I. Фёдор Павлович Карамазов

Of this "landowner" (as he was called among us, though he scarcely lived on his estate all his life) I shall say for now only this: that he was a strange type, yet one met with fairly often — precisely the type of a man who is not merely worthless and depraved but, along with that, muddle-headed too, and yet one of those muddle-headed men who know perfectly well how to manage their little property affairs, and that, it seems, is the one thing they manage.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; he was the smallest sort of landowner, ran about dining at other men's tables, angled to live as a hanger-on, and yet at the moment of his death there turned out to be as much as a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash to his name.

And at the same time he still went on, all his life, being one of the most muddle-headed madcaps in our whole district.

I will say it again: this was not stupidity; the majority of these madcaps are clever and cunning enough — it was precisely muddle-headedness, and of a particular kind at that, a national one.

He was married twice, and he had three sons: the eldest, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by his first wife, and the other two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second.

Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife came of the Miusov family, gentry fairly rich and distinguished, themselves landowners of our district.

How it could have come about that a girl with a dowry — and a beautiful one besides, and, on top of that, one of those bright, spirited wits not at all rare among us in the present generation, though they had begun to appear already in the last — could marry such a worthless "runt," as everyone then called him, I shall not undertake to explain at any length.

After all, I once knew a young lady, still of the last "romantic" generation, who, after several years of an enigmatic love for a certain gentleman — whom, by the way, she could always have married in the most untroubled manner — wound up, all the same, by inventing for herself insurmountable obstacles, and on a stormy night threw herself from a high, cliff-like bank into a fairly deep and swift river, perishing in it decidedly out of her own caprices, solely so as to resemble Shakespeare's Ophelia; and so much so that, had this cliff she had long marked out and cherished been less picturesque, had there stood in its place a merely prosaic, flat bank, then the suicide might very likely never have taken place at all.

This fact is a true one, and one must suppose that in our Russian life, over the last two or three generations, no small number of such facts, or of facts of the same kind, have occurred.

In just the same way, the deed of Adelaïda Ivanovna Miusova was without doubt an echo of influences from elsewhere, and likewise the chafing of a mind held captive.

She may, perhaps, have wished to assert feminine independence, to go against the conditions of society, against the despotism of her kin and her family — and an obliging fancy persuaded her, let us suppose for one moment only, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, for all his rank of hanger-on, was nonetheless one of the boldest and most mocking men of that age, an age in transition toward all that was better — whereas in fact he was only a spiteful buffoon, and nothing more.

What gave the affair its extra piquancy was that it came off as an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaïda Ivanovna.

As for Fyodor Pavlovitch, his social standing alone made him thoroughly primed for any such escapades at that time, for he passionately longed to make his career by whatever means came to hand; and to attach himself to good kindred and lay hold of a dowry was very tempting indeed.

As for any mutual love, there seems to have been none at all — neither on the bride's side nor on his, in spite even of Adelaïda Ivanovna's beauty.

So this case was perhaps unique of its kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, the most voluptuous man all his life long, ready in an instant to cling to any skirt at all, if only it beckoned to him.

And yet this one woman alone produced in him, on the side of passion, no particular impression whatever.

Adelaïda Ivanovna, the moment the elopement was over, saw in a flash that for her husband she felt only contempt and nothing more.

Thus the consequences of the marriage made themselves plain with extraordinary speed.

Although her family even came round to the event fairly soon and allotted the runaway her dowry, between the spouses there began the most disorderly life and endless scenes.

It was told that the young wife showed in all this an incomparably greater nobility and loftiness of spirit than did Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, filched from her at that very time, in one swoop, all her little funds, up to twenty-five thousand, the instant she received them, so that from then on those few thousands sank, for her, as if into water for good.

As for the small village and the fairly good town house that also came to her as part of the dowry, he tried for a long while and with all his might to have them transferred into his own name by drawing up some suitable deed, and he would surely have gained his end, out of the sheer contempt and revulsion toward himself, so to speak, that he aroused in his wife every minute of the day by his shameless extortions and beggings — out of her sheer spiritual exhaustion, just to be rid of him.

But, by good fortune, Adelaïda Ivanovna's family stepped in and reined the grasping fellow back.

It is positively known that frequent brawls broke out between the spouses, but, by tradition, it was not Fyodor Pavlovitch who beat the other but Adelaïda Ivanovna who did the beating — a hot-tempered lady, bold, dark-complexioned, impatient, endowed with remarkable physical strength.

At last she abandoned the house and fled from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a seminary-student-turned-schoolmaster who was perishing of poverty, leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch with little three-year-old Mitya on his hands.

Fyodor Pavlovitch promptly set up a whole harem in the house and the most riotous drinking, and in the intervals drove about nearly the entire province, tearfully complaining to anyone and everyone of Adelaïda Ivanovna, who had forsaken him, all the while disclosing such details as it would be far too shameful for a husband to tell about his married life.

The main thing was that he seemed actually pleased, and even flattered, to play out before everyone his absurd role of the wronged husband, and even to embroider, with trimmings, the particulars of his grievance.

"One would think, Fyodor Pavlovitch, that you had been given a promotion, you are so content, in spite of all your sorrow," the scoffers would say to him.

Many even added that he was glad to appear in the freshened-up guise of a buffoon, and that, on purpose, to heighten the laughter, he pretended not to notice his own comic situation.

Who knows, though — perhaps in his case it was even done in all naïveté.

At last he managed to track down his runaway.

The poor thing turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had moved with her seminarist and where she had flung herself, without reserve, into the fullest emancipation.

Fyodor Pavlovitch at once bestirred himself and began making ready to go to Petersburg — for what purpose? — he, of course, did not himself know.

Truly, he might perhaps have gone then; but, having undertaken such a resolve, he immediately reckoned himself within his special rights — for courage, before the road — to plunge anew into the most boundless drinking.

And it was at just this time that his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg.

She had somehow died all at once, somewhere in a garret, by some accounts of typhus, and by others, as it were, of starvation.

Fyodor Pavlovitch learned of his wife's death while drunk; they say he ran down the street and began to shout, raising his hands to heaven in joy, "Now lettest Thou depart," while by other accounts he wept aloud like a little child, and so much so that, they say, it was pitiful even to look at him, for all the revulsion felt toward him.

Very possibly both were true — that is, that he both rejoiced at his deliverance and wept for her who had delivered him — all together.

In the majority of cases people, even villains, are far more naïve and simple-hearted than we generally conclude about them.

And so, for that matter, are we ourselves.