II. Lyagavy

And so he had to “gallop off,” and still there was not a kopeck for horses, that is, there were two twenty-kopeck pieces, and that was all—all that remained of so many years of former prosperity! But at home he had an old silver watch, which had long since stopped going. He seized it and took it to a Jewish watchmaker who kept a little shop in the market. The man gave him six rubles for it. “I didn’t even expect that much!” cried the delighted Mitya (he still went on being delighted), seized his six rubles, and ran home. At home he made up the sum by borrowing three rubles from his landlords, who gave them to him with pleasure, though it was the last money they had, so fond were they of him. Mitya, in his rapturous state, revealed to them then and there that his fate was being decided, and told them, in a terrible hurry, of course, almost his whole “plan,” which he had just presented to Samsonov, then Samsonov’s decision, his future hopes, and so on and so forth. The landlords had been initiated into many of his secrets even before this, which was why they looked on him as one of their own, not a proud gentleman at all. Having thus got together nine rubles, Mitya sent for post horses to the Volovya station. But in this way the fact was remembered and noted that “on the eve of a certain event, at noon, Mitya had not a kopeck, and that to get money he sold his watch and borrowed three rubles from his landlords, and all before witnesses.”

I note this fact in advance; why I do so will become clear later.

Galloping off to the Volovya station, Mitya, though he was beaming with a joyful presentiment that at last he would finish and untangle “all these affairs,” was nevertheless trembling with fear as well: what would become of Grushenka now in his absence? What if it was precisely today that she would at last decide to go to Fyodor Pavlovich? That was why he had left without telling her and had charged his landlords on no account to reveal where he had gone if anyone came from anywhere asking for him. “I must be back without fail, without fail, by this evening,” he kept repeating, jolting along in the cart, “and as for this Lyagavy, I may even drag him back here… to draw up the deed…” So, with a sinking soul, Mitya dreamed, but alas, his dreams were very far from destined to come true according to his “plan.”

In the first place, he was late, having set out from the Volovya station by a country road. The country road turned out to be not twelve but eighteen versts. In the second place, he did not find the Ilyinskoye priest at home; he had gone off to a neighboring village. By the time Mitya tracked him down there, having driven to this neighboring village with the same horses, already exhausted, it was almost night. The priest, a timid little man, kindly in appearance, explained to him at once that this Lyagavy, though he had stopped at his place at first, was now at Sukhoi Posyolok, spending the night there in the forest warden’s cottage, because he was bargaining for timber there too. To Mitya’s urgent entreaties to take him to Lyagavy at once and “thereby, so to speak, save him,” the priest, though he hesitated at first, agreed nevertheless to accompany him to Sukhoi Posyolok, evidently feeling curious; but, as ill luck would have it, he advised going “on foot,” since it was only a verst or so, “and a little bit over.” Mitya, of course, agreed and set off at his yard-long stride, so that the poor priest had almost to run to keep up. He was a little man, not yet old, and very cautious. Mitya at once began talking to him too about his plans, hotly and nervously demanded advice about Lyagavy, and talked the whole way. The priest listened attentively but gave little advice. To Mitya’s questions he answered evasively: “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know, how should I know that,” and so on. When Mitya began speaking of his disputes with his father over the inheritance, the priest even took fright, because he stood in some sort of dependence on Fyodor Pavlovich. He inquired with surprise, however, why Mitya called this trading peasant Gorstkin “Lyagavy,” and obligingly explained to Mitya that though the man really was Lyagavy, he was not Lyagavy, because he was cruelly offended by that name, and that he must be called Gorstkin without fail, “otherwise you’ll get nothing done with him, he won’t even listen,” the priest concluded. Mitya was somewhat and hastily surprised, and explained that Samsonov himself had called him so. On hearing of this circumstance the priest at once let the subject drop, though he would have done well to explain to Dmitri Fyodorovich then and there his own surmise: that if Samsonov himself had sent him to this peasant as to Lyagavy, had he not done so for some reason as a joke, and was there not something wrong here? But Mitya had no time to stop “over such trifles.” He hurried, strode on, and only on reaching Sukhoi Posyolok realized that they had walked not one verst or one and a half but surely three; this vexed him, but he put up with it. They went into the cottage. The forest warden, an acquaintance of the priest’s, lived in one half of the cottage, and in the other, the clean half, across the entryway, Gorstkin had settled himself. They went into this clean half and lit a tallow candle. The room was heavily overheated. On the pine table stood a samovar that had gone out, and with it a tray with cups, an empty bottle of rum, a quart of vodka not quite finished, and the remains of a wheaten loaf. The visitor himself lay stretched out on the bench, with his outer coat crumpled up under his head instead of a pillow, and he was snoring heavily. Mitya stopped, at a loss. “He has to be woken, of course: my business is too important, I hurried so, I’m in a hurry to get back today,” Mitya grew anxious; but the priest and the warden stood in silence, not expressing their opinion. Mitya went up and began to wake him himself, began energetically, but the sleeper did not wake. “He’s drunk,” Mitya decided, “but what am I to do, Lord, what am I to do!” And suddenly, in terrible impatience, he began pulling the sleeper by the arms, by the legs, rocking him by the head, lifting him up and sitting him on the bench, and still, after very long efforts, he achieved only that the man began to mumble absurdly and to swear vigorously, though indistinctly.

“No, you’d better wait a while,” the priest pronounced at last, “because he’s evidently not in a fit state.”

“He’s been drinking all day,” the warden responded.

“God!” Mitya kept crying out. “If only you knew how necessary it is for me and in what despair I am now!”

“No, you’d better wait till morning,” the priest repeated.

“Till morning? Have mercy, that’s impossible!” And in despair he was about to rush at the drunkard again to wake him, but at once gave it up, understanding the full uselessness of his efforts. The priest was silent; the sleepy warden was gloomy.

“What terrible tragedies realism arranges for people!” Mitya said in utter despair. Sweat was pouring down his face. Seizing the moment, the priest set out very reasonably that even if they did manage to wake the sleeper, being drunk he would still be incapable of any conversation, “and your business is important, so it would be surer to leave it till the morning…” Mitya spread his hands and agreed.

“I’ll stay here, Father, with the candle, and wait to catch the moment. When he wakes up, then I’ll begin… I’ll pay you for the candle,” he turned to the warden, “and for the lodging too, you’ll remember Dmitri Karamazov. Only I don’t know what to do about you now, Father: where will you sleep?”

“No, I’ll go home, sir. I’ll ride back on his mare,” he pointed to the warden. “And so goodbye, sir, I wish you complete satisfaction.”

So it was decided. The priest set off on the mare, glad to be rid of him at last, but still shaking his head in confusion and pondering whether he ought not to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovich of this curious incident tomorrow in good time, “or else, as like as not, he’ll find out, get angry, and stop his favors.” The warden, scratching himself, went silently off to his half of the cottage, and Mitya sat down on the bench to catch, as he had put it, the moment. A deep anguish settled on his soul like a heavy fog. A deep, terrible anguish! He sat, he thought, but could think nothing through. The candle burned down, a cricket began to chirp, in the overheated room it was growing unbearably stuffy. Suddenly he pictured the garden, the passage behind the garden, at his father’s house a door mysteriously opening, and Grushenka running in through the door… He jumped up from the bench.

“Tragedy!” he said, gnashing his teeth, went mechanically up to the sleeper, and began to look at his face. He was a lean peasant, not yet old, with a very elongated face, light-brown curls, and a long, thin, reddish little beard, in a cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, with a silver watch chain peeping out of its pocket. Mitya examined this physiognomy with terrible hatred, and for some reason it was especially hateful to him that the man had curls. What was unbearably offensive above all was that here was he, Mitya, standing over him with his urgent business, having sacrificed so much, having thrown up so much, utterly worn out, while this parasite, “on whom my whole fate depends now, snores as if nothing were the matter, as if he were from another planet.” “Oh, the irony of fate!” exclaimed Mitya, and suddenly, completely losing his head, rushed again to wake the drunken peasant. He tried to wake him with a kind of fury, tugged at him, shoved him, even beat him, but after struggling with him for some five minutes and again achieving nothing, he went back to his bench in helpless despair and sat down.

“Stupid, stupid!” Mitya kept exclaiming. “And… how dishonorable all this is!” he suddenly added for some reason. His head began to ache terribly: “Shall I give it up, then? Go away altogether?” flashed through his mind. “No, I’ll stay till morning. I’ll stay on purpose now, on purpose! Why did I come, then, after that? And there’s nothing to leave on anyway, how is one to get away from here now, oh, what nonsense!”

His head, however, ached more and more. He sat motionless and no longer remembered how he dozed off and suddenly fell asleep sitting up. Apparently he slept for two hours or more. He came to from an unbearable headache, unbearable to the point of screaming. His temples were throbbing, the crown of his head ached; on coming to, he could not for a long time collect himself completely and grasp what had happened to him. At last he realized that the overheated room was full of fumes from the stove and that he might have died. And the drunken peasant still lay there snoring; the candle had guttered and was about to go out. Mitya shouted and rushed, staggering, across the entryway into the warden’s half. The warden woke quickly, but on hearing that there were fumes in the other room, though he went to see to it, he took the fact with strange indifference, which surprised Mitya offensively.

“But he’s dead, he’s dead, and then… what then?” Mitya kept exclaiming before him in a frenzy.

They opened the doors wide, opened the window, opened the flue; Mitya dragged in a bucket of water from the entryway, first wetted his own head, and then, finding some rag or other, dipped it in the water and laid it on Lyagavy’s head. The warden, however, went on treating the whole event even somewhat contemptuously, and, having opened the window, said gloomily, “It’ll do as it is,” and went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lit iron lantern. Mitya fussed over the fume-sick drunkard for half an hour or so, wetting his head all the while, and seriously intended not to sleep all night, but, worn out, he sat down somehow for just one minute to catch his breath, and instantly closed his eyes, then at once unconsciously stretched out on the bench and fell asleep like the dead.

He woke terribly late. It was already about nine o’clock in the morning. The sun was shining brightly through the two little windows of the cottage. The curly-headed peasant of the night before was sitting on the bench, already dressed in his coat. Before him stood a fresh samovar and a fresh quart. The old one of last night had already been finished, and the new one was more than half emptied. Mitya jumped up and at once realized that the cursed peasant was drunk again, deeply and irretrievably drunk. He stared at him for a minute with bulging eyes. The peasant, for his part, kept looking at him silently and slyly, with a kind of insulting calm, even with a kind of contemptuous haughtiness, as it seemed to Mitya. He rushed up to him.

“Excuse me, you see… I… you have probably heard from the warden here in the other room: I am Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of old Karamazov, whose grove you are pleased to be bargaining for…”

“That’s a lie!” the peasant suddenly rapped out firmly and calmly.

“What do you mean, a lie? You are acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich, I believe?”

“I’m not acquainted with any Fyodor Pavlovich of yours,” said the peasant, moving his tongue somehow heavily.

“The grove, you are bargaining with him for the grove; wake up, come to your senses. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoye brought me here… You wrote to Samsonov, and he sent me to you…” Mitya was gasping.

“Y-you’re lying!” Lyagavy rapped out again.

Mitya’s feet went cold.

“Have mercy, this is no joke! You are tipsy, perhaps. But surely you can speak, understand… otherwise… otherwise I don’t understand anything!”

“You’re a dyer!”

“Have mercy, I am Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov, I have a proposal for you… a profitable proposal… very profitable… precisely about the grove.”

The peasant was stroking his beard importantly.

“No, you took on a contract and turned out a scoundrel. You’re a scoundrel!”

“But I assure you that you are mistaken!” Mitya was wringing his hands in despair. The peasant kept stroking his beard and suddenly narrowed his eyes slyly.

“No, you show me this: you show me a law that allows dirty tricks to be played, do you hear! You’re a scoundrel, do you understand that?”

Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly it was as if “something struck him on the forehead,” as he himself put it afterward. In an instant a kind of illumination took place in his mind, “a lamp was lit, and I grasped everything.” He stood dumbfounded, at a loss to understand how he, a man of some intelligence after all, could have given in to such foolishness, got himself mixed up in such an adventure, and kept it all up for almost a whole day and night, fussing over this Lyagavy, wetting his head… “Well, the man is drunk, drunk out of his mind, and he’ll go on drinking for another week—what is there to wait for? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? And what if she… Oh God, what have I done!…”

The peasant sat looking at him and chuckling. On another occasion Mitya might perhaps have killed this fool out of anger, but now all his strength had gone out of him, as out of a child. Quietly he walked over to the bench, took his coat, put it on in silence, and went out of the cottage. In the other half he did not find the warden; there was no one there. He fished fifty kopecks in small coins from his pocket and left them on the table, for the night’s lodging, for the candle, and for the trouble. On coming out of the cottage he saw that all around there was only forest and nothing else. He walked at random, not even remembering which way to turn from the cottage—right or left; last night, hurrying here with the priest, he had not noticed the road. There was no vengefulness toward anyone in his soul, not even toward Samsonov. He strode along the narrow forest path senselessly, lost, with a “lost idea,” and not caring at all where he was going. A child coming the other way could have overpowered him, so drained had he suddenly become in soul and body. Somehow, however, he made his way out of the forest: suddenly there appeared reaped, bare fields over a boundless expanse. “What despair, what death all around!” he kept repeating, striding on and on.

He was saved by some travelers: a driver was taking some little old merchant along the country road. When they drew level, Mitya asked about the road, and it turned out that they too were going to Volovya. They came to terms and took Mitya along as a fellow traveler. Some three hours later they arrived. At the Volovya station Mitya at once ordered post horses to town, and suddenly realized that he was impossibly hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, they fixed him some fried eggs. He ate them all in an instant, ate the whole big hunk of bread, ate the sausage that turned up, and drank three glasses of vodka. Having refreshed himself, he cheered up, and his soul grew clear again. He flew along the road, urged on the driver, and suddenly formed a new, and this time “unalterable,” plan for getting “that cursed money” this very day before evening. “And to think, only to think, that a man’s fate is being ruined because of a paltry three thousand!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “I’ll settle it today!” And if it had not been for the incessant thought of Grushenka and of whether something had happened to her, he might perhaps have become quite cheerful again. But the thought of her pierced his soul every minute like a sharp knife. They arrived at last, and Mitya ran straight to Grushenka’s.