosha suddenly felt himself seriously and deliberately guilty before her. He was conquered and drawn to her at once. Besides all this, he noticed from her very first words that she was in some strong excitement, perhaps very unusual in her, an excitement that almost resembled a kind of rapture.

“I was waiting for you so because it’s from you alone that I can learn the whole truth now—from no one else!”

“I’ve come…” Alyosha muttered, getting confused, “I… he sent me…”

“Ah, he sent you, well, I had a feeling he would. Now I know everything, everything!” exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes suddenly flashing. “Wait, Alexei Fyodorovich, I’ll tell you beforehand why I was waiting for you so. You see, I perhaps know much more than even you do yourself; it isn’t news I need from you. What I need from you is this: I need to know your own, personal, latest impression of him, I need you to tell me in the most direct, unvarnished, even crude form (oh, as crude as you like!)—how do you yourself look at him now, and at his position, after your meeting with him today? That will perhaps be better than if I, whom he no longer wants to visit, had it out with him in person. Do you understand what I want from you? Now then, what did he send you to me with (I just knew he would send you!)—say it simply, say the very last word!…”

“He told me to… give you his bow, and that he will never come again… and to give you his bow.”

“His bow? He said that, he put it just like that?”

“Yes.”

“In passing, perhaps, by accident, he made a slip in the word, used the wrong word, not the one he should have?”

“No, he told me precisely to pass on that very word: ‘his bow.’ He asked me about three times not to forget to pass it on.”

Katerina Ivanovna flushed.

“Help me now, Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s now that I need your help: I’ll tell you my thought, and you just tell me whether I’m thinking right or not. Listen, if he had told you to give me his bow in passing, without insisting that the word be passed on, without underlining the word, then that would be everything… That would be the end! But if he insisted on that word especially, if he charged you especially not to forget to pass on that bow to me, then he must have been excited, beside himself, perhaps? He made up his mind and took fright at his decision! He didn’t walk away from me with a firm step, he went flying downhill. Underlining that word may mean nothing but bravado…”

“Yes, yes!” Alyosha warmly agreed. “That’s how it seems to me myself now.”

“And if that’s so, then he isn’t lost yet! He’s only in despair, but I can still save him. Wait: didn’t he tell you anything about money, about the three thousand?”

“He not only talked about it, but that was perhaps what was crushing him most of all. He said that he was deprived of his honor now and that now nothing mattered anymore,” Alyosha answered with fervor, feeling with all his heart how hope was flowing into his heart and that there might in fact be a way out and salvation for his brother. “But do you… know about that money?” he added, and suddenly stopped short.

“I’ve known for a long time, and I know for certain. I asked in Moscow by telegram, and I’ve long known that the money never arrived. He didn’t send the money, but I kept silent. In the last week I found out how much he still needed money… I set myself only one aim in all this: that he should know whom to come back to and who is his truest friend. No, he doesn’t want to believe that I am his truest friend, he didn’t want to know me, he looks at me only as a woman. All week I’ve been tormented by a terrible worry: how could I manage it so that he wouldn’t be ashamed before me of squandering that three thousand? That is, let him be ashamed before everyone and before himself, but let him not be ashamed before me. After all, he tells God everything without being ashamed. Then why doesn’t he know even now how much I can bear for him? Why, why doesn’t he know me, how dare he fail to know me, after all that has passed between us? I want to save him forever. Let him forget me as his fiancée! And here he is afraid for his honor before me! After all, he wasn’t afraid to open his heart to you, Alexei Fyodorovich, was he? Why haven’t I deserved the same until now?”

She spoke these last words in tears; the tears gushed from her eyes.

“I must tell you,” Alyosha said, his voice trembling too, “about what has just happened between him and his father.” And he told her the whole scene, told her that he had been sent for money, that Dmitri had burst in, beaten his father, and after that had once more, especially and insistently, confirmed that he, Alyosha, was to go and “give his bow”… “He went to that woman…” Alyosha added quietly.

“And you think I won’t endure that woman? He thinks I won’t endure her? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly laughed nervously. “Can a Karamazov burn with such a passion forever? It’s passion, not love. He won’t marry her, because she won’t even marry him…” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly smiled strangely again.

“Perhaps he will marry her,” Alyosha said sadly, lowering his eyes.

“He won’t marry her, I’m telling you! That girl is an angel, do you realize that? Do you realize it!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed with extraordinary fervor. “She is the most fantastic of fantastic creatures! I know how seductive she is, but I know, too, how kind she is, how firm, how noble. Why are you looking at me like that, Alexei Fyodorovich? Perhaps my words surprise you, perhaps you don’t believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!” she suddenly cried to someone, looking into the next room. “Come in to us, this is a dear man, this is Alyosha, he knows all about our affairs, show yourself to him!”

“And I was only waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,” said a tender, even somewhat sugary, female voice.

The portiere was raised, and… Grushenka herself, laughing and glad, came up to the table. Something seemed to give a jolt in Alyosha. He fastened his eyes on her and could not tear them away. Here she was, that dreadful woman, the “beast,” as brother Ivan had blurted out about her half an hour ago. And yet before him stood what seemed, to all appearances, the most ordinary and simple creature, a kind, sweet woman, beautiful, granted, but so like all other beautiful but “ordinary” women! True, she was very good-looking, very much so even, a Russian beauty, of the kind so many love to the point of passion. She was a woman of rather tall stature, somewhat shorter, however, than Katerina Ivanovna (who was really very tall), full-figured, with soft, as it were even soundless movements of the body, which were as it were pampered, like her voice, to some peculiar sugary refinement. She did not come up as Katerina Ivanovna did, with a powerful, brisk stride; on the contrary, soundlessly. Her foot could not be heard on the floor at all. Softly she sank into an armchair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk dress and luxuriously wrapping her full neck, white as foam, and her broad shoulders in a costly black woolen shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face expressed exactly that age. Her complexion was very white, with a high, pale-pink tint of color. The outline of her face was as it were too broad, and the lower jaw even jutted forward a tiny bit. The upper lip was thin, while the lower one, somewhat protruding, was twice as full and looked as if it were swollen. But her most wonderful, most abundant dark-blond hair, her dark sable brows, and her lovely gray-blue eyes with their long lashes would certainly have made the most indifferent and absent-minded man, even somewhere in a crowd, out walking, in a crush, suddenly stop before that face and remember it for a long time. What struck Alyosha most of all in that face was its childlike, simple-hearted expression. She looked like a child, she was glad of something like a child, she came up to the table precisely “glad,” and as though expecting something at any moment, with the most childlike, impatient, and trusting curiosity. Her look made the soul glad; Alyosha felt it. And there was something more in her, which he could not, or would not have known how to, account for, but which perhaps spoke to him also without his being aware of it: namely, once again, that softness, the tenderness of the movements of her body, the catlike soundlessness of those movements. And yet it was a powerful and ample body. Under the shawl one could make out broad full shoulders, a high, still quite youthful bosom. This body perhaps promised the forms of the Venus de Milo, though certainly, even now, in somewhat exaggerated proportion; that could be sensed. Connoisseurs of Russian female beauty could have predicted unerringly, looking at Grushenka, that by thirty this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony and spread, the face itself would grow flabby, that little wrinkles would appear extraordinarily fast around the eyes and on the forehead, the complexion would coarsen, turn florid perhaps; in a word, a beauty for a moment, a fleeting beauty, of the kind so often met with precisely in the Russian woman. Alyosha, of course, was not thinking about that, but, enchanted though he was, he asked himself, with some unpleasant sensation and as it were regretfully: why does she drawl her words like that and not speak naturally? She did it, evidently, because she found beauty in this drawling and in the studiedly sugary stressing of syllables and sounds. It was, of course, only a bad habit of bad taste, which testified to a low upbringing, to a notion of propriety vulgarly acquired from childhood. And yet this pronunciation and intonation seemed to Alyosha an almost impossible contradiction of that childishly simple-hearted and joyful expression of her face, of that quiet, happy, babylike radiance of her eyes! Katerina Ivanovna instantly sat her down in an armchair opposite Alyosha and rapturously kissed her several times on her laughing little lips. It was just as if she were in love with her.

“We are seeing each other for the first time, Alexei Fyodorovich,” she said, enraptured. “I wanted to get to know her, to see her, I meant to go to her myself, but at my first wish she came of her own accord. I just knew that she and I would settle everything, everything! My heart had a feeling… They begged me to give up this step, but I foresaw the outcome and I wasn’t mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me, all her intentions; like a good angel she flew down here and brought peace and joy…”

“You didn’t scorn me, dear, worthy young lady,” Grushenka drawled in a singsong, still with the same sweet, joyful smile.

“Don’t you dare say such words to me, you charmer, you enchantress! Scorn you? Here, I’ll kiss your lower lip once more. It really does look swollen, so here, let it swell still more, and more, and more… Look how she laughs, Alexei Fyodorovich, it gladdens the heart to look at this angel…” Alyosha was blushing and trembling with a small, imperceptible trembling.

“You pamper me, dear young lady, and maybe I’m not worth your kindness at all.”

“Not worth it! She isn’t worth it!” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed again with the same fervor. “Know, Alexei Fyodorovich, that we are a fantastic little head, that we are a willful but proud, oh so proud little heart! We are noble, Alexei Fyodorovich, we are magnanimous, do you know that? We were only unhappy. We were too quick to make every sacrifice for an unworthy man, perhaps, or a frivolous one. There was one man, an officer too, we fell in love with him, we gave him everything, it was long ago, five years ago, and he forgot us, he married. Now he is a widower, he has written, he is coming here, and know that we love him alone, him alone, to this day and have loved him all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again, and all these five years she has been unhappy. But who will reproach her, who can boast of her favor! Only that legless old man, the merchant, but he was more of a father to us, a friend, a protector. He found us then in despair, in torment, abandoned by the one we loved so… why, she wanted to drown herself then, why, that old man saved her, he saved her!”

“You do defend me so much, dear young lady, you do rush ahead in everything so,” Grushenka drawled again.

“Defend you? Is it for us to defend, and do we even dare to defend you here? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand, look at this plump little, small, lovely hand, Alexei Fyodorovich; do you see it, it brought me happiness and raised me from the dead, and now I’m going to kiss it, on the back and on the palm, there, there, and there!” And three times, as though enraptured, she kissed Grushenka’s truly lovely, perhaps too plump little hand. Grushenka, for her part, having held out that hand, followed the “dear young lady” with a nervous, ringing, lovely little laugh, and it was evidently pleasant to her to have her hand kissed like that. “Perhaps a little too much rapture,” flashed through Alyosha’s head. He blushed. His heart was somehow especially uneasy the whole time.

“You won’t put me to shame, will you, dear young lady, for kissing my hand like that in front of Alexei Fyodorovich?”

“But did I want to put you to shame by that?” Katerina Ivanovna said, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how badly you understand me!”

“And maybe you don’t understand me quite right either, dear young lady, maybe I’m much worse than I look to you. I have a wicked heart, I’m willful. I captured poor Dmitri Fyodorovich back then just to make fun of him.”

“But now you will save him. You gave your word. You’ll bring him to his senses, you’ll reveal to him that you love another, have loved him a long time, and that he is now offering you his hand…”

“Oh no, I didn’t give you any such word. You said all that to me yourself, but I didn’t give my word.”

“Then I must have misunderstood you,” Katerina Ivanovna said quietly, and as if turning a tiny bit pale. “You promised…”

“Oh no, angel young lady, I didn’t promise you anything,” Grushenka interrupted quietly and evenly, still with the same gay and innocent expression. “There, now you can see, worthy young lady, how nasty and headstrong I am compared with you. Whatever I take a fancy to, that’s just what I do. Earlier maybe I did promise you something, but just now I’m thinking again: what if I suddenly take a liking to him again, to Mitya, I mean? I did like him a lot once, after all, I even liked him for almost a whole hour. So maybe I’ll go and tell him right now to stay with me from this very day… That’s how fickle I am…”

“Earlier you said… something quite different…” Katerina Ivanovna barely brought out.

“Ah, earlier! But I’m soft-hearted, stupid. Just think what he’s been through on my account! And what if I come home and suddenly feel sorry for him, what then?”

“I didn’t expect…”

“Ah, young lady, how kind and noble you turn out to be compared with me. And now, I dare say, you’ll stop loving a fool like me, because of my character. Give me your dear little hand, angel young lady,” she asked tenderly, and as though with reverence took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand. “Look, dear young lady, I’m taking your little hand, and I’ll kiss it the way you kissed mine. Three times you kissed mine, and to get even I ought to give yours three hundred kisses for that. Well, so be it, and after that let it be as God sends; maybe I’ll be your slave entirely and want to please you like a slave in everything. As God decides, so let it be, without any agreements and promises between us. Your hand, your little hand, what a dear little hand! You dear young lady, you impossible beauty of mine!”

She slowly carried the little hand to her lips, with a strange aim, it is true: to “get even” with kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away: she had listened with timid hope to Grushenka’s last promise, though it, too, was very strangely put, to please her “like a slave”; she looked intently into her eyes: she saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, trusting expression, the same clear gaiety… “Perhaps she’s too naive!” flashed with hope in Katerina Ivanovna’s heart. Meanwhile Grushenka, as though delighted with the “dear little hand,” was slowly raising it to her lips. But right at her lips she suddenly held the hand still for two, three moments, as though pondering something.

“And you know what, angel young lady,” she suddenly drawled in the very tenderest and most sugary little voice, “you know what, I think I just won’t kiss your hand after all.” And she laughed a merry little laugh.

“As you like… What’s the matter with you?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly started.

“Just you keep that as a remembrance: that you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes. She was looking terribly intently at Katerina Ivanovna.

“Insolent creature!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly said, as though she had suddenly understood something; she flushed all over and jumped up from her seat. Grushenka, without hurrying, got up too.

“So I’ll go and tell Mitya right now how you kissed my hand and I didn’t kiss yours at all. And won’t he laugh!”

“Vile slut, get out!”

“Oh, how shameful, young lady, oh, how shameful, it isn’t even proper for you at all, such words, dear young lady.”

“Get out, you creature for sale!” Katerina Ivanovna screamed. Every little feature quivered in her utterly distorted face.

“For sale, is it? You yourself used to go to gentlemen for money at dusk, as a girl, you brought your beauty to sell, I know all about it.”

Katerina Ivanovna cried out and was about to throw herself at her, but Alyosha held her back with all his strength:

“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer anything, she’ll go, she’ll go right now!”

At that moment both of Katerina Ivanovna’s kinswomen ran into the room at the shout, and the maid ran in too. They all rushed to her.

“And I will go,” said Grushenka, snatching up her mantilla from the sofa. “Alyosha, sweetheart, you walk me home!”

“Go, go quickly!” Alyosha folded his hands before her, pleading.

“Darling Alyoshenka, walk me home! I’ll tell you one pretty, pretty little word on the way! It was for you, Alyoshenka, that I put on that scene. Walk me home, my dear, you’ll like it after.”

Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka, laughing a ringing laugh, ran out of the house.

Katerina Ivanovna had a fit. She was sobbing, spasms were choking her. Everyone was bustling around her.

“I warned you,” the elder aunt was saying to her, “I tried to hold you back from this step… you are too passionate… how could you bring yourself to such a step! You don’t know these creatures, and they say that this one is worse than all of them… No, you are too willful!”

“She’s a tiger!” Katerina Ivanovna screamed. “Why did you hold me back, Alexei Fyodorovich, I would have beaten her, beaten her!”

She was in no state to restrain herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not even want to restrain herself.

“She should be flogged with a lash, on the scaffold, by the hangman, in front of everyone!…”

Alyosha backed toward the door.

“But my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, throwing up her hands. “He! He could be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that creature about what happened there, on that fatal, eternally cursed, cursed day! ‘You brought your beauty to sell, dear young lady!’ She knows! Your brother is a scoundrel, Alexei Fyodorovich!”

Alyosha wanted to say something, but he could not find a single word. His heart was wrung with pain.

“Go away, Alexei Fyodorovich! I’m ashamed, it’s terrible for me! Tomorrow… I beg you on my knees, come tomorrow. Don’t condemn me, forgive me, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself yet!”

Alyosha went out into the street as though staggering. He wanted to cry too, as she did. Suddenly the maid caught up with him.

“The young lady forgot to give you this little letter from Mrs. Khokhlakova, it’s been lying here since dinner.”

Alyosha mechanically took the small pink envelope and, almost without realizing it, thrust it into his pocket.