“I don’t know what terms you’re on ... since you say it so positively, I suppose she did ... And you grabbed the money, and instead of Siberia, you’re going on a spree ... But where are you really off to, eh?”

“Mokroye.”

“Mokroye? But it’s night!”

“Mastriuk had it all, Mastriuk had a fall,”^[242] Mitya said suddenly.

“What do you mean, a fall? You’ve got thousands!”

“I’m not talking about thousands. To hell with thousands! I’m talking about a woman’s heart:

Gullible is the heart of woman, Ever-changing and full of vice.

I agree with Ulysses, it was he who said that.”^[243]

“I don’t understand you.”

“You think I’m drunk?”

“Not drunk, worse than that.”

“I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyich, drunk in spirit, and enough, enough...”

“What are you doing, loading the pistol?”

“Loading the pistol.”

Indeed, having opened the pistol case, Mitya uncapped the powder horn, carefully poured in some powder, and rammed the charge home. Then he took a bullet and, before dropping it in, held it up in two fingers near the candle. “What are you looking at the bullet for?” Pyotr Ilyich watched him with uneasy curiosity.

“Just a whim. Now, if you had decided to blow your brains out, would you look at the bullet before you loaded the pistol, or not?”

“Why look at it?”

“It will go into my brain, so it’s interesting to see what it’s like ... Ah, anyway, it’s all nonsense, a moment’s nonsense. There, that’s done,” he added, having dropped the bullet in and rammed the wadding in after it. “Nonsense, my dear Pyotr Ilyich, it’s all nonsense, and if you only knew what nonsense it is! Now give me a piece of paper.”

“Here’s some paper.”

“No, smooth, clean, for writing. That’s it.” And having snatched a pen from the table, Mitya quickly wrote two lines on the piece of paper, folded it in half twice, and put it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the pistols back in their case, locked it with a little key, and took the case in his hands. Then he looked at Pyotr Ilyich and gave him a long, meaning smile.

“Let’s go now,” he said.

“Go where? No, wait ... So you’re thinking about putting it into your brain, the bullet, I mean ... ?” Pyotr Ilyich asked uneasily.

“The bullet? Nonsense! I want to live, I love life! Believe me. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his hot light ... My dear Pyotr Ilyich, do you know how to remove yourself?”

“What do you mean, remove myself?”

“To make way. To make way for one you hold dear, and for one you hate. And so that the one you hate becomes dear to you—to make way like that! And to say to them: God be with you, go, pass by, while I...”

“While you ... ?”

“Enough. Let’s go.”

“By God, I’ll tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich looked at him, “to keep you from going there. Why do you need to go to Mokroye now?”

“There’s a woman there, a woman, and let that be enough for you, Pyotr Ilyich, drop it!”

“Listen, even though you’re a savage, somehow I’ve always liked you ... That’s why I worry.”

“Thank you, brother. I’m a savage, you say. Savages, savages! That’s something I keep repeating: savages! Ah, yes, here’s Misha, I forgot about him.”

Misha came in, puffing, with a wad of small bills, and reported that “they all got a move on” at Plotnikov’s and were running around with bottles, and fish, and tea—everything would be ready shortly. Mitya snatched a ten-rouble note and gave it to Pyotr Ilyich, and he tossed another ten-rouble note to Misha.

“Don’t you dare!” Pyotr Ilyich cried. “Not in my house. Anyway, it’s a harmful indulgence. Hide your money away, put it here, why throw it around? Tomorrow you’ll need it, and it’s me you’ll come to asking for ten roubles. Why do you keep stuffing it into your side pocket? You’re going to lose it!”

“Listen, my dear fellow, let’s go to Mokroye together!”

“Why should I go?”

“Listen, let’s open a bottle now, and we’ll drink to life! I want to have a drink, and I want above all to have a drink with you. I’ve never drunk with you, have I?”

“Fine, let’s go to the tavern, I’m on my way there myself.”

“No time for the tavern, better at Plotnikov’s shop, in the back room. Now, do you want me to ask you a riddle?”

“Ask.”

Mitya took the piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it, and held it up. There was written on it in his large, clear hand:

“For my whole life I punish myself, I punish my whole life!”

“Really, I’m going to tell someone, I will go now and tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich said, having read the paper.

“You won’t have time, my dear, let’s have a drink, come on!”

Plotnikov’s shop was only about two doors away from Pyotr Ilyich, at the corner of the street. It was the main grocery store in our town, owned by wealthy merchants, and in fact not bad at all. They had everything any store in the capital would have, all kinds of groceries: wines “bottled by Eliseyev brothers,” fruit, cigars, tea, sugar, coffee, and so on. There were always three clerks on duty, and two boys to run around with deliveries. Though things had gone poorly in our parts, landowners had left, trade had slackened, yet the grocery business flourished as before, and even got better and better every year: purchasers for such goods were never lacking. Mitya was awaited with impatience at the shop. They remembered only too well how three or four weeks earlier he had bought in the same way, all at once, all kinds of goods and wines, for several hundred roubles in cash (they would not, of course, have given him anything on credit); they remembered that he had a whole wad of money sticking out of his hand, just as now, and was throwing it around for nothing, without bargaining, without thinking and without wishing to think why he needed such a quantity of goods, wines, and so forth. Afterwards the whole town was saying that he had driven off to Mokroye with Grushenka then, “squandered three thousand at once in a night and a day, and came back from the spree without a kopeck, naked as the day he was born.” He had roused a whole camp of gypsies that time (they were in our neighborhood then), who in two days, while he was drunk, relieved him of an untold amount of money and drank an untold quantity of expensive wine. They said, laughing at Mitya, that in Mokroye he had drowned the cloddish peasants in champagne and stuffed their women and girls with candies and Strasbourg pâté. They also laughed, especially in the tavern, over Mitya’s own frank and public confession (of course, they did not laugh in his face; it was rather dangerous to laugh in his face) that all he got from Grushenka for the whole “escapade” was that “she let him kiss her little foot, and would not let him go any further.”

When Mitya and Pyotr Ilyich arrived at the shop, they found a cart ready at the door, covered with a rug, harnessed to a troika with bells and chimes, and the coachman Andrei awaiting Mitya. In the shop they had nearly finished “putting up” one box of goods and were only waiting for Mitya’s appearance to nail it shut and load it on the cart. Pyotr Ilyich was surprised.

“How did you manage to get a troika?” he asked Mitya.

“I met him, Andrei, as I was running to your place, and told him to drive straight here to the shop. Why waste time! Last time I went with Timofei, but now Timofei said bye-bye and went off ahead of me with a certain enchantress. Will we be very late, Andrei?”

“They’ll get there only an hour before us, if that, just an hour before!” Andrei hastily responded.”I harnessed Timofei up, I know how he drives. His driving’s not our driving, Dmitri Fyodorovich, not by a long shot. They won’t make it even an hour before us!” Andrei, a lean fellow with reddish hair, not yet old, dressed in a long peasant coat and with a caftan over his arm, added enthusiastically.

“I’ll give you fifty roubles for vodka if you’re only an hour behind them.”