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

somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a boy, not over twenty, dressed

like a dandy, with a very charming fair-skinned face, and splendid

thick, fair hair. From his fair face looked out beautiful pale blue

eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep expression, beyond

his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked and talked

quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when he was

aware of it himself. As a rule he was very wilful, even capricious,

though always friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed and

obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and listen,

seeming all the while to be persistently dreaming over something else.

Often he was listless and lazy; at other times he would grow

excited, sometimes, apparently, over the most trivial matters.

“Only imagine, I’ve been taking him about with me for the last

four days,” he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally

though, without the slightest affectation. “Ever since your brother,

do you remember, shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That

made me take an interest in him at the time, and I took him into the

country, but he keeps talking such rot I’m ashamed to be with him. I’m

taking him back.”

“The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is

impossible,” the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.

He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he

pretended. If he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a

Polish form.

“But I was married to a Polish lady myself,” tittered Maximov.

“But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the

cavalry. Were you a cavalry officer?” put in Kalgonov at once.

“Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!” cried Mitya, listening

eagerly, and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though

there were no knowing what he might hear from each.

“No, you see,” Maximov turned to him. “What I mean is that those

pretty Polish ladies … when they danced the mazurka with our

Uhlans… when one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps

on his knee like a kitten… a little white one… and the

pan-father and pan-mother look on and allow it… They allow it… and

next day the Uhlan comes and offers her his hand…. That’s how it

is… offers her his hand, he he!” Maximov ended, tittering.

“The pan is a lajdak!”* the tall Pole on the chair growled

suddenly and crossed one leg over the other. Mitya’s eye was caught by

his huge greased boot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both

the Poles looked rather greasy.

* Scoundrel.

“Well, now it’s lajdak! What’s he scolding about?” said Grushenka,

suddenly vexed.

“Pani Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant

girls, and not ladies of good birth,” the Pole with the pipe

observed to Grushenka.

“You can reckon on that,” the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.

“What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes

it cheerful,” Grushenka said crossly.

“I’m not hindering them, pani,” said the Pole in the wig, with a

long look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked

his pipe again.

“No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth.” Kalgonov got

excited again, as though it were a question of vast import. “He’s

never been in Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you

weren’t married in Poland, were you?”

“No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to

Russia before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and

another female relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight

from Poland and gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our

regiment, a very nice young man. At first he meant to marry her

himself. But he didn’t marry her, because she turned out to be lame.”

“So you married a lame woman?” cried Kalganov.

“Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and

concealed it. I thought she was hopping; she kept hopping…. I

thought it was for fun.”

“So pleased she was going to marry you!” yelled Kalganov, in a

ringing, childish voice.

“Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause.

Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very

evening, she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. ‘I once

jumped over a puddle when I was a child,’ she said, ‘and injured my

leg.’ He he!”

Kalgonov went off into the most childish laughter, almost

falling on the sofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the

pinnacle of happiness.

“Do you know, that’s the truth, he’s not lying now,” exclaimed

Kalganov, turning to Mitya; “and do you know, he’s been married twice;

it’s his first wife he’s talking about. But his second wife, do you

know, ran away, and is alive now.”

“Is it possible?” said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an

expression of the utmost astonishment.

“Yes. She did run away. I’ve had that unpleasant experience,”

Maximov modestly assented, “with a monsieur. And what was worse, she’d

had all my little property transferred to her beforehand. ‘You’re an

educated man,’ she said to me. ‘You can always get your living.’ She

settled my business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me:

‘One of your wives was lame, but the other was too light-footed.’ He

he!

“Listen, listen!” cried Kalganov, bubbling over, “if he’s

telling lies-and he often is-he’s only doing it to amuse us all.

There’s no harm in that, is there? You know, I sometimes like him.

He’s awfully low, but it’s natural to him, eh? Don’t you think so?

Some people are low from self-interest, but he’s simply so, from

nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was arguing about it all the way

yesterday) that Gogol wrote Dead Souls about him. Do you remember,

there’s a landowner called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed. He

was charged, do you remember, ‘for inflicting bodily injury with

rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.’ Would you

believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!

Now can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at

the beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don’t fit. He

couldn’t have been thrashed then, he couldn’t, could he?”

It was diffcult to imagine what Kalgonov was excited about, but

his excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.

“Well, but if they did thrash him!” he cried, laughing.

“It’s not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is- ” put

in Maximov.

“What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn’t.”

“What o’clock is it, panie?” the Pole, with the pipe, asked his

tall friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders

in reply. Neither of them had a watch.

“Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn’t other people talk

because you’re bored?” Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of

finding fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon

Mitya’s mind. This time the Pole answered with unmistakable

irritability.

“Pani, I didn’t oppose it. I didn’t say anything.”

“All right then. Come, tell us your story,” Grushenka cried to

Maximov. “Why are you all silent?”

“There’s nothing to tell, it’s all so foolish,” answered Maximov

at once, with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. “Besides, all

that’s by way of allegory in Gogol, for he’s made all the names have a

meaning. Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a

different name, he was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called

Fenardi, only he wasn’t an Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi

was a pretty girl with her pretty little legs in tights, and she had a

little short skirt with spangles, and she kept turning round and

round, only not for four hours but for four minutes only, and she

bewitched everyone…”

“But what were you beaten for?” cried Kalganov.

“For Piron!” answered Maximov.

“What Piron?” cried Mitya.

“The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big

party of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They’d invited me, and

first of all I began quoting epigrams. ‘Is that you, Boileau? What a

funny get-up!’ and Boileau answers that he’s going to a masquerade,

that is to the baths, he he! And they took it to themselves, so I made

haste to repeat another, very sarcastic, well known to all educated

people:

Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!

But one grief is weighing on me.

You don’t know your way to the sea!

“They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most

unseemly way for it. And as ill-luck would have it, to set things

right, I began telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how

he was not accepted into the French Academy, and to revenge himself

wrote his own epitaph:

Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien,

Pas meme academicien,*

* Here lies Piron, who was nothing, not even an Academician.

They seized me and thrashed me.”

“But what for? What for?”

“For my education. People can thrash a man for anything,”

Maximov concluded, briefly and sententiously.

“Eh, that’s enough! That’s all stupid, I don’t want to listen. I

thought it would be amusing,” Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.

Mitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose

upon his feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his

element, began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands

behind his back.

“Ah, he can’t sit still,” said Grushenka, looking at him

contemptuously. Mitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides,

that the Pole on the sofa was looking at him with an irritable

expression.

“Panie!” cried Mitya, “Let’s drink! and the other pan, too! Let us

drink.”

In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled

them with champagne.

“To Poland, Panovie, I drink to your Poland!” cried Mitya.

“I shall be delighted, panie,” said the Pole on the sofa, with

dignity and affable condescension, and he took his glass.

“And the other pan, what’s his name? Drink, most illustrious, take

your glass!” Mitya urged.

“Pan Vrublevsky,” put in the Pole on the sofa.

Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.

“To Poland, Panovie!” cried Mitya, raisin, his glass. “Hurrah!”

All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out

three glasses.

“Now to Russia, Panovie, and let us be brothers!”

“Pour out some for us,” said Grushenka; “I’ll drink to Russia,

too!”

“So will I,” said Kalganov.

“And I would, too… to Russia, the old grandmother!” tittered

Maximov.

“All! All!” cried Mitya. “Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!”

The other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the

table. Mitya filled the glasses.

“To Russia! Hurrah!” he shouted again. All drank the toast

except the Poles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once.

The Poles did not touch theirs.

“How’s this, Panovie?” cried Mitya, “won’t you drink it?”

Pan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a

resonant voice:

“To Russia as she was before 1772.”

“Come, that’s better!” cried the other Pole, and they both emptied

their glasses at once.

“You’re fools, you Panovie,” broke suddenly from Mitya.

“Panie!” shouted both the Poles,