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

A Sudden Resolution

SHE was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were

both just going to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not

locked themselves in. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by

the throat.

“Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?” he

roared furiously.

Both the women squealed.

“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I’ll

tell you everything directly, I won’t hide anything,” gabbled Fenya,

frightened to death; “she’s gone to Mokroe, to her officer.”

“What officer?” roared Mitya.

“To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who

threw her over five years ago,” cackled Fenya, as fast as she could

speak.

Mitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat.

He stood facing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his

eyes showed that he realised it all, all, from the first word, and

guessed the whole position. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at

that moment to observe whether he understood or not. She remained

sitting on the trunk as she had been when he ran into the room,

trembling all over, holding her hands out before her as though

trying to defend herself. She seemed to have grown rigid in that

position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immovably upon

him. And to make matters worse, both his hands were smeared with

blood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched his forehead with

them, wiping off the perspiration, so that on his forehead and his

right cheek were bloodstained patches. Fenya was on the verge of

hysterics. The old cook had jumped up and was staring at him like a

mad woman, almost unconscious with terror.

Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair

next to Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were,

terror-stricken, benumbed. Yet everything was clear as day: that

officer, he knew about him, he knew everything perfectly, he had known

it from Grushenka herself, had known that a letter had come from him a

month before. So that for a month, for a whole month, this had been

going on, a secret from him, till the very arrival of this new man,

and he had never thought of him! But how could he, how could he not

have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this officer, like

that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him? That was the

question that faced him like some monstrous thing. And he looked at

this monstrous thing with horror, growing cold with horror.

But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate

child, he began speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten

how he had scared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning

Fenya with an extreme preciseness, astonishing in his position, and

though the girl looked wildly at his bloodstained hands, she, too,

with wonderful readiness and rapidity, answered every question as

though eager to put the whole truth and nothing but the truth before

him. Little by little, even with a sort of enjoyment, she began

explaining every detail, not wanting to torment him, but, as it

were, eager to be of the utmost service to him. She described the

whole of that day, in great detail, the visit of Rakitin and

Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the watch, how the mistress

had set off, and how she had called out of the window to Alyosha to

give him, Mitya, her greetings, and to tell him “to remember for

ever how she had loved him for an hour.”

Hearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a

flush of colour on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to

him, not a bit afraid now to be inquisitive:

“Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They’re all over blood!

“Yes,” answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his

hands and at once forgot them and Fenya’s question.

He sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had

run in. His first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed

determination had taken possession of him. He suddenly stood up,

smiling dreamily.

“What has happened to you, sir?” said Fenya, pointing to his hands

again. She spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to

him now in his grief. Mitya looked at his hands again.

“That’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange

expression. “That’s human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But…

Fenya… there’s a fence here” (he looked at her as though setting her

a riddle), “a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn

to-morrow, when the sun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence…. You

don’t understand what fence, Fenya, and, never mind…. You’ll hear

to-morrow and understand… and now, good-bye. I won’t stand in her

way. I’ll step aside, I know how to step aside. Live, my joy…. You

loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka Karamazov so for ever….

She always used to call me Mityenka, do you remember?”

And with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya

was almost more frightened at this sudden departure than she had

been when he ran in and attacked her.

Just ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin,

the young official with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by

now half-past eight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea,

and had just put his coat on again to go to the Metropolis to play

billiards. Mitya caught him coming out.

Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man

uttered a cry of surprise.

“Good heavens! What is the matter?”

“I’ve come for my pistols,” said Mitya, “and brought you the

money. And thanks very much. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please

make haste.”

Pyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught

sight of a bundle of banknotes in Mitya’s hand, and what was more,

he had walked in holding the notes as no one walks in and no one

carries money: he had them in his right hand, and held them

outstretched as if to show them. Perhotin’s servant-boy, who met Mitya

in the passage, said afterwards that he walked into the passage in the

same way, with the money outstretched in his hand, so he must have

been carrying them like that even in the streets. They were all

rainbow-coloured hundred-rouble notes, and the fingers holding them

were covered with blood.

When Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money,

he said that it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it

might have been two thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big,

“fat” bundle. “Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” so he testified afterwards,

“seemed unlike himself, too; not drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost

to everything, but at the same time, as it were, absorbed, as though

pondering and searching for something and unable to come to a

decision. He was in great haste, answered abruptly and very strangely,

and at moments seemed not at all dejected but quite cheerful.”

“But what is the matter with you? What’s wrong?” cried Pyotr

Ilyitch, looking wildly at his guest. “How is it that you’re all

covered with blood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!”

He took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.

Seeing