VI. Here I Come Myself!

And Dmitri Fyodorovich was flying along the road. It was a little over twenty versts to Mokroye, but Andrei’s troika was galloping so hard that it could make it in an hour and a quarter. The fast ride seemed suddenly to refresh Mitya. The air was fresh and chilly, and large stars shone in the clear sky. It was that same night, and perhaps that same hour, when Alyosha, falling to the earth, “vowed ecstatically to love it forever and ever.” But it was murky, very murky in Mitya’s soul, and though much was tormenting his soul now, at this moment his whole being was drawn irresistibly toward her alone, toward his queen, to whom he was flying in order to look at her for the last time. I will say only one thing: his heart did not argue even for a minute. I may not be believed, perhaps, if I say that this jealous man felt not the slightest jealousy toward this new man, this new rival who had sprung up out of the ground, this “officer.” Toward anyone else, had such a man appeared, he would have been jealous at once and perhaps would again have soaked his terrible hands in blood; but toward this one, toward this “first one of hers,” he felt now, flying along in his troika, not only no jealous hatred but not even a hostile feeling—true, he had not seen him yet. “Here it’s indisputable, here it’s her right and his; here is her first love, which she hasn’t forgotten in five years: so she has loved only him these five years, and me, why did I turn up here? What have I got to do with it? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! And what am I now, anyway? Now it’s all over even without the officer; even if he hadn’t shown up at all, it would all be over just the same…”

Those, roughly, are the words in which he might have set out his feelings, if only he had been able to reason. But by then he was no longer able to reason. His whole present resolve had been born without reasoning, in a single instant; it had been felt all at once and accepted entire, with all its consequences, earlier that evening, at Fenya’s, from her very first words. And all the same, in spite of the whole resolve he had taken, it was murky in his soul, murky to the point of suffering: even resolve had not given him peace. Too much stood behind him and tormented him. And at moments this seemed strange to him: after all, the sentence had already been written by himself upon himself, with a pen on paper: “I execute myself and I punish”; and the slip of paper lay right here, in his pocket, ready; after all, the pistol was already loaded, after all, he had already decided how he would meet tomorrow the first hot ray of “golden-haired Phoebus”; and meanwhile he still could not settle accounts with the past, with everything that stood behind him and tormented him; he felt this to the point of torment, and the thought of it dug into his soul with despair. There was one moment on the road when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrei, jump out of the cart, take out his loaded pistol, and end it all, without even waiting for dawn. But that moment flew past like a spark. And besides, the troika was flying, “devouring space,” and as they drew nearer to the goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took his breath away more and more and drove all the other terrible phantoms from his heart. Oh, how he wanted to have a look at her, even a glimpse, even from a distance! “She’s with him now, well, so I’ll see how she is with him now, with her first sweetheart, and that’s all I need.” And never yet had there risen from his breast so much love for this woman, so fateful in his destiny, so much new feeling, never yet experienced by him, a feeling unexpected even to himself, a feeling tender to the point of prayer, to the point of vanishing before her. “And I will vanish!” he said suddenly, in a fit of some hysterical rapture.

They had been galloping for almost an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrei, though he was a talkative peasant, had not yet uttered a word either, as though he were afraid to start talking, and only briskly urged on his “nags,” his bay troika, lean but spirited. When suddenly Mitya exclaimed in terrible anxiety:

“Andrei! What if they’re asleep?”

It had suddenly come into his head, and until then he had not even thought of it.

“You’d have to think they’ve gone to bed by now, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

Mitya frowned painfully: and really, here he would come flying… with such feelings… and they would be asleep… she too would be asleep, perhaps, right there… An angry feeling boiled up in his heart.

“Drive on, Andrei, roll on, Andrei, quick!” he shouted in a frenzy.

“And maybe they haven’t all turned in yet,” Andrei reasoned, after a silence. “Timofei was saying earlier that a lot of them had gathered there…”

“At the station?”

“Not at the station, at the Plastunovs’, at the inn, a free station, that is.”

“I know; so how can you say there are a lot of them? A lot of whom? Who are they?” Mitya started up in terrible alarm at the unexpected news.

“Well, Timofei was saying, they’re all gentlefolk: two from town, who they are I don’t know, only Timofei was saying, two of the gentlemen from around here, and those two, visitors from somewhere, it seems, and maybe there’s somebody else too, I didn’t ask him properly. They’ve started playing cards, he said.”

“Cards?”

“So, there, maybe they’re not asleep, if they’ve got going at cards. You’d have to think it’s not past eleven yet, it’s just coming on to eleven, no more than that.”

“Drive on, Andrei, drive on!” Mitya cried out nervously again.

“Here’s something, if I might ask you, sir,” Andrei began again after a silence, “only I wouldn’t want to make you angry, I’m afraid, master.”

“What is it?”

“Earlier Fedosya Markovna lay down at your feet, she begged you not to ruin her mistress, and somebody else besides… so here, sir, I’m taking you there… Forgive me, sir, it’s just, from my conscience, maybe I said something stupid.”

Mitya suddenly seized him from behind by the shoulders.

“Are you a coachman? A coachman?” he began in a frenzy.

“A coachman…”

“Do you know that a man has to give way? So you’re a coachman, and so you won’t give way to anybody, run them down, that’s the idea, here I come! No, coachman, don’t run them down! You mustn’t run a man down, you mustn’t spoil people’s lives; and if you’ve spoiled a life, punish yourself… if only you’ve spoiled, if only you’ve ruined someone’s life, execute yourself and go away.”

All this burst out of Mitya as if in utter hysterics. Andrei, though he marveled at the master, kept up the conversation.

“That’s true, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear sir, you’re right there, that you mustn’t run a man down, and torment him neither, same as with any creature, because every creature, it’s a created creature, take a horse even, because there’s some that drive it hard for nothing, even our coachmen… And there’s no holding him, he just goes barreling along, just goes barreling right on along.”

“Into hell?” Mitya interrupted suddenly, and burst out in his unexpected short laugh. “Andrei, you simple soul,” he again seized him tight by the shoulders, “tell me: will Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov go to hell or not, what do you think?”

“I don’t know, my dear man, it depends on you, because you’re to us… You see, sir, when the Son of God was crucified on the cross and died, he came down from the cross straight into hell and set free all the sinners who were in torment. And hell groaned over it, that now, it thought, nobody’s ever going to come to it anymore, no sinners. And then the Lord said to hell: ‘Do not groan, O hell, for there shall come to you from now on all manner of grandees, rulers, chief judges, and rich men, and you shall be filled up exactly as you have been forever and ever, until the time when I come again.’ That’s right, that was the word that was said…”

“A folk legend, magnificent! Whip up the left one, Andrei!”

“So that’s who hell is meant for, sir,” Andrei whipped up the left one, “but you, sir, you’re just the same as a little child to us… that’s how we regard you… And though you’re hot-tempered, sir, that you are, the Lord will forgive you for your simple heart.”

“And you, will you forgive me, Andrei?”

“What have I got to forgive you for, you’ve done nothing to me.”

“No, for everyone, for everyone, you alone, now, this minute, here, on the road, will you forgive me for everyone? Speak, you soul of the common folk!”

“Oh, sir! It’s frightening even to drive you, the way you’re talking, it’s strange somehow…”

But Mitya did not hear. He was praying ecstatically and whispering wildly to himself.

“Lord, receive me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass by without your judgment… Do not judge, because I have condemned myself; do not judge, because I love you, Lord! I am vile myself, but I love you: if you send me to hell, I will love you there too, and from there I will cry out that I love you forever and ever… But let me, too, finish loving… here, now, finish loving, only five hours till your hot ray… For I love the queen of my soul. I love, and I cannot not love. You see all of me yourself. I’ll gallop up, I’ll fall down before her: you were right to pass me by… Farewell, and forget your victim, never trouble yourself!”

“Mokroye!” shouted Andrei, pointing ahead with his whip.

Through the pale murk of the night a solid mass of buildings, spread out over a huge space, suddenly showed black. The village of Mokroye had two thousand souls, but at this hour all of it was already asleep, and only here and there a few rare lights still flickered out of the dark.

“Drive, drive, Andrei, here I come!” Mitya exclaimed, as if in a fever.

“They’re not asleep!” Andrei said again, pointing with his whip at the Plastunovs’ inn, which stood right at the entrance to the village, and in which all six windows on the street were brightly lit.

“They’re not asleep!” Mitya joyfully took up. “Make a racket, Andrei, drive at a gallop, jingle, roll up with a crash. So that everyone knows who has come! Here I come! Here I come myself!” Mitya kept exclaiming ecstatically.

Andrei let his exhausted troika go at a gallop and really did roll up with a crash to the high porch, and reined in his steaming, half-winded horses. Mitya jumped down from the cart, and just at that moment the owner of the inn, who was, true, already on his way to bed, was curious enough to look out from the porch to see who had rolled up like that.

“Trifon Borisych, is that you?”

The owner bent down, peered, rushed headlong down from the porch, and in obsequious rapture threw himself toward the guest.

“Dmitri Fyodorych, my dear sir! Is it you we see again?”

This Trifon Borisych was a thickset and healthy peasant, of medium height, with a somewhat fattish face, of a stern and implacable look, especially with the Mokroye peasants, but having the gift of rapidly changing his face to the most obsequious expression when he scented a profit to be had. He went about in Russian dress, in a shirt with a side-buttoned collar and a long-waisted coat; he had a tidy bit of money, considerable in fact, but dreamed tirelessly of a higher role as well. More than half the peasants were in his clutches; everyone was deep in debt to him. He rented land from the landowners and bought some himself, and the peasants worked this land for him against their debts, which they could never get out of. He was a widower and had four grown daughters; one was already a widow, lived with him with two little ones, his granddaughters, and worked for him like a day laborer. Another daughter, a peasant girl, was married to an official, some little clerk who had worked his way up, and in one of the rooms of the inn, on the wall, among the family photographs, of the tiniest size, one could see a photograph of this little official too, in uniform and with an official’s shoulder straps. The two youngest daughters, on the church’s feast day or when setting off somewhere on a visit, put on blue or green dresses made in the fashion, tight at the back and with a train an arshin long, but the very next morning, as on any other day, they got up at first light and, with birch brooms in their hands, swept out the rooms, carried out the slops, and cleared away the litter after the lodgers. In spite of the thousands he had already acquired, Trifon Borisych was very fond of fleecing a carousing lodger, and remembering that not a month had passed since he had profited by Dmitri Fyodorovich, in a single day and night, during his spree with Grushenka, to the tune of two hundred rubles and more, if not all three, he greeted him now joyfully and impetuously, already scenting prey again from the mere way Mitya had rolled up to his porch.

“Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear sir, is it you we find again?”

“Stop, Trifon Borisych,” Mitya began, “first of all, the most important thing: where is she?”

“Agrafena Alexandrovna?” the owner understood at once, peering sharply into Mitya’s face. “Why, she’s staying right here too.”

“With whom, with whom?”

“Travelers passing through, sir… One of them’s an official, must be one of the Poles, judging by his talk, he’s the one who sent horses for her from here; and the other one with him is his comrade or a fellow traveler, who can tell; dressed in civilian clothes…”

“Well, are they carousing? Rich?”

“Carousing, what an idea! They don’t amount to much, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Don’t amount to much? Well, and the others?”

“From town, those ones, two gentlemen… They were coming back from Cherni and stayed on… One of them, the young one, must be a relation of Mr. Miusov, only I forget what he’s called… and the other one, I should think you know him too: the landowner Maximov, he’s been on a pilgrimage, he says, stopped at your monastery there, and so he’s traveling around with this young relation of Mr. Miusov…”

“And that’s all of them?”

“That’s all.”

“Stop, be quiet, Trifon Borisych, tell me now the most important thing: what about her, how is she?”

“Why, she arrived a while ago and is sitting with them.”

“Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?”

“No, she’s not laughing much, seems like… She’s even sitting there quite dull, she was combing the young man’s hair.”

“The Pole’s, the officer’s?”

“Why, he’s not young at all, and he’s no officer at all; no, sir, not his, but this nephew of Miusov’s, the young one… only I forget his name.”

“Kalganov?”

“Kalganov exactly.”

“All right, I’ll decide myself. Are they playing cards?”

“They were playing, but they stopped, they’ve finished their tea, the official asked for some liqueur.”

“Stop, Trifon Borisych, stop, my dear soul, I’ll decide myself. Now answer the most important thing: are there no Gypsies?”

“You don’t hear of the Gypsies at all now, Dmitri Fyodorovich, the authorities drove them off, but there are Yids here, they play the cimbalom and the fiddle, in Rozhdestvenskaya, so a person could send for them, even now. They’d come.”

“Send for them, by all means send for them!” cried Mitya. “And can the girls be roused, like that time, Marya especially, Stepanida too, Arina? Two hundred rubles for the chorus!”

“Why, for that kind of money I’ll rouse the whole village for you, though they’ve all turned in now to snore. And are they worth it, Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear sir, the peasants here, worth such kindness, or the girls either? To fix such a sum for that kind of vileness and coarseness! Is it for the likes of our peasant to be smoking cigarettes? And you handed them out. Why, he stinks, the brigand. And the girls, all of them, every last one, are lousy. Why, I’ll rouse my own daughters for you for nothing, never mind such a sum; they’ve only just gone to bed, so I’ll kick them in the back with my foot and make them sing for you. The other day you were giving the peasants champagne to drink, e-ekh!”

Trifon Borisych pitied Mitya in vain: that time he had himself hidden away a half dozen bottles of champagne from him, and had picked up a hundred-ruble note under the table and clenched it in his fist. And so it had stayed in his fist.

“Trifon Borisych, that time I shook out more than one little thousand here. Remember?”

“You shook them out, my dear man, how could we not remember you, you left a good three thousand with us, I dare say.”

“Well, I’ve come with the same now, see?”

And he took out his wad of banknotes and held it up to the owner’s very nose.

“Now listen and understand: in an hour the wine will come, the hors d’oeuvres, pies, and candies, all of it straight up there at once. This crate that Andrei has, up there too, right now, open it and serve the champagne at once… And the main thing, girls, girls, and Marya without fail…”

He turned to the cart and pulled his case of pistols out from under the seat.

“Settling up, Andrei, take it! Here are fifteen rubles for the troika, and here’s fifty for vodka… for your readiness, for your love… Remember the master Karamazov!”

“I’m afraid, master…” Andrei hesitated. “Give me five rubles for tea, if you please, but I won’t take more. Trifon Borisych is my witness. Do forgive my stupid word…”

“What are you afraid of?” Mitya measured him with a look. “Well, the devil take you, then!” he shouted, throwing him five rubles. “Now, Trifon Borisych, take me in quietly and let me first of all get a peep at them all, so that they don’t notice me. Where are they, in the blue room?”

Trifon Borisych looked warily at Mitya, but at once obediently did what was required: he carefully led him into the entryway, went himself into the big first room next to the one where the guests were sitting, and carried the candle out of it. Then he quietly led Mitya in and stood him in the corner, in the dark, from where he could freely look over the company without being seen by them. But Mitya did not look long, and in any case he could not make anything out: he saw her, and his heart began to pound, and his eyes went dim. She was sitting at the table, at the side, in an armchair, and next to her, on the sofa, was Kalganov, good-looking and still very young; she was holding his hand and, it seems, laughing, while he, without looking at her, was saying something loudly, as if in vexation, to Maximov, who was sitting across the table opposite Grushenka. Maximov for his part was laughing very much at something. On the sofa sat he, and beside the sofa, on a chair, by the wall, some other stranger. The one who sat sprawled on the sofa was smoking a pipe, and all that flashed through Mitya’s mind was that he was a fattish, broad-faced little man, probably not tall, and seemingly angry at something. His comrade, though, the other stranger, struck Mitya as somehow extraordinarily tall; but beyond that he could make out nothing. His breath caught. He could not stand there even a minute; he set the case down on a chest of drawers and, going cold and his heart sinking, walked straight into the blue room to the company.

“Ai!” Grushenka shrieked in fright, noticing him first.