The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Alyosha felt at once that he had gravely wronged her in his
thoughts. He was conquered and captivated immediately. Besides all
this, he noticed at her first words that she was in great
excitement, an excitement perhaps quite exceptional and almost
approaching ecstasy.
“I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole
truth-from you and no one else.”
“I have come,” muttered Alyosha confusedly, “I-he sent me.”
“Ah, he sent you I foresaw that. Now I know everything-everything!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing. “Wait a
moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I’ll tell you why I’ve been so longing to
see you. You see, I know perhaps far more than you do yourself, and
there’s no need for you to tell me anything. I’ll tell you what I want
from you. I want to know your own last impression of him. I want you
to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely even (oh, as coarsely as
you like!), what you thought of him just now and of his position after
your meeting with him to-day. That will perhaps be better than if I
had a personal explanation with him, as he does not want to come to
me. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me simply,
tell me every word of the message he sent you with (I knew he would
send you).”
“He told me to give you his compliments and to say that he would
never come again but to give you his compliments.”
“His compliments? Was that what he said his own expression?”
“Yes.”
“Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he
did not use the right word?”
“No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or
three times not to forget to say so.”
Katerina Ivanovna flushed hotly.
“Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help.
I’ll tell you what I think, and you must simply say whether it’s right
or not. Listen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing,
without insisting on your repeating the words, without emphasising
them, that would be the end of everything! But if he particularly
insisted on those words, if he particularly told you not to forget
to repeat them to me, then perhaps he was in excitement, beside
himself. He had made his decision and was frightened at it. He
wasn’t walking away from me with a resolute step, but leaping
headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado.”
“Yes, yes!” cried Alyosha warmly. “I believe that is it.”
“And, if so, he’s not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay!
Did he not tell you anything about money-about three thousand
roubles?”
“He did speak about it, and it’s that more than anything that’s
crushing him. He said he had lost his honour and that nothing
matters now,” Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his
heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and
salvation for his brother. “But do you know about the money?” he
added, and suddenly broke off.
“I’ve known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire,
and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn’t sent
the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in
need of money. My only object in all this was that he should know to
whom to turn, and who was his true friend. No, he won’t recognise that
I am his truest friend; he won’t know me, and looks on me merely as
a woman. I’ve been tormented all the week, trying to think how to
prevent him from being ashamed to face me because he spent that
three thousand. Let him feel ashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of
other people’s knowing, but not of my knowing. He can tell God
everything without shame. Why is it he still does not understand how
much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn’t he know me? How
dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him
for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that
he is dishonoured in my eyes. Why, he wasn’t afraid to be open with
you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don’t deserve the same?”
The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes.
“I must tell you,” Alyosha began, his voice trembling too, “what
happened just now between him and my father.”
And he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get
the money, how he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after
that had again specially and emphatically begged him to take his
compliments and farewell. “He went to that woman,” Alyosha added
softly.
“And do you suppose that I can’t put up with that woman? Does he
think I can’t? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly laughed
nervously. “Could such a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It’s
passion, not love. He won’t marry her because she won’t marry him.”
Again Katerina Ivanovna laughed strangely.
“He may marry her,” said Alyosha mournfully, looking down.
“He won’t marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you
know that? Do you know that?” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly
with extraordinary warmth. “She is one of the most fantastic of
fantastic creatures. I know how bewitching she is, but I know too that
she is kind, firm, and noble. Why do you look at me like that,
Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you are wondering at my words, perhaps
you don’t believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!” she cried
suddenly to someone, peeping into the next room, “come in to us.
This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows all about our affairs.
Show yourself to him.”
“I’ve only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,”
said a soft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice.
The portiere was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and
beaming, came up to the table. A violent revulsion passed over
Alyosha. He fixed his eyes on her and could not take them off. Here
she was, that awful woman, the “beast,” as Ivan had called her half an
hour before. And yet one would have thought the creature standing
before him most simple and ordinary, a good-natured, kind woman,
handsome certainly, but so like other handsome ordinary women! It is
true she was very, very good-looking with that Russian beauty so
passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall woman, though
a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was exceptionally tall.
She had a full figure, with soft, as it were, noiseless, movements,
softened to a peculiar over-sweetness, like her voice. She moved,
not like Katerina Ivanovna, with a vigorous, bold step, but
noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the floor. She
sank softly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk
dress, and delicately nestling her milk-white neck and broad shoulders
in a costly cashmere shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face
looked exactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale
pink tint on her cheeks. The modelling of her face might be said to be
too broad, and the lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip
was thin, but the slightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as
full, and looked pouting. But her magnificent, abundant dark brown
hair, her sable-coloured eyebrows and charming greyblue eyes with
their long lashes would have made the most indifferent person, meeting
her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the sight of her face
and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that face
was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike
look in her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the
table, beaming with delight and seeming to expect something with
childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The light in her eyes
gladdened the soul-Alyosha felt that. There was something else in her
which he could not understand, or would not have been able to
define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It was
that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that
catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the
shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite
girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo,
though already in somewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be
divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with
certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its
harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; that the face would
become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her
forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and
red perhaps-in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the
fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women.
Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he was
fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it
were regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak
naturally. She did so, evidently feeling there was a charm in the
exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course,
only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea
of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking
impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly
simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in
her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an
armchair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on
her smiling lips. She seemed quite in love with her.
“This is the first time we’ve met, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she
said rapturously. “I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to
her, but I’d no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I
knew we should settle everything together-everything. My heart told
me so-I was begged not to take the step, but I foresaw it would be
a way out of the difficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has
explained everything to me, told me all she means to do. She flew here
like an angel of goodness and brought us peace and joy.”
“You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady,” drawled
Grushenka in her singsong voice, still with the same charming smile of
delight.
“Don’t dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch!
Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as
though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more.
Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch!
Alyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running
down him.
“You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not
at all worthy of your kindness.”
“Not worthy! She’s not worthy of it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried
again with the same warmth. “You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we’re
fanciful, we’re self-willed, but proudest of the proud in our little
heart. We’re noble, we’re generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me tell
you. We have only been unfortunate. We were too ready to make every
sacrifice for an unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one
man-one, an officer too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to
him. That was long ago, five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he
has married. Now he is a widower, he has written, he is coming here,
and,
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