they heard my footsteps and are listening … if only I don’t cough or
He waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at moments, he could scarcely breathe.
“No, this throbbing at my heart won’t stop,” he thought. “I can’t wait any longer.”
He was standing behind a bush in the shadow. The light of the window fell on the front part of the bush.
“How red the whitebeam berries are!” he murmured, not knowing why.
Softly and noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and raised himself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch’s bedroom lay open before him. It was not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a red screen, “Chinese,” as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it.
The word “Chinese” flashed into Mitya’s mind, “and behind the screen, is Grushenka,” thought Mitya.
He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was wearing his new striped-silk dressing-gown, which Mitya had never seen, and a silk cord with tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt of fine linen with gold studs peeped out under the collar of the dressing-gown. On his head Fyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage which Alyosha had seen.
“He has got himself up,” thought Mitya.
His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought. Suddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing went up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter and drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a moment, walked carelessly up to the looking-glass on the wall, with his right hand raised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and