I. The Beginning of the Official Perkhotin’s Career

Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, whom we left knocking with all his might at the strong, locked gates of the merchant’s widow Morozova’s house, ended, of course, by finally knocking his way in. Hearing such a furious knocking at the gates, Fenya, who had been so frightened two hours before and who, from agitation and “brooding,” still could not make up her mind to go to bed, was frightened again now almost to the point of hysterics: she imagined that it was Dmitri Fyodorovich knocking again (in spite of having seen with her own eyes how he drove away), because no one but he could knock so “insolently.” She rushed to the yard porter, who had woken up and was already on his way to the gates at the knocking, and began begging him not to let him in. But the yard porter questioned the man who was knocking and, learning who he was and that he wanted to see Fedosya Markovna on a very important matter, at last decided to unlock the gate for him. Going in to Fedosya Markovna, into the same kitchen again, where “for doubtation’s sake” she begged Pyotr Ilyich to allow the yard porter to come in as well, Pyotr Ilyich began questioning her and in an instant hit on the most important thing: namely, that Dmitri Fyodorovich, running off to look for Grushenka, had snatched the pestle out of the mortar, and had come back without the pestle, but with his hands covered in blood: “And the blood was still dripping, just dripping off them, just dripping!” Fenya kept exclaiming, having evidently created this terrible fact herself in her disordered imagination. But Pyotr Ilyich had seen the blood-covered hands himself, though nothing had been dripping from them, and had himself helped to wash them, and besides, the question was not how soon they had dried, but where exactly Dmitri Fyodorovich had run with the pestle, that is, whether it was certainly to Fyodor Pavlovich’s, and from what could this be concluded so decisively? On this point Pyotr Ilyich insisted thoroughly, and though in the end he learned nothing firmly, he did carry away something close to a conviction that Dmitri Fyodorovich could have run nowhere but to his parent’s house, and that, consequently, something must certainly have happened there. “And when he came back,” Fenya added with agitation, “and I confessed everything to him, then I started asking him: ‘Why are both your hands covered in blood, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear?’” and he supposedly answered her just like that, that this blood was human blood and that he had only just now killed a man. “He confessed it just like that, he owned up to me about everything right there, and suddenly ran out like a madman. I sat down and started thinking: where has he run off to now like a madman? He’ll go to Mokroye, I think, and kill my mistress there. I ran out then, to his lodgings, to beg him not to kill my mistress, but by the Plotnikovs’ shop I look and see that he’s already driving off, and that his hands aren’t bloody anymore” (Fenya had noticed and remembered this). The old woman, Fenya’s grandmother, confirmed as much as she could all her granddaughter’s testimony. After asking about a few more things, Pyotr Ilyich left the house in still greater agitation and uneasiness than when he had entered it.

It would seem that the most direct and nearest thing for him to do now would be to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and find out whether anything had happened there, and if it had, then what exactly, and only after making indisputably sure, then go to the district police chief, as Pyotr Ilyich had already firmly resolved. But the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovich’s gates were strong, he would have to knock again, and he was only distantly acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich—and there he would knock his way in, they would open for him, and suddenly nothing would have happened there, and the mocking Fyodor Pavlovich would go around town tomorrow telling the anecdote of how at midnight an official he didn’t know, Perkhotin, had come breaking into his house to find out whether somebody had killed him. A scandal! And scandal was what Pyotr Ilyich feared more than anything in the world. Nevertheless, the feeling that was carrying him away was so strong that, angrily stamping his foot on the ground and cursing himself again, he immediately rushed off on a new path, but no longer to Fyodor Pavlovich’s; to Mrs. Khokhlakova’s instead. If she, he thought, answered the question whether it was she who had given Dmitri Fyodorovich three thousand earlier, at such and such an hour, then in the case of a negative answer he would go straight to the district police chief, without stopping at Fyodor Pavlovich’s; in the opposite case he would put everything off till tomorrow and go back home. Here, of course, it is plain to see that the young man’s decision to go at night, almost at eleven o’clock, to the house of a society lady completely unknown to him, to rouse her, perhaps, out of bed, in order to put to her a question astonishing in its circumstances, contained, perhaps, far more chances of producing a scandal than going to Fyodor Pavlovich’s. But so it sometimes happens, especially in cases like the present one, with the decisions of the most exact and phlegmatic people. And Pyotr Ilyich, at that moment, was no longer at all phlegmatic! All his life afterward he remembered how an irresistible uneasiness, which had gradually taken possession of him, at last grew in him to the point of torment and carried him away even against his will. Of course, he still cursed himself the whole way for going to this lady, but “I’ll see it through, I’ll see it through to the end!” he repeated for the tenth time, gnashing his teeth, and he carried out his intention—he saw it through. It was exactly eleven o’clock when he entered Mrs. Khokhlakova’s house. He was let into the yard fairly quickly, but to the question whether the mistress was already asleep or had not yet gone to bed, the yard porter could give no exact answer, except that at this hour they usually went to bed. “Up there, upstairs, have yourself announced; if they want to receive you, they’ll receive you, and if they don’t, they won’t.” Pyotr Ilyich went upstairs, but here things got harder. The footman did not want to announce him, and at last called a maid. Pyotr Ilyich politely but insistently asked her to tell her mistress that, you see, a local official, Perkhotin, had come on a special matter, and that if it were not such an important matter he would not have dared to come—“announce me in precisely, precisely these words,” he asked the maid. She went away. He stayed waiting in the front hall. Mrs. Khokhlakova herself, though she had not yet fallen asleep, was already in her bedroom. She had been upset ever since Mitya’s visit earlier and already had a presentiment that she would not escape, that night, the migraine she usually had in such cases. On hearing the maid’s report, and surprised, she nevertheless irritably ordered him to be refused, in spite of the fact that this unexpected visit at such an hour by a “local official” unknown to her had extraordinarily excited her feminine curiosity. But Pyotr Ilyich this time dug in his heels like a mule: on hearing the refusal, he very insistently asked to be announced once more and to have it passed on in “these very words,” that he was here “on an extraordinarily important matter, and they may perhaps regret it themselves afterward if they do not receive him now.” “I felt as if I were flying down a mountain then,” he told it afterward himself. The housemaid, looking him over in surprise, went off a second time to announce him. Mrs. Khokhlakova was struck, thought, asked what he looked like, and learned that he was “very decently dressed, ma’am, young, and so polite.” Let us note in parentheses and in passing that Pyotr Ilyich was a rather handsome young man, and knew it about himself. Mrs. Khokhlakova decided to come out. She was already in her dressing gown and slippers, but she had thrown a black shawl over her shoulders. The “official” was asked to come into the drawing room, the very one in which Mitya had been received earlier. The hostess came out to her visitor with a sternly questioning look and, without asking him to sit down, began straight off with the question: “What is it you wish?”

“I have ventured to disturb you, madam, on account of our common acquaintance Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov,” Perkhotin began, but he had only just pronounced this name when the strongest irritation suddenly showed in the hostess’s face. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him in a fury.

“How long, how long am I going to be tormented with this terrible man?” she cried in a frenzy. “How dared you, my dear sir, how could you make up your mind to disturb a lady unknown to you in her own house and at such an hour… and come to her to talk about a man who here, in this very drawing room, only three hours ago, came to kill me, stamped his feet, and went out as no one goes out of a decent house. Know, my dear sir, that I am going to complain about you, that I will not let this pass, kindly leave me this very instant… I am a mother, I will at once… I… I…”

“Kill! So he wanted to kill you too?”

“Why, has he already killed someone?” Mrs. Khokhlakova asked impetuously.

“Be so good as to listen, madam, for only half a minute, and in two words I will explain everything to you,” Perkhotin answered firmly. “Today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Karamazov borrowed ten rubles from me, as one comrade from another, and I know positively that he had no money, and today at nine o’clock he came into my place carrying in his hands, in plain view, a wad of hundred-ruble notes, about two or even three thousand rubles. And his hands and face were all covered with blood, while he himself seemed as if out of his mind. To my question where he had got so much money, he answered precisely that he had just got it from you, before coming, and that you had lent him the sum of three thousand so that he could go, supposedly, to the gold mines…”

An extraordinary and painful agitation suddenly showed in Mrs. Khokhlakova’s face.

“God! He has killed his old father!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “I gave him no money, none! Oh, run, run!… Not another word! Save the old man, run to his father’s, run!”

“Allow me, madam, so you did not give him any money? You firmly remember that you did not give him any sum?”

“I did not, I did not! I refused him, because he did not know how to appreciate it. He went out in a rage and stamped his feet. He rushed at me, and I jumped back… And I will tell you something more, as a man from whom I no longer intend to hide anything now: he even spat at me, can you imagine that? But why are we standing? Ah, sit down… Forgive me, I… Or better, run, run, you have to run and save the unfortunate old man from a terrible death!”

“But what if he has already killed him?”

“Ah, my God, that’s true! So what are we to do now? What do you think, what must be done now?”

Meanwhile she had seated Pyotr Ilyich and sat down herself opposite him. Pyotr Ilyich set out for her, briefly but quite clearly, the history of the affair, at least that part of the history of which he himself had been a witness that day; he told her too about his visit to Fenya just now and informed her of the news about the pestle. All these details shook the excited lady beyond measure; she kept crying out and covering her eyes with her hands…

“Imagine, I had a presentiment of all this! I am gifted with this quality: whatever I imagine to myself, that is what happens. And how many, how many times I looked at that terrible man and always thought: here is a man who will end by killing me. And so it has happened… That is, if he has killed not me now but only his father, it is certainly because the visible finger of God was here, protecting me; and besides, he was ashamed himself to kill me, because I myself, here, on this very spot, put round his neck a little icon from the relics of the Great Martyr Barbara… And how near I was to death at that moment, why, I went right up to him, quite close, and he stretched out his whole neck to me! You know, Pyotr Ilyich (forgive me, your name, I believe you said, is Pyotr Ilyich)… you know, I do not believe in miracles, but this little icon and this obvious miracle with me now—it shakes me, and I am beginning again to believe in anything at all. Have you heard of the elder Zosima?… But then, I don’t know what I’m saying… And imagine, he spat at me even with the little icon round his neck… Of course, he only spat, he didn’t kill me, and… and look where he has galloped off to! But where are we to go, where do we go now, what do you think?”

Pyotr Ilyich stood up and announced that he would now go straight to the district police chief and tell him everything, and after that it was for the police chief himself to decide.

“Ah, he is a fine, a fine man, I am acquainted with Mikhail Makarovich. By all means, go precisely to him. How resourceful you are, Pyotr Ilyich, and how well you have thought it all out; you know, in your place I would never have thought of it!”

“All the more since I am a good acquaintance of the district police chief myself,” remarked Pyotr Ilyich, still standing and evidently wishing to break away as quickly as possible from the impetuous lady, who would not let him take his leave of her and go.

“And you know, you know,” she babbled, “come and tell me what you see there and find out… and what is discovered… and how they decide about him and where they sentence him to. Tell me, we don’t have capital punishment, do we? But be sure to come, even at three o’clock in the night, even at four, even at half past four… Have them wake me, shake me, if I won’t get up… Oh, God, but I won’t even fall asleep. You know, shouldn’t I go with you myself?…”

“N-no, ma’am, but if you were to write now, in your own hand, three lines, just in case, saying that you gave Dmitri Fyodorovich no money at all, it would perhaps not be amiss… just in case…”

“By all means!” Mrs. Khokhlakova sprang rapturously to her bureau. “And you know, you astonish me, you simply overwhelm me with your resourcefulness and your skill in these matters… You serve here? How pleasant it is to hear that you serve here…”

And while still saying this, she quickly wrote out on half a sheet of notepaper the following three large lines:

“Never in my life did I lend the unfortunate Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov (since he is, after all, unfortunate now) three thousand rubles today, nor any other money ever, ever! To this I swear by all that is holy in our world.”

“Here is the note!” She turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyich. “Go now, save him. It is a great deed on your part.”

And she made the sign of the cross over him three times. She even ran out to see him off as far as the front hall.

“How grateful I am to you! You will not believe how grateful I am to you now for coming to me first. How is it we have never met? I would be very flattered to receive you in my house henceforth as well. And how pleasant it is to hear that you serve here… and with such exactness, such resourcefulness… But they must appreciate you, they must understand you at last, and anything that I could do for you, then believe me… Oh, I so love young people! I am in love with young people. Young people are the foundation of all our present suffering Russia, all her hope… Oh, go, go!…”

But Pyotr Ilyich had already run out, or else she would not have let him go so soon. Mrs. Khokhlakova, however, had made a rather pleasant impression on him, which even somewhat softened his anxiety at having been drawn into such a nasty business. Tastes are extraordinarily various, that is well known. “And she isn’t so elderly at all,” he thought with pleasure. “On the contrary, I’d have taken her for her own daughter.”

As for Mrs. Khokhlakova herself, she was simply enchanted with the young man. “So much skill, so much accuracy, and in such a young man, in our time, and all of it with such manners and looks. And they say of modern young men that they don’t know how to do anything; here’s an example for you,” and so on, and so on. So that she simply even forgot about the “terrible event,” and only when lying down in bed, and suddenly remembering again “how near she had been to death,” she said: “Ah, it’s terrible, terrible!” But she at once fell into the soundest and sweetest sleep. I would not, however, have enlarged upon such petty and incidental details, if this eccentric meeting of the young official with the widow, who was by no means old yet, which I have just described, had not later served as the foundation of the whole career in life of this exact and accurate young man, which is remembered with amazement in our little town to this day, and about which perhaps we too shall say a special little word when we conclude our long story of the brothers Karamazov.