The Possessed (The Devils) - The Original Classic Edition. Dostoyevsky Fyodor
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America? How you must have sworn at him!"
"Not a bit of it. On the contrary, Kirillov and I made up our minds from the first that we Russians were like little children beside
the Americans, and that one must be born in America, or at least live for many years with Americans to be on a level with them.
And do you know, if we were asked a dollar for a thing worth a farthing, we used to pay it with pleasure, in fact with enthusiasm. We approved of everything: spiritualism, lynch-law, revolvers, tramps. Once when we were travelling a fellow slipped his hand into my pocket, took my brush, and began brushing his hair with it. Kirillov and I only looked at one another, and made up our minds that that was the right thing and that we liked it very much...."
"The strange thing is that with us all this is not only in the brain but is carried out in practice," I observed. "Men made of paper," Shatov repeated.
"But to cross the ocean in an emigrant steamer, though, to go to an unknown country, even to make a personal experiment and all that--by Jove... there really is a large-hearted staunchness about it.... But how did you get out of it?"
"I wrote to a man in Europe and he sent me a hundred roubles."
As Shatov talked he looked doggedly at the ground as he always did, even when he was excited. At this point he suddenly raised his head.
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"Do you want to know the man's name?" "Who was it?"
"Nikolay Stavrogin."
He got up suddenly, turned to his limewood writing-table and began searching for something on it. There was a vague, though well-authenticated rumour among us that Shatov's wife had at one time had a liaison with Nikolay Stavrogin, in Paris, and just about two years ago, that is when Shatov was in America. It is true that this was long after his wife had left him in Geneva.
"If so, what possesses him now to bring his name forward and to lay stress on it?" I thought.
"I haven't paid him back yet," he said, turning suddenly to me again, and looking at me intently he sat down in the same place as
before in the corner, and asked abruptly, in quite a different voice:
"You have come no doubt with some object. What do you want?"
I told him everything immediately, in its exact historical order, and added that though I had time to think it over coolly after the
first excitement was over, I was more puzzled than ever. I saw that it meant something very important to Lizaveta Nikolaevna. I was extremely anxious to help her, but the trouble was that I didn't know how to keep the promise I had made her, and didn't even quite understand now what I had promised her. Then I assured him impressively once more that she had not meant to deceive him, and had had no thought of doing so; that there had been some misunderstanding, and that she had been very much hurt by the extraordinary way in which he had gone off that morning.
He listened very attentively.
"Perhaps I was stupid this morning, as I usually am.... Well, if she didn't understand why I went away like that... so much the better for her."
He got up, went to the door, opened it, and began listening on the stairs. "Do you want to see that person yourself ?"
"That's just what I wanted, but how is it to be done?" I cried, delighted.
"Let's simply go down while she's alone. When he comes in he'll beat her horribly if he finds out we've been there. I often go in on
the sly. I went for him this morning when he began beating her again." "What do you mean?"
"I dragged him off her by the hair. He tried to beat me, but I frightened him, and so it ended. I'm afraid he'll come back drunk, and won't forget it--he'll give her a bad beating because of it."
We went downstairs at once.
The Lebyadkins' door was shut but not locked, and we were able to go in. Their lodging consisted of two nasty little rooms, with
smoke-begrimed walls on which the filthy wall-paper literally hung in tatters. It had been used for some years as an eating-house,
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