'Marie... you know... perhaps you're very tired, for God's sake, don't be angry ... If you'd accept, for instance, some tea at least, eh? Tea is very fortifying, eh? If you'd accept! ...'
'Why ask me to accept, of course I accept, what a child you are still. Give it if you can. What a small room! How cold it is!'
'Oh, right away, firewood, firewood ... I have some firewood!' Shatov got all stirred up. 'Firewood... that is, but. . . tea, too, right away,' he waved his hand as if with desperate resolution, and grabbed his cap.
'You're going out? So there's no tea in the house!'
'There will be, there will, there'll be everything, right away... I...' He grabbed the revolver from the shelf.
'I'll sell this revolver now ... or pawn it...'
'How stupid, and it will take so long! Here, take my money, if you have nothing, there's eighty kopecks, I think; that's all. It's like a crazy house here.'
'There's no need, no need for your money, I'll go now, one moment, even without the revolver...'
And he rushed straight to Kirillov. This was probably still two hours before Kirillov was visited by Pyotr Stepanovich and Liputin. Shatov and Kirillov, who shared the same yard, hardly ever saw each other, and when they met they did not nod or speak: they had spent much too long 'lying' beside each other in America.
'Kirillov, you always have tea; have you got tea and a samovar?'
Kirillov, who was pacing the room (as was his custom, all night, from corner to corner), suddenly stopped and looked intently at the man who had run in, though without any special surprise.
'There's tea, there's sugar, and there's a samovar. But no need for the samovar, the tea is hot. Just sit down and drink.'
'Kirillov, we lay beside each other in America ... My wife has come to me... I... Give me the tea ... I need the samovar.'
'If it's a wife, you need the samovar. But the samovar later. I have two. For now take the teapot from the table. Hot, the hottest. Take everything; take sugar; all of it. Bread ... A lot of bread; all of it. There's veal. A rouble in cash.'
'Give it to me, friend, I'll pay it back tomorrow! Ah, Kirillov!'
'Is this the wife who was in Switzerland? That's good. And that you ran in like that is also good.'
'Kirillov!' Shatov cried, taking the teapot under his arm and sugar and bread in both hands, 'Kirillov! If ... if you could renounce your terrible fantasies and drop your atheistic ravings... oh, what a man you'd be, Kirillov!'
'One can see you love your wife after Switzerland. That's good, if it's after Switzerland. When you need tea, come again. Come all night, I don't sleep at all. There'll be a samovar. Take the rouble, here. Go to your wife, I'll stay and think about you and your wife.'
Marya Shatov was visibly pleased by his haste and almost greedily got down to her tea, but there was no need to run for the samovar: she drank only half a cup and swallowed just a tiny piece of bread. The veal was squeamishly and irritably rejected.
'You're ill, Marie, it's all such illness in you...' Shatov remarked timidly, waiting timidly on her.
'Of course I'm ill, sit down, please. Where did you get tea, if there wasn't any?'
Shatov told her about Kirillov, slightly, briefly. She had heard something about him.
'He's mad, I know; no more, please. As if there weren't enough fools! So you were in America? I heard, you wrote.'
'Yes, I... wrote to Paris.'
'Enough, and please let's talk about something else. Are you a Slavophil by conviction?'
'I... not that I... Seeing it was impossible to be a Russian, I became a Slavophil,' he grinned crookedly, with the strain of a man whose witticism is inappropriate and forced.
'So you're not a Russian?'
'No, I'm not.'
'Well, this is all stupid. Sit down, finally, I beg you. What's all this back-and-forth? You think I'm raving? Maybe I will be raving. You say there are just the two of you in the house?'
'Two... downstairs...'
'And both such smart ones. What's downstairs? You said downstairs?'
'No, nothing.'
'What, nothing? I want to know.'
'I was just going to say that there are two of us on the yard now, and before the Lebyadkins used to live downstairs...'
'That's the woman who was killed last night?' she suddenly heaved herself up. 'I heard about it. As soon as I arrived, I heard about it. You had a fire?'
'Yes, Marie, yes, and maybe I'm a terrible scoundrel this minute, because I forgive the scoundrels...' He suddenly got up and began to pace the room, his arms raised as if in a frenzy.
But Marie did not quite understand him. She listened distractedly to his replies; she asked, but did not listen.
'Nice things you've got going. Oh, how scoundrelly everything is! They're all such scoundrels. But do sit down, I
