The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 1

Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

 

ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor

Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his

own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and

tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall

describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that

this “landowner”- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent

a day of his life on his own estate-was a strange type, yet one

pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the

same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are

very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and,

apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began

with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine

at other men’s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his

death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash.

At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless,

fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not

stupidity-the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and

intelligent enough-but just senselessness, and a peculiar national

form of it.

 

He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by

his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor

Pavlovitch’s first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly

rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our

district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was

also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls,

so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the

last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all

called him, I won’t attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the

last “romantic” generation who after some years of an enigmatic

passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at

any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended

by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid

river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished,

entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s

Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of

hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank

in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place.

This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar

instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna

Miusov’s action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people’s

ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom.

She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override

class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable

imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that

Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of

the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he

was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the

marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this

greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna’s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s

position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise,

for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or

another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was

an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist

apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida

Ivanovna’s beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the

life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper,

and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement.

She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to

his senses.

 

Immediatley after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a

flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The

marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with

extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event

pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the

husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there

were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young

wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor

Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to

twenty five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those

thousands were lost to her forever. The little village and the

rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his

utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some

deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from

her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the

contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless

importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna’s family intervened

and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that

frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour

had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten

by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient

woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left

the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute

divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her

husband’s hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular

harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of

drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the

province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna’s

having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to

mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify

him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part

of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

 

“One would think that you’d got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch,

you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow,” scoffers said to him.

Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to

play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he

pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows,

it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the

track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in

Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where

she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor

Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go

to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He

would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt

at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of

reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife’s family received

the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in

a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had

it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his

wife’s death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and

began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: “Lord, now

lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,” but others say he wept

without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were

sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite

possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his

release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a

general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and

simplehearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.