Liputin rushed headlong for home.
IV
He had long kept ready a passport in a different name. It is wild even to think that this precise little man, a petty family tyrant, a functionary in any case (though a Fourierist), and, finally, before all else, a capitalist and moneylender—had long, long ago conceived within himself the fantastic notion of readying this passport just in case, so as to slip abroad with its help if. . . so he did allow for the possibility of this if! though, of course, he himself was never able to formulate precisely what this if might signify...
But now it suddenly formulated itself, and in the most unexpected way. That desperate idea with which he had come to Kirillov's, after hearing Pyotr Stepanovich's 'moron' on the sidewalk, consisted in abandoning everything tomorrow at daybreak and expatriating abroad! Whoever does not believe that such fantastic things happen in our everyday reality even now, may consult the biographies of all real Russian emigres abroad. Not one of them fled in a more intelligent or realistic way. It is all the same unbridled kingdom of phantoms, and nothing more.
Having run home, he began by locking himself in, getting a valise, and beginning to pack convulsively. His main concern was about money, what amount and how he would be able to secure it. Precisely to secure, because, according to his notion, he could not delay even an hour, and had to be on the highway at daybreak. He also did not know how he would get on the train; he vaguely resolved to get on somewhere at the second or even third big station from town, and to get there even if by foot. In this way, instinctively and mechanically, with a whole whirl of thoughts in his head, he stood pottering over his valise and—suddenly stopped, abandoned it all, and with a deep moan stretched out on the sofa.
He clearly felt and suddenly became conscious of the fact that he might indeed be running away, but that to resolve the question of whether he was to run away before or after Shatov was now already quite beyond his power; that he was now only a crude, unfeeling body, an inert mass, but that he was being moved by some external, terrible power, and that though he did have a passport for abroad, though he could run away from Shatov (otherwise why such a hurry?), he would run away not before Shatov, not from Shatov, but precisely after Shatov, and that it had been thus decided, signed, and sealed. In unbearable anguish, trembling and astonished at himself every moment, groaning and going numb alternately, he somehow survived, locked in and lying on his sofa, until eleven o'clock the next morning, and it was then suddenly that the expected push came which suddenly directed his decision. At eleven o'clock, as soon as he unlocked his door and went out to his family, he suddenly learned from them that a robber, the escaped convict Fedka, who terrorized everyone, a pilferer of churches, a recent murderer and arsonist, whom our police had been after but kept failing to catch, had been found murdered that morning at daybreak, some four miles from town, at the turnoff from the highway to the road to Zakharyino, and that the whole town was already talking about it. He at once rushed headlong out of the house to learn the details, and learned first that Fedka, found with his head smashed in, had by all tokens been robbed, and second, that the police already had strong suspicions and even some firm evidence for concluding that his murderer was the Shpigulin man Fomka, the same one with whom he had undoubtedly killed and set fire to the Lebyadkins, and that a quarrel had already taken place between them on their way, because Fedka had supposedly hidden a big sum of money stolen from Lebyadkin... Liputin also ran to Pyotr Stepanovich's place and managed to learn at the back door, on the sly, that although Pyotr Stepanovich had returned home yesterday at, say, around one o'clock in the morning, he had been pleased to spend the whole night there quietly asleep until eight o'clock. Of course, there could be no doubt that the death of the robber Fedka contained nothing at all extraordinary in itself, and that such denouements precisely happen most often in careers of that sort, but the coincidence of the fatal words that 'Fedka had drunk vodka that evening for the last time,' with the immediate justification of the prophecy, was so portentous that Liputin suddenly ceased to hesitate. The push was given; it was as if a stone had fallen on him and crushed him forever. Returning home, he silently shoved his valise under the bed with his foot, and that evening, at the appointed time, was the first of them all to come to the place fixed for meeting Shatov—true, with his passport still in his pocket...
5: A Traveler
I
The catastrophe with Liza and the death of Marya Timofeevna produced an overwhelming impression on Shatov. I have already mentioned that I saw him that morning in passing; he seemed to me as if he were not in his right mind. He told me, incidentally, that the evening before, at around nine o'clock (that is, some three hours before the fire), he had been at Marya Timofeevna's. He went in the morning to have a look at the corpses, but as far as I know he did not give any evidence anywhere that morning. Meanwhile, towards the end of the day, a whole storm arose in his soul and... and I believe I can say positively that there was a certain moment at dusk when he wanted to get up, go, and—declare all. What this all was—he himself well knew. Of course, he would have achieved nothing, and would simply have betrayed himself. He had no proofs to expose the just-committed evildoing; and what he did have were only vague guesses about it, which for him alone were equal to full conviction. But he was ready to ruin himself just in order to 'crush the scoundrels'—his own words. Pyotr Stepanovich had in part correctly divined this impulse in him and knew he was running a great risk in postponing his new, terrible design until the next day. Here, as usual, there was on his part much presumption and disdain for all this 'trash,' and for Shatov especially. He had long disdained Shatov for his 'tearful idiocy,' as he had said about him while still abroad, and firmly trusted that he could handle such an unclever man—that is, not lose sight of him all that day and stop him at the first sign of danger. And yet the 'scoundrels' were spared a little longer only through a completely unexpected and, by them, totally unforeseen circumstance.
Somewhere between seven and eight in the evening (it was precisely the time when our people were gathered at Erkel's, waiting indignantly and anxiously for Pyotr Stepanovich), Shatov, with a headache and a slight chill, was lying stretched out on his bed, in the dark, without a candle, tormented by perplexity, angry, deciding and then unable to decide finally, and anticipating with a curse that anyhow it would all lead nowhere. Gradually he dozed off into a momentary, light sleep, and in his dreams had something like a nightmare; he dreamed he was on his bed all tangled up in ropes, bound and unable to move, and meanwhile the whole house was resounding from a terrible knocking on the fence, on the gate, on his door, in Kirillov's wing, so that the whole house was trembling, and some distant, familiar, but, for him, tormenting voice was piteously calling him. He suddenly came to his senses and raised himself on his bed. To his surprise, the knocking on the gate continued, and though it was hardly as strong as it had seemed in his dream, it was rapid and persistent, and the strange and 'tormenting' voice, though not piteous but, on the contrary, impatient and irritable, still came from below at the gate, alternating with another more restrained and ordinary voice. He jumped up, opened the vent window, and stuck his head out.
'Who's there?' he called, literally going stiff with fright.
'If you are Shatov,' the answer came sharply and firmly from below, 'then please be so good as to announce directly and honestly whether you agree to let me in or not?'
Right enough; he recognized the voice!
'Marie! ... Is it you?'
