V. Внезапное решение

Trusting in Nazar Ivanovich, once again they had not bolted themselves in from the inside.

Mitya rushed in, flung himself at Fenya, and seized her tightly by the throat.

"Tell me this instant, where is she, who is she with now at Mokroe?" he howled in a frenzy.

Both women shrieked.

"Oh, I'll tell you, oh, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, I'll tell you everything this minute, I'll hide nothing," Fenya rattled off in a gabble, frightened half to death. "She's gone to Mokroe, to the officer."

"What officer?" Mitya bellowed.

"The former officer, that very one, her own from before, the one who five years ago threw her over and went away," Fenya rapped out in the same gabble.

Dmitri Fyodorovich let go of the hands with which he had been gripping her throat.

He stood before her, pale as a corpse and speechless, but by his eyes one could see that he had understood it all at once — all of it, all at once, grasped it from half a word down to the last little detail, and had guessed everything.

It was not for poor Fenya, of course, to be observing in that second whether he understood or not.

Just as she had been when he rushed in, sitting on the trunk, so she stayed now, all atremble, and with her hands thrust out before her as if wishing to ward him off, she froze stock-still in that posture.

With the pupils of her eyes frightened and dilated by terror, she fixed them on him without moving.

And on top of it all, his two hands happened to be smeared with blood.

On the way, while running, he must have touched them to his forehead, wiping the sweat from his face, so that on his brow and on his right cheek there were left red smears of blood.

Fenya was on the verge of hysterics, while the old cook had sprung up and was staring like a madwoman, all but fainting away.

Dmitri Fyodorovich stood a minute and then suddenly, mechanically, sank down on a chair beside Fenya.

He sat there, and not so much thinking as if seized by fright, as though sunk in some kind of stupor.

But everything was clear as day: this officer — he knew about him, knew everything about him perfectly well, knew it from Grushenka herself, knew that a month ago he had sent a letter.

So for a month, a whole month, this affair had been carried on in deep secret from him, right up until the present arrival of this new man, and he had never once thought of him!

But how could he, how could he not have thought of him?

Why had he simply forgotten about this officer back then, forgotten him the very moment he learned of him?

That was the question that stood before him like some kind of monster.

And he contemplated this monster truly in fright, gone cold with terror.

But suddenly, softly and gently, like a quiet and tender child, he began to speak with Fenya, as though entirely forgetting that he had just so frightened, offended, and tormented her.

Suddenly he set about questioning Fenya with an extraordinary, even — given his condition — astonishing precision.

And Fenya, though she stared wildly at his bloodied hands, nonetheless set about answering his every question with an astonishing readiness and haste, even as if eager to lay before him the whole "honest-to-goodness truth."

Little by little, even with a kind of joy, she began to set out all the details — not in the least wishing to torment him, but as if hurrying with all her might, from the heart, to be of service to him.

Down to the last particular she told him the whole of that day too: the visit of Rakitin and Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had kept watch, how the mistress had driven off, and what she had called out through the little window to Alyosha — her bow to him, to Mitenka, and that he should "remember forever how she had loved him for one little hour."

Hearing of the bow, Mitya suddenly gave a smile, and on his pale cheeks a flush flared up.

At that very moment Fenya said to him, no longer the least bit afraid of being thought too curious:

"Your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovich, what hands you have — all covered in blood!"

"Yes," Mitya answered mechanically, glanced absently at his hands, and at once forgot about them and about Fenya's question.

He sank into silence again.

Some twenty minutes had already passed since he had rushed in.

His earlier fright had passed, but evidently some new, unbending resolve had now taken complete possession of him.

Suddenly he rose from his place and gave a pensive smile.

"Master, what is it that's happened to you?" said Fenya, pointing again at his hands — said it with pity, as if she were now the creature closest to him in his grief.

Mitya looked at his hands again.

"This is blood, Fenya," he said, gazing at her with a strange expression, "this is human blood, and — God, why was it spilled!"

"But... Fenya... there's a fence here" (he looked at her as though setting her a riddle), "a single high fence, dreadful to look at, but... tomorrow at daybreak, when 'the sun takes wing,' Mitenka will leap over that fence..."

"You don't understand, Fenya, what kind of fence — well, never mind... it doesn't matter, tomorrow you'll hear and understand it all... and now, farewell!"

"I won't stand in the way, I'll step aside — I'll know how to step aside."

"Live, my joy... you loved me for an hour, so remember Mitenka Karamazov forever..."

"She always called me Mitenka, you know — remember?"

And with these words he suddenly walked out of the kitchen.

And Fenya was almost more frightened by this exit than she had been a moment before, when he rushed in and flung himself at her.

Exactly ten minutes later Dmitri Fyodorovich called on that young official, Pyotr Ilyich Perhotin, with whom he had pawned his pistols a little earlier.

It was already half past eight, and Pyotr Ilyich, having taken his tea at home, had just put his frock coat back on to set off for the tavern "The Capital City" for a game of billiards.

Mitya caught him on his way out.

Seeing him, and his face smeared with blood, the other man fairly cried out:

"Lord! What's the matter with you?"

"Here's the thing," Mitya said quickly, "I've come for my pistols and brought you the money. With thanks. I'm in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyich, please be quick."

Pyotr Ilyich grew more and more astonished: in Mitya's hands he suddenly made out a heap of money, and what was more, the man was holding that heap and had come in with it the way no one holds money and no one comes in — he was carrying all the notes in his right hand, as if on display, holding the hand straight out before him.

The boy, the official's servant who had met Mitya in the entryway, related afterward that he had come into the entry just so, with the money in his hands, which meant that he had carried it down the street the same way, before him in his right hand.

The notes were all hundred-rouble bills, the rainbow kind, and he was holding them in his bloodstained fingers.

Pyotr Ilyich, when interested parties later asked him how much money there had been, declared that it had been hard to reckon by eye at the time — perhaps two thousand, perhaps three, but the wad was a big one, "nice and thick."

Dmitri Fyodorovich himself, as he too testified afterward, "was likewise altogether not himself, yet not drunk, but as though in some kind of rapture, very distracted, and at the same time as if concentrated, as though pondering something and trying to work it out and unable to decide. He was in a great hurry, answered abruptly and very strangely, and at moments seemed not to be in any grief at all, but even cheerful."

"But what is the matter with you, what is the matter now?" Pyotr Ilyich cried out again, eyeing his guest wildly. "How did you get so bloodied — did you fall, or what? Look at yourself!"

He grabbed him by the elbow and stood him in front of the mirror.

Mitya, catching sight of his blood-smeared face, gave a start and frowned angrily.

"Ah, the devil! That's all I needed," he muttered with vexation, quickly shifted the notes from his right hand to his left, and convulsively yanked a handkerchief out of his pocket.

But the handkerchief too proved to be all blood (with this very handkerchief he had wiped Grigory's head and face): scarcely a single spot of it was white, and it had not so much begun to dry as somehow stiffened into a wad and would not unfold.

Mitya flung it angrily to the floor.

"Ah, the devil! Haven't you got some sort of rag... to wipe myself off with..."

"So you've only smeared yourself, you're not wounded? Then you'd best wash up," answered Pyotr Ilyich. "Here's the washstand, I'll pour for you."

"The washstand? That's good... only where am I to put this?" — in a perfectly strange bewilderment he pointed Pyotr Ilyich to his wad of hundreds, gazing at him questioningly, as if the other were the one who had to decide where he should stow his own money.

"Stick it in your pocket, or set it here on the table — it won't go missing."

"In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. That's good... No, you see, this is all nonsense!" he cried, as if suddenly coming out of his abstraction. "Look: let's first finish this business — the pistols, hand them over to me — and here's your money... because I have great, great need... and I've not a drop of time, not a drop..."