Notes from Underground & The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky [Dostoyevsky, Fyodor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027234936
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘Well, one day I met Akoulka. She was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: “A fine morning, Akoulka Koudimovna, my pet! You’re the girl who knows how to please the chaps. Who’s living with you now, and where do you get the money for your finery?” That’s just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her doorstep: “Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?” And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they thrashed her for an hour on end. Her mother said: “I give her the whip because she isn’t my daughter any more.”’

‘So she was as bad as they said?’

‘Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, Philka and I were always drunk. One day when I was abed, mother comes and says:

‘“What d’ ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief! “ She abused me for some time, and then said: “Marry Akoulka. They’ll be glad to give her to you, and they’ll give three hundred roubles with her.”

‘“But,” says I, “all the world knows that she’s a bad girl”

‘“Tush! The marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she’ll always be in fear of her life from you, so you’ll be in clover together. Their money would make us comfortable. I’ve spoken about the marriage already to Marie Stépanovna; we’re of one mind about it.”

‘So I say: “Let’s have twenty roubles down, and I’ll take her.”

‘Well, believe it or not, but I was drunk right up to the wedding-day. Philka Marosof was threatening me all the time.

‘“I’ll break every bone in your body. A nice fellow you are to be engaged-and to Akoulka. If I like I’ll sleep every blessed night with her when she’s your wife.”

‘“You’re a hound, and a liar,” I replied. But he insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim’s and said: “I won’t marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this moment.”

‘And did they really let you have her?’

‘Me? Why not, indeed? We were quite respectable people. Father was ruined by a fire shortly before he died; he’s been a richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.’

‘“A fellow like you, without a shirt to his back, ought to be only too happy to marry my daughter,” retorted Aukoudim.

‘“Just remember your door and its coat of pitch,” I answered back.

‘“ Stuff and nonsense,” said he. “There’s no proof whatever that the girl’s done wrong.”

‘“Please yourself. There’s the door, and you can go about your business; but give back the money you’ve had!”

‘Then Philka Marosof and I agreed to send Mitri Bykoff to old Aukoudim to tell him that we’d insult him to his face in front of everyone. Well, as I say, I was full of drink right up to the wedding-day; I wasn’t sober till I got into church.

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