The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕

middle-aged peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a

long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black

waistcoat, from the pocket of which peeped the chain of a silver

watch. Mitya looked at his face with intense hatred, and for some

unknown reason his curly hair particularly irritated him.

What was insufferably humiliating was that, after leaving things

of such importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn

out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt

on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there

were nothing the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet.

“Oh, the irony of fate!” cried Mitya, and, quite losing his

head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a

sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but

after five minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in

helpless despair, and sat down.

“Stupid! Stupid!” cried Mitya. “And how dishonourable it all

is!” something made him add. His head began to ache horribly.

“Should he fling it up and go away altogether?” he wondered. “No, wait

till to-morrow now. I’ll stay on purpose. What else did I come for?

Besides, I’ve no means of going. How am I to get away from here now?

Oh, the idiocy of it” But his head ached more and more. He sat without

moving, and unconsciously dozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He

seemed to have slept for two hours or more. He was waked up by his

head aching so unbearably that he could have screamed. There was a

hammering in his temples, and the top of his head ached. It was a long

time before he could wake up fully and understand what had happened to

him.

At last he realised that the room was full of charcoal fumes

from the stove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the

drunken peasant still lay snoring. The candle guttered and was about

to go out. Mitya cried out, and ran staggering across the passage into

the forester’s room. The forester waked up at once, but hearing that

the other room was full of fumes, to Mitya’s surprise and annoyance,

accepted the fact with strange unconcern, though he did go to see to

it.

“But he’s dead, he’s dead! and… what am I to do then?” cried

Mitya frantically.

They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney.

Mitya brought a pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his

own head, then, finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the

water, and put it on Lyagavy’s head. The forester still treated the

matter contemptuously, and when he opened the window said grumpily:

“It’ll be all right, now.”

He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya

fussed about the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head,

and gravely resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out

that when he sat down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes,

unconsciously stretched himself full length on the bench and slept

like the dead.

It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about

nine o’clock. The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows

of the hut. The curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and

had his coat on. He had another samovar and another bottle in front of

him. Yesterday’s bottle had already been finished, and the new one was

more than half empty. Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the

cursed peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably. He stared at

him for a moment with wide opened eyes. The peasant was silently and

slyly watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of

contemptuous condescension, so Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.

“Excuse me, you see… I… you’ve most likely heard from the

forester here in the hut. I’m Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son

of the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying.”

“That’s a lie!” said the peasant, calmly and confidently.

“A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?”

“I don’t know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches,” said the

peasant, speaking thickly.

“You’re bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do

wake up, and collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me

here. You wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you,” Mitya

gasped breathlessly.

“You’re lying!” Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya’s legs went cold.

“For mercy’s sake! It isn’t a joke! You’re drunk, perhaps. Yet you

can speak and understand… or else… I understand nothing!”

“You’re a painter!”

“For mercy’s sake! I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an

offer to make you, an advantageous offer… very advantageous offer,

concerning the copse!”

The peasant stroked his beard importantly.

“No, you’ve contracted for the job and turned out a scamp.

You’re a scoundrel!”

“I assure you you’re mistaken,” cried Mitya, wringing his hands in

despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed

up his eyes cunningly.

“No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery.

D’you hear? You’re a scoundrel! Do you understand that?”

Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly “something seemed to hit

him on the head,” as he said afterwards. In an instant a light

seemed to dawn in his mind, “a light was kindled and I grasped it

all.” He stood, stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of

intelligence, could have yielded to such folly, have been led into

such an adventure, and have kept it up for almost twenty-four hours,

fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.

“Why, the man’s drunk, dead drunk, and he’ll go on drinking now

for a week; what’s the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov

sent me here on purpose? What if she- ? Oh God, what have I done?”

The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya

might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a

child. He went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on

without a word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the

forester in the next room; there was no one there. He took fifty

copecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table

for his night’s lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given.

Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked

at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the

right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the

priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling

for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow

forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A

child could have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He

got out of the forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare

after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye could see.

“What despair! What death all round!” he repeated, striding on and

on.

He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven

across country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked

the way and it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to

Volovya. After some discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours

later they arrived. At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses

to drive to the town, and suddenly realised that he was appallingly

hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was

prepared for him. He ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of

bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three glasses of vodka. After

eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He flew towards the

town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and “unalterable”

plan to procure that “accursed money” before evening. “And to think,

only to think that a man’s life should be ruined for the sake of

that paltry three thousand!” he cried, contemptuously. “I’ll settle it

to-day.” And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of

what might have happened to her, which never left him, he would

perhaps have become quite cheerful again…. But the thought of her

was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like a sharp knife.

At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.