II. The Sore Little Foot

The first of these errands was at Mrs. Khokhlakova’s house, and he hurried there so as to get it over with as quickly as possible and not be late for Mitya. Mrs. Khokhlakova had been ailing for three weeks now: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and although she did not keep to her bed, she nonetheless spent the days half reclining on a couch in her boudoir, in an attractive but decent negligee. Alyosha had once noted to himself with an innocent smile that Mrs. Khokhlakova, in spite of her illness, had begun almost to dress for show: little caps, little bows, loose little jackets had appeared, and he guessed why this was so, though he drove these thoughts away as idle. In the last two months the young man Perkhotin had begun calling on Mrs. Khokhlakova, among her other visitors. Alyosha had not been there for some four days and, on entering the house, made haste to go straight to Liza, for his errand was with her, since Liza had sent a maid to him the day before with an urgent request to come to her at once “on a very important matter,” which, for certain reasons, had interested Alyosha. But while the maid was going to announce him to Liza, Mrs. Khokhlakova had already learned from someone of his arrival and at once sent to ask him to come to her “for just one little minute.” Alyosha reasoned that it would be better to satisfy the mamma’s request first, for otherwise she would keep sending to Liza every minute while he was sitting with her. Mrs. Khokhlakova was lying on the couch, dressed somehow especially festively and evidently in a state of extraordinary nervous excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of delight.

“Ages, ages, whole ages since I’ve seen you! A whole week, good gracious, ah, but then you were here only four days ago, on Wednesday. You’ve come to see Lise, I’m sure you meant to go straight to her on tiptoe so that I wouldn’t hear. Dear, dear Alexei Fyodorovich, if you only knew how she worries me! But that’s for later. Though it is the most important thing, it’s for later. Dear Alexei Fyodorovich, I entrust my Liza to you completely. Since the death of the elder Zosima—God rest his soul!” (She crossed herself.) “Since him, I look upon you as a schema-monk, although you wear your new suit most charmingly. Wherever did you find such a tailor here? But no, no, that’s not the important thing, that’s for later. Forgive me for sometimes calling you Alyosha, I’m an old woman, everything is permitted to me,” she smiled coquettishly, “but that’s for later too. The main thing is that I mustn’t forget the main thing. Please remind me yourself, the moment I start rambling, just say: ‘And the main thing?’ Ah, how do I know what the main thing is now! Ever since Lise took back her promise—her childish promise, Alexei Fyodorovich—to marry you, you of course understood that it was all only the playful childish fancy of a sick little girl who had sat in an invalid chair for a long time—thank God, she walks now. This new doctor, whom Katya sent for from Moscow for that unhappy brother of yours, who tomorrow… Well, why talk about tomorrow! I’m dying at the mere thought of tomorrow! Mainly of curiosity… In a word, this doctor was here yesterday and saw Lise… I paid him fifty rubles for the visit. But that’s not it at all, not it again… You see, I’m completely muddled now. I’m in a hurry. Why am I in a hurry? I don’t know. I’m terribly ceasing to know things now. Everything has got mixed up for me into a sort of lump. I’m afraid you’ll go and jump up and leave me out of boredom, and that’s the last I’ll see of you. Ah, my God! Why are we sitting here, and first of all, coffee, Yulia, Glafira, coffee!”

Alyosha hastily thanked her and announced that he had only just had coffee.

“Where?”

“At Agrafena Alexandrovna’s.”

“That… that’s at that woman’s! Ah, it’s she who has been the ruin of everyone, and yet, I don’t know, they say she has become a saint, though late. It would have been better before, when it was needed, but now, what use is it? Be quiet, be quiet, Alexei Fyodorovich, because I want to say so much that I don’t think I’ll say anything at all. This terrible trial… I shall certainly go, I’m getting ready, they’ll carry me in in an armchair, and besides I can sit up, I’ll have people with me, and you know, don’t you, that I’m one of the witnesses. How am I to speak, how am I to speak! I don’t know what I’m going to say. You have to take an oath, don’t you, isn’t that so, isn’t it?”

“It is, but I don’t think you will be able to appear.”

“I can sit up; ah, you’re putting me off! This trial, this savage deed, and then everyone goes to Siberia, others get married, and all of it fast, fast, and everything changes, and at last, nothing, everyone is old and looking into the grave. Well, let it be, I’m tired. This Katya, cette charmante personne, she has shattered all my hopes, now she’ll follow one of your brothers to Siberia, and your other brother will go after her and live in the next town, and they will all torment one another. It’s driving me out of my mind, and above all this publicity: they’ve written about it a million times in all the newspapers in Petersburg and Moscow. Ah yes, imagine, they’ve written about me too, that I was your brother’s ‘dear friend,’ I don’t want to say the nasty word, imagine, now just imagine!”

“That cannot be! Where did they write it, and how?”

“I’ll show you this minute. I got it yesterday, and read it yesterday. Here, in the newspaper Rumors, the Petersburg one. These Rumors started coming out this year, I’m terribly fond of rumors, so I subscribed, and here’s what I brought down on my own head: that’s the sort of rumors they turned out to be. Here, here in this place, read it.”

And she held out to Alyosha a sheet of newspaper that had been lying under her pillow.

It was not exactly that she was upset; she was somehow all shattered, and indeed, perhaps, everything in her head had really rolled up into a lump. The newspaper item was highly characteristic and was, of course, bound to have a very touchy effect on her, but she, luckily for her perhaps, was incapable at that moment of concentrating on one point, and so a minute later she might even forget about the newspaper and jump to something else entirely. As for the fame of the terrible trial having already spread everywhere throughout Russia, Alyosha had known that a long while, and, God, what wild items and reports he had managed to read in these two months, among other, accurate reports, about his brother, about the Karamazovs in general, and even about himself. One newspaper had even said that out of fear after his brother’s crime he had taken the schema and shut himself up as a recluse; another refuted this and wrote, on the contrary, that he and his elder Zosima had broken open the monastery money box and “run off from the monastery.” The present item, in the newspaper Rumors, was headed: “From Skotoprigonyevsk (alas, that is what our little town is called; I have long concealed its name),¹ on the Karamazov Trial.” It was quite short, and Mrs. Khokhlakova was not mentioned in it directly at all; indeed, all the names were concealed. It merely reported that the criminal whom they were now preparing to try with such a fanfare, a retired army captain of an insolent sort, an idler and a serf-owner, had constantly been engaged in amours and had particular influence over certain “ladies languishing in solitude.” One such lady, so it said, one of the “languishing widows,” who tried to look young though she already had a grown-up daughter, had been so captivated by him that only two hours before the crime she had offered him three thousand rubles on condition that he run off with her at once to the gold mines. But the villain, so it said, had preferred to kill his father and rob him of precisely the same three thousand, counting on doing it with impunity, rather than drag himself off to Siberia with the forty-year-old charms of his languishing lady. This playful report ended, as was only proper, with noble indignation at the immorality of parricide and of the former serfdom. Having read it with curiosity, Alyosha folded the sheet and handed it back to Mrs. Khokhlakova.

“Well, how can it not be me?” she began babbling again. “It’s me, after all, I offered him the gold mines almost an hour before, and suddenly ‘forty-year-old charms’! As if that were why I did it! He did it on purpose! May the eternal Judge forgive him for the forty-year-old charms, as I forgive him, but this is… you know who this is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I haven’t heard anything.”

“It’s he, he, and not ‘perhaps’! I threw him out, you see… You know the whole story, don’t you?”

“I know that you invited him not to call on you in future, but what for exactly, that I… haven’t heard, at least not from you.”

“So you’ve heard it from him! Well, is he abusing me, abusing me terribly?”

“Yes, he abuses you, but then he abuses everyone. But why you turned him away I haven’t heard from him either. And in general I meet him very seldom. We are not friends.”

“Well, then, I’ll reveal it all to you and, there’s nothing for it, I’ll repent, because there is one trait in this in which I myself, perhaps, am to blame. Only a little, little trait, the very littlest, so that perhaps there isn’t one at all. You see, my dear,” Mrs. Khokhlakova suddenly put on a sort of playful air, and a sweet though enigmatic little smile flickered on her lips, “you see, I suspect… you will forgive me, Alyosha, I speak to you as a mother… oh no, no, on the contrary, I speak to you now as to my father… because mother doesn’t fit here at all… Well, it’s just as if I were speaking to the elder Zosima at confession, and that is most correct, it fits very well: didn’t I call you a schema-monk just now? Well, so this poor young man, your friend Rakitin (oh God, I simply can’t be angry with him! I’m angry and cross, but not very), in a word, this frivolous young man suddenly, imagine, took it into his head, it seems, to fall in love with me. I noticed it only later, only later, all of a sudden, but at first, that is, a month or so ago, he began calling on me more often, almost every day, although we had been acquainted before. I knew nothing… and then suddenly it was as though it dawned on me, and I begin, to my surprise, to notice things. You know that two months ago I began receiving that modest, charming, and worthy young man, Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, who is in the service here. You’ve met him so many times yourself. And isn’t it true, he’s worthy, serious? He comes once every three days, not every day (though he might come every day, for all I care), and he is always so well dressed, and in general I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, just like you, and he has almost a statesman’s mind, he speaks so charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly put in a word for him. He’s a future diplomat. On that terrible day he almost saved me from death, coming to me at night. Well, and your friend Rakitin always comes in such boots and drags them across the carpet… in a word, he even began hinting something to me, and suddenly once, as he was leaving, he pressed my hand terribly hard. No sooner had he pressed my hand than my foot suddenly began to ache. He had met Pyotr Ilyich at my house before, and, would you believe it, he keeps needling him, keeps needling him, just bellows at him for something. I simply watch the two of them when they come together and laugh inside. Then suddenly I’m sitting alone, that is, no, I was lying down by then, suddenly I’m lying alone, and Mikhail Ivanovich comes in and, imagine, brings me his little verses, the very shortest, on my sore foot, that is, he described my sore foot in verse. Wait, how does it go:

“This little foot, this little foot
Has gone and got a little sore…—

“or something like that—I simply can’t remember verses—I have them lying here—well, I’ll show you later, only they’re lovely, lovely, and, you know, not only about the little foot, but edifying too, with a lovely idea, only I’ve forgotten it, in a word, fit for an album. Well, I thanked him, of course, and he was evidently flattered. I had hardly thanked him when in walks Pyotr Ilyich too, and Mikhail Ivanovich suddenly turned as black as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyich had interrupted him in something, because Mikhail Ivanovich certainly wanted to say something right after the verses, I had a presentiment of it, and just then Pyotr Ilyich walked in. I suddenly show Pyotr Ilyich the verses, and I don’t say who wrote them. But I’m sure, I’m sure he guessed at once, though to this day he won’t admit it and says he didn’t guess; but he does that on purpose. Pyotr Ilyich at once burst out laughing and began to criticize: trashy little verses, he says, some seminarian wrote them, and, you know, with such passion, such passion! At that your friend, instead of laughing, suddenly flew into a perfect rage… Lord, I thought they would come to blows. ‘It was I,’ he says, ‘who wrote them. I wrote them,’ he says, ‘as a joke, because I consider writing verses a base thing… Only my verses are good. They want to put up a monument to your Pushkin for women’s little feet, but mine have a tendency, and you,’ he says, ‘are a serf-owner yourself; you,’ he says, ‘have no humaneness whatever, you don’t feel any of today’s enlightened feelings, progress hasn’t touched you, you,’ he says, ‘are a petty official and you take bribes!’ At that I began to shout and implore them. And Pyotr Ilyich, you know, is not at all timid, and he suddenly adopted the most noble tone: looks at him mockingly, listens, and apologizes: ‘I didn’t know,’ he says. ‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have said it, I would have,’ he says, ‘praised them… Poets,’ he says, ‘are all so irritable…’ In a word, such mockery under the guise of the most noble tone. He explained to me himself afterward that it was all mockery, but I thought he meant it. Only suddenly I’m lying here, just as I am now in front of you, and I think: will it or will it not be noble if I suddenly drive Mikhail Ivanovich out for shouting indecently at my guest in my house? And would you believe it: I lie there, I’ve closed my eyes, and I think: will it or will it not be noble, and I can’t decide, and I suffer, I suffer, and my heart is pounding: shall I cry out or not cry out? One voice says: cry out, and the other says: no, don’t cry out! The moment that other voice said it, I suddenly cried out and suddenly fell into a faint. Well, then of course there was a commotion. Suddenly I get up and say to Mikhail Ivanovich: it pains me to tell you, but I do not wish to receive you in my house any longer. And so I threw him out. Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich! I know myself that I did a nasty thing, I was lying the whole time, I wasn’t angry with him at all, but suddenly, above all suddenly, it seemed to me that it would be so good, that scene… Only, would you believe it, that scene was natural all the same, because I even burst into tears and cried for several days afterward, and then suddenly, after dinner one day, I forgot all about it. So he stopped coming, two weeks now, and I think: can it really be that he won’t come at all? That was only yesterday, and then suddenly toward evening these Rumors arrive. I read it and gasped, well, who wrote it, he wrote it, he went home that time, sat down, and wrote it; sent it off, and they printed it. It was two weeks ago, you see. Only, Alyosha, it’s awful what I’m saying, and I’m not saying at all what I need to say, am I? Ah, it just says itself!”

“I terribly need to be at my brother’s in time today,” Alyosha began to murmur.

“Precisely, precisely! You’ve reminded me of everything! Listen, what is a fit of passion?”

“What fit of passion?” Alyosha was surprised.

“A legal fit of passion. The kind of fit of passion for which everything is forgiven. Whatever you’ve done, you’re forgiven at once.”

“But what are you talking about?”

“About this: this Katya… Ah, she’s a dear, dear creature, only I simply can’t make out whom she’s in love with. She was sitting with me not long ago, and I couldn’t worm anything out of her. All the more so as she herself now begins with me so superficially, in a word, all about my health and nothing more, and she even takes such a tone, and so I said to myself: well, let it be, well, God be with you… Ah yes, well, about this fit of passion: this doctor has come. You know that a doctor has come? Well, how could you not know, the one who recognizes madmen, it was you who sent for him, that is, not you, but Katya. It’s all Katya! Well, so you see: a man is sitting there, not mad at all, only suddenly he has a fit of passion. He is in his right mind and knows what he’s doing, and yet he’s in a state of passion. Well, so it was with Dmitri Fyodorovich, there surely was a fit of passion. When they opened the new courts, they found out about fits of passion at once. It’s a blessing of the new courts. This doctor came and asks me about that evening, well, about the gold mines: what, he says, was he like then? How could he not be in a state of passion: he came and shouted: money, money, three thousand, give me three thousand, and then went and suddenly killed. I don’t want to, he says, I don’t want to kill, and suddenly he killed. That is the very thing they’ll forgive him for, that he resisted and yet killed.”

“But he didn’t kill,” Alyosha interrupted, somewhat sharply. Uneasiness and impatience were overcoming him more and more.

“I know, it was that old man Grigory who killed…”

“What, Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

“He, he, it was Grigory. When Dmitri Fyodorovich struck him, he lay there, and then he got up, sees the door is open, went in, and killed Fyodor Pavlovich.”

“But why, why?”

“Why, he had a fit of passion. When Dmitri Fyodorovich struck him on the head, he came to and had a fit of passion, went and killed. And as for his saying himself that he didn’t kill, maybe he doesn’t remember it. Only, you see: it will be better, much better, if Dmitri Fyodorovich killed. And that’s how it was, though I say it was Grigory, but it surely was Dmitri Fyodorovich, and it’s much, much better that way! Ah, not better because a son killed his father, I don’t praise that, children, on the contrary, ought to honor their parents, but all the same it’s better if it was he, because then you have nothing to cry about, since he killed without being in his right mind or, better to say, being fully in his right mind but not knowing how it happened to him. No, let them forgive him; it is so humane, and so that people will see the blessing of the new courts, and I didn’t even know, but they say it’s been going on a long time, and when I found out yesterday it struck me so that I wanted to send for you at once; and then, if they forgive him, then straight from the court to my house for dinner, and I’ll invite my acquaintances, and we’ll drink to the new courts. I don’t think he’s dangerous, and besides I’ll invite a great many guests, so that he can always be taken out if he does anything, and then he can be a justice of the peace somewhere in another town or something, because those who have suffered misfortune themselves judge best of all. And the main thing is, who isn’t in a state of passion nowadays, you, I, we’re all in a state of passion, and so many examples: a man sits singing a romance, suddenly something displeases him, he takes a pistol and kills whoever happens to be there, and after that everyone forgives him. I read about it not long ago, and all the doctors confirmed it. Doctors confirm things nowadays, they confirm everything. Good gracious, my Lise is in a state of passion, I was crying over her only yesterday, I cried the day before, and today I guessed that she simply has a fit of passion. Oh, Lise grieves me so! I think she’s gone completely mad. Why did she send for you? Did she send for you, or did you come to her yourself?”

“Yes, she sent for me, and I’m going to her now,” Alyosha got up resolutely.

“Ah, dear, dear Alexei Fyodorovich, here, perhaps, is the most important thing of all,” Mrs. Khokhlakova cried out, suddenly bursting into tears. “God sees that I sincerely trust Lise to you, and it doesn’t matter that she sent for you without her mother knowing. But Ivan Fyodorovich, your brother, forgive me, I cannot trust my daughter to him so lightly, although I continue to consider him a most chivalrous young man. And imagine, he suddenly paid a visit to Lise, and I knew nothing about it.”

“What? How? When?” Alyosha was terribly surprised. He did not sit down again but listened standing.

“I’ll tell you, perhaps that is precisely why I sent for you, because I no longer even know why I sent for you. It’s like this: Ivan Fyodorovich has been here only twice since his return from Moscow; the first time he came as an acquaintance to pay a visit, and the second time, that was not long ago, Katya was sitting with me, and he dropped in, having learned that she was here. Of course, I made no claim to frequent visits from him, knowing how much trouble he has on his hands these days, vous comprenez, cette affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa (you understand, this business and the terrible death of your papa), only suddenly I learn that he’s been here again, only not to me but to Lise, that was some six days ago; he came, sat for five minutes, and left. And I learned about it a whole three days later from Glafira, so that it suddenly gave me quite a jolt. I at once summon Lise, and she laughs: he thought, she says, that you were asleep, and came in to me to ask about your health. Of course, that was how it was. Only Lise, Lise, oh God, how she grieves me! Imagine, suddenly one night, that was four days ago, just after you were last here and left, suddenly at night she has a fit, screaming, shrieking, hysterics! Why do I never have hysterics? Then the next day a fit, and then on the third day too, and yesterday, and so yesterday this fit of passion. And she suddenly shouts at me: ‘I hate Ivan Fyodorovich, I demand that you not receive him, that you refuse him the house!’ I was stunned at anything so unexpected and object to her: why on earth should I refuse such a worthy young man, and with such learning, and with such a misfortune, because after all these stories are a misfortune, not a fortune, isn’t that so? She suddenly burst out laughing at my words and so, you know, insultingly. Well, I’m glad, I think, that I made her laugh, and now the fits will pass, all the more so as I myself meant to refuse Ivan Fyodorovich for these strange visits without my consent and to demand an explanation. Only suddenly this morning Liza woke up and got angry with Yulia and, imagine, struck her in the face with her hand. But that’s monstrous, with my maids I use the formal you. And suddenly an hour later she’s embracing Yulia and kissing her feet. And to me she sent word that she would not come to me at all and never wants to come in future, and when I dragged myself to her, she rushed to kiss me and cry and, kissing me, simply pushed me out of the door without saying a word, so that I found out nothing at all. Now, dear Alexei Fyodorovich, all my hopes are in you, and of course the fate of my whole life is in your hands. I simply ask you to go to Lise, find out everything from her, as only you know how to do, and come and tell me, me, her mother, because, you understand, I shall die, I shall simply die if all this goes on, or I’ll run away from home. I can’t bear it any longer, I have patience, but I may lose it, and then… and then there will be horrors. Ah, my God, at last, Pyotr Ilyich!” Mrs. Khokhlakova cried out, suddenly all radiant, catching sight of Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin as he came in. “You’re late, you’re late! Well, sit down, speak, decide our fate, well, what about this lawyer? Where are you going, Alexei Fyodorovich?”

“To Lise.”

“Ah, yes! So you won’t forget, you won’t forget what I asked you? Fate is in it, fate!”

“Of course I won’t forget, if only it’s possible… but I am so late,” Alyosha muttered, beating a hasty retreat.

“No, you will surely, surely come in, and not ‘if it’s possible,’ or I shall die!” Mrs. Khokhlakova shouted after him, but Alyosha had already left the room.

Notes

1. 1. The name means, roughly, “Cattle-Pen Town” or “Stockyard Town” (skot, cattle; prigon, a driving-in of livestock).