“Stop, Rakitka!” Grushenka suddenly jumped up. “Be still, both of you. I’ll tell you everything now: you be still, Alyosha, because I feel ashamed of hearing such words from you, because I’m wicked, not good—that’s how I am. And you, Rakitka, be still because you’re lying. I did have such a low thought, of eating him up, but now you’re lying, it’s quite different now ... and I don’t want to hear any more from you, Rakitka!” Grushenka spoke all this with unusual excitement.
“Look at them—both senseless!” Rakitin hissed, staring at them both in amazement. “It’s crazy, I feel like I’m in a madhouse. They’ve both gone soft, they’ll start crying in a minute!”
“I will start crying, I will start crying!” Grushenka kept repeating. “He called me his sister, I’ll never forget it! Just know one thing, Rakitka, I may be wicked, but still I gave an onion.”
“An onion? Ah, the devil, they really have gone crazy!”
Rakitin was surprised at their exaltation, which offended and annoyed him, though he should have realized that everything had just come together for them both in such a way that their souls were shaken, which does not happen very often in life. But Rakitin, who could be quite sensitive in understanding everything that concerned himself, was quite crude in understanding the feelings and sensations of his neighbors—partly because of his youthful inexperience, and partly because of his great egoism.
“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka turned to him, laughing nervously, “I’m boasting to Rakitka that I gave an onion, but I’m not boasting to you, I’ll tell you about it for a different reason. It’s just a fable, but a good fable, I heard it when I was still a child, from my Matryona who cooks for me now. It goes like this: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here, woman, he said, take hold of it and I’ll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.[230]That’s the fable, Alyosha, I know it by heart, because I myself am that wicked woman. I boasted to Rakitin that I gave an onion, but I’ll say it differently to you: in my whole life I’ve given
“What nonsense! What nonsense!” exclaimed Rakitin, taken aback.
“I owe it to you, Rakitka, take it, you won’t refuse, you asked for it yourself,” and she flung the bill at him.
“Why refuse?” Rakitin said in a deep voice, visibly ashamed, but disguising his embarrassment with swagger. “It will truly come in handy; fools exist for the intelligent man’s profit.”
“And now keep still, Rakitka, what I’m going to say now is not for your ears. Sit there in the corner and keep still, you don’t love us, so keep still.”
“What’s there to love you for?” Rakitin snarled, no longer concealing his spite. He put the twenty-five roubles in his pocket, and was decidedly ashamed before Alyosha. He had planned on being paid later, so that Alyosha would not know, but now shame made him angry. Up to that moment he had found it more politic not to contradict Grushenka too much, despite all her barbs, since she obviously had some sort of power over him. But now he, too, got angry:
“One loves for some reason, and what has either of you done for me?”
“You should love for no reason, like Alyosha.”
“How does he love you? What has he shown you, that you’re making such a fuss about it?”
Grushenka stood in the middle of the room; she spoke heatedly, and hysterical notes could be heard in her voice.
