I. Кузьма Самсонов

These last two days he had been in such an unimaginable state that he might truly have fallen ill with brain fever, as he himself said afterward.

Alyosha had been unable to track him down the previous morning, and his brother Ivan had been unable that same day to arrange a meeting with him at the tavern.

The people who owned the little lodging where he stayed had, on his orders, concealed his whereabouts.

And he, during those two days, had literally dashed about in every direction, "wrestling with his fate and saving himself," as he later put it, and even flew out of town for a few hours on one urgent matter, despite its being a terror to him to leave, abandoning Grushenka for even a minute without an eye upon her.

All of this came to light afterward in the most detailed and documented form, but for now we shall set down in fact only the most essential parts of the story of those two terrible days in his life, the days preceding the dreadful catastrophe that burst so suddenly over his destiny.

Grushenka, though she did love him truly and sincerely for a brief hour — that is the truth — yet at the very same time tormented him at moments quite cruelly and mercilessly.

The chief thing was that he could make out nothing whatever of her intentions; to coax it out of her by tenderness or by force was also impossible: she would yield to nothing, but would only grow angry and turn away from him altogether — this he clearly understood at the time.

He suspected then, quite rightly, that she herself was caught in some struggle of her own, in some extraordinary indecision, that she was about to resolve on something and could never quite resolve it, and so, his heart sinking, he had grounds enough for supposing that at moments she must simply have hated him together with his passion.

Perhaps that was indeed so, but what exactly Grushenka was grieving over, he could not for all that understand.

For him, in essence, the whole question that tormented him came down to just two terms: "Either he, Mitya, or Fyodor Pavlovich."

Here, by the way, one firm fact must be marked down: he was fully convinced that Fyodor Pavlovich would certainly offer Grushenka (if he had not already offered) lawful marriage, and he did not believe for a minute that the old voluptuary hoped to get off with a mere three thousand.

This Mitya had deduced, knowing Grushenka and her character.

That is why it could at times seem to him that all Grushenka's torment and all her irresolution arose merely from her not knowing which of them to choose and which of them would be the more advantageous to her.

As for the imminent return of the "officer" — that is, of that fateful man in Grushenka's life, whose arrival she awaited with such agitation and dread — he, strange to say, in those days did not even think to think about it.

True, in the very last days Grushenka had said very little to him about it.

Yet he knew perfectly well, from her own lips, of the letter received a month before from this former seducer of hers, and he knew in part the contents of the letter as well.

Then, in one spiteful moment, Grushenka had shown him that letter, but, to her surprise, he had attached almost no value to it.

And it would be very difficult to explain why: perhaps simply because, oppressed as he was by the whole hideousness and horror of his struggle with his own father over this woman, he could no longer imagine for himself anything more terrible or more dangerous — at least at that time.

As for the suitor, who had suddenly popped up from somewhere after five years' disappearance, he simply did not believe in him at all, and least of all that the man would arrive soon.

Besides, in that very first letter from the "officer" that had been shown to Mitenka, the arrival of this new rival was spoken of most indefinitely: the letter was very vague, very high-flown, and filled with nothing but sentimentality.

It must be noted that Grushenka had on that occasion hidden from him the closing lines of the letter, in which the return was spoken of somewhat more definitely.

Moreover, Mitenka recalled afterward that in that moment he had caught, as it were, a certain involuntary and proud contempt for this missive from Siberia in Grushenka's very face.

After that Grushenka told Mitenka nothing further about any later dealings with this new rival.

And so, little by little, he forgot about the officer altogether.

He thought only of this: that whatever might come of it and however the matter might turn out, the looming, decisive collision between him and Fyodor Pavlovich was too near at hand and had to be settled before anything else.

His soul sinking, he awaited Grushenka's decision every minute and kept on believing that it would come about, as it were, all at once, by inspiration.

Suddenly she would say to him: "Take me, I am yours forever" — and it would all be over: he would seize her and carry her off to the ends of the earth that very instant.

Oh, that very instant he would carry her away as far, as far as possible — if not to the ends of the earth, then somewhere to the ends of Russia, would marry her there and settle down with her incognito, so that no one at all should know of them, neither here, nor there, nor anywhere.

Then, oh, then a completely new life would begin at once!

Of this other, renewed, and now "virtuous" life ("virtuous without fail, without fail") he dreamed every minute and in a frenzy.

He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal.

The vile mire into which he had sunk himself by his own will weighed on him too heavily, and, like very many men in such circumstances, he put his faith above all in a change of place: if only it were not these people, if only it were not these circumstances, if only he could fly away from this accursed spot — and everything would be reborn, would set off in a new way!

That was what he believed in and what he pined for.

But this was only in the event of the first, the happy resolution of the question.

There was another resolution too, another outcome presented itself — but a terrible one.

Suddenly she would say to him: "Be off — I have just now settled things with Fyodor Pavlovich and am marrying him, and you are not wanted" — and then… but then…

Mitya, however, did not know what would happen then; right up to the very last hour he did not know — and in this he must be vindicated.

He had no definite intentions; no crime had been thought out.

He only watched, spied, and tormented himself, but for all that he was preparing only for the first, the happy turn of his fate.

He even drove off every other thought.

But here a quite different torment began, here rose up something altogether new and extraneous, yet likewise fateful and insoluble.

Namely, in the event that she should say to him: "I am yours, carry me off" — then how was he to carry her off?

Where had he the means for it, the money?

Just at this juncture all his income had run dry — the income from Fyodor Pavlovich's handouts that had not once been interrupted over so many years.

Grushenka, of course, had money, but in Mitya there suddenly arose a fearful pride on this score: he wanted to carry her off himself and to begin a new life with her on his own means, not on hers; he could not even conceive of taking her money from her, and he suffered from the thought to the point of an agonizing revulsion.

I do not enlarge here upon this fact, nor analyze it, but merely note it: such was the cast of his soul at that moment.

All this might come about indirectly and, as it were, even unconsciously, out of the secret pangs of his conscience over the money of Katerina Ivanovna's that he had thievishly appropriated: "Before one woman I am a scoundrel, and before the other I shall at once turn out a scoundrel again," he thought then, as he himself afterward confessed, "and besides, if Grushenka finds out, she will not herself want such a scoundrel."

And so, where was he to get the means, where was he to get this fateful money?

Otherwise everything would be lost and nothing would come about, "and solely because there was not money enough — oh, the shame of it!"

I run ahead of myself: the thing is precisely that he, perhaps, did know where to get this money, knew, perhaps, where it even lay.

I shall say nothing more about it this time, for it will all be explained later; but here is what his chief trouble consisted in, and though obscurely, I will speak it out: in order to take this money that lay somewhere, in order to have the right to take it, he had first to return the three thousand to Katerina Ivanovna — otherwise "I am a pickpocket, I am a scoundrel, and I do not wish to begin a new life as a scoundrel," Mitya decided, and so he resolved to turn the whole world upside down if need be, but without fail to give these three thousand back to Katerina Ivanovna whatever it might cost, and before all else.