“Come along, my economist, come along, don’t be angry,” Mitya dragged him into the back room of the shop. “They’re going to bring us a bottle here, we’ll have a sip. Eh, Pyotr Ilyich, let’s go together, because you’re a dear man, just the sort I like.”
Mitya sat down on a little wicker chair in front of a tiny table covered with a most filthy tablecloth. Pyotr Ilyich squeezed in opposite him, and the champagne appeared at once. The offer was made to serve the gentlemen oysters, “foremost oysters, the latest arrivals.”
“Devil take your oysters, I don’t eat them, bring us nothing,” Pyotr Ilyich snarled almost angrily.
“No time for oysters,” Mitya remarked, “and I have no appetite. You know, my friend,” he suddenly said with feeling, “I’ve never liked all this disorder.”
“Who likes it? Three dozen bottles, for peasants? Good Lord, anyone would explode!”
“I don’t mean that. I mean a higher order. There is no order in me, no higher order ... But ... that’s all over, nothing to grieve about. Too late, devil take it! My whole life has been disorder, and I must put it in order. Punning, am I?”
“You’re not punning, you’re raving.”
“Glory to the Highest in the world, Glory to the Highest in me!
That verse once burst from my soul, not a verse but a tear, I wrote it myself ... not, by the way, that time when I was dragging the captain by his beard ...” “Why mention him all of a sudden?”
“Why him all of a sudden? Nonsense! Everything ends, everything comes out even; a line—and a sum total.”
“I keep thinking about your pistols, really.”
“The pistols are nonsense, too! Drink and stop imagining things. I love life, I’ve grown to love life too much, so much it’s disgusting. Enough! To life, my dear, let us drink to life, I offer a toast to life! Why am I so pleased with myself? I’m base, but I’m pleased with myself, and yet it pains me to be base and still pleased with myself. I bless creation, I’m ready right now to bless God and his creation, but ... I must exterminate one foul insect, so that it will not crawl around spoiling life for others ... Let us drink to life, dear brother! What can be more precious than life! Nothing, nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens.”
“To life, then, and maybe to your queen as well.”
They emptied their glasses. Mitya, though rapturous and expansive, was somehow sad. As though some insuperable and heavy care stood over him.
“Misha ... was it your Misha who just came in? Misha, my dear Misha, come here, drink a glass for me, to the golden-haired Phoebus of tomorrow...”
“Not him!” Pyotr Ilyich cried irritably.
“No, please, let him. I want him to.”
“Ahh . . .!” — Misha drank his glass, bowed, and ran out.
“Hell remember it better,” Mitya observed. “A woman, I love a woman! What is woman? The queen of the earth! Sad, I feel sad, Pyotr Ilyich. Do you remember Hamlet? ‘I am sad, so sad, Horatio ... Ach, poor Yorick!’[244] It is I, perhaps, who am Yorick. Yorick now, that is, and later—the skull.”
Pyotr Ilyich listened silently; Mitya also fell silent for a time.
“What kind of dog is that?” he suddenly asked the sales clerk distractedly, noticing a pretty little lapdog with black eyes in the corner.
“It’s the mistress’s, Varvara Alexeyevna’s, lapdog,” the sales clerk replied. “She brought him here today and forgot him. We must take him back to her.”
“I saw one like it ... in the regiment ... ,” Mitya said pensively, “only that one had a broken hind leg ... Incidentally, Pyotr Ilyich, I wanted to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“No, I’m just asking. From someone’s pocket, you see, someone else’s property? I don’t mean government money, everyone steals government money, and of course you, too ...”
“Go to the devil.” “I mean someone else’s property: right from their pocket or purse, eh?”
“I once stole twenty kopecks from my mother, from the table, when I was nine years old. Took it on the sly and clutched it in my fist.”
“And then what?”
“Then nothing. I kept it for three days, felt ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.”
“And then what?”
“Naturally I got a whipping. Why, you haven’t stolen anything, have you?”
“I have,” Mitya winked slyly.
“What have you stolen?” Pyotr Ilyich became curious.
“Twenty kopecks from my mother, when I was nine, I gave it back in three days.” Having said this, Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.
“Dmitri Fyodorovich, shouldn’t we hurry up?” Andrei suddenly called from the door of the shop.
“Ready? Let’s go!” Mitya got into a flutter. “Yet one last tale and then[245]. . . give Andrei a glass of vodka for the road now! And a shot of cognac along with it! This box” (the pistol case) “goes under my seat. Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich, think kindly of me.”
“But you’re coming back tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
“Will you be so kind as to settle the bill now, sir?” the sales clerk ran up.
“Ah, yes, the bill! Certainly!”
