第84章

Maybe he has gone away," the old man said in answer to Alyosha's persistent inquiries.Alyosha saw that he was answering in accordance with instructions.When he asked whether he were not at Grushenka's or in hiding at Foma's (Alyosha spoke so freely on purpose), all three looked at him in alarm."They are fond of him, they are doing their best for him," thought Alyosha."That's good."At last he found the house in Lake Street.It was a decrepit little house, sunk on one side, with three windows looking into the street, and with a muddy yard, in the middle of which stood a solitary cow.He crossed the yard and found the door opening into the passage.On the left of the passage lived the old woman of the house with her old daughter.Both seemed to be deaf.In answer to his repeated inquiry for the captain, one of them at last understood that he was asking for their lodgers, and pointed to a door across the passage.The captain's lodging turned out to be a simple cottage room.

Alyosha had his hand on the iron latch to open the door, when he was struck by the strange hush within.Yet he knew from Katerina Ivanovna's words that the man had a family."Either they are all asleep or perhaps they have heard me coming and are waiting for me to open the door.I'd better knock first," and he knocked.An answer came, but not at once, after an interval of perhaps ten seconds.

"Who's there?" shouted someone in a loud and very angry voice.

Then Alyosha opened the door and crossed the threshold.He found himself in a regular peasant's room.Though it was large, it was cumbered up with domestic belongings of all sorts, and there were several people in it.On the left was a large Russian stove.From the stove to the window on the left was a string running across the room, and on it there were rags hanging.There was a bedstead against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted quilts.On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print-covered pillows, each smaller than the one beneath.On the other there was only one very small pillow.The opposite corner was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string.Behind this curtain could be seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair.The rough square table of plain wood had been moved into the middle window.The three windows, which consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave little light, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light and rather stuffy.On the table was a frying pan with the remains of some fried eggs, a half-eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of vodka.

A woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was sitting on a chair by the bed on the left.Her face was thin and yellow, and her sunken cheeks betrayed at the first glance that she was ill.But what struck Alyosha most was the expression in the poor woman's eyes- a look of surprised inquiry and yet of haughty pride.

And while he was talking to her husband, her big brown eyes moved from one speaker to the other with the same haughty and questioning expression.Beside her at the window stood a young girl, rather plain, with scanty reddish hair, poorly but very neatly dressed.She looked disdainfully at Alyosha as he came in.Beside the other bed was sitting another female figure.She was a very sad sight, a young girl of about twenty, but hunchback and crippled "with withered legs,"as Alyosha was told afterwards.Her crutches stood in the corner close by.The strikingly beautiful and gentle eyes of this poor girl looked with mild serenity at Alyosha.A man of forty-five was sitting at the table, finishing the fried eggs.He was spare, small, and weakly built.He had reddish hair and a scanty light-coloured beard, very much like a wisp of tow (this comparison and the phrase "a wisp of tow" flashed at once into Alyosha's mind for some reason, he remembered it afterwards).It was obviously this gentleman who had shouted to him, as there was no other man in the room.But when Alyosha went in, he leapt up from the bench on which he was sitting, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a ragged napkin, darted up to Alyosha.

"It's a monk come to beg for the monastery.A nice place to come to!" the girl standing in the left corner said aloud.The man spun round instantly towards her and answered her in an excited and breaking voice:

"No, Varvara, you are wrong.Allow me to ask," he turned again to Alyosha, "what has brought you to our retreat?"Alyosha looked attentively at him.It was the first time he had seen him.There was something angular, flurried and irritable about him.Though he had obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk.

There was extraordinary impudence in his expression, and yet, strange to say, at the same time there was fear.He looked like a man who had long been kept in subjection and had submitted to it, and now had suddenly turned and was trying to assert himself.Or, better still, like a man who wants dreadfully to hit you but is horribly afraid you will hit him.In his words and in the intonation of his shrill voice there was a sort of crazy humour, at times spiteful and at times cringing, and continually shifting from one tone to another.The question about "our retreat" he had asked, as it were, quivering all over, rolling his eyes, and skipping up so close to Alyosha that he instinctively drew back a step.He was dressed in a very shabby dark cotton coat, patched and spotted.He wore checked trousers of an extremely light colour, long out of fashion, and of very thin material.They were so crumpled and so short that he looked as though he had grown out of them like a boy.

"I am Alexey Karamazov," Alyosha began in reply.