"But . . . how can you marry her now! . . . How will it be afterwards?" the prince asked in horror.
Rogozhin gave the prince a heavy and terrible look and made no reply.
"For five days now I haven't gone to her," he went on, after a moment's silence. "I keep being afraid she'll drive me away. 'I'm still my own mistress,' she says, 'if I like, I'll drive you away for good and go abroad' (it was she who told me she'd go abroad," he observed as if in parenthesis and looked somehow peculiarly into the prince's eyes); "sometimes, it's true, she's just scaring me, she keeps laughing at me for some reason. But at other times she really scowls, pouts, doesn't say a word; and that's what I'm afraid of. The other day I thought: I shouldn't come empty-handed—but I just made her laugh and then she even got angry. She gave her maid Katka such a shawl of mine that, even if she lived in luxury before, she maybe never saw the like. And I can't make a peep about the time of the wedding. What kind of bridegroom am I, if I'm afraid even to come for a visit? So I sit here, and when I can't stand it any longer, I go on the sly and slink past her house or hide around the corner. The other day I stood watch by her gates almost till daylight—I imagined something then. And she must have spied me through the window: 'What would you do to me,' she says, 'if you saw me deceive you?' I couldn't stand it and said, 'You know what.'"
"What does she know?"
"How should I know!" Rogozhin laughed spitefully. "In Moscow then I couldn't catch her with anybody, though I tried a long time. I confronted her once and said: 'You promised to marry me, you're entering an honest family, and do you know what you are now? Here's what you are!' "
"You said it to her?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
" 'I might not even take you as my lackey now,' she says, 'much less be your wife.' 'And I,' I say, 'am not leaving like that, once and for all.' 'And I,' she says, 'will now call Keller and tell him to throw you out the gate.' I fell on her and beat her black and blue."
"It can't be!" cried the prince.
"I tell you: it happened," Rogozhin confirmed quietly, but with flashing eyes. "For exactly a day and a half I didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't leave her room, stood on my knees before her:
'I'll die,' I said, 'but I won't leave until you forgive me, and if you order me taken away, I'll drown myself; because what will I be now without you?' She was like a crazy woman all that day, she wept, she wanted to stab me with a knife, she abused me. She called Zalyozhev, Keller, Zemtiuzhnikov, and everybody, pointed at me, disgraced me. 'Gentlemen, let's all go to the theater tonight, let him stay here, since he doesn't want to leave, I'm not tied to him. And you, Parfyon Semyonovich, will be served tea here without me, you must have gotten hungry today.' She came back from the theater alone: 'They're little cowards and scoundrels,' she says, 'they're afraid of you, and they try to frighten me: he won't leave you like that, he may put a knife in you. But I'm going to my bedroom and I won't lock the door: that's how afraid of you I am! So that you know it and see it! Did you have tea?' 'No,' I say, 'and I won't.' 'You had the honor of being offered, but this doesn't suit you at all.' And she did what she said, she didn't lock her bedroom. In the morning she came out—laughing. 'Have you gone crazy, or what?' she says. 'You'll starve to death like this.' 'Forgive me,' I say. 'I don't want to forgive you, and I won't marry you, you've been told. Did you really spend the whole night sitting in that chair, you didn't sleep?' 'No,' I say, 'I didn't sleep.' 'Such a clever one! And you won't have tea and won't eat dinner again?' 'I told you I won't—forgive me!' 'This really doesn't suit you,' she says, 'if only you knew, it's like a saddle on a cow. You're not trying to frighten me, are you? A lot I care if you go hungry; I'm not afraid!' She got angry, but not for long; she began nagging me again. And I marveled at her then, that she felt no spite towards me. Because she does remember evil, with others she remembers evil a long time! Then it occurred to me that she considered me so low that she couldn't even be very angry with me. And that's the truth. 'Do you know,' she says, 'what the pope of Rome is?' 'I've heard of him,' I say. 'Parfyon Semyonych,' she says, 'you never studied world history.' 'I never studied anything,' I say. 'Here, then,' she says, 'I'll give you something to read: there was this one pope who got angry with some emperor, and this emperor spent three days without eating or drinking, barefoot, on his knees, in front of his palace, until the pope forgave him; what do you think this emperor thought to himself for those three days, standing on his knees, and what kind of vows did he make? . . . Wait,' she says, 'I'll read it to you myself!' She jumped up, brought a book: 'It's poetry,' she says, and begins reading verses to me about this emperor swearing to
take revenge on this pope during those three days. 17'Can it be,' she says, 'that you don't like it, Parfyon Semyonych?' 'That's all true,' I say, 'what you read.' 'Aha, you yourself say it's true, that means you, too, may be making vows that "if she marries me, then I'll remember everything she's done, then I'll have fun at her expense!" ' 'I don't know,' I say, 'maybe that's what I'm thinking.' 'How is it you don't know?' 'I just don't,' I say, 'that's not what I'm thinking about now.' 'And what are you thinking about now?' 'About how you get up from your place, go past me, and I look at you and watch you; your dress rustles, and my heart sinks, and if you leave the room, I remember every little word you've said, and in what voice, and what it was; and this whole night I wasn't thinking about anything, but I kept listening to how you breathed in your sleep, and how you stirred a couple of times ...' 'And perhaps,' she laughed, 'you don't think about or remember how you beat me?' And maybe I do,' I say, 'I don't know.' 'But what if I don't forgive you and don't marry you?' 'I told you, I'll drown myself.' 'Perhaps you'll still kill me before that. . .' She said it and fell to thinking. Then she got angry and left. An hour later she comes out to me so gloomy. 'I'll marry you, Parfyon Semyonovich,' she says, 'and not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'll perish all the same. And which way is better, eh? Sit down,' she says, 'dinner will be served now. And if I marry you,' she added, 'I'll be your faithful wife, don't doubt it and don't worry.' She was silent a minute, then said: 'You're not a lackey after all. Before I used to think you were as complete a lackey as they come.' Then she set a date for the wedding, and a week later she ran away from me here to Lebedev. When I arrived, she said: 'I don't reject you altogether; I only want to wait a little more, as long as I like, because I'm still my own mistress. You wait, too, if you want.' That's how we are now . . . What do you think of all that, Lev Nikolaevich?"
"What do you think yourself?" the prince asked back, looking sadly at Rogozhin.
"As if I think!" escaped him. He was going to add something, but kept silent in inconsolable anguish.
The prince stood up and was again about to leave.
"All the same I won't hinder you," he said quietly, almost pensively, as if responding to some inner, hidden thought of his own.
"You know what I'll tell you?" Rogozhin suddenly became animated and his eyes flashed. "How can you give her up to me
like that? I don't understand. Have you stopped loving her altogether? Before you were in anguish anyway; I could see that. So why have you come galloping here headlong? Out of pity?" (And his face twisted in spiteful mockery.) "Heh, heh!"