“What is it?”
“Just now Fedosya Markovna fell at your feet, begging you not to harm her mistress, or anyone else ... so, sir, well, I’m driving you there ... Forgive me, sir, maybe I’ve said something foolish, because of my conscience.”
Mitya suddenly seized his shoulders from behind.
“Are you a coachman? A coachman?” he began frenziedly.
“A coachman ...”
“Then you know you have to make way. If you’re a coachman, what do you do, not make way for people? Just run them down? Look out, I’m coming! No, coachman, do not run them down! You must not run anyone down, you must not spoil people’s lives; and if you have spoiled someone’s life—punish yourself ... if you’ve ever spoiled, if you’ve ever harmed someone’s life—punish yourself and go away.”
All this burst from Mitya as if in complete hysterics. Andrei, though he was surprised at the gentleman, kept up the conversation.
“That’s true, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, you’re right there, one mustn’t run a man down, or torment him, or any other creature either, for every creature has been created, a horse, for example, because there’s people that just barrel on regardless, some of us coachmen, let’s say ... And there’s no holding him back, he just keeps pushing on, pushing right on.”
“To hell?” Mitya suddenly interrupted, and burst into his abrupt, unexpected laugh. “Andrei, you simple soul,” again he seized him firmly by the shoulders, “tell me: will Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov go to hell or not? What do you think?”
“I don’t know, my dear, it depends on you, because you are ... You see, sir, when the Son of God was crucified on the cross and died, he went straight from the cross to hell and freed all the sinners suffering there. And hell groaned because it thought it wouldn’t have any more sinners coming. And the Lord said to helclass="underline" ‘Do not groan, O hell, for all kinds of mighty ones, rulers, great judges, and rich men will come to you from all parts, and you will be as full as ever, unto ages of ages, till the time when I come again.’ That’s right, that’s what he said . . .”[246]
“A popular legend—splendid! Whip up the left one, Andrei!”
“That’s who hell is meant for, sir,” Andrei whipped up the left one, “and you, sir, are just like a little child to us ... that’s how we look at you ... And though you’re one to get angry, that you are, sir, the Lord will forgive you for your simple heart.”
“And you, will you forgive me, Andrei?”
“Why should I forgive you, you never did anything to me.”
“No, for everyone, for everyone, will you alone, right now, this moment, here on the road, forgive me for everyone? Speak, my simple soul!”
“Ah, sir! I’m even afraid to be driving you, you talk so strange somehow...”
But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying, whispering wildly to himself.
“Lord, take me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass without your judgment ... Do not judge me, for I have condemned myself; do not judge me, for I love you, Lord! I am loathsome, but I love you: if you send me to hell, even there I will love you, and from there I will cry that I love you unto ages of ages ... But let me also finish with loving ... finish here and now with loving, for five hours only, till your hot ray ... For I love the queen of my soul. I love her and cannot not love her. You see all of me. I will gallop up, I will fall before her: you are right to pass me by ... Farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself!”
“Mokroye!” cried Andrei, pointing ahead with his whip.
Through the pale darkness of night suddenly appeared a solid black mass of buildings spread over a vast space. The population of the village of Mokroye was two thousand souls, but at that hour they were all asleep, and only a few lights gleamed here and there in the darkness.
“Drive, drive, Andrei, I’m coming!” Mitya exclaimed as if in fever.
“They’re not asleep!” Andrei said again, pointing with his whip to Plastunov’s inn, which stood just at the entrance and in which all six street windows were brightly lit.
“Not asleep!” Mitya echoed happily. “Make it rattle, Andrei, gallop, ring the bells, drive up with a clatter. Let everybody know who’s come! I’m coming! Me! Here I come!” Mitya kept exclaiming frenziedly.
Andrei put the exhausted troika to a gallop, and indeed drove up to the high porch with a clatter and reined in his steaming, half-suffocated horses. Mitya jumped from the cart just as the innkeeper, who was in fact on his way to bed, peered out from the porch, curious who could just have driven up like that.
“Is it you, Trifon Borisich?”
The innkeeper bent forward, peered, ran headlong down the steps, and rushed up to his guest in servile rapture.
“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich! Do we meet again?”
This Trifon Borisich was a thickset and robust man of medium height, with a somewhat fleshy face, of stern and implacable appearance, especially with the Mokroye peasants, but endowed with the ability to change his expression to one of the utmost servility whenever he smelled a profit. He went about dressed in Russian style, in a peasant blouse and a long, full-skirted coat, had quite a bit of money, but also constantly dreamed of a higher role. He had more than half of the peasants in his clutches, everyone was in debt to him. He rented land from the landowners, and had also bought some himself, and the peasants worked this land for him in return for their debts, which they could never pay back. He was a widower and had four grown-up daughters; one was already a widow and lived with him with her two little ones, his granddaughters, working for him as a charwoman. Another of his peasant daughters was married to an official, who had risen from being a petty clerk, and one could see on the wall in one of the rooms of the inn, among the family photographs, also a miniature photograph of this little official in his uniform and official epaulettes. The two younger daughters, on feast days or when going visiting, would put on light blue or green dresses of fashionable cut, tight-fitting behind and with three feet of train, but the very next morning, as on any other day, they would get up at dawn, sweep the rooms with birch brooms in their hands, take the garbage out, and clear away the trash left by the lodgers. Despite the thousands he had already made, Trifon Borisich took great pleasure in fleecing a lodger on a spree, and, recalling that not quite a month ago he had profited from Dmitri Fyodorovich in one day, during his spree with Grushenka, to the tune of more than two hundred roubles, if not three, he now greeted him joyfully and eagerly, scenting his prey again just by the way Mitya drove up to the porch.
“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, will you be our guest again?”
“Wait, Trifon Borisich,” Mitya began, “first things first: where is she?”
“Agrafena Alexandrovna?” the innkeeper understood at once, peering alertly into Mitya’s face. “She’s here, too ... staying...”
“With whom? With whom?”
“Some visitors passing through, sir ... One is an official, must be a Pole from the way he talks, it was he who sent horses for her from here; the other one is a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, who can tell? They’re both in civilian clothes ...”
“What, are they on a spree? Are they rich?”
“Spree, nothing! They’re small fry, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”
“Small? And the others?”
“They’re from town, two gentlemen ... They were on their way back from Cherny and stopped here. One of them, the young one, must be a relative of Mr. Miusov’s, only I forget his name ... and the other one you know, too, I suppose: the landowner Maximov; he went on a pilgrimage to your monastery, he says, and now he’s going around with this young relative of Mr. Miusov’s ...”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Stop, listen, Trifon Borisich, now tell me the most important thing: what about her, how is she?”