"It's a tragedy!" he said, grinding his teeth.Mechanically he went up to the sleeping man and looked in his face.He was a lean, middle-aged peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which peeped the chain of a silver watch.Mitya looked at his face with intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly irritated him.
What was insufferably humiliating was that, after leaving things of such importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as though he'd dropped from another planet.
"Oh, the irony of fate!" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant.He roused him with a sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down.
"Stupid! Stupid!" cried Mitya."And how dishonourable it all is!" something made him add.His head began to ache horribly.
"Should he fling it up and go away altogether?" he wondered."No, wait till to-morrow now.I'll stay on purpose.What else did I come for?
Besides, I've no means of going.How am I to get away from here now?
Oh, the idiocy of it" But his head ached more and more.He sat without moving, and unconsciously dozed off and fell asleep as he sat.He seemed to have slept for two hours or more.He was waked up by his head aching so unbearably that he could have screamed.There was a hammering in his temples, and the top of his head ached.It was a long time before he could wake up fully and understand what had happened to him.
At last he realised that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the stove, and that he might die of suffocation.And the drunken peasant still lay snoring.The candle guttered and was about to go out.Mitya cried out, and ran staggering across the passage into the forester's room.The forester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room was full of fumes, to Mitya's surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact with strange unconcern, though he did go to see to it.
"But he's dead, he's dead! and...what am I to do then?" cried Mitya frantically.
They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney.
Mitya brought a pail of water from the passage.First he wetted his own head, then, finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it on Lyagavy's head.The forester still treated the matter contemptuously, and when he opened the window said grumpily:
"It'll be all right, now."
He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern.Mitya fussed about the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and gravely resolved not to sleep all night.But he was so worn out that when he sat down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes, unconsciously stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like the dead.
It was dreadfully late when he waked.It was somewhere about nine o'clock.The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the hut.The curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat on.He had another samovar and another bottle in front of him.Yesterday's bottle had already been finished, and the new one was more than half empty.Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably.He stared at him for a moment with wide opened eyes.The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya fancied.He rushed up to him.
"Excuse me, you see...I...you've most likely heard from the forester here in the hut.I'm Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying.""That's a lie!" said the peasant, calmly and confidently.
"A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?"
"I don't know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches," said the peasant, speaking thickly.
"You're bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse.Do wake up, and collect yourself.Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here.You wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you," Mitya gasped breathlessly.
"You're lying!" Lyagavy blurted out again.Mitya's legs went cold.
"For mercy's sake! It isn't a joke! You're drunk, perhaps.Yet you can speak and understand...or else...I understand nothing!""You're a painter!"
"For mercy's sake! I'm Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov.I have an offer to make you, an advantageous offer...very advantageous offer, concerning the copse!"The peasant stroked his beard importantly.
"No, you've contracted for the job and turned out a scamp.
You're a scoundrel!"
"I assure you you're mistaken," cried Mitya, wringing his hands in despair.The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his eyes cunningly.
"No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery.
D'you hear? You're a scoundrel! Do you understand that?"Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly "something seemed to hit him on the head," as he said afterwards.In an instant a light seemed to dawn in his mind, "a light was kindled and I grasped it all." He stood, stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.
