The Brothers Karamazov

BOOK V: PRO AND CONTRA

Chapter 1: A Betrothal

Madame Khokhlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was in a hurry; something important had happened: Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had ended in a fainting spell, then she felt “terrible, horrible weakness, she lay down, rolled up her eyes, and became delirious. Now there’s fever, we sent for Herzenstube, we sent for her aunts. The aunts are already here, but Herzen-stube still isn’t. They’re all sitting in her room and waiting. Who knows what may come of it? And she’s unconscious. What if it’s brain fever?”

Exclaiming this, Madame Khokhlakov looked seriously frightened: “Now this is serious, serious!” she added at every word, as if everything that had happened to her before were not serious. Alyosha listened to her with sorrow; he tried to begin telling her of his own adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words: she had no time, she asked him to sit with Lise and wait for her there.

“Lise, my dearest Alexei Fyodorovich,” she whispered almost in his ear, “Lise has given me a strange surprise just now, but she has also moved me, and so my heart forgives her everything. Imagine, no sooner had you gone than she suddenly began sincerely regretting that she had supposedly been laughing at you yesterday and today. But she wasn’t laughing, she was only joking. Yet she so seriously regretted it, almost to the point of tears, that I was surprised. She has never so seriously regretted laughing at me, she has always made light of it. And you know, she laughs at me all the time. But now she’s serious, now everything has become serious. She values your opinion highly, Alexei Fyodorovich, and, if possible, do not be offended, and do not bear her a grudge. I myself am forever sparing her, because she’s such a smart little girl—don’t you think so? She was saying just now that you were a friend of her childhood—’the most serious friend of my childhood’—imagine that, the most serious—and what about me? In this regard she has the most serious feelings, and even memories, and above all, these phrases and words of hers, the most unexpected little words, that suddenly pop out when you least expect them. Recently, for instance, talking about a pine tree: there was a pine tree standing in our garden when she was very little, maybe it’s still standing, so there’s no need to speak in the past tense. Pines are not people, Alexei Fyodorovich, they take a long time to change. ‘Mama,’ she said, ‘how I pine for that pine’—you see, ‘pine’ and ‘pine’—but she put it some other way, because something’s confused here, pine is such a silly word, only she said something so original on the subject that I decidedly cannot begin to repeat it. Besides, I’ve forgotten it all. Well, good-bye, I am deeply shaken, and am probably losing my mind. Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, twice in my life I’ve lost my mind and had to be treated. Go to Lise. Cheer her up, as you always manage to do so charmingly. Lise,” she called, going up to her door, “here I’ve brought you your much-insulted Alexei Fyodorovich, and he’s not at all angry, I assure you; quite the opposite, he’s surprised you could think so!”

“Merci, maman. Come in, Alexei Fyodorovich.”

Alyosha went in. Lise looked somehow embarrassed and suddenly blushed all over. She seemed to be ashamed of something, and, as always happens in such cases, she quickly began speaking of something quite unrelated, as if at that moment only this unrelated thing interested her.

“Mama suddenly told me just now, Alexei Fyodorovich, the whole story about the two hundred roubles, and about this errand of yours ... to that poor officer ... and the whole awful story, how he was offended, and, you know, though mama gets everything mixed up ... she keeps jumping all over ... I still cried when I heard it. Well, what happened? Did you give him the money, and how is the wretched man now ... ?”

“That’s just it—I didn’t, but it’s a long story,” Alyosha replied, as if for his part what concerned him most was precisely that he had not given the money, but at the same time Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, was looking away and was also obviously trying to speak of unrelated matters. Alyosha sat down at the table and began telling his story, but from the first words he lost all his embarrassment and, in turn, carried Lise away. He spoke under the influence of strong emotion and the recent extraordinary impression, and succeeded in telling it well and thoroughly. Earlier, while still in Moscow, still in Lise’s childhood, he had enjoyed visiting her and telling her now something that had just happened to him, now something he had read, or again something he remembered from his own childhood. Sometimes they even both daydreamed together and made up long stories between them, mostly gay and amusing ones. Now it was as if they were suddenly transported back to that time in Moscow two years before. Lise was greatly moved by his story. Alyosha managed to paint the image of “Ilyushechka” for her with ardent feeling. And when he finished describing in great detail the scene of the wretched man trampling on the money, Lise clasped her hands and cried out with irrepressible feeling: “So you didn’t give him the money, you just let him run away like that! My God, but you should at least have run after him and caught him...”

“No, Lise, it’s better that I didn’t run after him,” Alyosha said, getting up from his chair and anxiously pacing the room.

“How better? Why better? Now they’ll die without bread!”

“They won’t die, because these two hundred roubles will still catch up with them. He’ll take them tomorrow, despite all. Yes, tomorrow he’ll certainly take them,” Alyosha said, pacing back and forth in thought. “You see, Lise,” he went on, suddenly stopping in front of her, “I made a mistake there, but the mistake has turned out for the better.”

“What mistake, and why for the better?”

“This is why: he’s a cowardly man and has a weak character. He’s so worn out, and very kind. And now I keep wondering: why is it that he suddenly got so offended and trampled on the money—because, I assure you, until the very last minute he did not know he was going to trample on it. And it seems to me that he was offended by a number of things ... in his position it could hardly be otherwise ... First, he was offended because he had been too glad of the money in front of me, and hadn’t concealed it from me. If he had been glad but not overly so, if he hadn’t shown it, if he had given himself airs as others do when they’re accepting money, making faces, then he might have stood it and accepted, but he was too honestly glad, and that is what was offensive. ‘ Ah, Lise, he’s an honest and kind man—that’s the whole trouble in such cases! All the while he was speaking then, his voice was so weak, weakened, and he spoke so fast, so fast, and he kept laughing with such a little giggle, or else he just wept ... really, he wept, he was so delighted ... and he spoke of his daughters ... and of the position he would find in another town ... And just when he had poured out his soul, he suddenly became ashamed that he had shown me his whole soul like that. And he immediately began to hate me. He’s the sort of man who feels terribly shamed by poverty. But above all he was offended because he had accepted me too quickly as a friend and given in to me too soon; first he attacked me, tried to frighten me, then suddenly, as soon as he saw the money, he began embracing me. Because he did embrace me, and kept touching me with his hands. That is precisely why he came to feel such humiliation, and it was just there that I made that mistake, a very serious one: I suddenly said to him that if he didn’t have enough money to move to another town, he would be given more, and that even I myself would give him as much of my own money as he wanted. And that suddenly struck him: why, indeed, should I up and help him? You know, Lise, it’s terribly difficult for an offended man when everyone suddenly starts looking like his benefactor ... I knew that; the elder told me so. I don’t know how to put it, but I’ve noticed it often myself. And I feel exactly the same way. And above all, though he didn’t know until the very last minute that he would trample on the bills, he did anticipate it, he must have. That’s what made his delight so intense, because he anticipated ... And so, though this is all so bad, it’s still for the better. I even think that it’s for the best, that it even could not be better ...”

“Why, why couldn’t it be better?” Lise exclaimed, looking at Alyosha in great astonishment.

“Because, Lise, if he had taken the money instead of trampling on it, he’d have gone home, and within an hour he’d have been weeping over his humiliation—that’s certainly what would have happened. He would weep, and perhaps tomorrow, at the first light, he would come to me, and maybe throw the bills at me and trample on them as he did today. But now he’s gone off feeling terribly proud and triumphant, though he knows that he’s ‘ruined himself.’ And so nothing could be easier now than to get him to accept these same two hundred roubles, maybe even tomorrow, because he has already proved his honor, thrown down the money, trampled on it ... He couldn’t have known, when he was trampling on it, that I would bring it to him again tomorrow. And at the same time he needs this money terribly. Although he is proud of himself now, even today he’ll start thinking about the help he has lost. During the night the thought will become stronger still, he will dream about it, and by tomorrow morning he will perhaps be ready to run to me and ask forgiveness. And at that moment I shall appear: ‘Here,’ I’ll say, ‘you are a proud man, you’ve proved it, take the money now, forgive us.’ And this time he will take it!”

Alyosha said in a sort of rapture: “And this time he will take it!” Lise clapped her hands.

“Ah, it’s true, ah, I suddenly understand it so terribly well! Ah, Alyosha, how do you know all that? So young, and he already knows what’s in the soul ... I could never have thought that up ...”

“Now, above all, he must be convinced that he is on an equal footing with all of us, in spite of his taking money from us,” Alyosha continued in his rapture, “and not only on an equal but even on a greater footing...”

‘“On a greater footing’—how charming, Alexei Fyodorovich, but go on, go on!”

“You mean I didn’t put it right. . . about a greater footing ... but no matter, because ...”

“Oh, no matter, no matter, of course no matter! Forgive me, Alyosha dear ... You know, until now I almost didn’t respect you ... that is, I respected you, but on an equal footing, and now I shall respect you on a greater footing ... Dear, don’t be angry at my ’witticisms,’” she went on at once with strong feeling, “I’m funny, I’m little, but you, you ... Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, isn’t there something in all this reasoning of ours, I mean, of yours ... no, better, of ours ... isn’t there some contempt for him, for this wretched man ... that we’re examining his soul like this, as if we were looking down on him? That we have decided so certainly, now, that he will accept the money?”

“No, Lise, there is no contempt in it,” Alyosha answered firmly, as if he were already prepared for the question. “I thought it over myself, on the way here. Consider, what contempt can there be if we ourselves are just the same as he is, if everyone is just the same as he is? Because we are just the same, not better. And even if we were better, we would still be the same in his place. . . I don’t know about you, Lise, but for myself I consider that my soul is petty in many ways. And his is not petty, on the contrary, it is very sensitive ... No, Lise, there is no contempt for him! You know, Lise, my elder said once that most people need to be looked after like children, and some like the sick in hospitals ...”

“Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, my darling, let’s look after people that way!”

“Yes, let’s, Lise, I’m ready—only personally I’m not quite ready. I’m sometimes very impatient, and sometimes I don’t see things. With you it’s quite different.”

“Ah, I don’t believe it! Alexei Fyodorovich, how happy I am!”

“How good that you say so, Lise. “

“Alexei Fyodorovich, you are wonderfully good, but sometimes it’s as if you’re a pedant ... and then one looks, and you’re not a pedant at all. Go to the door, open it quietly, and see whether mama is eavesdropping,” Lise suddenly whispered in a sort of nervous, hurried whisper.

Alyosha went, opened the door a little, and reported that no one was eavesdropping.

“Come here, Alexei Fyodorovich,” Lise went on, blushing more and more, “give me your hand, so. Listen, I must make you a great confession: yesterday’s letter was not a joke, it was serious...”

And she hid her eyes with her hand. One could see that she was very ashamed to be making this confession. Suddenly she seized his hand and impetuously kissed it three times.

“Ah, Lise, isn’t that wonderful,” Alyosha exclaimed joyfully. “And I was completely sure that you wrote it seriously.”

“He was sure—just imagine!” she suddenly pushed his hand aside, without, however, letting go of it, blushing terribly and laughing a little happy laugh, “I kiss his hand and he says ‘how wonderful.’” But her reproach was unjust: Alyosha, too, was in great confusion. “I wish you would always like me, Lise, but I don’t know how to do it,” he barely murmured, blushing himself.

“Alyosha, dear, you are cold and impudent. Just look at him! He was so good as to choose me for his spouse, and left it at that! He was quite sure I wrote to him seriously—how nice! It’s impudence, that’s what it is!”

“Why, is it bad that I was sure?” Alyosha suddenly laughed.

“Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it is terribly good,” Lise looked at him tenderly and with happiness. Alyosha stood still holding her hand in his. Suddenly he leaned forward and kissed her full on the lips.

“What’s this now? What are you doing?” Lise cried. Alyosha was quite lost.

“Forgive me if I’m not ... Maybe it was a terribly silly ... You said I was cold, so I up and kissed you ... Only I see it came out silly...”

Lise laughed and hid her face in her hands.

“And in that dress!” escaped her in the midst of her laughter, but she suddenly stopped laughing and became all serious, almost severe.

“Well, Alyosha, we must put off kissing, because neither of us knows how to do it yet, and we still have a long time to wait,” she ended suddenly. “You’d better tell me why you’re taking me—such a fool, such a sick little fool, and you so intelligent, so intellectual, so observant? Ah, Alyosha, I’m terribly happy, because I’m not worthy of you at all!”

“You are, Lise. In a few days I’ll be leaving the monastery for good. Going out into the world, one ought to get married, that I know. And so he told me. Who better could I have than you ... and who else but you would have me? I’ve already thought it over. First, you’ve known me since childhood, and second, you have very many abilities that are not in me at all. Your soul is lighter than mine; above all, you are more innocent than I am, and I’ve already touched many, many things ... Ah, you don’t know it, but I, too, am a Karamazov! What matter if you laugh and joke, and at me, too? On the contrary, laugh—I’m so glad of it ... But you laugh like a little girl, and inside you think like a martyr...”

“A martyr? How so?”

“Yes, Lise, your question just now: aren’t we contemptuous of that wretched man, dissecting his soul like that—that was a martyr’s question ... you see, I can’t express it at all, but someone in whom such questions arise is capable of suffering. Sitting in your chair, you must already have thought a lot ...”

“Alyosha, give me your hand, why are you taking it away?” Lise said in a voice somehow flat, weakened from happiness. “Listen, Alyosha, what are you going to wear when you leave the monastery, what kind of clothes? Don’t laugh, don’t be angry, it’s very, very important for me.”

“I haven’t thought about clothes yet, Lise, but I’ll wear whatever you like.” “I want you to have a dark blue velvet jacket, a white piqué waistcoat, and a gray soft felt hat ... Tell me, did you really believe that I didn’t love you this morning, when I renounced my letter from yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t believe it.”

“Oh, impossible man, incorrigible!”

“You see, I knew that you ... seemed to love me, but I pretended to believe that you didn’t love me, so that you would feel ... more comfortable ...”

“Worse still! The worst and best of all. Alyosha, I love you terribly. Today, when you were about to come, I bet myself: I’ll ask him for yesterday’s letter, and if he calmly takes it out and gives it to me (as might always be expected of him), that will mean that he doesn’t love me at all, feels nothing, and is simply a silly and unworthy boy, and I am ruined. But you left the letter in your cell, and that encouraged me: isn’t it true that you left it in the cell because you anticipated that I would demand the letter back, so that you wouldn’t have to give it back? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Lise, it’s not true at all, because the letter is with me now, and it was with me then, too, in this pocket. Here it is.”

Laughing, Alyosha took the letter out and showed it to her from afar.

“Only I won’t give it to you, I’ll hold it up for you to see.”

“What? So you lied to me then? You, a monk, lied?”

“Perhaps I lied,” Alyosha went on laughing. “I lied so as not to give you back the letter. It is very dear to me,” he added suddenly with strong feeling, blushing again, “it will be so forever, and I will never give it to anyone!”

Lise looked at him with admiration.

“Alyosha,” she murmured again, “look out the door, see if mama is eavesdropping.”

“Very well, Lise, I will look, only wouldn’t it be better not to look? Why suspect your mother of such meanness?”

“Meanness? What meanness? That she’s eavesdropping on her daughter is her right, it’s not meanness,” Lise flared up. “And you may rest assured, Alexei Fyodorovich, that when I myself am a mother and have a daughter like me, I shall certainly eavesdrop on her.”

“Really, Lise? That’s not good.”

“Oh, my God, what’s mean about it? If it were an ordinary social conversation and I eavesdropped, that would be mean, but when her own daughter has locked herself up with a young man ... Listen, Alyosha, I want you to know that I will spy on you, too, as soon as we are married, and I also want you to know that I will open all your letters and read everything ... So be forewarned ...”

“Yes, of course, if that is ... ,” muttered Alyosha, “only it’s not good . . .” “Ah, what contempt! Alyosha, dear, let’s not quarrel from the very first moment—it’s better if I tell you the whole truth: of course it’s very bad to eavesdrop, and of course I am wrong and you are right, but I will eavesdrop anyway.”

“Do, then. You won’t spy out anything of the sort in me,” Alyosha laughed.

“And, Alyosha, will you submit to me? This, too, ought to be decided beforehand.”

“I will, certainly, with the greatest pleasure, only not in the most important things. If you disagree with me about the most important things, I will still do as duty tells me.”

“That’s how it should be. And you should know that I, too, on the contrary, am not only ready to submit to you in the most important things, but will also yield to you in everything, and I will give you my oath on it right now—in everything and for my whole life,” Lise cried out fervently, “and happily, happily! What’s more, I swear to you that I shall never eavesdrop on you, not once ever, nor shall I read even one of your letters, for you are right and I am not. And though I shall want terribly to eavesdrop, I know it, I still shan’t do it, because you consider it ignoble. You are like my providence now ... Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, why have you been so sad these days, both yesterday and today? I know you have cares, great troubles, but I see that you have some special sadness besides, perhaps some secret one, don’t you?”

“Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too,” Alyosha said sadly. “I can see that you love me if you’ve guessed that.”

“What is this sadness? About what? Can you tell me?” Lise pleaded timidly.

“I’ll tell you later, Lise ... later ... ,” Alyosha became embarrassed. “Now perhaps you wouldn’t understand it. And perhaps I wouldn’t be able to explain it myself.”

“Besides, I know that your brothers and your father are tormenting you.”

“Yes, my brothers, too,” said Alyosha, as if thinking to himself.

“I don’t like your brother Ivan Fyodorovich, Alyosha,” Lise suddenly remarked.

Alyosha noted her remark with a certain surprise, but did not take it up.

“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on, “my father, too. And they’re destroying others with them. This is the ‘earthy force of the Karama-zovs,’ as Father Paissy put it the other day—earthy and violent, raw ... Whether the Spirit of God is moving over that force—even that I do not know. I only know that I myself am a Karamazov ... I am a monk, a monk? Am I a monk, Lise? Didn’t you say somehow a moment ago that I was a monk?”

“Yes, I said that.”

“And, look, maybe I don’t even believe in God.” “You don’t believe? What’s the matter with you?” Lise asked softly and cautiously. But Alyosha did not answer. There was, in these too-sudden words, something too mysterious and too subjective, perhaps not clear to himself, but that undoubtedly tormented him.

“And now, on top of all that, my friend is going, the first of men in the world is leaving the earth! If you knew, if you knew, Lise, how bound I am, how welded my soul is to this man! And now I shall be left alone ... I will come to you, Lise ... Henceforth we will be together ...”

“Yes, together, together! From now on, always together, for the whole of our lives. Listen, kiss me, I allow you to.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Well, go now, Christ be with you!” (and she made a cross over him). “Go to him, quickly, while he is alive. I see that I’ve delayed you cruelly. I will pray today for him and for you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! We shall be happy, shan’t we?”

“It seems we shall be, Lise.”

On parting from Lise, Alyosha chose not to go and see Madame Khokhlakov, and he was about to leave the house without saying good-bye to her. But as soon as he opened the door and went to the stairs, Madame Khokhlakov appeared before him from nowhere. Alyosha could tell from her very first words that she had been waiting there for him on purpose.

“Alexei Fyodorovich, this is terrible. It’s a child’s trifles and all nonsense. I hope you won’t take it into your head to dream ... Foolishness, foolishness, and more foolishness!” she pounced on him.

“Only don’t say that to her,” said Alyosha, “or she will get upset, and that is bad for her now.”

“Sensible words from a sensible young man. Shall I take it that you agreed with her only because, out of compassion for her sickly condition, you did not want to anger her by contradicting her?”

“Oh, no, not at all, I spoke perfectly seriously with her,” Alyosha declared firmly.

“Seriousness is impossible, unthinkable here, and first of all let me tell you that now I will not receive you again, not even once, and second, I will go away and take her with me.”

“But why?” said Alyosha. “It’s still so far off, we’ll have to wait perhaps a year and a half.”

“Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, that’s true, of course, and in a year and a half you will quarrel and break up with her a thousand times. But I’m so unhappy, so unhappy! Perhaps it’s all a trifle, but it is a great blow to me. Now I’m like Famusov in the last scene, you are Chatsky, and she is Sophia,^[121] and just imagine, I ran out here to the stairs on purpose to meet you, and there, too, all the fatal things take place on the stairs. I heard everything, I almost fell over. This explains the horrors of that whole night and all these recent hysterics! For the daughter—love, and for the mother—death. Go lie in your coffin. Now, the second and most important thing: what is this letter she wrote to you? Show it to me at once, at once!”

“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna’s health? I very much need to know.”

“She’s still delirious, she hasn’t come to herself; her aunts are here and do nothing but say ‘Ah’ and put on airs in front of me, and Herzenstube came and got so frightened that I didn’t know what to do with him or how to save him, I even thought of sending for a doctor. He was taken away in my carriage. And suddenly, to crown it all, suddenly you, with this letter! True, it won’t be for a year and a half. In the name of all that’s great and holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me the letter, Alexei Fyodorovich, show me, her mother! Hold it up, if you wish, and I shall read it from your hand.”

“No, I won’t show it to you, Katerina Osipovna, even with her permission I would not show it to you. I’ll come tomorrow, and, if you wish, I’ll discuss many things with you, but now—farewell!”

And Alyosha ran downstairs into the street.

Chapter 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar

Besides, he had no time. A thought flashed through him as he was saying good-bye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him. It was getting late, already past two in the afternoon. With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his”great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define. “Let my benefactor die without me, but at least I won’t have to reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by, in a hurry to get home. In doing so, I shall be acting in accordance with his great word ...”

His plan consisted in taking his brother Dmitri unawares—namely, by climbing over the same wattle fence as yesterday, getting into the garden, and planting himself in that gazebo. “If he’s not there,” Alyosha thought, “then, without telling either Foma or the landladies, I’ll hide in the gazebo until evening, if need be. If he’s still keeping watch for Grushenka’s visit, most likely he’ll come to the gazebo . . .”By the way, Alyosha did not give too much thought to the details of the plan, but decided to carry it out, even if it meant he would not get back to the monastery that day . . .

Everything went without hindrance: he climbed over the wattle fence at almost the same spot as the day before and secretly stole into the gazebo. He did not want to be observed: both the landlady and Foma (if he was there) might be on his brother’s side and obey his orders, and therefore either not let Alyosha into the garden or forewarn his brother in good time that he was being sought and asked for. There was no one in the gazebo. Alyosha sat in the same place as the day before and began to wait. He looked around the gazebo, and for some reason it seemed to him much more decrepit than before; this time it seemed quite wretched to him. The day, by the way, was as fine as the day before. On the green table a circle was imprinted from yesterday’s glass of cognac, which must have spilled over. Empty and profitless thoughts, as always during a tedious time of waiting, crept into his head: for example, why, as he had come in now, had he sat precisely in the very same place as the day before, and not in some other place? Finally he became very sad, sad from anxious uncertainty. But he had not been sitting there for even a quarter of an hour when suddenly, from somewhere very close by, came the strum of a guitar. Some people were sitting, or had just sat down, about twenty paces away, certainly not more, somewhere in the bushes. Alyosha suddenly had a flash of recollection that the day before, when he had left his brother and gone out of the gazebo, he had seen, or there flashed before him, as it were, to the left, near the fence, a low, old green garden bench among the bushes. The visitors, therefore, must just have sat down on it. But who were they? A single male voice suddenly sang a verse in a sweet falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:

An invincible power

Binds me to my flower.

Lord have me-e-e-ercy

On her and me!

On her and me!

On her and me!’^[122]

The voice stopped. A lackey tenor, with a lackey trill. Another voice, female this time, suddenly said caressingly and timidly, as it were, but still in a very mincing manner:

“And why, Pavel Fyodorovich, have you been staying away from us so much? Why do you keep neglecting us?”

“Not at all, miss,” a man’s voice answered, politely enough, but above all with firm and insistent dignity. Apparently the man had the upper hand and the woman was flirting with him. “The man seems to be Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “judging by his voice at least. And the lady must be the daughter of the house, the one who came from Moscow, wears a dress with a train, and goes to get soup from Marfa Ignatievna...”

“I like any verses terribly, if it’s nicely put together,” the female voice went on. “Why don’t you go on?”

The voice sang again:

More than all a king’s wealth Is my dear one’s good health. Lord have me-e-e-ercy On her and me! On her and me! On her and me!

“Last time it came out even better,” remarked the female voice. “After the king’s wealth, you sang: ‘Is my honey’s good health.’ It came out more tender. You must have forgotten today.” “Verse is nonsense, miss,” Smerdyakov said curtly. “Oh, no, I do so like a bit of verse.”

“As far as verse goes, miss, essentially it’s nonsense. Consider for yourself: who on earth talks in rhymes? And if we all started talking in rhymes, even by order of the authorities, how much would get said, miss? Verse is no good, Maria Kondratievna.”

“You’re so smart about everything! How did you ever amount to all that?” the female voice was growing more and more caressing.

“I could have done even better, miss, and I’d know a lot more, if it wasn’t for my destiny ever since childhood. I’d have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow, it spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: ‘You opened her matrix,’ he says.^[123] I don’t know about her matrix, but I’d have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss. They used to say in the market, and your mama, too, started telling me, with her great indelicacy, that she went around with her hair in a Polish plait and was a wee bit under five feet tall. Why say a wee bit when you can simply say ‘a little’ like everyone else? She wanted to make it tearful, but those are peasant tears, miss, so to speak, those are real peasant feelings. Can a Russian peasant have feelings comparably to an educated man? With such lack of education, he can’t have any feelings at all. Ever since my childhood, whenever I hear this ‘wee bit,’ I want to throw myself at the wall. I hate all of Russia, Maria Kondratievna.”

“If you were a military cadet or a fine young hussar, you wouldn’t talk that way, you’d draw your sword and start defending all of Russia.”

“I not only have no wish to be a fine military hussar, Maria Kondratievna, but I wish, on the contrary, for the abolition of all soldiers.”

“And when the enemy comes, who will defend us?”

“But there’s no need to at all, miss. In the year twelve there was a great invasion by the emperor Napoleon of France, the first, the father of the present one,^[124] and it would have been good if we had been subjected then by those same Frenchmen: an intelligent nation would have subjected a very stupid one, miss, and joined it to itself. There would be quite a different order of things then, miss.”

“Why, as if theirs are so much better than ours! I wouldn’t trade a certain gallant I know for three of the youngest Englishmen,” Maria Kondratievna said tenderly, no doubt accompanying her words at that moment with a most languid look.

“Folks have their preferences, miss.”

“And you yourself are just like a foreigner, just like a real noble foreigner, I’ll tell you so for all that I’m blushing.”

“When it comes to depravity, if you want to know, theirs and ours are no different. They’re all rogues, only theirs walks around in patent leather boots, and our swine stinks in his poverty and sees nothing wrong with it. The Russian people need thrashing, miss, as Fyodor Pavlovich rightly said yesterday, though he’s a madman, he and all his children, miss.”

“But you respect Ivan Fyodorovich, you said so yourself.”

“And he made reference to me that I’m a stinking lackey. He considers me as maybe rebelling, but he’s mistaken, miss. If I had just so much in my pocket, I’d have left long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovich is worse than any lackey, in his behavior, and in his intelligence, and in his poverty, miss, and he’s not fit for anything, but, on the contrary, he gets honor from everybody. I may be only a broth-maker, but if I’m lucky I can open a café-restaurant in Moscow, on the Petrovka.^[125] Because I cook specialités, and no one in Moscow except foreigners can serve specialités. Dmitri Fyodorovich is a ragamuffin, but if he were to challenge the biggest count’s son to a duel, he would accept, miss, and how is he any better than me? Because he’s a lot stupider than me. He’s blown so much money, and for nothing, miss.”

“I think duels are so nice,” Maria Kondratievna suddenly remarked.

“How so, miss?” “It’s so scary and brave, especially when fine young officers with pistols in their hands are shooting at each other because of some lady friend. Just like a picture. Oh, if only they let girls watch, I’d like terribly to see one.”

“It’s fine when he’s doing the aiming, but when it’s his mug that’s being aimed at, there’s the stupidest feeling, miss. You’d run away from the place, Maria Kondratievna.”

“Do you mean you would run away?”

But Smerdyakov did not deign to answer. After a moment’s silence there came another strum, and the falsetto poured out the last verse:

I don’t care what you say

For I’m going away,

I’ll be happy and free In the big citee! And I won’t grieve, No, I’ll never grieve,I don’t plan ever to grieve.

Here something unexpected happened: Alyosha suddenly sneezed. The people on the bench hushed at once. Alyosha got up and walked in their direction. It was indeed Smerdyakov, dressed up, pomaded, perhaps even curled, in patent leather shoes. The guitar lay on the bench. The lady was Maria Kondratievna, the landlady’s daughter; she was wearing a light blue dress with a train two yards long; she was still a young girl, and would have been pretty if her face had not been so round and so terribly freckled.

“Will my brother Dmitri be back soon?” Alyosha asked as calmly as he could.

Smerdyakov slowly rose from the bench; Maria Kondratievna rose, too.

“Why should I be informed as to Dmitri Fyodorovich? It’s not as if I were his keeper,” Smerdyakov answered quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.

“But I just asked if you knew,” Alyosha explained.

“I know nothing of his whereabouts, and have no wish to know, sir.”

“But my brother precisely told me that it is you who let him know about everything that goes on in the house, and have promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”

Smerdyakov slowly and imperturbably raised his eyes to him.

“And how were you pleased to get in this time, since the gates here have been latched for an hour already?” he asked, looking fixedly at Alyosha.

“I got in over the fence from the lane and went straight to the gazebo. I hope you will excuse me for that,” he addressed Maria Kondratievna, “I was in a hurry to get hold of my brother.” “Ah, how should we take offense at you,” drawled Maria Kondratievna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology, “since Dmitri Fyodorovich, too, often goes to the gazebo in the same manner, we don’t even know it and there he is sitting in the gazebo.”

“I am trying very hard to find him now, I very much wish to see him, or to find out from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s a matter of great importance for him.”

“He doesn’t keep us notified,” babbled Maria Kondratievna.

“Even though I come here as an acquaintance,” Smerdyakov began again, “even here the gentleman harasses me cruelly with his ceaseless inquiries about the master; well, he says, how are things there, who comes and who goes, and can I tell him anything else? Twice he even threatened me with death.”

“With death?” Alyosha asked in surprise.

“But that would constitute nothing for him, sir, given his character, which you yourself had the honor of observing yesterday. If I miss Agrafena Alexandrovna, and she spends the night here, he says, you won’t live long, you first. I’m very afraid of him, sir, and if I wasn’t even more afraid, I’d have to report him to the town authorities. God even knows what he may produce.”

“The other day he said to him, ‘I’ll grind you in a mortar,’ “ Maria Kondratievna added.

“Well, if it’s in a mortar, it may just be talk .. . ,” Alyosha remarked. “If I could see him now, I might say something about that, too...”

“There’s only one thing I can tell you,” Smerdyakov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. “I come here sometimes as a customary neighborly acquaintance, and why shouldn’t I, sir? On the other hand, today at daybreak Ivan Fyodorovich sent me to his lodgings, on his Lake Street, without a letter, sir, so that in words Dmitri Fyodorovich should come to the local tavern, on the square, to have dinner together. I went, sir, but I didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovich at home, and it was just eight o’clock. ‘He’s been and gone,’ his landlords informed me, in those very words. As if they had some kind of conspiracy, sir, a mutual one. And now, maybe at this very moment he’s sitting in that tavern with his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, because Ivan Fyodorovich did not come home for dinner, and Fyodor Pavlovich finished his dinner alone an hour ago, and then lay down to sleep. I earnestly request, however, that you not tell him anything about me and what I’ve told you, because he’d kill me for nothing, sir.”

“My brother Ivan invited Dmitri to a tavern today?” Alyosha quickly asked again.

“Right, sir.” “To the ‘Metropolis,’ on the square?”

“That’s the one, sir.”

“It’s quite possible!” Alyosha exclaimed in great excitement. “Thank you, Smerdyakov, that is important news, I shall go there now.”

“Don’t give me away, sir,” Smerdyakov called after him.

“Oh, no, I’ll come to the tavern as if by chance, don’t worry.”

“But where are you going? Let me open the gate for you,” cried Maria Kondratievna.

“No, it’s closer this way, I’ll climb over the fence.”

The news shook Alyosha terribly. He set off for the tavern. It would be improper for him to enter the tavern dressed as he was, but he could inquire on the stairs and ask them to come out. Just as he reached the tavern, however, a window suddenly opened and his brother Ivan himself shouted down to him:

“Alyosha, can you come in here, or not? I’d be awfully obliged.”

“Certainly I can, only I’m not sure, the way I’m dressed...”

“But I have a private room. Go to the porch, I’ll run down and meet you...”

A minute later Alyosha was sitting next to his brother. Ivan was alone, and was having dinner.

Chapter 3: The Brothers Get Acquainted :

Ivan was not, however, in a private room. It was simply a place at the window separated by screens, but those who sat behind the screens still could not be seen by others. It was the front room, the first, with a sideboard along the wall. Waiters kept darting across it every moment. There was only one customer, a little old man, a retired officer, and he was drinking tea in the corner. But in the other rooms of the tavern there was all the usual tavern bustle, voices calling, beer bottles popping, billiard balls clicking, a barrel organ droning. Alyosha knew that Ivan hardly ever went to this tavern, and was no lover of taverns generally; therefore he must have turned up here, Alyosha thought, precisely by appointment, to meet with his brother Dmitri. And yet there was no brother Dmitri.

“I’ll order some fish soup for you, or something—you don’t live on tea alone, do you?” cried Ivan, apparently terribly pleased that he had managed to lure Alyosha. He himself had already finished dinner and was having tea.

“I’ll have fish soup, and then tea, I’m hungry,” Alyosha said cheerfully.

“And cherry preserve? They have it here. Do you remember how you loved cherry preserve at Polenov’s when you were little?”

“You remember that? I’ll have preserve, too, I still love it.”

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered fish soup, tea, and preserve.

“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I was nearly fifteen then. Fifteen and eleven, it’s such a difference that brothers of those ages are never friends. I don’t even know if I loved you. When I left for Moscow, in the first years I didn’t even think of you at all. Later, when you got to Moscow yourself, it seems to me that we met only once somewhere. And now it’s already the fourth month that I’ve been living here, and so far you and I have not exchanged a single word. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I was sitting here now, wondering how I could see you to say good-bye, and you came walking along.”

“So you wished very much to see me?”

“Very much. I want to get acquainted with you once and for all, and I want you to get acquainted with me. And with that, to say good-bye. I think it’s best to get acquainted before parting. I saw how you kept looking at me all these three months, there was a certain ceaseless expectation in your eyes, and that is something I cannot bear, which is why I never approached you. But in the end I learned to respect you: this little man stands his ground, I thought. Observe that I’m speaking seriously, though I may be laughing. You do stand your ground, don’t you? I love people who stand their ground, whatever they may stand upon, and even if they’re such little boys as you are. In the end, your expectant look did not disgust me at all; on the contrary, I finally came to love your expectant look ... You seem to love me for some reason, Alyosha?”

“I do love you, Ivan. Our brother Dmitri says of you: Ivan is a grave. I say: Ivan is a riddle. You are still a riddle to me, but I’ve already understood something about you, though only since this morning!”

“What is it?” Ivan laughed.

“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed, too.

“Well?”

“That you are just a young man, exactly like all other young men of twenty-three—yes, a young, very young, fresh and nice boy, still green, in fact! Well, are you very offended?”

“On the contrary, you’ve struck me with a coincidence!” Ivan cried gaily and ardently. “Would you believe that after our meeting today at her place, I have been thinking to myself about just that, my twenty-three-year-old greenness, and suddenly you guessed it exactly, and began with that very thing. I’ve been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! However, by the age of thirty, I will probably drop the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away ... I don’t know where. But until my thirtieth year, I know this for certain, my youth will overcome everything—all disillusionment, all aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as could overcome this wild and perhaps indecent thirst for life in me, and have decided that apparently there is not—that is, once again, until my thirtieth year, after which I myself shall want no more, so it seems to me. Some snotty-nosed, consumptive moralists, poets especially, often call this thirst for life base. True, it’s a feature of the Karamazovs, to some extent, this thirst for life despite all; it must be sitting in you, too; but why is it base? There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring^[126] are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit. Here, they’ve brought your fish soup—help yourself. It’s good fish soup, they make it well. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I’ll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that’s the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I—this I know beforehand—will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them—being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength ... Do you understand any of this blather, Alyoshka, or not?” Ivan suddenly laughed.

“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world. “

“Love life more than its meaning?”

“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.”

“You’re already saving me, though maybe I wasn’t perishing. And what does this second half consist of?”

“Resurrecting your dead, who may never have died. Now give me some tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.”

“I see you’re feeling inspired. I’m terribly fond of such professions de foi^[127] from such ... novices. You’re a firm man, Alexei. Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?”

“Yes, it’s true. My elder is sending me into the world.”

“So we’ll see each other in the world, we’ll meet before my thirtieth year, when I will begin to tear myself away from the cup. Now, father doesn’t want to tear himself away from his cup until he’s seventy, he’s even dreaming of eighty, he said so himself, and he means it all too seriously, though he is a buffoon. He stands on his sensuality, also as on a rock ... though after thirty years, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on ... But still, seventy is base; thirty is better: it’s possible to preserve ‘a tinge of nobility’^[128] while duping oneself. Have you seen Dmitri today?”

“No, I haven’t, but I did see Smerdyakov.” And Alyosha told his brother quickly and in detail about his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan suddenly began listening very anxiously, and even asked him to repeat certain things.

“Only he asked me not to tell brother Dmitri what he had said about him,” Alyosha added.

Ivan frowned and lapsed into thought.

“Are you frowning because of Smerdyakov?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, because of him. Devil take him. Dmitri I really did want to see, but now there’s no need ... ,” Ivan spoke reluctantly.

“Are you really leaving so soon, brother?”

“Yes.”

“What about Dmitri and father? How will it end between them?” Alyosha said anxiously.

“Don’t drag that out again! What have I got to do with it? Am I my brother Dmitri’s keeper or something?” Ivan snapped irritably, but suddenly smiled somehow bitterly. “Cain’s answer to God about his murdered brother, eh? Maybe that’s what you’re thinking at the moment? But, devil take it, I can’t really stay on here as their keeper! I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. Don’t think that I’m jealous of Dmitri and have been trying all these three months to win over his beauty Katerina Ivanovna! Damn it, I had my own affairs. I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. I just finished my affairs today, as you witnessed.”

“You mean today at Katerina Ivanovna’s?”

“Yes, and I’m done with it all at once. And why not? What do I care about Dmitri? Dmitri has nothing to do with it. I had my own affairs with Katerina Ivanovna. You know yourself, on the contrary, that Dmitri behaved as if he were conspiring with me. I never asked, not at all, but he himself solemnly handed her over to me, with his blessing. It all smacks of the ludicrous! No, Alyosha, no, if only you knew how light I feel now! I was sitting here eating my dinner and, believe me, I almost wanted to order champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Pah! half a year almost—and suddenly at once, I got rid of it all at once. Did I suspect, even yesterday, that it would cost me nothing to end it if I wanted?”

“Are you talking about your love, Ivan?”

“Love, if you wish, yes, I fell in love with a young lady, an institute girl. I tormented myself over her, and she tormented me. I sat over her ... and sud-denly it all blew away. This morning I spoke inspiredly, then I left—and burst out laughing, do you believe it? No, I’m speaking literally.”

“You’re also speaking quite cheerfully, now,” Alyosha remarked, looking closely at his face, which indeed had suddenly turned cheerful.

“But how could I know that I didn’t love her at all! Heh, heh! And it turns out that I didn’t. Yet I liked her so! How I liked her even today, as I was reciting my speech. And, you know, even now I like her terribly, and at the same time it’s so easy to leave her. Do you think it’s all fanfaronade?”

“No. Only maybe it wasn’t love.”

“Alyoshka,” laughed Ivan, “don’t get into arguments about love! It’s unseemly for you. But this morning, this morning, ai! how you jumped into it! I keep forgetting to kiss you for it ... And how she tormented me! I was sitting next to a strain, truly! Ah, she knew that I loved her! And she loved me, not Dmitri,” Ivan cheerfully insisted. “Dmitri is only a strain. Everything I said to her today is the very truth. But the thing is, the most important thing is, that she’ll need maybe fifteen or twenty years to realize that she doesn’t love Dmitri at all, and loves only me, whom she torments. And maybe she’ll never realize it, even despite today’s lesson. So much the better: I got up and left forever. By the way, how is she now? What happened after I left?” Alyosha told him about the hysterics and that she was now apparently unconscious and delirious.

“And Khokhlakov isn’t lying?”

“It seems not.”

“I’ll have to find out. No one, by the way, ever died of hysterics. Let her have hysterics, God loved woman when he sent her hysterics. I won’t go there at all. Why get myself into that again!”

“Yet you told her this morning that she never loved you.”

“I said it on purpose. Alyoshka, why don’t I call for champagne, let’s drink to my freedom. No, if only you knew how glad I am!”

“No, brother, we’d better not drink,” Alyosha said suddenly, “besides, I feel somehow sad.”

“Yes, you’ve been sad for a long time, I noticed it long ago.”

“So you’re definitely leaving tomorrow morning?”

“Morning? I didn’t say morning ... But, after all, maybe in the morning. Would you believe that I dined here today only to avoid dining with the old man, he’s become so loathsome to me. If it were just him alone, I would have left long ago. And why do you worry so much about my leaving? You and I still have God knows how long before I go. A whole eternity of time, immortality!”

“What eternity, if you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“But what does that matter to you and me?” Ivan laughed. “We still have time for our talk, for what brought us together here. Why do you look surprised? Tell me, what did we meet here for? To talk about loving Katerina Ivanovna, or about the old man and Dmitri? About going abroad? About the fatal situation in Russia? About the emperor Napoleon? Was it really for that?”

“No, not that.”

“So you know yourself what for. Some people need one thing, but we green youths need another, we need first of all to resolve the everlasting questions, that is what concerns us. All of young Russia is talking now only about the eternal questions. Precisely now, just when all the old men have suddenly gotten into practical questions. Why have you been looking at me so expectantly for these three months? In order to ask me: And how believest thou, if thou believest anything at all?’^[129] That is what your three months of looking come down to, is it not, Alexei Fyodorovich?”

“Maybe so,” Alyosha smiled. “You’re not laughing at me now, brother?”

“Me, laughing? I wouldn’t want to upset my little brother who has been looking at me for three months with so much expectation. Look me in the eye, Alyosha: I’m exactly the same little boy as you are, except that I’m not a novice. How have Russian boys handled things up to now? Some of them, that is. Take, for instance, some stinking local tavern. They meet there and settle down in a corner. They’ve never seen each other before in their whole lives, and when they walk out of the tavern, they won’t see each other again for forty years. Well, then, what are they going to argue about, seizing this moment in the tavern? About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same, only from the other end. And many, many of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the eternal questions, now, in our time. Isn’t it so?”

“Yes, for real Russians the questions of the existence of God and immortality, or, as you just said, the same questions from the other end, are of course first and foremost, and they should be,” Alyosha spoke, looking intently at his brother with the same quiet and searching smile.

“You see, Alyosha, sometimes it’s not at all smart to be a Russian, but still it’s even impossible to imagine anything more foolish than what Russian boys are doing now. Though I’m terribly fond of one Russian boy named Alyoshka.”

“Nicely rounded off,” Alyosha laughed suddenly.

“Now, tell me where to begin, give the order yourself—with God? The existence of God? Or what?”

“Begin with whatever you like, even ‘from the other end.’ You did proclaim yesterday at father’s that there is no God,” Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.

“I said that on purpose yesterday, at dinner with the old man, just to tease you, and I saw how your eyes glowed. But now I don’t mind at all discussing things with you, and I say it very seriously. I want to get close to you, Alyosha, because I have no friends. I want to try. Well, imagine that perhaps I, too, accept God,” Ivan laughed, “that comes as a surprise to you, eh?”

“Yes, of course, unless you’re joking again.”

“‘Joking.’ They said yesterday at the elder’s that I was joking. You see, my dear, there was in the eighteenth century an old sinner who stated that if God did not exist, he would have to be invented: S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer.^[130] And man has, indeed, invented God. And the strange thing, the wonder would not be that God really exists, the wonder is that such a notion—the notion of the necessity of God—could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man—so holy, so moving, so wise a notion, which does man such great honor. As for me, I long ago decided not to think about whether man created God or God created man. Naturally, I will not run through all the modern axioms laid down by Russian boys on the subject, which are all absolutely derived from European hypotheses; because what is a hypothesis there immediately becomes an axiom for a Russian boy, and that is true not only of boys but perhaps of their professors as well, since Russian professors today are quite often the same Russian boys. And therefore I will avoid all hypotheses. What task are you and I faced with now? My task is to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in, and what I hope for, is that right? And therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. But this, however, needs to be noted: if God exists and if he indeed created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it in accordance with Euclidean geometry, and he created human reason with a conception of only three dimensions of space. At the same time there were and are even now geometers and philosophers, even some of the most outstanding among them, who doubt that the whole universe, or, even more broadly, the whole of being, was created purely in accordance with Euclidean geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, may perhaps meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have come to the conclusion that if I cannot understand even that, then it is not for me to understand about God. I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world. And I advise you never to think about it, Alyosha my friend, and most especially about whether God exists or not. All such questions are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was ‘with God,’ who himself is God, and so on, and so on and so forth, to infinity.^[131] Many words have been invented on the subject. It seems I’m already on a good path, eh? And now imagine that in the final outcome I do not accept this world of God’s, I do not admit it at all, though I know it exists. It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man’s Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world’s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men—let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it. That is my essence, Alyosha, that is my thesis. I say it to you in all seriousness. I purposely started this talk of ours as stupidly as possible, but I arrived at my confession, because my confession is all you need. You did not need to know about God, you only needed to know what your beloved brother lives by. And I’ve told you.”

Ivan ended his long tirade suddenly with a sort of special and unexpected feeling.

“And why did you start out ‘as stupidly as possible’?” Alyosha asked, looking at him thoughtfully.

“Well, first, for the sake of Russianism, let’s say: Russian conversations on these subjects are all conducted as stupidly as possible. And second, then, the stupider, the more to the point. The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest. I brought the case around to my despair, and the more stupidly I’ve presented it, the more it’s to my advantage.”

“Will you explain to me why you ‘do not accept the world’?” said Alyosha.

“Of course I’ll explain, it’s no secret, that’s what I’ve been leading up to. My dear little brother, it’s not that I want to corrupt you and push you off your foundation; perhaps I want to be healed by you,” Ivan suddenly smiled just like a meek little boy. Never before had Alyosha seen him smile that way.

Chapter 4: Rebellion

“I must make an admission,” Ivan began. “I never could understand how it’s possible to love one’s neighbors. In my opinion, it is precisely one’s neighbors that one cannot possibly love. Perhaps if they weren’t so nigh ... I read sometime, somewhere about ‘John the Merciful’ (some saint) that when a hungry and frozen passerby came to him and asked to be made warm, he lay down with him in bed, embraced him, and began breathing into his mouth, which was foul and festering with some terrible disease.^[132] I’m convinced that he did it with the strain of a lie, out of love enforced by duty, out of self-imposed penance. If we’re to come to love a man, the man himself should stay hidden, because as soon as he shows his face—love vanishes.”

“The elder Zosima has spoken of that more than once,” Alyosha remarked. “He also says that a man’s face often prevents many people, who are as yet inexperienced in love, from loving him. But there is still much love in mankind, almost like Christ’s love, I know that, Ivan...”

“Well, I don’t know it yet, and I cannot understand it, nor can a numberless multitude of other people along with me. The question is whether this comes from bad qualities in people, or is inherent in their nature. In my opinion, Christ’s love for people is in its kind a miracle impossible on earth. True, he was God. But we are not gods. Let’s say that I, for example, am capable of profound suffering, but another man will never be able to know the degree of my suffering, because he is another and not me, and besides, a man is rarely willing to acknowledge someone else as a sufferer (as if it were a kind of distinction). And why won’t he acknowledge it, do you think? Because I, for example, have a bad smell, or a foolish face, or once stepped on his foot. Besides, there is suffering and suffering: some benefactor of mine may still allow a humiliating suffering, which humiliates me—hunger, for example; but a slightly higher suffering—for an idea, for example—no, that he will not allow, save perhaps on rare occasions, because he will look at me and suddenly see that my face is not at all the kind of face that, he fancies, a man should have who suffers, for example, for such and such an idea. And so he at once deprives me of his benefactions, and not even from the wickedness of his heart. Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It’s still possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close. If it were all as it is on stage, in a ballet, where beggars, when they appear, come in silken rags and tattered lace and ask for alms dancing gracefully, well, then it would still be possible to admire them. To admire, but still not to love. But enough of that. I simply wanted to put you in my perspective. I meant to talk about the suffering of mankind in general, but better let us dwell only on the suffering of children. That will reduce the scope of my argument about ten times, but even so it’s better if we keep to children. The more unprofitable for me, of course. But, first, one can love children even up close, even dirty or homely children (it seems to me, however, that children are never homely). Second, I will not speak of grown-ups because, apart from the fact that they are disgusting and do not deserve love, they also have retribution: they ate the apple, and knew good and evil, and became ‘as gods.’^[133] And they still go on eating it. But little children have not eaten anything and are not yet guilty of anything. Do you love children, Alyosha? I know you love them, and you’ll understand why I want to speak only of them now. If they, too, suffer terribly on earth, it is, of course, for their fathers; they are punished for their fathers who ate the apple—but that is reasoning from another world; for the human heart here on earth it is incomprehensible. It is impossible that a blameless one should suffer for another, and such a blameless one! Marvel at me, Alyosha—I, too, love children terribly. And observe, that cruel people—passionate, carnivorous, Karamazovian—sometimes love children very much. Children, while they are still children, up to the age of seven, for example, are terribly remote from grown-up people, as if they were different beings, of a different nature. I knew a robber in prison: he happened, in the course of his career, while slaughtering whole families in the houses he broke into and robbed at night, to have put the knife to several children as well. But he showed a strange affection for them while he was in prison. He spent all his time at the window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come to his window, and the boy got to be very friendly with him ... Do you know why I’m saying all this, Alyosha? I somehow have a headache, and I feel sad.”

“You have a strange look as you speak,” Alyosha observed anxiously, “as if you were in some kind of madness.”

“By the way, a Bulgarian I met recently in Moscow,” Ivan Fyodorovich went on, as if he were not listening to his brother, “told me how the Turks and Circassians there, in Bulgaria, have been committing atrocities everywhere, fearing a general uprising of the Slavs—they burn, kill, rape women and children, they nail prisoners by the ears to fences and leave them like that until morning, and in the morning they hang them—and so on, it’s impossible to imagine it all. Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it. These Turks, among other things, have also taken a delight in torturing children, starting with cutting them out of their mothers’ wombs with a dagger, and ending with tossing nursing infants up in the air and catching them on their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. The main delight comes from doing it before their mothers’ eyes. But here is a picture that I found very interesting. Imagine a nursing infant in the arms of its trembling mother, surrounded by Turks. They’ve thought up an amusing trick: they fondle the baby, they laugh to make it laugh, and they succeed—the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk aims a pistol at it, four inches from its face. The baby laughs gleefully, reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little head ... Artistic, isn’t it? By the way, they say the Turks are very fond of sweets.”

“What are you driving at, brother?” Alyosha asked.

“I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”

“As well as God, then.”

“You’re a remarkably good ‘implorator of unholy suits,’ as Polonius says in Hamlet,”^[134] Ivan laughed. “So you caught me, but let it be, I’m glad. A nice God you’ve got, if man created him in his image and likeness.^[135] You asked me what I was driving at: you see, I’m an amateur and collector of certain little facts; I copy them down from newspapers and stories, from wherever, and save them—would you believe it?—certain kinds of little anecdotes. I already have a nice collection of them. The Turks, of course, are in it, but they’re foreigners. I have native specimens as well, even better than the Turkish ones. You know, with us it’s beating, the birch and the lash, that’s our national way: with us nailed ears are unthinkable, we’re Europeans after all, but the birch, the lash—that is ours and cannot be taken from us. Abroad they apparently no longer do any beating nowadays; either their morals have been purified or they’ve passed such laws that apparently one man no longer dares to whip another; but they’ve rewarded themselves with something else to make up for it, something as purely national as our way, so national that it is apparently impossible for us, though, by the way, it seems to be taking root here, especially since the time of the religious movement in our higher society. I have a lovely pamphlet, translated from the French, telling of how quite recently, only five years ago, in Geneva, a villain and murderer named Richard was executed— a lad of twenty-three, I believe, who repented and turned to the Christian faith at the foot of the scaffold. This Richard was someone’s illegitimate child; at the age of six he was presented by his parents to some Swiss mountain shepherds, who brought him up to work for them. He grew up among them like a little wild beast; the shepherds taught him nothing; on the contrary, by the time he was seven, they were already sending him out to tend the flocks in the cold and wet, with almost no clothes and almost nothing to eat. And, of course, none of them stopped to think or repent of doing so; on the contrary, they considered themselves entirely within their rights, for Richard had been presented to them as an object, and they did not even think it necessary to feed him. Richard himself testified that in those years, like the prodigal son in the Gospel, he wanted terribly to eat at least the mash given to the pigs being fattened for market, but he was not given even that and was beaten when he stole from the pigs, and thus he spent his whole childhood and his youth, until he grew up and, having gathered strength, went out to steal for himself. The savage began earning money as a day laborer in Geneva, spent his earnings on drink, lived like a monster, and ended by killing some old man and robbing him. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death. They don’t sentimentalize over there. So then in prison he was immediately surrounded by pastors and members of various Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic ladies, and so on. In prison they taught him to read and write, began expounding the Gospel to him, exhorted him, persuaded him, pushed him, pestered him, urged him, and finally he himself solemnly confessed his crime. He repented, he wrote to the court himself saying that he was a monster, and that at last he had been deemed worthy of being illumined by the Lord and of receiving grace. All of Geneva was stirred, all of pious and philanthropic Geneva. All that was lofty and well-bred rushed to him in prison; Richard was kissed, embraced: ‘You are our brother, grace has descended upon you! ‘ And Richard himself simply wept with emotion: ‘Yes, grace has descended upon me! Before, through all my childhood and youth, I was glad to eat swine’s food, and now grace has descended upon me, too, I am dying in the Lord!’ ‘Yes, yes, Richard, die in the Lord, you have shed blood and must die in the Lord. Though it’s not your fault that you knew nothing of the Lord when you envied the swine their food and were beaten for stealing it (which was very bad, for it is forbidden to steal), but still you have shed blood and must die.’ And so the last day came. Limp Richard weeps and all the while keeps repeating: ‘This is the best day of my life, I am going to the Lord! ‘ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors, the judges, and the philanthropic ladies, ‘this is your happiest day, for you are going to the Lord!’ And it’s all moving towards the scaffold, in carriages and on foot, following the cart of shame that is bearing Richard. They arrive at the scaffold. ‘Die, brother,’ they call out to Richard, ‘die in the Lord, for grace has descended upon you, too! ‘ And so, covered with the kisses of his brothers, brother Richard is dragged up onto the scaffold, laid down on the guillotine, and his head is whacked off in brotherly fashion, forasmuch as grace has descended upon him, too. No, it’s quite typical. This little pamphlet was translated into Russian by some Russian Lutheranizing philanthropists from high society and sent out gratis with newspapers and other publications for the enlightenment of the Russian people. This thing about Richard is so good because it’s national. Though for us it’s absurd to cut our brother’s head off only because he’s become our brother and grace has descended upon him, still, I repeat, we have our own ways, which are almost as good. We have our historical, direct, and intimate delight in the torture of beating. Nekrasov has a poem describing a peasant flogging a horse on its eyes with a knout, ‘on its meek eyes.’^[136] We’ve all seen that; that is Russianism. He describes a weak nag, harnessed with too heavy a load, that gets stuck in the mud with her cart and is unable to pull it out. The peasant beats her, beats her savagely, beats her finally not knowing what he’s doing; drunk with beating, he flogs her painfully, repeatedly: ‘Pull, though you have no strength, pull, though you die! ‘ The little nag strains, and now he begins flogging her, flogging the defenseless creature on her weeping, her ‘meek eyes.’ Beside herself, she strains and pulls the cart out, trembling all over, not breathing, moving somehow sideways, with a sort of skipping motion, somehow unnaturally and shamefully—it’s horrible in Nekrasov. But that’s only a horse; God gave us horses so that we could flog them. So the Tartars instructed us,^[137] and they left us the knout as a reminder. But people, too, can be flogged. And so, an intelligent, educated gentleman and his lady flog their own daughter, a child of seven, with a birch—I have it written down in detail. The papa is glad that the birch is covered with little twigs, ‘it will smart more,’ he says, and so he starts ‘smarting’ his own daughter. I know for certain that there are floggers who get more excited with every stroke, to the point of sensuality, literal sensuality, more and more, progressively, with each new stroke. They flog for one minute, they flog for five minutes, they flog for ten minutes—longer, harder, faster, sharper. The child is crying, the child finally cannot cry, she has no breath left: ‘Papa, papa, dear papa!’ The case, through some devilishly improper accident, comes to court. A lawyer is hired. Among the Russian people, lawyers have long been called ‘hired consciences. ‘ The lawyer shouts in his client’s defense. ‘The case,’ he says, ‘is quite simple, domestic, and ordinary: a father flogged his daughter, and, to the shame of our times, it has come to court!’ The convinced jury retires and brings in a verdict of ‘not guilty.’ The public roars with delight that the torturer has been acquitted. Ahh, if I’d been there, I’d have yelled out a suggestion that they establish a scholarship in honor of the torturer...! Lovely pictures. But about little children I can do even better, I’ve collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. A little girl, five years old, is hated by her father and mother, ‘most honorable and official people, educated and well-bred.’^[138] You see, once again I positively maintain that this peculiar quality exists in much of mankind—this love of torturing children, but only children. These same torturers look upon all other examples of humankind even mildly and benevolently, being educated and humane Europeans, but they have a great love of torturing children, they even love children in that sense. It is precisely the defenselessness of these creatures that tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to—that is what enflames the vile blood of the torturer. There is, of course, a beast hidden in every man, a beast of rage, a beast of sensual inflammability at the cries of the tormented victim, an unrestrained beast let off the chain, a beast of diseases acquired in debauchery— gout, rotten liver, and so on. These educated parents subjected the poor five-year-old girl to every possible torture. They beat her, flogged her, kicked her, not knowing why themselves, until her whole body was nothing but bruises; finally they attained the height of finesse: in the freezing cold, they locked her all night in the outhouse, because she wouldn’t ask to get up and go in the middle of the night (as if a five-year-old child sleeping its sound angelic sleep could have learned to ask by that age)—for that they smeared her face with her excrement and made her eat the excrement, and it was her mother, her mother who made her! And this mother could sleep while her poor little child was moaning all night in that vile place! Can you understand that a small creature, who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her, in a vile place, in the dark and the cold, beats herself on her strained little chest with her tiny fist and weeps with her anguished, gentle, meek tears for ‘dear God’ to protect her—can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to ‘dear God.’ I’m not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil take them all, but these little ones! I’m tormenting you, Alyoshka, you don’t look yourself. I’ll stop if you wish.”

“Never mind, I want to suffer, too,” Alyosha murmured.

“One more picture, just one more, for curiosity, because it’s so typical, and above all I just read it in one of the collections of our old documents, the Archive, Antiquities, or somewhere, I’ll have to check the reference, I even forget where I read it.^[139] It was in the darkest days of serfdom, back at the beginning of the century—and long live the liberator of the people!^[140] There was a general at the beginning of the century, a general with high connections and a very wealthy landowner, the sort of man (indeed, even then they seem to have been very few) who, on retiring from the army, feels all but certain that his service has earned him the power of life and death over his subjects. There were such men in those days. So this general settled on his estate of two thousand souls, swaggered around, treated his lesser neighbors as his spongers and buffoons. He had hundreds of dogs in his kennels and nearly a hundred handlers, all in livery, all on horseback. And so one day a house-serf, a little boy, only eight years old, threw a stone while he was playing and hurt the paw of the general’s favorite hound. ‘Why is my favorite dog limping?’ It was reported to him that this boy had thrown a stone at her and hurt her paw. ‘So it was you,’ the general looked the boy up and down. ‘Take him!’ They took him, took him from his mother, and locked him up for the night. In the morning, at dawn, the general rode out in full dress for the hunt, mounted on his horse, surrounded by spongers, dogs, handlers, huntsmen, all on horseback. The house-serfs are gathered for their edification, the guilty boy’s mother in front of them all. The boy is led out of the lockup. A gloomy, cold, misty autumn day, a great day for hunting. The general orders them to undress the boy; the child is stripped naked, he shivers, he’s crazy with fear, he doesn’t dare make a peep ... ‘Drive him!’ the general commands. The huntsmen shout, ‘Run, run!’ The boy runs ... ‘Sic him!’ screams the general and looses the whole pack of wolfhounds on him. He hunted him down before his mother’s eyes, and the dogs tore the child to pieces...! I believe the general was later declared incompetent to administer his estates. Well ... what to do with him? Shoot him? Shoot him for our moral satisfaction? Speak, Alyoshka!”

“Shoot him!” Alyosha said softly, looking up at his brother with a sort of pale, twisted smile.

“Bravo!”Ivan yelled in a sort of rapture.”If even you say so,then ... A fine monk you are! See what a little devil is sitting in your heart, Alyoshka Karamazov!”

“What I said is absurd, but ...”

“That’s just it, that ‘but ... ,’” Ivan was shouting. “I tell you, novice, that absurdities are all too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen. We know what we know!”

“What do you know?”

“I don’t understand anything,” Ivan went on as if in delirium, “and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact...”

“Why are you testing me?” Alyosha exclaimed with a rueful strain. “Will you finally tell me?”

“Of course I’ll tell you, that’s just what I’ve been leading up to. You are dear to me, I don’t want to let you slip, and I won’t give you up to your Zosima.”

Ivan was silent for a moment; his face suddenly became very sad.

“Listen to me: I took children only so as to make it more obvious. About all the other human tears that have soaked the whole earth through, from crust to core, I don’t say a word, I’ve purposely narrowed down my theme. I am a bedbug, and I confess in all humility that I can understand nothing of why it’s all arranged as it is. So people themselves are to blame: they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven,^[141] knowing that they would become unhappy—so why pity them? Oh, with my pathetic, earthly, Euclidean mind, I know only that there is suffering, that none are to blame, that all things follow simply and directly one from another, that everything flows and finds its level—but that is all just Euclidean gibberish, of course I know that, and of course I cannot consent to live by it! What do I care that none are to blame and that I know it—I need retribution, otherwise I will destroy myself. And retribution not somewhere and sometime in infinity, but here and now, on earth, so that I see it myself. I have believed, and I want to see for myself, and if I am dead by that time, let them resurrect me, because it will be too unfair if it all takes place without me. Is it possible that I’ve suffered so that I, together with my evil deeds and sufferings, should be manure for someone’s future harmony? I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion,^[142] and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it was all for. All religions in the world are based on this desire, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I going to do with them? That is the question I cannot resolve. For the hundredth time I repeat: there are hosts of questions, but I’ve taken only the children, because here what I need to say is irrefutably clear. Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It’s quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering. Why do they get thrown on the pile, to manure someone’s future harmony with themselves? I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? And if it is really true that they, too, are in solidarity with their fathers in all the fathers’ evildoings, that truth certainly is not of this world and is incomprehensible to me. Some joker will say, perhaps, that in any case the child will grow up and have time enough to sin, but there’s this boy who didn’t grow up but was torn apart by dogs at the age of eight. Oh, Alyosha, I’m not blaspheming! I do understand how the universe will tremble when all in heaven and under the earth merge in one voice of praise, and all that lives and has lived cries out: ‘Just art thou, O Lord, for thy ways are revealed!‘^[143] Oh, yes, when the mother and the torturer whose hounds tore her son to pieces embrace each other, and all three cry out with tears: Just art thou, O Lord,’ then of course the crown of knowledge will have come and everything will be explained. But there is the hitch: that is what I cannot accept. And while I am on earth, I hasten to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, it may well be that if I live until that moment, or rise again in order to see it, I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest, looking at the mother embracing her child’s tormentor: ‘Just art thou, O Lord!’ but I do not want to cry out with them. While there’s still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to ‘dear God’ in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive, and I want to embrace, I don’t want more suffering. And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price. I do not, finally, want the mother to embrace the tormentor who let his dogs tear her son to pieces! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she wants to, let her forgive the tormentor her immeasurable maternal suffering; but she has no right to forgive the suffering of her child who was torn to pieces, she dare not forgive the tormentor, even if the child himself were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, then where is the harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive? I don’t want harmony, for love of mankind I don’t want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I’d rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can’t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket.^[144] And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead of time as possible. Which is what I am doing. It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.”

“That is rebellion,” Alyosha said softly, dropping his eyes.

“Rebellion? I don’t like hearing such a word from you,” Ivan said with feeling. “One cannot live by rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me straight out, I call on you—answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth.”

“No, I would not agree,” Alyosha said softly. “And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?”

“No, I cannot admit it. Brother,” Alyosha said suddenly, his eyes beginning to flash, “you asked just now if there is in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive. But there is such a being, and he can forgive everything, forgive all and for all,^[145] because he himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything. You’ve forgotten about him, but it is on him that the structure is being built, and it is to him that they will cry out: ‘Just art thou, O Lord, for thy ways have been revealed!’”

“Ah, yes, the ‘only sinless One’^[146] and his blood! No, I have not forgotten about him; on the contrary, I’ve been wondering all the while why you hadn’t brought him up for so long, because in discussions your people usually trot him out first thing. You know, Alyosha—don’t laugh!—I composed a poem once, about a year ago. If you can waste ten more minutes on me, I’ll tell it to you.”

“You wrote a poem?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t write it,” Ivan laughed, “I’ve never composed two lines of verse in my whole life. But I made up this poem and memorized it. I made it up in great fervor. You’ll be my first reader—I mean, listener. Why, indeed, should an author lose even one listener?” Ivan grinned. “Shall I tell it or not?”

“I’m listening carefully,” said Alyosha.

“My poem is called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’—an absurd thing, but I want you to hear it.”

Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor

“But here, too, it’s impossible to do without a preface, a literary preface, that is—pah!” Ivan laughed, “and what sort of writer am I! You see, my action takes place in the sixteenth century, and back then—by the way, you must have learned this in school—back then it was customary in poetic works to bring higher powers down to earth. I don’t need to mention Dante. In France, court clerks, as well as monks in the monasteries, gave whole performances in which they brought the Madonna, angels, saints, Christ, and God himself on stage. At the time it was all done quite artlessly. In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, in the Paris of Louis XI, to honor the birth of the French dauphin, an edifying performance is given free of charge for the people in the city hall, entitled Le bon jugement de la très sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie,^[147] in which she herself appears in person and pronounces her bon jugement. With us in Moscow, in pre-Petrine antiquity,^[148] much the same kind of dramatic performances, especially from the Old Testament, were given from time to time; but, besides dramatic performances, there were many stories and ‘verses’ floating around the world in which saints, angels, and all the powers of heaven took part as needed. In our monasteries such poems were translated, recopied, even composed—and when?—under the Tartars. There is, for example, one little monastery poem (from the Greek, of course): The Mother of God Visits the Torments,^[149] with scenes of a boldness not inferior to Dante’s. The Mother of God visits hell and the Archangel Michael guides her through ‘the torments.’ She sees sinners and their sufferings. Among them, by the way, there is a most amusing class of sinners in a burning lake: some of them sink so far down into the lake that they can no longer come up again, and ‘these God forgets’—an expression of extraordinary depth and force. And so the Mother of God, shocked and weeping, falls before the throne of God and asks pardon for everyone in hell, everyone she has seen there, without distinction. Her conversation with God is immensely interesting. She pleads, she won’t go away, and when God points out to her the nail-pierced hands and feet of her Son and asks: ‘How can I forgive his tormentors?’ she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down together with her and plead for the pardon of all without discrimination. In the end she extorts from God a cessation of torments every year, from Holy Friday to Pentecost, and the sinners in hell at once thank the Lord and cry out to him: ‘Just art thou, O Lord, who hast judged so.’ Well, my little poem would have been of the same kind if it had appeared back then. He comes onstage in it; actually, he says nothing in the poem, he just appears and passes on. Fifteen centuries have gone by since he gave the promise to come in his Kingdom, fifteen centuries since his prophet wrote: ‘Behold, I come quickly.’^[150] ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth not even the Son, but only my heavenly Father,’^[151] as he himself declared while still on earth. But mankind awaits him with the same faith and the same tender emotion. Oh, even with greater faith, for fifteen centuries have gone by since men ceased to receive pledges from heaven:

Believe what the heart tells you, For heaven offers no pledge.^[152]

Only faith in what the heart tells you! True, there were also many miracles then. There were saints who performed miraculous healings; to some righteous men, according to their biographies, the Queen of Heaven herself came down. But the devil never rests, and there had already arisen in mankind some doubt as to the authenticity of these miracles. Just then, in the north, in Germany, a horrible new heresy appeared.^[153] A great star, ‘like a lamp’ (that is, the Church), ‘fell upon the fountains of waters, and they were made bitter.’^[154]These heretics began blasphemously denying miracles. But those who still believed became all the more ardent in their belief. The tears of mankind rose up to him as before, they waited for him, loved him, hoped in him, yearned to suffer and die for him as before ... And for so many centuries mankind had been pleading with faith and fire: ‘God our Lord, reveal thyself to us,’^[155] for so many centuries they had been calling out to him, that he in his immeasurable compassion desired to descend to those who were pleading. He had descended even before then, he had visited some righteous men, martyrs, and holy hermits while they were still on earth, as is written in their ‘lives.’ Our own Tyutchev, who deeply believed in the truth of his words, proclaimed that:

Bent under the burden of the Cross, The King of Heaven in the form of a slave Walked the length and breadth of you, Blessing you, my native land.^[156]

It must needs have been so, let me tell you. And so he desired to appear to people if only for a moment—to his tormented, suffering people, rank with sin but loving him like children. My action is set in Spain, in Seville, in the most horrible time of the Inquisition, when fires blazed every day to the glory of God, and

In the splendid auto-da-fé Evil heretics were burnt.^[157]

Oh, of course, this was not that coming in which he will appear, according to his promise, at the end of time, in all his heavenly glory, and which will be as sudden ‘as the lightning that shineth out of the east unto the west.”^[158] No, he desired to visit his children if only for a moment, and precisely where the fires of the heretics had begun to crackle. In his infinite mercy he walked once again among men, in the same human image in which he had walked for three years among men fifteen centuries earlier. He came down to the ‘scorched squares’^[159] of a southern town where just the day before, in a ‘splendid auto-da-fé,’ in the presence of the king, the court, knights, cardinals, and the loveliest court ladies, before the teeming populace of all Seville, the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor had burned almost a hundred heretics at once ad majorent gloriam Dei.^[160] He appeared quietly, inconspicuously, but, strange to say, everyone recognized him. This could be one of the best passages in the poem, I mean, why it is exactly that they recognize him. People are drawn to him by an invincible force, they flock to him, surround him, follow him. He passes silently among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love shines in his heart, rays of Light, Enlightenment, and Power stream from his eyes and, pouring over the people, shake their hearts with responding love. He stretches forth his hands to them, blesses them, and from the touch of him, even only of his garments, comes a healing power. Here an old man, blind from childhood, calls out from the crowd: ‘Lord, heal me so that I, too, can see you,’ and it is as if the scales fell from his eyes, and the blind man sees him. People weep and kiss the earth he walks upon. Children throw down flowers before him, sing and cry ‘Hosanna! ‘ to him. ‘It’s he, it’s really he,’ everyone repeats, ‘it must be he, it can be no one but he.’ He stops at the porch of the Seville cathedral at the very moment when a child’s little, open, white coffin is being brought in with weeping: in it lies a seven-year-old girl, the only daughter of a noble citizen. The dead child is covered with flowers. ‘He will raise your child,’ people in the crowd shout to the weeping mother. The cathedral padre, who has come out to meet the coffin, looks perplexed and frowns. Suddenly a wail comes from the dead child’s mother. She throws herself down at his feet: ‘If it is you, then raise my child! ‘ she exclaims, stretching her hands out to him. The procession halts, the little coffin is lowered down onto the porch at his feet. He looks with compassion and his lips once again softly utter: ‘Talitha cumi’—’and the damsel arose.’^[161] The girl rises in her coffin, sits up and, smiling, looks around her in wide-eyed astonishment. She is still holding the bunch of white roses with which she had been lying in the coffin. There is a commotion among the people, cries, weeping, and at this very moment the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself crosses the square in front of the cathedral. He is an old man, almost ninety, tall and straight, with a gaunt face and sunken eyes, from which a glitter still shines like a fiery spark. Oh, he is not wearing his magnificent cardinal’s robes in which he had displayed himself to the people the day before, when the enemies of the Roman faith were burned—no, at this moment he is wearing only his old, coarse monastic cassock. He is followed at a certain distance by his grim assistants and slaves, and by the ‘holy’ guard. At the sight of the crowd he stops and watches from afar. He has seen everything, seen the coffin set down at his feet, seen the girl rise, and his face darkens. He scowls with his thick, gray eyebrows, and his eyes shine with a sinister fire. He stretches forth his finger and orders the guard to take him. And such is his power, so tamed, submissive, and tremblingly obedient to his will are the people, that the crowd immediately parts before the guard, and they, amidst the deathly silence that has suddenly fallen, lay their hands on him and lead him away. As one man the crowd immediately bows to the ground before the aged Inquisitor, who silently blesses the people and moves on. The guard lead their prisoner to the small, gloomy, vaulted prison in the old building of the holy court, and lock him there. The day is over, the Seville night comes, dark, hot, and ‘breathless.’ The air is ‘fragrant with laurel and lemon.’^[162] In the deep darkness, the iron door of the prison suddenly opens, and the old Grand Inquisitor himself slowly enters carrying a lamp. He is alone, the door is immediately locked behind him. He stands in the entrance and for a long time, for a minute or two, gazes into his face. At last he quietly approaches, sets the lamp on the table, and says to him: ‘Is it you? You?’ But receiving no answer, he quickly adds: ‘Do not answer, be silent. After all, what could you say? I know too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what you already said once. Why, then, have you come to interfere with us? For you have come to interfere with us and you know it yourself. But do you know what will happen tomorrow? I do not know who you are, and I do not want to know: whether it is you, or only his likeness; but tomorrow I shall condemn you and burn you at the stake as the most evil of heretics, and the very people who today kissed your feet, tomorrow, at a nod from me, will rush to heap the coals up around your stake, do you know that? Yes, perhaps you do know it,’ he added, pondering deeply, never for a moment taking his eyes from his prisoner.”

“I don’t quite understand what this is, Ivan,” Alyosha, who all the while had been listening silently, smiled. “Is it boundless fantasy, or some mistake on the old man’s part, some impossible qui pro quo?”^[163]

“Assume it’s the latter, if you like,” Ivan laughed, “if you’re so spoiled by modern realism and can’t stand anything fantastic—if you want it to be qui pro quo, let it be. Of course,” he laughed again, “the man is ninety years old, and might have lost his mind long ago over his idea. He might have been struck by the prisoner’s appearance. It might, finally, have been simple delirium, the vision of a ninety-year-old man nearing death, and who is excited, besides, by the auto-da-fé of a hundred burnt heretics the day before. But isn’t it all the same to you and me whether it’s qui pro quo or boundless fantasy? The only thing is that the old man needs to speak out, that finally after all his ninety years, he speaks out, and says aloud all that he has been silent about for ninety years.”

“And the prisoner is silent, too? Just looks at him without saying a word?”

“But that must be so in any case,” Ivan laughed again. “The old man himself points out to him that he has no right to add anything to what has already been said once. That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.’ They not only speak this way, they also write this way, at least the Jesuits do. I’ve read it in their theologians myself. ‘Have you the right to proclaim to us even one of the mysteries of that world from which you have come?’ my old man asks him, and answers the question himself: ‘No, you have not, so as not to add to what has already been said once, and so as not to deprive people of freedom, for which you stood so firmly when you were on earth. Anything you proclaim anew will encroach upon the freedom of men’s faith, for it will come as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was the dearest of all things to you, even then, one and a half thousand years ago. Was it not you who so often said then: “I want to make you free”?^[164] But now you have seen these “free” men,’ the old man suddenly adds with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, this work has cost us dearly,’ he goes on, looking sternly at him, ‘but we have finally finished this work in your name. For fifteen hundred years we have been at pains over this freedom, but now it is finished, and well finished. You do not believe that it is well finished? You look at me meekly and do not deign even to be indignant with me. Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?’”

“Again I don’t understand,” Alyosha interrupted. “Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?”

“Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues’ credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy. ‘For only now’ (he is referring, of course, to the Inquisition) ‘has it become possible to think for the first time about human happiness. Man was made a rebel; can rebels be happy? You were warned,’ he says to him, ‘you had no lack of warnings and indications, but you did not heed the warnings, you rejected the only way of arranging for human happiness, but fortunately, on your departure, you handed the work over to us. You promised, you established with your word, you gave us the right to bind and loose,^[165] and surely you cannot even think of taking this right away from us now. Why, then, have you come to interfere with us?’”

“What does it mean, that he had no lack of warnings and indications?” Alyosha asked.

“You see, that is the main thing that the old man needs to speak about.

“‘The dread and intelligent spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-being,’ the old man goes on, ‘the great spirit spoke with you in the wilderness, and it has been passed on to us in books that he supposedly “tempted” you.^[166] Did he really? And was it possible to say anything more true than what he proclaimed to you in his three questions, which you rejected, and which the books refer to as “temptations”? And at the same time, if ever a real, thundering miracle was performed on earth, it was on that day, the day of those three temptations. The miracle lay precisely in the appearance of those three questions. If it were possible to imagine, just as a trial and an example, that those three questions of the dread spirit had been lost from the books without a trace, and it was necessary that they be restored, thought up and invented anew, to be put back into the books, and to that end all the wise men on earth—rulers, high priests, scholars, philosophers, poets—were brought together and given this task: to think up, to invent three questions such as would not only correspond to the scale of the event, but, moreover, would express in three words, in three human phrases only, the entire future history of the world and mankind—do you think that all the combined wisdom of the earth could think up anything faintly resembling in force and depth those three questions that were actually presented to you then by the powerful and intelligent spirit in the wilderness? By the questions alone, simply by the miracle of their appearance, one can see that one is dealing with a mind not human and transient but eternal and absolute. For in these three questions all of subsequent human history is as if brought together into a single whole and foretold; three images are revealed that will take in all the insoluble historical contradictions of human nature over all the earth. This could not have been seen so well at the time, for the future was unknown, but now that fifteen centuries have gone by, we can see that in these three questions everything was so precisely divined and foretold, and has proved so completely true, that to add to them or subtract anything from them is impossible.

“‘Decide yourself who was right: you or the one who questioned you then? Recall the first question; its meaning, though not literally, was this: “You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear—for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them.” But you did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, you reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of bread? You objected that man does not live by bread alone, but do you know that in the name of this very earthly bread, the spirit of the earth will rise against you and fight with you and defeat you, and everyone will follow him exclaiming: “Who can compare to this beast, for he has given us fire from heaven!”^[167]Do you know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men? “Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!”—that is what they will write on the banner they raise against you, and by which your temple will be destroyed. In place of your temple a new edifice will be raised, the terrible Tower of Babel will be raised again,^[168] and though, like the former one, this one will not be completed either, still you could have avoided this new tower and shortened people’s suffering by a thousand years—for it is to us they will come after suffering for a thousand years with their tower! They will seek us out again, underground, in catacombs, hiding (for again we shall be persecuted and tortured), they will find us and cry out: “Feed us, for those who promised us fire from heaven did not give it.” And then we shall finish building their tower, for only he who feeds them will finish it, and only we shall feed them, in your name, for we shall lie that it is in your name. Oh, never, never will they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: “Better that you enslave us, but feed us.” They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves. They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. You promised them heavenly bread, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble human race? And if in the name of heavenly bread thousands and tens of thousands will follow you, what will become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Is it that only the tens of thousands of the great and strong are dear to you, and the remaining millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, weak but loving you, should serve only as material for the great and the strong? No, the weak, too, are dear to us. They are depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us, and look upon us as gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them—so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! But we shall say that we are obedient to you and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us. This deceit will constitute our suffering, for we shall have to lie. This is what that first question in the wilderness meant, and this is what you rejected in the name of freedom, which you placed above everything. And yet this question contains the great mystery of this world. Had you accepted the “loaves,” you would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being, and of the whole of mankind together, namely: “before whom shall I bow down?” There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it. For the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something before which I or some other man can bow down, but to find something that everyone else will also believe in and bow down to, for it must needs be all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: “Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise death to you and your gods!” And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols. You knew, you could not but know, this essential mystery of human nature, but you rejected the only absolute banner, which was offered to you to make all men bow down to you indisputably— the banner of earthly bread; and you rejected it in the name of freedom and heavenly bread. Now see what you did next. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. With bread you were given an indisputable banner: give man bread and he will bow down to you, for there is nothing more indisputable than bread. But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience—oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. That is so, but what came of it? Instead of taking over men’s freedom, you increased it still more for them! Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. And so, instead of a firm foundation for appeasing human conscience once and for all, you chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men’s strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all—and who did this? He who came to give his life for them! Instead of taking over men’s freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely, seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law,^[169] man had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide-but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it. Yet is this what was offered you? There are three powers, only three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels, for their own happiness— these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority. You rejected the first, the second, and the third, and gave yourself as an example of that. When the dread and wise spirit set you on a pinnacle of the Temple and said to you: “If you would know whether or not you are the Son of God, cast yourself down; for it is written of him, that the angels will bear him up, and he will not fall or be hurt, and then you will know whether you are the Son of God, and will prove what faith you have in your Father.”^[170] But you heard and rejected the offer and did not yield and did not throw yourself down. Oh, of course, in this you acted proudly and magnificently, like God, but mankind, that weak, rebellious tribe—are they gods? Oh, you knew then that if you made just one step, just one movement towards throwing yourself down, you would immediately have tempted the Lord and would have lost all faith in him and been dashed against the earth you came to save, and the intelligent spirit who was tempting you would rejoice. But, I repeat, are there many like you? And, indeed, could you possibly have assumed, even for a moment, that mankind, too, would be strong enough for such a temptation? Is that how human nature was created—to reject the miracle, and in those terrible moments of life, the moments of the most terrible, essential, and tormenting questions of the soul, to remain only with the free decision of the heart? Oh, you knew that your deed would be preserved in books, would reach the depths of the ages and the utmost limits of the earth, and you hoped that, following you, man, too, would remain with God, having no need of miracles. But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles. And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself, his own miracles this time, and will bow down to the miracles of quacks, or women’s magic, though he be rebellious, heretical, and godless a hundred times over. You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: “Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you.”^[171] You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified. But here, too, you overestimated mankind, for, of course, they are slaves, though they were created rebels. Behold and judge, now that fifteen centuries have passed, take a look at them: whom have you raised up to yourself? I swear, man is created weaker and baser than you thought him! How, how can he ever accomplish the same things as you? Respecting him so much, you behaved as if you had ceased to be compassionate, because you demanded too much of him—and who did this? He who loved him more than himself! Respecting him less, you would have demanded less of him, and that would be closer to love, for his burden would be lighter. He is weak and mean. What matter that he now rebels everywhere against our power, and takes pride in this rebellion? The pride of a child and a schoolboy! They are little children, who rebel in class and drive out the teacher. But there will also come an end to the children’s delight, and it will cost them dearly. They will tear down the temples and drench the earth with blood. But finally the foolish children will understand that although they are rebels, they are feeble rebels, who cannot endure their own rebellion. Pouring out their foolish tears, they will finally acknowledge that he who created them rebels no doubt intended to laugh at them. They will say it in despair, and what they say will be a blasphemy that will make them even more unhappy, for human nature cannot bear blasphemy and in the end always takes revenge for it. And so, turmoil, confusion, and unhappiness—these are the present lot of mankind, after you suffered so much for their freedom! Your great prophet tells in a vision and an allegory that he saw all those who took part in the first resurrection and that they were twelve thousand from each tribe.^[172] But even if there were so many, they, too, were not like men, as it were, but gods. They endured your cross, they endured scores of years of hungry and naked wilderness, eating locusts and roots,^[173] and of course you can point with pride to these children of freedom, of free love, of free and magnificent sacrifice in your name. But remember that there were only several thousand of them, and they were gods. What of the rest? Is it the fault of the rest of feeble mankind that they could not endure what the mighty endured? Is it the fault of the weak soul that it is unable to contain such terrible gifts? Can it be that you indeed came only to the chosen ones and for the chosen ones? But if so, there is a mystery here, and we cannot understand it. And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts. Tell me, were we right in teaching and doing so? Have we not, indeed, loved mankind, in so humbly recognizing their impotence, in so lovingly alleviating their burden and allowing their feeble nature even to sin, with our permission? Why have you come to interfere with us now? And why are you looking at me so silently and understandingly with your meek eyes? Be angry! I do not want your love, for I do not love you. And what can I hide from you? Do I not know with whom I am speaking? What I have to tell you is all known to you already, I can read it in your eyes. And is it for me to hide our secret from you? Perhaps you precisely want to hear it from my lips. Listen, then: we are not with you, but with him, that is our secret! For a long time now—eight centuries already—we have not been with you, but with him. Exactly eight centuries ago we took from him what you so indignantly rejected,^[174] that last gift he offered you when he showed you all the kingdoms of the earth: we took Rome and the sword of Caesar from him, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, the only rulers, though we have not yet succeeded in bringing our cause to its full conclusion. But whose fault is that? Oh, this work is still in its very beginnings, but it has begun. There is still long to wait before its completion, and the earth still has much to suffer, but we shall accomplish it and we shall be caesars, and then we shall think about the universal happiness of mankind. And yet you could have taken the sword of Caesar even then. Why did you reject that last gift? Had you accepted that third counsel of the mighty spirit, you would have furnished all that man seeks on earth, that is: someone to bow down to, someone to take over his conscience, and a means for uniting everyone at last into a common, concordant, and incontestable anthill—for the need for universal union is the third and last torment of men. Mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal. There have been many great nations with great histories, but the higher these nations stood, the unhappier they were, for they were more strongly aware than others of the need for a universal union of mankind. Great conquerors, Tamerlanes and Genghis Khans, swept over the earth like a whirlwind, yearning to conquer the cosmos, but they, too, expressed, albeit unconsciously, the same great need of mankind for universal and general union. Had you accepted the world and Caesar’s purple, you would have founded a universal kingdom and granted universal peace. For who shall possess mankind if not those who possess their conscience and give them their bread? And so we took Caesar’s sword, and in taking it, of course, we rejected you and followed him. Oh, there will be centuries more of the lawlessness of free reason, of their science and anthropophagy— for, having begun to build their Tower of Babel without us, they will end in anthropophagy. And it is then that the beast will come crawling to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood from its eyes. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written: “Mystery!”^[175] But then, and then only, will the kingdom of peace and happiness come for mankind. You are proud of your chosen ones, but you have only your chosen ones, while we will pacify all. And there is still more: how many among those chosen ones, the strong ones who might have become chosen ones, have finally grown tired of waiting for you, and have brought and will yet bring the powers of their spirit and the ardor of their hearts to another field, and will end by raising their free banner against you! But you raised that banner yourself. With us everyone will be happy, and they will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as in your freedom, everywhere. Oh, we shall convince them that they will only become free when they resign their freedom to us, and submit to us. Will we be right, do you think, or will we be lying? They themselves will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember to what horrors of slavery and confusion your freedom led them. Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: “Yes, you were right, you alone possess his mystery, and we are coming back to you—save us from ourselves.” Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly, of course, that we take from them the bread they have procured with their own hands, in order to distribute it among them, without any miracle; they will see that we have not turned stones into bread; but, indeed, more than over the bread itself, they will rejoice over taking it from our hands! For they will remember only too well that before, without us, the very bread they procured for themselves turned to stones in their hands, and when they came back to us, the very stones in their hands turned to bread. Too well, far too well, will they appreciate what it means to submit once and for all! And until men understand this, they will be unhappy. Who contributed most of all to this lack of understanding, tell me? Who broke up the flock and scattered it upon paths unknown? But the flock will gather again, and again submit, and this time once and for all. Then we shall give them quiet, humble happiness, the happiness of feeble creatures, such as they were created. Oh, we shall finally convince them not to be proud, for you raised them up and thereby taught them pride; we shall prove to them that they are feeble, that they are only pitiful children, but that a child’s happiness is sweeter than any other. They will become timid and look to us and cling to us in fear, like chicks to a hen. They will marvel and stand in awe of us and be proud that we are so powerful and so intelligent as to have been able to subdue such a tempestuous flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble limply before our wrath, their minds will grow timid, their eyes will become as tearful as children’s or women’s, but just as readily at a gesture from us they will pass over to gaiety and laughter, to bright joy and happy children’s song. Yes, we will make them work, but in the hours free from labor we will arrange their lives like a children’s game, with children’s songs, choruses, and innocent dancing. Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission; and that we allow them to sin because we love them, and as for the punishment for these sins, very well, we take it upon ourselves. And we will take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as benefactors, who have borne their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—all depending on their obedience—and they will submit to us gladly and joyfully. The most tormenting secrets of their conscience—all, all they will bring to us, and we will decide all things, and they will joyfully believe our decision, because it will deliver them from their great care and their present terrible torments of personal and free decision. And everyone will be happy, all the millions of creatures, except for the hundred thousand of those who govern them. For only we, we who keep the mystery, only we shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward. For even if there were anything in the next world, it would not, of course, be for such as they. It is said and prophesied that you will come and once more be victorious, you will come with your chosen ones, with your proud and mighty ones, but we will say that they saved only themselves, while we have saved everyone. It is said that the harlot who sits upon the beast and holds mystery in her hands will be disgraced, that the feeble will rebel again, that they will tear her purple and strip bare her “loathsome” body.^[176] But then I will stand up and point out to you the thousands of millions of happy babes who do not know sin. And we, who took their sins upon ourselves for their happiness, we will stand before you and say: “Judge us if you can and dare.” Know that I am not afraid of you. Know that I, too, was in the wilderness, and I, too, ate locusts and roots; that I, too, blessed freedom, with which you have blessed mankind, and I, too, was preparing to enter the number of your chosen ones, the number of the strong and mighty, with a thirst “that the number be complete.”^[177] But I awoke and did not want to serve madness. I returned and joined the host of those who have corrected your deed. I left the proud and returned to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I am telling you will come true, and our kingdom will be established. Tomorrow, I repeat, you will see this obedient flock, which at my first gesture will rush to heap hot coals around your stake, at which I shall burn you for having come to interfere with us. For if anyone has ever deserved our stake, it is you. Tomorrow I shall burn you. Dixi.’”^[178]

Ivan stopped. He was flushed from speaking, and from speaking with such enthusiasm; but when he finished, he suddenly smiled.

Alyosha, who all the while had listened to him silently, though towards the end, in great agitation, he had started many times to interrupt his brother’s speech but obviously restrained himself, suddenly spoke as if tearing himself loose.

“But ... that’s absurd!” he cried, blushing. “Your poem praises Jesus, it doesn’t revile him ... as you meant it to. And who will believe you about freedom? Is that, is that any way to understand it? It’s a far cry from the Orthodox idea ... It’s Rome, and not even the whole of Rome, that isn’t true— they’re the worst of Catholicism, the Inquisitors, the Jesuits...! But there could not even possibly be such a fantastic person as your Inquisitor. What sins do they take on themselves? Who are these bearers of the mystery who took some sort of curse upon themselves for men’s happiness? Has anyone ever seen them? We know the Jesuits, bad things are said about them, but are they what you have there? They’re not that, not that at all ... They’re simply a Roman army, for a future universal earthly kingdom, with the emperor— the pontiff of Rome—at their head ... that’s their ideal, but without any mysteries or lofty sadness ... Simply the lust for power, for filthy earthly lucre,^[179] enslavement ... a sort of future serfdom with them as the landowners .. . that’s all they have. Maybe they don’t even believe in God. Your suffering Inquisitor is only a fantasy ...”

“But wait, wait,” Ivan was laughing, “don’t get so excited. A fantasy, you say? Let it be. Of course it’s a fantasy. But still, let me ask: do you really think that this whole Catholic movement of the past few centuries is really nothing but the lust for power only for the sake of filthy lucre? Did Father Paissy teach you that?”

“No, no, on the contrary, Father Paissy once even said something like what you ... but not like that, of course, not at all like that,” Alyosha suddenly recollected himself.

“A precious bit of information, however, despite your ‘not at all like that.’ I ask you specifically: why should your Jesuits and Inquisitors have joined together only for material wicked lucre? Why can’t there happen to be among them at least one sufferer who is tormented by great sadness and loves mankind? Look, suppose that one among all those who desire only material and filthy lucre, that one of them, at least, is like my old Inquisitor, who himself ate roots in the desert and raved, overcoming his flesh, in order to make himself free and perfect, but who still loved mankind all his life, and suddenly opened his eyes and saw that there is no great moral blessedness in achieving perfection of the will only to become convinced, at the same time, that millions of the rest of God’s creatures have been set up only for mockery, that they will never be strong enough to manage their freedom, that from such pitiful rebels will never come giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist had his dream of harmony. Having understood all that, he returned and joined ... the intelligent people. Couldn’t this have happened?”

“Whom did he join? What intelligent people?” Alyosha exclaimed, almost passionately. “They are not so very intelligent, nor do they have any great mysteries and secrets ... Except maybe for godlessness, that’s their whole secret. Your Inquisitor doesn’t believe in God, that’s his whole secret!”

“What of it! At last you’ve understood. Yes, indeed, that alone is the whole secret, but is it not suffering, if only for such a man as he, who has wasted his whole life on a great deed in the wilderness and still has not been cured of his love for mankind? In his declining years he comes to the clear conviction that only the counsels of the great and dread spirit could at least somehow organize the feeble rebels, ‘the unfinished, trial creatures created in mockery,’ in a tolerable way. And so, convinced of that, he sees that one must follow the directives of the intelligent spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and to that end accept lies and deceit, and lead people, consciously now, to death and destruction, deceiving them, moreover, all along the way, so that they somehow do not notice where they are being led, so that at least on the way these pitiful, blind men consider themselves happy. And deceive them, notice, in the name of him in whose ideal the old man believed so passionately all his life! Is that not a misfortune? And if even one such man, at least, finds himself at the head of that whole army ‘lusting for power only for the sake of filthy lucre,’ is one such man, at least, not enough to make a tragedy? Moreover, one such man standing at its head would be enough to bring out finally the real ruling idea of the whole Roman cause, with all its armies and Jesuits—the highest idea of this cause. I tell you outright that I firmly believe that this one man has never been lacking among those standing at the head of the movement. Who knows, perhaps such ‘ones’ have even been found among the Roman pontiffs. Who knows, maybe this accursed old man, who loves mankind so stubbornly in his own way, exists even now, in the form of a great host of such old men, and by no means accidentally, but in concert, as a secret union, organized long ago for the purpose of keeping the mystery, of keeping it from unhappy and feeble mankind with the aim of making them happy. It surely exists, and it should be so. I imagine that even the Masons have something like this mystery as their basis,’^[180] and that Catholics hate the Masons so much because they see them as competitors, breaking up the unity of the idea, whereas there should be one flock and one shepherd ... However, the way I’m defending my thought makes me seem like an author who did not stand up to your criticism. Enough of that.”

“Maybe you’re a Mason yourself!” suddenly escaped from Alyosha. “You don’t believe in God,” he added, this time with great sorrow. Besides, it seemed to him that his brother was looking at him mockingly. “And how does your poem end,” he asked suddenly, staring at the ground, “or was that the end?”

“I was going to end it like this: when the Inquisitor fell silent, he waited some time for his prisoner to reply. His silence weighed on him. He had seen how the captive listened to him all the while intently and calmly, looking him straight in the eye, and apparently not wishing to contradict anything. The old man would have liked him to say something, even something bitter, terrible. But suddenly he approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips. That is the whole answer. The old man shudders. Something stirs at the corners of his mouth; he walks to the door, opens it, and says to him: ‘Go and do not come again ... do not come at all ... never, never!’ And he lets him out into the ‘dark squares of the city.’^[181] The prisoner goes away.”

“And the old man?”

“The kiss burns in his heart, but the old man holds to his former idea.”

“And you with him!” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully. Ivan laughed.

“But it’s nonsense, Alyosha, it’s just the muddled poem of a muddled student who never wrote two lines of verse. Why are you taking it so seriously? You don’t think I’ll go straight to the Jesuits now, to join the host of those who are correcting his deed! Good lord, what do I care? As I told you: I just want to drag on until I’m thirty, and then—smash the cup on the floor!”

“And the sticky little leaves, and the precious graves, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, what will you love them with?” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully. “Is it possible, with such hell in your heart and in your head? No, you’re precisely going in order to join them ... and if not, you’ll kill yourself, you won’t endure it!”

“There is a force that will endure everything,” said Ivan, this time with a cold smirk.

“What force?”

“The Karamazov force ... the force of the Karamazov baseness.”

“To drown in depravity, to stifle your soul with corruption, is that it?”

“That, too, perhaps ... only until my thirtieth year maybe I’ll escape it, and then ...”

“How will you escape it? By means of what? With your thoughts, it’s impossible.”

“Again, in Karamazov fashion.”

“You mean ‘everything is permitted’? Everything is permitted, is that right, is it?”

Ivan frowned, and suddenly turned somehow strangely pale.

“Ah, you caught that little remark yesterday, which offended Miusov so much ... and that brother Dmitri so naively popped up and rephrased?” he grinned crookedly. “Yes, perhaps ‘everything is permitted,’ since the word has already been spoken. I do not renounce it. And Mitenka’s version is not so bad.”

Alyosha was looking at him silently.

“I thought, brother, that when I left here I’d have you, at least, in all the world,” Ivan suddenly spoke with unexpected feeling, “but now I see that in your heart, too, there is no room for me, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘everything is permitted,’ I will not renounce, and what then? Will you renounce me for that? Will you?”

Alyosha stood up, went over to him in silence, and gently kissed him on the lips.

“Literary theft!” Ivan cried, suddenly going into some kind of rapture. “You stole that from my poem! Thank you, however. Get up, Alyosha, let’s go, it’s time we both did.”

They went out, but stopped on the porch of the tavern.

“So, Alyosha,” Ivan spoke in a firm voice, “if, indeed, I hold out for the sticky little leaves, I shall love them only remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are here somewhere, and I shall not stop wanting to live. Is that enough for you? If you wish, you can take it as a declaration of love. And now you go right, I’ll go left—and enough, you hear, enough.^[182] I mean, even if I don’t go away tomorrow (but it seems I certainly shall), and we somehow meet again, not another word to me on any of these subjects. An urgent request. And with regard to brother Dmitri, too, I ask you particularly, do not ever even mention him to me again,” he suddenly added irritably. “It’s all exhausted, it’s all talked out, isn’t it? And in return for that, I will also make you a promise: when I’m thirty and want ‘to smash the cup on the floor,’ then, wherever you may be, I will still come to talk things over with you once more ... even from America, I assure you. I will make a point of it. It will also be very interesting to have a look at you by then, to see what’s become of you. Rather a solemn promise, you see. And indeed, perhaps we’re saying goodbye for some seven or ten years. Well, go now to your Pater Seraphicus;^[183] he’s dying, and if he dies without you, you may be angry with me for having kept you. Good-bye, kiss me once more—so—and now go...”

Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was similar to the way his brother Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the day before it was something quite different. This strange little observation flashed like an arrow through the sad mind of Alyosha, sad and sorrowful at that moment. He waited a little, looking after his brother. For some reason he suddenly noticed that his brother Ivan somehow swayed as he walked, and that his right shoulder, seen from behind, appeared lower than his left. He had never noticed it before. But suddenly he, too, turned and almost ran to the monastery. It was already getting quite dark, and he felt almost frightened; something new was growing in him, which he would have been unable to explain. The wind rose again as it had yesterday, and the centuries-old pine trees rustled gloomily around him as he entered the hermitage woods. He was almost running. “Pater Seraphicus—he got that name from somewhere—but where?” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. “Ivan, poor Ivan, when shall I see you again ... ? Lord, here’s the hermitage! Yes, yes, that’s him, Pater Seraphicus, he will save me ... from him, and forever!”

Several times, later in his life, in great perplexity, he wondered how he could suddenly, after parting with his brother Ivan, so completely forget about his brother Dmitri, when he had resolved that morning, only a few hours earlier, that he must find him, and would not leave until he did, even if it meant not returning to the monastery that night.

Chapter 6: A Rather Obscure One for the Moment

And Ivan Fyodorovich, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house. But, strangely, an unbearable anguish suddenly came over him, and, moreover, the closer he came to home, the worse it grew with every step. The strangeness lay not in the anguish itself, but in the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich simply could not define what the anguish consisted of. He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing, the very next day, having suddenly broken with everything that had drawn him there, to make another sharp turn, entering upon a new, completely unknown path, again quite as lonely as before, having much hope, but not knowing for what, expecting much, too much, from life, but unable himself to define anything either in his expectations or even in his desires. And yet at that moment, though the anguish of the new and unknown was indeed in his soul, he was tormented by something quite different. “Can it be loathing for my father’s house?” he thought to himself. “Very likely. I’m so sick of it, and though today I shall cross that vile threshold for the last time, still it makes me sick ...” But no, that was not it. Was it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation he had had with him? “For so many years I was silent with the whole world and did not deign to speak, and suddenly I spewed out so much gibberish!” Indeed, it could have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and youthful vanity, vexation at having been unable to speak his mind, especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom he undoubtedly counted a great deal in his heart. Of course there was that, too, that is, this vexation, there even had to be, but it was not that either, not that at all. “Anguish to the point of nausea, yet it’s beyond me to say what I want. Perhaps I shouldn’t think ...”

Ivan Fyodorovich tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. Above all, this anguish was vexing and annoyed him by the fact that it had some sort of accidental, completely external appearance; this he felt. Somewhere some being or object was standing and sticking up, just as when something sometimes sticks up in front of one’s eye and one doesn’t notice it for a long time, being busy or in heated conversation, and meanwhile one is clearly annoyed, almost suffering, and at last it dawns on one to remove the offending object, often quite trifling and ridiculous, something left in the wrong place, a handkerchief dropped on the floor, a book not put back in the bookcase, or whatever. At last, in a very bad and irritated state of mind, Ivan Fyodorovich reached his father’s house, and suddenly, glancing at the gate from about fifty paces away, he at once realized what was tormenting and worrying him so.

On the bench by the gate, idly enjoying the cool of the evening, sat the lackey Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyodorovich realized at the first sight of him that the lackey Smerdyakov was also sitting in his soul, and that it was precisely this man that his soul could not bear. It all suddenly became bright and clear. Earlier, with Alyosha’s story of his encounter with Smerdyakov, something gloomy and disgusting had suddenly pierced his heart and immediately evoked a reciprocal malice. Later, during their conversation, Smerdyakov was temporarily forgotten, but remained in his soul nonetheless, and as soon as Ivan Fyodorovich parted with Alyosha and headed for home alone, the forgotten feeling at once began suddenly and quickly to reemerge. “But can it be that this worthless scoundrel troubles me so much!” he thought with unbearable malice.

It so happened that Ivan Fyodorovich had recently begun taking an intense dislike to the man, especially over the past few days. He had even begun to notice his growing feeling almost of hatred for this creature. Perhaps the process of hatred had intensified so precisely because at first, when Ivan Fyodorovich had just come to our town, things had gone quite differently. Then, Ivan Fyodorovich had suddenly taken some special interest in Smerdyakov, found him even very original. He got him accustomed to talking with him, always marveling, however, at a certain incoherence, or, better, a certain restiveness in his mind, unable to understand what it was that could so constantly and persistently trouble “this contemplator.”^[184] They talked about philosophical questions and even about why the light shone on the first day, while the sun, moon, and stars were created only on the fourth day, and how this should be understood, but Ivan Fyodorovich was soon convinced that the sun, moon, and stars were not the point at all, that while the sun, moon, and stars might be an interesting subject, for Smerdyakov it was of completely third-rate importance, and that he was after something quite different. Be it one way or the other, in any event a boundless vanity began to appear and betray itself, an injured vanity besides. Ivan Fyodorovich did not like that at all. Here his loathing began. Then disorder came to the house, Grushenka appeared, the episodes with his brother Dmitri began, there were troubles of all sorts—they talked about that, too, but though Smerdyakov always entered into these conversations with great excitement, once again it was impossible to discover what he himself wanted. One might even marvel at the illogic and incoherence of some of his wishes, which came out involuntarily and always with the same vagueness. Smerdyakov kept inquiring, asking certain indirect, apparently farfetched questions, but why—he never explained, and usually, at the most heated moment of his questioning, he would suddenly fall silent or switch to something quite different. But in the end the thing that finally most irritated Ivan Fyodorovich and filled him with such loathing was a sort of loathsome and peculiar familiarity, which Smerdyakov began displaying towards him more and more markedly. Not that he allowed himself any impoliteness; on the contrary, he always spoke with the greatest respect; but nonetheless things worked out in such a way that Smerdyakov apparently, God knows why, finally came to consider himself somehow in league, as it were, with Ivan Fyodorovich, always spoke in such tones as to suggest that there was already something agreed to and kept secret, as it were, between the two of them, something once spoken on both sides, which was known only to the two of them and was even incomprehensible to the other mortals milling around them. For a long time, however, Ivan Fyodorovich did not understand this real reason for his increasing loathing, and only very recently had he finally managed to grasp what it was. With a feeling of squeamishness and irritation, he was now about to walk through the gate silently and without looking at Smerdyakov; but Smerdyakov got up from the bench, and by that one gesture Ivan Fyodorovich perceived at once that he wished to have a special conversation with him Ivan Fyodorovich looked at him and stopped, and the fact that he suddenly stopped like that, and did not pass by as he had wished to do a moment before, so infuriated him that he began to shake. With rage and loathing he looked at Smerdyakov’s wasted, eunuch’s physiognomy with its strands of hair brushed forward at the temples and a fluffed-up little tuft on top. His slightly squinting left eye winked and smirked as if to say: “What’s the hurry? You won’t pass me by. You know that we two intelligent men have something to talk over.” Ivan Fyodorovich was shaking:

“Get away, scoundrel! I’m no friend of yours, you fool!” was about to fly out of his mouth, but to his great amazement what did fly out of his mouth was something quite different.

“How is papa, asleep or awake?” he said softly and humbly, to his own surprise, and suddenly, also to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For a moment he was almost frightened—he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood in front of him, his hands behind his back, looking at him confidently, almost sternly.

“Still asleep, sir,” he said unhurriedly. (“You see, you yourself spoke first, not I.”) “I’m surprised at you, sir,” he added after a short pause, lowering his eyes somehow demurely, moving his right foot forward, and playing with the toe of his patent leather boot.

“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan asked abruptly and severely, doing his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly he realized with loathing that he felt the most intense curiosity, and that nothing could induce him to leave before it was satisfied.

“Why won’t you go to Chermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov suddenly glanced up and smiled familiarly. “And why I’m smiling, you yourself should understand, if you’re an intelligent man,” his squinting left eye seemed to say.

“Why should I go to Chermashnya?” Ivan Fyodorovich said in surprise.

Smerdyakov paused again.

“Even Fyodor Pavlovich himself has begged you so to do it, sir,” he said at last, unhurriedly and as if he attached no value to his answer: I’m getting off with a third-rate explanation, just so as to say something.

“What the devil do you want? Speak more clearly!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried at last angrily, passing from humility to rudeness.

Smerdyakov put his right foot together with his left, straightened up, but continued looking at him with the same calmness and the same little smile.

“Essentially nothing, sir ... just making conversation...”

There was another pause. They were silent for about a minute. Ivan Fyodorovich knew that now he ought to rise up and be angry, and Smerdyakov stood in front of him as if he were waiting: “Now we’ll see whether you get angry or not.” So at least it seemed to Ivan Fyodorovich. At last he swung forward in order to get up. Smerdyakov caught the moment precisely.

“My position, sir, is terrible, Ivan Fyodorovich, I don’t even know how to help myself,” he suddenly said firmly and distinctly, with a sigh on the last word. Ivan Fyodorovich at once sat down again.

“They’re both quite crazy, sir, they’ve both gone as far as childishness, sir,” Smerdyakov went on. “I mean your father and your brother, sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich. He’ll get up now, Fyodor Pavlovich will, and begin pestering me every minute: ‘Why hasn’t she come? How is it she hasn’t come? ‘ and it will go on until midnight, even past midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna doesn’t come (because she may have no intention of ever coming at all, sir), then he’ll jump on me again tomorrow morning: ‘Why didn’t she come? Tell me why, and when will she come?’—just as if I stood to blame for that all before him. On the other hand, there’s this matter, sir, that just as soon as it turns dusk, and even before, your good brother arrives at our neighbors’, with a weapon in his hands. ‘Listen, you rogue, you broth-maker,’ he says, ‘if you miss her and don’t let me know when she comes—I’ll kill you first of all.’ The night goes by, and in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovich, starts tormenting me with his torments: ‘Why didn’t she come? Will she be here soon?’ and again it’s as if I stood to blame before him, sir, because his lady didn’t come. And both of them, sir, keep getting angrier and angrier with every day and every hour, so that I sometimes think of taking my own life, sir, from fear. I can’t trust them, sir.”

“And why did you get mixed up in it? Why did you begin carrying tales to Dmitri Fyodorovich?” Ivan Fyodorovich said irritably.

“How could I not get mixed up in it, sir? And I didn’t get mixed up in it at all, if you want to know with complete exactitude, sir. I kept quiet from the very beginning, I was afraid to object, and the gentleman himself appointed me to be his servant Licharda.^[185] And since then all he says to me is: ‘I’ll kill you, you rogue, if you miss her!’ I suppose for certain, sir, that a long attack of the falling sickness will come on me tomorrow.”

“What do you mean, a long attack?”

“A long sort of attack, sir, extremely long. Several hours, sir, maybe even a day or two. Once it went on for three days, I fell out of the attic that time. It would stop shaking me, and then it would start again; and for all three days I couldn’t get into my right mind. Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Herzenstube, the local doctor, sir, and he put ice on my head and used some other remedy. . . I could have died, sir.”

“But they say that with the falling sickness you can’t know beforehand that an attack will come at such and such a time. What makes you say you’ll have one tomorrow?” Ivan Fyodorovich inquired with peculiar and irritable curiosity.

“That’s right, sir, you can’t know beforehand.”

“Besides, you fell from the attic that time.”

“I climb up to the attic every day, sir. I could fall from the attic tomorrow, too. Or if not from the attic, then I might fall into the cellar, sir, I go to the cellar every day, too, with my duties, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich gave him a long look.

“I see, you’re just driveling, and I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” he said softly but somehow menacingly. “You mean you’re going to pretend to have a three-day attack of the falling sickness tomorrow, eh?”

Smerdyakov, who was staring at the ground and again playing with his right toe, moved his right foot back, put his left foot forward instead, raised his eyes, and, smirking, said:

“Even if I could do such a thing, sir—that is, pretend, sir—and since for an experienced man it would be easy enough to do, then in that case, too, I would have every right to use such a means to save my life from death; for if I’m lying sick, then even if Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to his father, he can’t ask a sick man: ‘Why didn’t you inform me?’ He’d be ashamed to.”

“What the devil!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly flung out, his face twisted with malice. “Why are you so afraid for your life? My brother Dmitri’s threats are all just passionate talk, nothing more. He won’t kill you; he’ll kill, but not you!”

“He’d kill me like a fly, sir, me first of all. And even more than that, I’m afraid of something else: that I’ll be considered in his accomplice when he commits some absurdity over his father.”

“Why would they consider you his accomplice?”

“They’ll consider me his accomplice because I informed him about the signals, in great secrecy, sir.”

“What signals? Who did you inform? Devil take you, speak more clearly!”

“I must confess fully,” Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic composure, “that I have a secret here with Fyodor Pavlovich. As you yourself have the honor of knowing (if you do have the honor of knowing it), for the past few days now, as soon as night comes, or just evening, he immediately locks himself in. Lately you’ve been going upstairs early, and yesterday you didn’t go anywhere at all, sir, and therefore maybe you don’t know how carefully he’s begun locking himself in for the night. And even if Grigory Vasilievich himself was to come, he’d open the door for him, sir, only if he was sure of his voice. But Grigory Vasilievich won’t come, sir, because I’m the only one who waits on him now in his room, sir—that’s how he arranged it ever since he started this to-do with Agrafena Alexandrovna, and for the night, I, too, now retire, on his directions, and go and sleep in the cottage, provided I don’t sleep before midnight, but keep watch, get up and walk around the yard, and wait for Agrafena Alexandrovna to come, sir, because he’s been waiting for her like a crazy man for the past few days. And he reasons like this, sir: she’s afraid of him, he says, of Dmitri Fyodorovich (he calls him Mitka), and therefore she will come late at night, by the back way, you watch out for her, he says, until midnight or later. And if she comes, run to the door and knock, on the door or on the garden window, first two times slowly, like this: one, two; then three times more quickly: tap-tap-tap. Then, he says, I’ll know at once that she’s there and will quietly open the door to you. The other signal he gave me in case something urgent happens: first twice quickly, tap-tap, then a pause, then one much stronger tap. Then he’ll know that something sudden has happened and I need very bad to see him, and he’ll open up and I’ll come in and report. It’s all in case Agrafena Alexandrovna might not come herself, but sends a message about something; Dmitri Fyodorovich might come, too, besides, so I should also inform him if he’s around. He’s real frightened of Dmitri Fyodorovich, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna has already come and he’s locked himself up with her, and meanwhile Dmitri Fyodorovich turns up somewhere around, then, in that case, it is my duty to report it to him at once without fail, by three knocks, so that the first signal of five knocks means ‘Agrafena Alexandrovna is here,’ and the second signal of three knocks means \ ‘Really have to see you’— that’s how he himself taught me and explained them each several times, with examples. And since in the whole universe only he and I, sir, know about these signals, he’ll come doubtless and not calling out any names (he’s afraid of calling out loud) and open the door. And these same signals have now become known to Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Become known? You told him? How dared you?”

“It’s this same fear, sir. And how could I dare hold it back from him, sir? Dmitri Fyodorovich kept pressing me every day: ‘You’re deceiving me, what are you hiding from me? I’ll break both your legs!’ That’s when I informed him about these same secret signals, so that at least he could see my servility and be satisfied that I’m not deceiving him and report to him in every way.”

“If you think he’ll use these signals to try and get in, you mustn’t let him in.”

“But if I was to be laid up with a fit, sir, then how could I stop him from coming in, even if I dared to stop him, sir, seeing how desperate he is?”

“How the devil can you be so sure you’ll have a fit, devil take you! Are you laughing at me?”

“Would I dare laugh at you, sir, and do you think I feel up to laughing with all this fear? I anticipate that a falling fit will come on me, I have this anticipation, it will come from fear alone, sir.”

“What the devil! If you’re laid up then Grigory will keep watch! Warn Grigory beforehand, he certainly won’t let him in.”

“By no means would I dare tell Grigory Vasilievich about the signals without the master’s orders, sir. And concerning Grigory Vasilievich hearing and not letting him in, he’s come down sick today, ever since yesterday, and Marfa Ignatievna is going to give him the treatment tomorrow. They just decided on it. This treatment of theirs is rather curious, sir: Marfa Ignatievna knows this infusion, and always keeps it on hand, a strong one, with some herb in it—it’s her secret, sir. And with this secret medicine she treats Grigory Vasilievich about three times a year, when his whole lower back goes out—he has something like a paralysis, sir, about three times a year. Then Marfa Ignatievna takes a towel, soaks it in this infusion, and rubs his whole back with it for half an hour, till it’s dry and even gets quite red and swollen, sir, and then she gives him what’s left in the bottle to drink, with some prayer, sir, not all of it, though, because on this rare occasion she leaves a small amount for herself as well, sir, and also drinks it. And neither of them, I can tell you, is used to drinking, and they drop down right there and fall fast asleep for a long time, sir; and when Grigory Vasilievich wakes up after that, he almost always feels good, and Marfa Ignatievna, she wakes up after that and always has a headache, sir. And so, if Marfa Ignatievna fulfills this same intention tomorrow, sir, it’s not likely they’ll be able to hear anything and not let Dmitri Fyodorovich in. They’ll be asleep, sir.”

“What drivel! And it will all come together just like that, as if on purpose: your falling fit, and the two of them unconscious!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich. “Or are you going to arrange it that way?” suddenly escaped him, and he frowned menacingly.

“How could I arrange it, sir ... ? And why would I arrange it, if everything here depends on Dmitri Fyodorovich alone, sir, and only on his thoughts ... ? If he wants to commit anything, he’ll commit it, sir, and if not, I won’t bring him on purpose and push him into his father’s room.”

“And why should he go to father, especially on the sly, if, as you say yourself, Agrafena Alexandrovna won’t come at all?” Ivan Fyodorovich continued, turning pale with anger. “You say yourself, and I, too, have felt sure all along, that the old man is just dreaming, and that that creature would never come to him. Why, then, should Dmitri burst in on the old man if she doesn’t come? Speak! I want to know what you think.”

“If you please, sir, you know yourself why he will come, you don’t need to know what I think. He’ll come just because he’s angry, or because he’s suspicious, on account of my sickness, for example, he’ll begin wondering, he’ll get impatient and come to have a look through the rooms like he did yesterday, to see if maybe she didn’t sneak by him and get in. He is also perfectly informed that Fyodor Pavlovich has a big envelope prepared, and there are three thousand roubles sealed up in it, with three seals, sir, tied round with a ribbon and addressed by his own hand: ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she wants to come,’ and after that, three days later, he added: ‘and to my chicky.’ So that’s what’s so dubious, sir.”

“Nonsense!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, almost in a rage. “Dmitri won’t come to steal money and kill his father on top of it. He might have killed him yesterday over Grushenka, like a wild, angry fool, but he won’t go and steal!”

“He needs money very bad, sir, he’s in great extremities, Ivan Fyodorovich. You don’t even know how bad he needs it,” Smerdyakov explained with perfeet composure and remarkable distinctness. “Besides, he considers that same three thousand, sir, as if it was his own, and he told me so himself: ‘My father,’ he said, ‘still owes me exactly three thousand.’ And on top of all that, Ivan Fyodorovich, consider also a certain pure truth, sir: it’s almost a sure thing, one must say, sir, that Agrafena Alexandrovna, if only she wants to, could definitely get him to marry her, I mean the master himself, Fyodor Pavlovich, sir, if only she wants to—well, and maybe she’ll want to, sir. I’m just saying that she won’t come, but maybe she’ll want even more, sir, I mean to become the mistress right off. I know myself that her merchant Samsonov told her in all sincerity that it would even be quite a clever deal, and laughed as he said it. And she’s quite clever in her mind, sir. Why should she marry such a pauper as Dmitri Fyodorovich, sir? And so, taking that, now consider for yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich, that then there will be nothing at all left either for Dmitri Fyodorovich, or even for you, sir, along with your brother Alexei Fyodorovich, after your father’s death, not a rouble, sir, because Agrafena Alexandrovna will marry him in order to get it all down in her name and transfer whatever capital there is to herself, sir. But if your father was to die now, while none of that has happened, sir, then each one of you would get a sure forty thousand all at once, even Dmitri Fyodorovich, whom he hates so much, because he hasn’t made his will, sir ... All of that is known perfectly well to Dmitri Fyodorovich...”

Something became twisted, as it were, and twitched in Ivan Fyodorovich’s face. He suddenly blushed.

“And why, after all that,” he suddenly interrupted Smerdyakov, “do you advise me to go to Chermashnya? What do you mean to say by that? I’ll go, and that is what will happen here?” Ivan Fyodorovich was breathing with difficulty.

“Exactly right, sir,” Smerdyakov said quietly and reasonably, but keeping his eyes fixed on Ivan Fyodorovich.

“Exactly right?” Ivan Fyodorovich repeated, trying hard to restrain himself, and his eyes flashed menacingly.

“I said it because I felt bad for you. In your place, if it were me, I’d leave the whole thing right now ... rather than sit next to such business, sir ... ,” Smerdyakov replied, looking at Ivan Fyodorovich’s flashing eyes with an air of great candor. Both were silent for a time.

“It seems you’re a perfect idiot, and, no doubt ... a terrible scoundrel!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly got up from the bench. He was about to walk straight through the gate, but suddenly stopped and turned to Smerdyakov. Something strange happened: all of a sudden, as if in a convulsion, Ivan Fyodorovich bit his lip, clenched his fists, and in another moment would certainly have thrown himself on Smerdyakov. The latter, at any rate, noticed it at the same moment, gave a start, and shrank back with his whole body. But the moment passed favorably for Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyodorovich silently but in some perplexity, as it were, turned towards the gate.

“I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow, if you want to know—early tomorrow morning—and that’s it!” he said suddenly, with malice, loudly and distinctly, wondering afterwards why he had felt any need to tell this to Smerdyakov.

“That’s for the best, sir,” the latter put in, as if it was just what he had been waiting for. “The only thing is that they might trouble you from here in Moscow, by telegraph, sir, in some such case.”

Ivan Fyodorovich stopped again and again turned quickly to Smerdyakov. But with the latter, too, something seemed to happen. All his familiarity and casualness instantly dropped away; his whole face expressed extreme attention and expectation, but timid and obsequious now: “Don’t you want to say something more? Don’t you want to add anything?” could be read in the intent look he fixed on Ivan Fyodorovich.

“And wouldn’t they also summon me from Chermashnya ... in some such case?” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly yelled, raising his voice terribly for some unknown reason.

“Also from Chermashnya, sir ... they’ll trouble you there, sir ... ,” Smerdyakov muttered almost in a whisper, as if taken aback, but continuing to look intently, very intently, straight into Ivan Fyodorovich’s eyes.

“Only Moscow is further and Chermashnya is nearer—so are you worried about my travel expenses when you insist on Chermashnya, or about my having to make such a long detour?”

“Exactly right, sir ... ,” Smerdyakov muttered in a faltering voice now, with a hideous smile, again convulsively preparing to jump back just in time. But Ivan Fyodorovich, much to Smerdyakov’s surprise, suddenly laughed and walked quickly through the gate, still laughing. Anyone seeing his face would certainly have concluded that he was not laughing at all out of merriment. And for the life of him he himself could not have explained what was happening to him at that moment. He moved and walked as if in spasms.

Chapter 7: “It’s Always Interesting to Talk with an Intelligent Man”

And he spoke the same way. Having met Fyodor Pavlovich in the front hall, just as he came in, he suddenly cried out to him, waving his arms: “Upstairs, to my room, not now, good-bye,” and walked past, trying not even to look at his father. Very possibly the old man was too hateful to him at that moment, but such an unceremonious display of animosity came as a surprise even to Fyodor Pavlovich. And indeed the old man was apparently in a hurry to tell him something, for which purpose he had come out to meet him in the front hall; but, greeted with such courtesy, he stood silently, with a sneering look, following his boy with his eyes until he disappeared up the stairs.

“What’s with him?” he quickly asked Smerdyakov, who came in after Ivan Fyodorovich.

“He’s angry about something, sir, who knows what,” the servant muttered evasively.

“Ah, the devil! Let him be angry! Bring the samovar and clear out. Hurry up! Anything new?”

Then came all kinds of questions of the sort Smerdyakov had just complained of to Ivan Fyodorovich—that is, all to do with the expected lady visitor, which questions we shall omit here. Half an hour later the house was locked up and the crazy old fool was wandering through his rooms alone, in trembling expectation every moment of the five prearranged knocks, glancing from time to time at the dark windows and seeing nothing in them but night.

It was already very late, but Ivan Fyodorovich was still awake and pondering. That night he went to bed late, at about two. But we will not relate the whole train of his thought, nor is it time yet for us to enter into this soul—this soul will have its turn. And even if we should try to relate something, it would be very hard to do, because there were no thoughts, but something very indefinite, and, above all, too excited. He himself felt that he had lost his bearings. He was also tormented by various strange and almost entirely unexpected desires; for example, already after midnight, he suddenly felt an insistent and unbearable urge to go downstairs, unlock the door, go out to the servants’ cottage, and give Smerdyakov a beating; but if you had asked him why, he would have been decidedly unable to give even one precise reason, save perhaps that this lackey had become hateful to him, as if he had offended him more gravely than anyone else in the world. On the other hand, more than once during the night his soul was seized by some inexplicable and humiliating timidity, which—he could feel it—even suddenly robbed him, as it were, of his physical strength. His head ached and he was giddy. Something hateful was gnawing his soul, as if he were about to take revenge on someone. He even hated Alyosha, recalling that day’s conversation; at moments he hated himself very much as well. He almost forgot to think of Katerina Ivanovna, and afterwards was greatly surprised at that, the more so as he distinctly remembered how, just the morning before, when he had boasted so sweepingly at Katerina Ivanovna’s that he was leaving the next day for Moscow, at the same moment in his soul he had whispered to himself: “That’s nonsense, you won’t go, it won’t be so easy to tear yourself away as you’re bragging now.” Remembering this night long afterwards, Ivan Fyodorovich recalled with particular disgust how he suddenly would get up from the sofa and quietly, as though terribly afraid of being seen, open the door, go out to the head of the stairs, and listen to Fyodor Pavlovich moving around below, wandering through the downstairs rooms—he would listen for a long time, five minutes at a stretch, with a sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath, his heart pounding—and why he was doing all that, what he was listening for, he, of course, did not know himself. All his life afterwards he referred to this “action” as “loathsome,” and all his life, deep in himself, in the inmost part of his soul, he considered it the basest action of his whole life. For Fyodor Pavlovich himself he did not even feel any hatred during those minutes, but was simply overwhelmingly curious about how he was wandering around down there, what approximately he could be doing now in his rooms, guessing and pondering how he might glance at the dark windows down there and suddenly stop in the middle of the room, waiting, waiting to hear if anyone knocked. Perhaps twice Ivan Fyodorovich went out to the stairs in this pursuit. When all became quiet and Fyodor Pavlovich had gone to bed, at about two o’clock, Ivan Fyodorovich, too, went to bed with a firm desire to fall asleep quickly, for he felt terribly exhausted. And indeed he suddenly fell fast asleep and slept dreamlessly, but he woke up early, at about seven o’clock, when it was already light. On opening his eyes, to his amazement, he suddenly felt in himself the surge of some remarkable energy; he jumped up quickly, dressed quickly, took out his suitcase, and without a pause hurriedly began packing it. He had gotten his linen back from the washerwoman just the previous morning. Ivan Fyodorovich even smiled at the thought that it had all worked out so well, that there was nothing to delay his sudden departure. And the departure indeed turned out to be sudden. Though Ivan Fyodorovich had said the day before (to Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and then Smerdyakov) that he would be leaving the next day, by the time he went to bed he remembered very well that he was not even thinking about his departure, at least he never imagined that his first impulse, on waking up in the morning, would be to rush and pack his suitcase. At last the suitcase and bag were ready. It was about nine o’clock when Marfa Ignatievna came upstairs to him with her usual daily question: “Will you be pleased to have tea in your room, or will you come downstairs?” Ivan Fyodorovich came downstairs, looking almost gay, though there was in him, in his words and gestures, something scattered and hasty, as it were. He greeted his father affably and even inquired especially about his health, and then, without waiting for his father to finish his reply, at once announced that he was leaving for Moscow in an hour, for good, and asked that the horses be sent for. The old man listened to the announcement with no sign of surprise, and quite indecently forgot to feel any grief at his boy’s departure; instead he suddenly got into a great flutter, having just incidentally remembered some urgent business of his own.

“Ah, you! What a fellow! Couldn’t have told me yesterday ... well, no matter, we’ll settle it now. Do me a great favor, old man, stop off at Chermashnya. You just have to turn left at the Volovya station, just eight short miles and you’re in Chermashnya.”

“I can’t, for pity’s sake! It’s fifty miles to the railway, and the train leaves for Moscow at seven in the evening—I barely have time to make it.”

“You’ll make it tomorrow, or the day after, but turn off to Chermashnya today. What will it cost you to placate your father! If I hadn’t been kept here, I’d have shot over there and back myself long ago, because the deal there is an urgent and special one, but now isn’t the right time for me ... You see, I have a woodlot there, two parcels, in Begichev and Dyachkina, on waste lands. The Maslovs, the old man and his son, merchants, are offering only eight thousand for it, to cut the timber, and just last year a buyer turned up who offered twelve thousand, but he wasn’t local, that’s the catch. Because there’s no dealing among the locals now: the Maslovs—father and son, worth a hundred thousand—have got everybody in their fist: you take whatever they offer, and none of the locals dares to compete with them. And suddenly the priest at Ilyinskoye wrote me last Thursday that Gorstkin has come along, another little merchant, I know him, but the precious thing is that he’s not a local, he comes from Pogrebovo, which means he’s not afraid of the Maslovs, because he isn’t local. Eleven thousand he says he’ll give for the lot, do you hear? But the priest writes that he’ll only be staying on for another week. So suppose you go and settle it with him ...” “Write to the priest; he’ll settle it with him.”

“He can’t do it, that’s the thing. This priest has no eye for business. He’s pure gold, I’d hand him twenty thousand right now for safekeeping, without a receipt, but he has no eye at all, as if he weren’t even a man, a crow could trick him. And he’s a learned man, just think of it! This Gorstkin looks like a peasant, wears a blue coat, only in character he’s a complete scoundrel, that’s the trouble for us: he lies, there’s the catch. Sometimes he lies so much that you wonder, why is he doing it? Two years ago he lied that his wife was dead and that he’d already married another one, and, imagine, not a word of it was true: his wife never died, she’s still alive and beats him once every three days. So we’ve got to find out whether he’s lying now, too, or really wants to buy and is offering eleven thousand.”

“But there’s no use sending me; I have no eye either.”

“No, no, you’ll do fine, because I’m going to tell you all his signs, Gorstkin’s, I mean; I’ve been dealing with him from way back. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a red, ugly, thin little beard. If his beard shakes and he looks angry when he talks—good, it means he’s telling the truth, he wants to do business; but if he strokes his beard with his left hand and chuckles to himself—no good, he’s swindling, he’s going to cheat you. Never watch his eyes, you can’t tell anything from his eyes, they’re murky water, he’s a rogue—but watch his beard. I’ll give you a note for him, and you show it. His name is Gorstkin, only it’s not Gorstkin but Lyagavy, so don’t tell him he’s Lyagavy or he’ll get offended.^[186] If you settle with him and see that it’s all right, send me a note at once. Just write: ‘He’s not lying.’ Insist on eleven thousand; you can knock off a thousand, but not more. Think: from eight to eleven, it’s a difference of three thousand. It’s as if I just picked up three thousand, finding a buyer is hard, and I need money desperately. Let me know if it’s serious, then I’ll shoot over and back myself, I’ll snatch some time somehow. Why drive over there now, if the priest is only imagining things? Well, will you go or not?”

“Spare me, eh? I have no time.”

“Ahh, do it for your father, I won’t forget it! You have no hearts, any of you, that’s what! Will a day or two make any difference? Where are you off to— Venice? Your Venice won’t fall apart in two days. I’d send Alyoshka, but Alyoshka’s no use in such matters. It’s because you’re an intelligent man—don’t I know that? You’re not a timber dealer, but you have a good eye. The only thing is to see whether the man is talking seriously or not. Watch his beard, I tell you: if his little beard shakes, it’s serious.”

“So you yourself are pushing me to this damned Chermashnya, eh?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried with a malicious grin. Fyodor Pavlovich did not perceive or did not want to perceive the malice, but he did catch the grin.

“You’ll go, then, you’ll go? I’ll scribble a note for you right now.” “I don’t know if I’ll go, I don’t know, I’ll decide on the way.”

“Why on the way? Decide now. Decide, my dear! Make the deal, write me two lines, give the note to the priest, and he’ll send it to me at once. Then off to Venice—I won’t keep you any longer. The priest will deliver you to the Volovya station with his own horses ...”

The old man was simply delighted; he scribbled the note, the horses were sent for, cognac was served with a bite to eat. When the old man was pleased, he always became effusive, but this time he restrained himself, as it were. For instance, he did not say a single word about Dmitri Fyodorovich. And he was quite unmoved by the parting. He even seemed to have run out of things to talk about, and Ivan Fyodorovich was very much aware of it: “He’s sick of me really,” he thought to himself. Only when they were already saying good-bye on the porch did the old man begin to flutter about, as it were, and try to start kissing. But Ivan Fyodorovich quickly gave him his hand to shake, obviously backing away from the kisses. The old man understood at once and immediately checked himself.

“Well, God be with you, God be with you!” he kept repeating from the porch. “Will you come back again in this lifetime? Well, do come, I’ll always be glad to see you. Well, so Christ be with you!”

Ivan Fyodorovich got into the carriage.

“Farewell, Ivan! Don’t hold any grudges!” the father cried for the last time.

The whole household came out to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich presented each of them with ten roubles. When he was already seated in the carriage, Smerdyakov ran up to straighten the rug.

“You see ... I’m going to Chermashnya ... ,” somehow suddenly escaped from Ivan Fyodorovich; again, as the day before, it flew out by itself, accompanied by a kind of nervous chuckle. He kept remembering it for a long time afterwards.

“So it’s true what they say, that it’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man,” Smerdyakov replied firmly, giving Ivan Fyodorovich a penetrating look.

The carriage started and raced off. All was vague in the traveler’s soul, but he greedily looked around him at the fields, the hills, the trees, a flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky. Suddenly he felt so well. He tried to strike up a conversation with the coachman, and found something in the peasant’s reply terribly interesting, but a moment later he realized that it had all flown over his head and, in fact, he had not understood what the peasant had replied. He fell silent; it was good just as it was: clean, fresh, cool air; a clear sky. The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna flashed through his mind; but he gently smiled and gently blew at the dear shadows, and they flew away: “Their time will come,” he thought. They covered the distance to the next station quickly, changed horses, and raced on to Volovya. “Why is it interesting to talk with an intelligent man? What did he mean by that?” the thought suddenly took his breath away. “And why did I report to him that I was going to Chermashnya?” They pulled up at the Volovya station. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the carriage and was surrounded by coachmen. They haggled over the ride to Chermashnya, eight miles by country road, in a hired carriage. He told them to harness up. He went into the station house, looked around, glanced at the stationmaster’s wife, and suddenly walked back out on the porch.

“Forget about Chermashnya, brothers. Am I too late to get to the railway by seven o’clock?”

“We’ll just make it. Shall we harness up?”

“At once. Will one of you be in town tomorrow?”

“Yes, sure, Mitri here will be.”

“Can you do me a favor, Mitri? Stop and see my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him that I didn’t go to Chermashnya. Can you do that?”

“Why not? I’ll stop by. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovich for a long time.”

“Here’s a tip for you; I don’t suppose you’ll get anything from him ... ,” Ivan Fyodorovich laughed gaily.

“True enough, I won’t,” Mitri laughed, too. “Thank you, sir, I’ll be sure to do it...”

At seven o’clock in the evening Ivan Fyodorovich boarded the train and flew towards Moscow. “Away with all the past, I’m through with the old world forever, and may I never hear another word or echo from it; to the new world, to new places, and no looking back!” But instead of delight, such darkness suddenly descended on his soul, and such grief gnawed at his heart, as he had never known before in the whole of his life. He sat thinking all night; the train flew on, and only at daybreak, entering Moscow, did he suddenly come to, as it were.

“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.

And Fyodor Pavlovich, having seen his boy off, was left feeling very pleased. For all of two hours he felt almost happy and sat sipping cognac; but suddenly there occurred a most annoying and unpleasant circumstance for everyone in the house, which instantly plunged Fyodor Pavlovich into great confusion: Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell in from the top step. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatievna happened to be in the yard at the moment and heard it in time. She did not see the fall, but she did hear the cry, a special, strange cry, long familiar to her—the cry of an epileptic falling into a fit. Whether the fit had come on him as he was going down the stairs, so that of course he would have fallen unconscious at once, or whether, on the contrary, the fall and concussion had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was a known epileptic, was impossible to figure out; but he was found in the cellar, in cramps and convulsions, writhing and foaming at the mouth. At first they thought he must have broken something, an arm or a leg, and injured himself, but “God preserved him,” as Marfa Ignatievna put it: nothing of the sort had happened, and the only difficulty lay in getting him up and out of the cellar into the daylight. But they asked for help from some neighbors and somehow managed to accomplish it. Fyodor Pavlovich was present at this ceremony and lent a hand, obviously frightened and lost, as it were. The sick man, however, did not regain consciousness: the fits would let up for a time, but they kept coming back, and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen as the year before when he had accidentally fallen from the attic. They remembered that then they had applied ice to his head. Some ice was found in the cellar and Marfa Ignatievna arranged things, and towards evening Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Dr. Herzenstube, which doctor arrived at once. Having examined the patient thoroughly (he was the most thorough and attentive doctor in the whole district, an elderly and most venerable man), he concluded that the fit was an extraordinary one and “might threaten a danger,” and that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, does not fully understand it yet, but if by tomorrow morning the present remedies have not helped, he will venture to try others. The sick man was put to bed in the cottage, in a small room next to the quarters of Grigory and Marfa Ignatievna. For the rest of the day, Fyodor Pavlovich suffered one disaster after another: Marfa Ignatievna cooked dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov’s cooking, came out “like swill,” while the chicken was so dry that teeth could not chew it. In reply to the bitter, though just, reproaches of her master, Marfa Ignatievna objected that the chicken was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been to cooking school. Towards evening another care cropped up: it was reported to Fyodor Pavlovich that Grigory, who had fallen ill two days before, was now almost completely bedridden with his lower back out. Fyodor Pavlovich finished tea as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in terrible and anxious expectation. It so happened that he expected Grushenka’s arrival almost certainly that very evening; at least he had gotten from Smerdyakov, still early that morning, almost an assurance that “she has now undoubtedly promised to arrive, sir.” The irrepressible old man’s heart was beating anxiously; he paced his empty rooms and listened. He had to be on the alert: Dmitri Fyodorovich could be watching out for her somewhere, and when she knocked at the window (Smerdyakov had assured Fyodor Pavlovich two days before that he had told her where and how to knock), he would have to open the door as quickly as possible and by no means keep her waiting in the entryway even for a second, or else, God forbid, she might become frightened and run away. It was bothersome for Fyodor Pavlovich, but never had his heart bathed in sweeter hopes: for it was possible to say almost for certain that this time she would surely come ... !