“But wait,” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, staring at him and listening worriedly, “you’d better go yourself, then you can tell them, he’ll get it all wrong.”
“He will, I can see, he’ll get it all wrong! Eh, Misha, and I was about to give you a kiss for your services. If you keep it all straight, you’ll get ten roubles, now off with you ... Champagne above all, let them break out the champagne, and some cognac, and red wine, and white wine, and all the rest, like the other time ... They’ll remember how it was.”
“But listen to me!” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, now with impatience. “I said, let him just run over to change the money and tell them not to lock up, and then you can go and talk to them yourself. . . Give me your bill. Off you go, Misha, shake a leg!” Pyotr Ilyich seemed to chase Misha out deliberately, because the boy was standing in front of the visitor, staring goggle-eyed at his bloody face and bloodstained hands, with a bunch of money in his trembling fingers, and just stood gaping in amazement and fear, probably grasping little of what Mitya was telling him to do.
“Well, now let’s go and wash,” Pyotr Ilyich said sternly. “Put the money on the table, or in your pocket ... That’s it, now come along. And take your frock coat off.”
And he began helping him to take off his frock coat, but suddenly he cried out again:
“Look, there’s blood on your coat, too!”
“It ... it’s not the coat. Only a little bit on the sleeve ... And then just here, where the handkerchief was. It soaked through the pocket. I sat down on it at Fenya’s and the blood soaked through,” Mitya explained at once with surprising trustfulness. Pyotr Ilyich listened, frowning.
“How on earth did you get like this? You must have had a fight with someone,” he muttered.
They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyich held the jug and poured water. Mitya hurried and did not soap his hands well. (His hands were trembling, as Pyotr Ilyich recalled afterwards.) Pyotr Ilyich at once ordered him to use more soap and scrub harder. It was as if, at that moment, he was gaining more and more of an upper hand over Mitya. Let us note in passing that the young man was not of a timid nature.
“Look, you didn’t clean under your nails; now scrub your face, here, on the temples, by your ear ... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you going? Look, the whole right cuff is bloody.”
“Yes, bloody,” Mitya remarked, examining the cuff of his shirt.
“Change your shirt, then.”
“No time. Look, I’ll just ... ,” Mitya went on with the same trustfulness, wiping his face and hands now and putting on his frock coat, “I’ll just tuck the edge of the sleeve in here, and it won’t show under the coat ... See!”
“Tell me, now, how on earth did you get like this? Did you have a fight with someone? Was it in the tavern, like the other time? It wasn’t that captain again—the one you beat and dragged around?” Pyotr Ilyich recalled as if in reproach. “Did you beat someone else ... or kill him, possibly?”
“Nonsense!” said Mitya.
“Why nonsense?”
“Never mind,” Mitya said, and suddenly grinned. “I just ran down a little old woman in the square.”
“Ran down? A little old woman?”
“An old man!” Mitya shouted, looking Pyotr Ilyich straight in the face, laughing, and shouting at him as if he were deaf.
“Ah, devil take it—an old man, an old woman ... Did you kill somebody?”
“We made peace. Had a fight, then made peace. Somewhere. We parted friends. Some fool ... he’s forgiven me ... surely he’s forgiven me by now ... If he’d gotten up, he wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Mitya suddenly winked, “only, you know, devil take him, do you hear, Pyotr Ilyich, devil take him! Never mind! No more now!” Mitya snapped resolutely.
“I mean, why go getting into trouble with everybody ... like the other time with that captain, over some trifle ... You’ve had a fight, and now you’re going off on a spree—that’s just like you! Three dozen bottles of champagne—what do you need so much for?”
“Bravo! Now give me the pistols. By God, I have no time. I’d like to chat with you, my dear, but I have no time. And there’s no need, it’s too late for talking. Ah! Where’s the money, where did I put it?” he cried, and began feeling in all his pockets.
“You put it on the table ... yourself. . . there it is. Did you forget? Really, money is like trash or water for you. Here are your pistols. Strange, at six o’clock you pawned them for ten roubles, and now look how many thousands you’ve got. Must be two, or three?”
“Must be three!” Mitya laughed, putting the money into the side pocket of his trousers.
“You’ll lose it that way. Have you got a gold mine or something?”
“A mine? A gold mine!” Mitya shouted at the top of his lungs, and burst out laughing. “Do you want to go to the gold mines, Perkhotin? There’s a lady here who’ll fork out three thousand on the spot if you’ll agree to go. She did it for me, she likes gold mines so much! You know Madame Khokhlakov?”
“Not personally, but I’ve heard about her and seen her. Did she really give you three thousand? Just forked it out like that?” Pyotr Ilyich looked doubtful.
“Go there tomorrow, when the sun soars aloft, when the ever-youthful Phoebus soars aloft,[241] praising and glorifying God, go to her, to Khokhlakov, and ask her yourself if she forked me out three thousand or not. See what she says.”
“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.