
Chapter One excerpt
Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov
was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in
our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy
and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe
in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this
�landowner��for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of
his life on his own estate�was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be
met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was
one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their
worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for
instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to
dine at other men�s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death
it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same
time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the
whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity�the majority of these
fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough�but just senselessness,
and a peculiar national form of it.
He was married twice, and had three
sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his
second. Fyodor Pavlovitch�s first wife, Adela�da Ivanovna, belonged to a
fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the
Mi�sovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and
moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation,
but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless
puny weakling, as we all called him, I won�t attempt to explain. I knew a
young lady of the last �romantic� generation who after some years of an
enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at
any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing
herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank,
almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to
be like Shakespeare�s Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and
favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic
flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place.
This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the
last two or three generations. Adela�da Ivanovna Mi�sov�s action was
similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people�s ideas, and was due to the
irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her
feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her
family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief
moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of
the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact,
an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was
that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adela�da
Ivanovna�s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch�s position at the time made him
specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make
a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a
dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently,
either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adela�da Ivanovna�s beauty. This
was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who
was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the
slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no
particular appeal to his senses.
Immediately after the elopement Adela�da
Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but
contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with
extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly
and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead
a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was
said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than
Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to
twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands
were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather fine town house
which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to
his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded,
merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the
contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity.
But, fortunately, Adela�da Ivanovna�s family intervened and circumvented his
greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the
husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife
but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient
woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength.
Glossary:
- abject: being of the lowest kind
- caprice: impulse
- piquancy: spicy, provocative
- dowry: money or property brought by a bride to her husband at
marriage
- importunity: persistent begging
http://www.optimnem.co.uk
|