“Aie!” shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.
Chapter 7 The First and Rightful Lover
WITH his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering at every word, “I… I’m all right! Don’t be afraid!” he exclaimed, “I — there’s nothing the matter,” he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand tightly. “I… I’m coming, too. I’m here till morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same room?”
So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting on the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and observed severely:
“Panie,* we’re here in private. There are other rooms.”
- Pan and Panie mean Mr. in Polish. Pani means Mrs. Panovie, gentlemen.
“Why, it’s you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?” answered Kalgonov suddenly. “Sit down with us. How are you?”
“Delighted to see you, dear… and precious fellow, I always thought a lot of you.” Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out his hand across the table.
“Aie! How tight you squeeze! You’ve quite broken my fingers,” laughed Kalganov.
“He always squeezes like that, always,” Grushenka put in gaily, with a timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya’s face that he was not going to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity and still some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him, and indeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in and speak like this at such a moment.
“Good evening,” Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up to him, too.
“Good evening. You’re here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I—” (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the pipe again, evidently taking him for the most important person present.) “I flew here….
I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour in this room, in this very room … where I, too, adored… my queen…. Forgive me, Panie,” he cried wildly, “I flew here and vowed — Oh, don’t be afraid, it’s my last night! Let’s drink to our good understanding. They’ll bring the wine at once…. I brought this with me.” (Something made him pull out his bundle of notes.) “Allow me, panie! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away, and there’ll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on my last night.”
He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at Grushenka, and was in evident perplexity.
“If my suverin lady is permitting—” he was beginning.
“What does ‘suverin’ mean? ‘Sovereign,’ I suppose?” interrupted Grushenka. “I can’t help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are you talking about? Don’t frighten us, please. You won’t frighten us, will you? If you won’t, I am glad to see you…”
“Me, me frighten you?” cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. “Oh, pass me by, go your way, I won’t hinder you!…”
And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair tight, as though embracing it.
“Come, come, what a fellow you are!” cried Grushenka reproachfully. “That’s just how he comes to see me — he begins talking, and I can’t make out what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he’s crying again! It’s shamefull Why are you crying?
As though you had anything to cry for!” she added enigmatically, emphasising each word with some irritability.
“I… I’m not crying…. Well, good evening!” He instantly turned round in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh, but a long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.
“Well, there you are again….
Come, cheer up, cheer up!” Grushenka said to him persuasively. “I’m very glad you’ve come, very glad, Mitya, do you hear, I’m very glad! I want him to stay here with us,” she said peremptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. “I wish it, I wish it! And if he goes away I shall go, too!” she added with flashing eyes.
“What my queen commands is law!” pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing Grushenka’s hand. “I beg you, panie, to join our company,” he added politely, addressing Mitya.
Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another tirade, but the words did not come.
“Let’s drink, Panie,” he blurted out instead of making a speech. Everyone laughed.
“Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!” Grushenka exclaimed nervously. “Do you hear, Mitya,” she went on insistently, “don’t prance about, but it’s nice you’ve brought the champagne. I want some myself, and I can’t bear liqueurs. And best of all, you’ve come yourself. We were fearfully dull here…. You’ve come for a spree again, I suppose? But put your money in your pocket. Where did you get such a lot?”
Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle of notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed. In confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At that moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne, and glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so bewildered that he did not know what to do with it. Kalgonov took it from him and poured out the champagne.
“Another! Another bottle!” Mitya cried to the inn-keeper, and, forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to their good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for anyone else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly gentle and subdued.
He looked shyly and happily at everyone, with a continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten everything, and was looking round at everyone with a childlike smile of delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.
The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanour and his Polish accent; and, above all, by his pipe. “Well, what of it? It’s a good thing he’s smoking a pipe,” he reflected. The Pole’s puffy, middle-aged face, with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking moustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not even particularly struck by the Pole’s absurd wig made in Siberia, with love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples.
“I suppose it’s all right since he wears a wig,” he went on, musing blissfully. The other, younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on the sofa. “If he stood up he’d be six foot three.” The thought flitted through Mitya’s mind.
It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the friend of the other, as it were, a “bodyguard,” and no doubt the big Pole was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.
Grushenka’s mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he looked round at everyone with expectant eyes.
“Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don’t you begin doing something?” his smiling eyes seemed to ask.
“He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing,” Kalgonov began suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.
Mitya immediately stared at Kalgonov and then at Maximov
“He’s talking nonsense?” he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming suddenly delighted at something— “ha ha!”
“Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers in the twenties married Polish women. That’s awful rot, isn’t it?”
“Polish women?” repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.
Kalgonov was well aware of Mitya’s attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been with someone to see her; but she had not taken
