The Brothers Karamazov полностью

“Imagine, I’ve been taking him around with me for four days now,” he went on, drawing the words out a little, lazily, as it were, but quite naturally, and without any foppery. “Ever since the day your brother pushed him out of the carriage and sent him flying, remember? That made me very interested in him then, and I took him to the village with me, but now he keeps telling such lies that I’m ashamed to be with him. I’m taking him back...”

“The pan has never seen a Polish pani, and says what is not possible,” the pan with the pipe observed to Maximov.

The pan with the pipe spoke Russian quite well, much better, at least, than he pretended. If he happened to use Russian words, he distorted them in a Polish manner.

“But I was married to a Polish pani myself, sir,” Maximov giggled in reply.

“And did you also serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry. But you’re no cavalryman,” Kalganov immediately mixed in.

“No, indeed, he’s no cavalryman! Ha, ha!” cried Mitya, who was listening greedily and quickly shifting his questioning glance to each speaker in turn, as if he expected to hear God knows what from each of them.

“No, you see, sir,” Maximov turned to him, “I mean, sir, that those young Polish girls ... pretty girls, sir ... as soon as they’d danced a mazurka with one of our uhlans ... as soon as she’d danced a mazurka with him, she’d jump on his lap like a little cat, sir ... a little white cat, sir ... and the pan father and the pani mother see it and allow it ... allow it, sir ... and the next day the uhlan would go and offer his hand ... like that, sir ... offer his hand, hee, hee!” Maximov ended with a giggle.

“The pan is a lajdak!”^[249] the tall pan on the chair suddenly growled and crossed one leg over the other. All that caught Mitya’s eye was his enormous greased boot with its thick and dirty sole. Generally, the clothing of both pans was rather grimy.

“So it’s lajdak now! Why is he calling names?” Grushenka suddenly became angry.

“Pani Agrippina,^[250] what the pan saw in the Polish land were peasant women, not noble ladies,” the pan with the pipe observed to Grushenka.

“You can bet on that!” the tall pan on the chair snapped contemptuously.

“Really! Let him talk! People talk, why interfere with them? It’s fun to be with them,” Grushenka snarled.

“I am not interfering, pani” the pan in the wig observed significantly, with a prolonged look at Grushenka, and, lapsing into an imposing silence, began sucking on his pipe again.

“But no, no, what the pan just said is right,” Kalganov got excited again, as if the matter involved were God knows how important. “He hasn’t been to Poland, how can he talk about Poland? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you?”

“No, sir, in Smolensk province. But, anyway, an uhlan brought her from Poland, sir, I mean my future spouse, sir, with her pani mother, and her aunt, and yet another female relation with a grown-up son, right from Poland ... and let me have her. He was one of our sublieutenants, a very nice young man. First he wanted to marry her himself, but he didn’t because she turned out to be lame ...”

“So you married a lame woman?” Kalganov exclaimed.

“A lame woman, sir. They both deceived me a little bit then and concealed it. I thought she was skipping ... she kept skipping all the time, and I thought it was from high spirits ...”

“From joy that she was marrying you?” Kalganov yelled in a ringing, childlike voice.

“Yes, sir, from joy. And the reason turned out to be quite different, sir. Later, when we got married, that same evening after the church service, she confessed and asked my forgiveness with great feeling. She once jumped over a puddle in her young years, she said, and injured her little foot, hee, hee, hee!”

Kalganov simply dissolved in the most childlike laughter and almost collapsed on the sofa. Grushenka laughed, too. Mitya was in perfect bliss. “You know, you know, he’s telling the truth now, he’s not lying anymore!” Kalganov exclaimed, addressing Mitya. “And you know, he was married twice—it’s his first wife he’s talking about—and his second wife, you know, ran away and is still alive, did you know that?”

“She did?” Mitya quickly turned to Maximov, his face expressing remarkable amazement.

“Yes, sir, she ran away, I’ve had that unpleasantness,” Maximov confirmed humbly. “With a certain monsieur, sir. And the worst of it was that beforehand she first of all transferred my whole village to her name alone. You’re an educated man, she said, you can always earn your keep. So she left me flat. A venerable bishop once observed to me: your first wife was lame, and the second too lightfooted, hee, hee!”