“Listen, Kirillov, are you afraid? If you want to cry off, say so at once.”
“I am not afraid.”
“I ask because you are making so many inquiries.”
“Are you going soon?”
“Asking questions again?”
Kirillov scanned him contemptuously.
“You see,” Pyotr Stepanovitch went on, getting angrier and angrier, and unable to take the right tone, “you want me to go away, to be alone, to concentrate yourself, but all that’s a bad sign for you—for you above all. You want to think a great deal. To my mind you’d better not think. And really you make me uneasy.”
“There’s only one thing I hate, that at such a moment I should have a reptile like you beside me.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I’ll go away at the time and stand on the steps if you like. If you are so concerned about trifles when it comes to dying, then … it’s all a very bad sign. I’ll go out on to the steps and you can imagine I know nothing about it, and that I am a man infinitely below you.”
“No, not infinitely; you’ve got abilities, but there’s a lot you don’t understand because you are a low man.”
“Delighted, delighted. I told you already I am delighted to provide entertainment … at such a moment.”
“You don’t understand anything.”
“That is, I … well, I listen with respect, anyway.”
“You can do nothing; even now you can’t hide your petty spite, though it’s not to your interest to show it. You’ll make me cross, and then I may want another six months.” Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch. “I never understood your theory, but I know you didn’t invent it for our sakes, so I suppose you would carry it out apart from us. And I know too that you haven’t mastered the idea but the idea has mastered you, so you won’t put it off.”
“What? The idea has mastered me?”
“Yes.”
“And not I mastered the idea? That’s good. You have a little sense. Only you tease me and I am proud.”
“That’s a good thing, that’s a good thing. Just what you need, to be proud.”
“Enough. You’ve drunk your tea; go away.”
“Damn it all, I suppose I must”—Pyotr Stepanovitch got up—“though it’s early. Listen, Kirillov. Shall I find that man—you know whom I mean—at Myasnitchiha’s? Or has she too been lying?”
“You won’t find him, because he is here and not there.”
“Here! Damn it all, where?”
“Sitting in the kitchen, eating and drinking.”
“How dared he?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, flushing angrily. “It was his duty to wait … what nonsense! He has no passport, no money!”
“I don’t know. He came to say good-bye; he is dressed and ready. He is going away and won’t come back. He says you are a scoundrel and he doesn’t want to wait for your money.”
“Ha ha! He is afraid that I’ll … But even now I can … if … Where is he, in the kitchen?”
Kirillov opened a side door into a tiny dark room; from this room three steps led straight to the part of the kitchen where the cook’s bed was usually put, behind the partition. Here, in the corner under the ikons, Fedka was sitting now, at a bare deal table. Before him stood a pint bottle, a plate of bread, and some cold beef and potatoes on an earthenware dish. He was eating in a leisurely way and was already half drunk, but he was wearing his sheep-skin coat and was evidently ready for a journey. A samovar was boiling the other side of the screen, but it was not for Fedka, who had every night for a week or more zealously blown it up and got it ready for “Alexey Nilitch, for he’s such a habit of drinking tea at nights.” I am strongly disposed to believe that, as Kirillov had not a cook, he had cooked the beef and potatoes that morning with his own hands for Fedka.
“What notion is this?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, whisking into the room. “Why didn’t you wait where you were ordered?”
And swinging his fist, he brought it down heavily on the table.
Fedka assumed an air of dignity.
“You wait a bit, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you wait a bit,” he began, with a swaggering emphasis on each word, “it’s your first duty to understand here that you are on a polite visit to Mr. Kirillov, Alexey Nilitch, whose boots you might clean any day, because beside you he is a man of culture and you are only—foo!”
And he made a jaunty show of spitting to one side. Haughtiness and determination were evident in his manner, and a certain very threatening assumption of argumentative calm that suggested an outburst to follow. But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to realise the danger, and it did not fit in with his preconceived ideas. The incidents and disasters of the day had quite turned his head. Liputin, at the top of the three steps, stared inquisitively down from the little dark room.
“Do you or don’t you want a trustworthy passport and good money to go where you’ve been told? Yes or no?”
“D’you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you’ve been deceiving me from the first, and so you’ve been a regular scoundrel to me. For all the world like a filthy human louse—that’s how I look on you. You’ve promised me a lot of money for shedding innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin, though it turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding. I didn’t get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stavrogin hit you in the face, which has come to our ears. Now you are threatening me again and promising me money—what for, you don’t say. And I shouldn’t wonder if you are sending me to Petersburg to plot some revenge in your spite against Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, reckoning on my simplicity. And that proves you are the chief murderer. And do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the depravity of your heart you’ve given up believing in God Himself, the true Creator? You are no better than an idolater and are on a level with the Tatar and the Mordva. Alexey Nilitch, who is a philosopher, has expounded the true God, the Creator, many a time to you, as well as the creation of the world and the fate that’s to come and the transformation of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse, but you’ve persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest evil seducer and so-called atheist.…”
“Ah, you drunken dog! He strips the ikons of their setting and then preaches about God!”
“D’you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, I tell you truly that I have stripped the ikons, but I only took out the pearls; and how do you know? Perhaps my own tear was transformed into a pearl in the furnace of the Most High to make up for my sufferings, seeing I am just that very orphan, having no daily refuge. Do you know from the books that once, in ancient times, a merchant with just such tearful sighs and prayers stole a pearl from the halo of the Mother of God, and afterwards, in the face of all the people, laid the whole price of it at her feet, and the Holy Mother sheltered him with her mantle before all the people, so that it was a miracle, and the command was given through the authorities to write it all down word for word in the Imperial books. And you let a mouse in, so you insulted the very throne of God. And if you were not my natural master, whom I dandled in my arms when I was a stripling, I would have done for you now, without budging from this place!”
Pyotr Stepanovitch flew into a violent rage.
“Tell me, have you seen Stavrogin to-day?”
“Don’t you dare to question me. Mr. Stavrogin is fairly amazed at you, and he had no share in it even in wish, let alone instructions or giving money. You’ve presumed with me.”
“You’ll get the money and you’ll get another two thousand in Petersburg, when you get there, in a lump sum, and you’ll get more.”
“You are lying, my fine gentleman, and it makes me laugh to see how easily you are taken in. Mr. Stavrogin stands at the top of the ladder above you, and you yelp at him from below like a silly puppy dog, while he thinks it would be doing you an honour to spit at you.”
“But do you know,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in a rage, “that I won’t let you stir a step from here, you scoundrel, and I’ll hand you straight over to the police.”
Fedka leapt on to his feet and his eyes gleamed with fury. Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled out his revolver. Then followed a rapid and revolting scene: before Pyotr Stepanovitch could take aim, Fedka swung round and in a flash struck him on the cheek with all his might. Then there was the thud of a second blow, a third, then a fourth, all on the cheek. Pyotr Stepanovitch was dazed; with his eyes starting out of his head, he muttered something, and suddenly crashed full length to the ground.
“There you are; take him,” shouted Fedka with a triumphant swagger; he instantly took up his cap, his bag from under the bench, and was gone. Pyotr Stepanovitch lay gasping and unconscious. Liputin even imagined that he had been murdered. Kirillov ran headlong into the kitchen.
“Water!”
