The Brothers Karamazov

She was not really upset, but somehow all in pieces, and it was perhaps possible that everything had indeed become mixed into a lump in her head. The newspaper item was a typical one and, of course, must have had a rather ticklish effect on her, but, fortunately, at that moment she was perhaps unable to concentrate on any one point, and could therefore even forget about the newspaper in a moment and jump on to something quite different. Alyosha had known for some time that the rumor of a terrible trial had spread everywhere throughout Russia, and, God, what wild reports and articles he had read in the course of those two months, along with other, accurate items, about his brother, about the Karamazovs in general, and even about himself. In one newspaper it was even stated that he had become a monk from fear, following his brother’s crime, and gone into seclusion; this was denied in another, where it was written that, on the contrary, he and his elder Zosima had robbed the monastery cash box and “skipped from the monastery.” Today’s item in the newspaper Rumors was entitled “From Skotoprigonyevsk”^[287] (alas, that is the name of our town; I have been concealing it all this time) “Concerning the Trial of Karamazov.” It was brief, and there was no direct mention of Madame Khokhlakov, and generally all the names were concealed. It was simply reported that the criminal whose forthcoming trial was causing so much noise was a retired army officer, of an insolent sort, an idler and serf-owner, who devoted all his time to amorous affairs, and had a particular influence with certain “bored and solitary ladies.” And that one such lady, “a bored widow,” rather girlish, though she already had a grown-up daughter, took such a fancy to him that only two hours before the crime she had offered him three thousand roubles if he would run away with her at once to the gold mines. But the villain still preferred better to kill his father and rob him precisely of three thousand, counting on doing it with impunity, rather than drag himself off to Siberia with the forty-year-old charms of his bored lady. This playful communication ended, quite properly, with noble indignation at the immorality of parricide and the former serfdom. Having read it with curiosity, Alyosha folded the page and handed it back to Madame Khokhlakov.

“Well, who else is it but me?” she started prattling again. “It’s me, I offered him gold mines almost an hour before, and suddenly those ‘forty-year-old charms’! But it wasn’t that! He says it on purpose! May the eternal judge forgive him those forty-year-old charms, as I forgive him, but this ... do you know who it is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I’ve heard nothing about it.”

“It’s him, him, and no ‘perhaps’! Because I turned him out ... Do you know that whole story?”

“I know you suggested that he not visit you in the future, but precisely why, I haven’t heard ... at least, not from you.”

“Ah, so you heard it from him! And what, does he abuse me, does he abuse me very much?”

“Yes, he abuses you, but he abuses everybody. But why you closed your door to him—that he didn’t tell me. And in fact I see him very seldom. We are not friends.”